SIDEWALK CRITIC SIDEWALK CRITIC LEWIS MUMFORD’S WRITINGS ON NEW YORK EDITED BY Robert Wojtowicz PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS • NEW YORK Published by Library of Congress Princeton Architectural Press Cataloging-in-Publication Data 37 East 7th Street Mumford, Lewis, 1895‒1990 New York, New York 10003 Sidewalk critic : Lewis Mumford’s 212.995.9620 writings on New York / Robert Wojtowicz, editor. For a free catalog of books, p. cm. call 1.800.722.6657. A selection of essays from the New Visit our web site at www.papress.com. Yorker, published between 1931 and 1940. ©1998 Princeton Architectural Press Includes bibliographical references All rights reserved and index. Printed and bound in the United States ISBN 1-56898-133-3 (alk. paper) 02 01 00 99 98 5 4 3 2 1 First edition 1. Architecture—New York (State) —New York. 2. Architecture, Modern “The Sky Line” is a trademark of the —20th century—New York (State)— New Yorker. New York. 3. New York (N.Y.)— Buildings, structures, etc. I. Wojtowicz, No part of this book my be used or repro- Robert. II. Title. duced in any manner without written NA735.N5M79 1998 permission from the publisher, except in 720’.9747’1—dc21 98-18843 the context of reviews. CIP Editing and design: Endsheets: Midtown Manhattan, Clare Jacobson 1937‒38. Photo by Alexander Alland. Copy editing and indexing: Frontispiece: Portrait of Lewis Mumford Andrew Rubenfeld by George Platt Lynes. Courtesy Estate of George Platt Lynes. Special thanks to: Eugenia Bell, Jane Photograph of the Museum of Modern Garvie, Caroline Green, Dieter Janssen, Art courtesy of the Museum of Modern Therese Kelly, Mark Lamster, Anne Art, New York. Nitschke, and Sara E. Stemen of All other photographs courtesy United Princeton Architectural Press States History, Local History & Genealogy —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation. CONTENTS 9 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 10 INTRODUCTION PROLOGUE 32 A New York Childhood: Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay 40 A New York Adolescence: Tennis, Quadratic Equations, and Love 1931-32 54 Frozen Music or Solidified Static?: Reflections on Radio City 60 The Sky Line: Bridges and Buildings 63 The Sky Line: The Modern Hospital 66 The Sky Line: From the Palace of the Popes The Cantilevered Front Return to Sobriety 69 The Sky Line: Unconscious Architecture 71 The Sky Line: Organic Architecture 74 The Sky Line: A Survivor of the Brown Decades De Mortuis What Might Have Been 77 The Sky Line: Medals and Mentions 80 The Sky Line: On Making a Museum Post-Boom Tower The Modern Restaurant 1932-33 84 The Sky Line: Gas Tanks and Towers The New Architect 88 The Sky Line: The Laundry Takes to Architecture 90 The Art Galleries: The Rockefeller Collection 93 The Sky Line: Two Theatres 95 The Sky Line: The Architects Show Their Wares 1932-33 (continued) 97 The Art Galleries: Early Americans Ben Shahn and Tom Mooney Mr. Rivera’s Mural 100 The Sky Line: Skyscrapers and Tenements 1933-34 104 The Sky Line: Portholes on the Avenue Bankers and Goldfish 107 The Sky Line: Mr. Rockefeller’s Center 110 The Sky Line: The New York Lunchroom 1934-35 114 The Sky Line: On an Incinerator Renovated Brownstone 118 The Sky Line: Concerning Foley Square 121 The Sky Line: Modern Design And the New Bryant Park 124 The Sky Line: Meditations on a Zoo 127 The Sky Line: Bars and Lounges 130 The Sky Line: Mr. Wright’s City Downtown Dignity 1935-36 134 The Sky Line: Menageries and Piers 138 The Sky Line: A Park with a View M. Le Corbusier Indians and Platters 142 The Sky Line: The New Housing 146 The Art Galleries: Fifth Avenue’s New Museum 150 The Sky Line: Old and New 154 The Sky Line: Fiftieth Anniversary A Georgian Post Office 158 The Sky Line: Houses and Fairs 1936-37 164 The Sky Line: Modernity and Commerce 168 The Sky Line: Parks and Playgrounds New Buildings for Old 173 The Sky Line: The City of the Future 177 The Sky Line: Buildings and Books 181 The Sky Line: The World’s Fair 185 The Sky Line: Bridges and Beaches 1937-38 192 The Sky Line: Gardens and Glass 197 The Sky Line: New Façades 202 The Sky Line: For the Common Good 206 The Sky Line: At Home, Indoors and Out 209 The Sky Line: The New Order 213 The Sky Line: Pax in Urbe 1938-39 218 The Sky Line: Bauhaus Two Restaurants and a Theatre 222 The Sky Line: Westward Ho! 226 The Sky Line: The American Tradition 230 The Sky Line: Growing Pains The New Museum 235 The Sky Line in Flushing: West Is East 242 The Sky Line in Flushing: Genuine Bootleg 1939-40 250 The Sky Line: Modern Housing, from A to X 254 The Sky Line: Millions for Mausoleums 258 The Sky Line: Versailles for the Millions 262 The Sky Line: The Dead Past and the Dead Present 266 The Sky Line: Rockefeller Center Revisited 270 INDEX To Richard Coons ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VER the years, I have encountered people, who, upon hearing of my interest in Lewis Mumford, have asked: “Why don’t you do O something with the early ‘Sky Lines’ that he wrote for the New Yorker?” Sidewalk Critic is my response to them, while it is also an offering to those readers who will be encountering Mumford’s work for the first time and those “students” of New York City who will revel in the abun- dance of information that follows. There is no more delightful introduction to Lewis Mumford and the city he called home for the first forty years of his life. Special thanks are due to my friend and agent Robert E. Shepard, who convinced Princeton Architectural Press to publish this collection. My edi- tor, Clare Jacobson, guided the project through to publication with aston- ishing calm and speed. Robert Arbuckle, Rachel Bones, Nancy Shawcross, Nancy Shelton, and Clay Vaughan uncovered information when I could not access it myself. Permission to republish this material was graciously pro- vided by Elizabeth Morss, executor of the Mumford estate and Lewis and Sophia Mumford’s granddaughter, and the legal counsel of the New Yorker, largely through the efforts of Jeanne Bauer. Robert Wojtowicz Norfolk, Virginia Cap, at Duell, Sloane & Pearce, suggested doing a book of Sky Lines. I collected these hastily in the spring of 1953, to see if they held up under critical inspection. My judge- ment was yes & no: so I decided against it—though by this time Harcourt, after Cap’s talking with Giroux, were ready, too. Since then, I have a few good ones to add: yet I hesitate, until at least I publish one or two more books on non-architectural subjects. LM December 29, 1953 INTRODUCTION EWIS Mumford (1895‒1990) was the most important architectural critic produced by the United States in the twentieth century.1 A L modernist who opposed the International Style, and a contextu- alist long before the emergence of postmodernism, he was primarily a social critic whose views on architecture defy easy categorization. In addition, he considered his architectural criticism to be an inseparable part of a larger, organic body of thought that found expression in more than twenty books and more than a thousand articles and reviews on a staggering array of sub- jects. To a large extent this is the case, but buried in the back issues of the New Yorker under “The Sky Line” lies a trove of Mumford’s best work in architectural criticism, unencumbered by weighty discourses on the tyran- ny of machines or the dissolution of cities. That Mumford should have equivocated over the republication of the early “Sky Lines” at first seems rather curious. Charles “Cap” Pearce, for- merly of Harcourt Brace and the New Yorker, and others in Mumford’s publishing circle clearly saw merit in them, so why would Mumford have wanted to suppress them? Moreover, why did Mumford generally feel uneasy about his role as architectural critic? The answers lie in the peculiar circumstances of the first part of his career. Following the trail blazed by earlier American critics such as Montgomery Schuyler, Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer, and Herbert Croly, Mumford first rose to national promi- nence in the 1920s through a series of short books on utopian thought and American culture and through dozens of articles and reviews on an even wider range of topics. A common thread that linked many of these pieces was architecture’s pivotal role as an index of civilization, a role that, accord- ing to Mumford, was in desperate need of clarification. From 1931 to 1963, his position as a regular columnist for the New Yorker provided him with the ideal platform for disseminating his views on modern architecture. Neither American traditionalists nor European modernists were spared his somewhat biting and often humorous criticism, as he attempted to strike a 12 SIDEWALK CRITIC balance between internationalism and regionalism, the “technic” and the “organic,” style and function. Yet, Mumford was dissatisfied with these early literary and journalistic efforts. From the early 1930s to the early 1950s, he focussed his growing intellectual ambitions on The Renewal of Life, a multivolume study of Western civilization that he hoped would bring him the same international renown that had already settled on Oswald Spengler and would later greet Arnold Toynbee.2 Using the parallel themes of technology, urbanism, and sociology, Mumford explicated an organic philosophy, synthesized from a variety of sources, that had guided his thinking since his college days. Architecture remained a unifying but background theme in this study, pro- viding a benchmark against which he could measure the integration of form and purpose that he sought in modern life.