Interesting, I don't remember it that way.

Terry Teachout writes a very interesting piece (and not just because my name appears in it) titled Among the fortresses (foreshadowing his conclusion) on a very contemporary subject: the "culture center" as an urban redevelopment tool. Putting aide whether packaging culture into reservations somehow subtly debases it, (I think it feels smarmy and Teachout suggests "potential confusion of artistic aims that occurs when such a center is viewed as a means, not an end)", TT's post focuses on the pragmatic question: Does it work?

He quotes at length from an article he wrote 1997 for Time but which was never published. It was bumped, ironically I'd say. (That very bumping is a fine example of the dangers of over-focus on hero-worship architecture: Teachout's article was bumped by Robert Hughes' article on the Guggenheim Bilbao! Now I think that's funny.) Anyway, the bumpee was writing about New Jersey Performing Arts Center and whether it could possibly help turn around Newwark, New Jersey.

He cites Lincoln Center in Manhattan as an example of where a cultural center worked to change a neighborhood and writes that "similar ventures have revived other near-dead urban areasmost famously New York's Lincoln Center, which turned the Upper West Side from a decaying slum into Seinfeld country" and concludes (really in passing) that "Lincoln Center has its crippling flaws, God knows, but it did succeed in transforming New Yorks Upper West Side almost beyond recognition.

Is that so? Has it really changed that much and was Lincoln Center the impetus?

Now this is a very minor question (and really a tangent from the key point of Teachout's very good post, as Lincoln Center as cited as an exception to the rule in any case) as much as a statement. I graduated from Columbia in 1967 -- yes one of the golden boys. I shared an apartment on West End Avenue and 105th Street. with a bunch of other great guys (and I can never remember that apartment without hearing Bob Dylan's Dream). My recollection of the area which became Lincoln Center ---down in the 60s --- was that it was kinda grungy but perfectly ok. Nothing even remotely as creepy as the East Village, for example at this time. And anyway my neighborhood just south of Columbia was then a bit grungy, too. Considering Lincoln Center's location with walking distance of mid-town employment centers, is it reasonable to attribute much if any of the gentrification of the West Side to it? I haven't lived in NYC since 1967 so my knowledge is skimpy. But I wonder if TT and others are offering Lincoln Center too much credit? And that truly is a question as opposed to a statement disguised as one.

Btw, there are some interesting comments on this same and very pregnant topic --- big-buck architectural spectacles as a way to catalyze urban redevelopment --- at the Better Buildings Listserve sponsored by the Project for Public Spaces. (You can signup for it here at PPS Listserves.)

This comment, which popped up on my email today, seemed particularly well-said:

Sydney was not saved by the Opera nor was Paris by the Tour Eiffel. Buildings, no matter how deep their foundations, can't possible support the weight that is too often placed on them to be "breakthrough."

The Disney monstrosity will not "turn LA around" or "rejuvenate the
cities missing core." And it shouldn't be expected to. It is one
building. A civic hall that will, by definition, sit empty most of the
time. It's the longhair version of a new stadium, with all the
commensurate ability to create "community" and "economic
revitalization," which is to say, none.

What's really sad is that nearly all of these attempts at iconic status
are not meant to serve the communities in which they exist, but mainly
to draw attention and tourists. I am reminded of the plethora of
concrete dinosaurs and other roadside attractions that once stood along
the highways of the American west....except at least the intent was
honest, not gilded in architectural, contextual doublespeak.

Finally, perhaps it is fitting that Disney money built the LA hall.
Disney's desire to create an alternate reality has finally manifest
itself in architecture. One day soon we won't have to go to Orlando, as
it will have come to us. Ugh.

As with any Listserve, it gives you back to the degree you put into it.

•••

UPDATE: Further discussion by Terry Teachout here.

Comments

[JRoth]

Another data point: you may be aware of Pittsburgh's Cultural District and Cultural Trust, the organization (alliance of orgs, really) that acts like a CDC for a neighborhood (almost) without residents.

The backstory, briefly, is that Pittsburgh's Downtown has followed much of the classic post-war arc, as it became business-only by day and seedy by night, complete with a de facto red light district. Starting in the 70s, a number of local philanthropists began to work against this, donating sometimes vast sums towards the culture-driven revitalization of the neighborhood. Old movie palaces were renovated into symphony halls and other performing arts spaces. In a relatively brief time, the seedy element was largely driven out (a highly symbolic moment was the reopening of an adult movie theater as an arthouse theater), and that side of Downtown is the only part with a nightlife. The appropriate auxiliary businesses have also thrived - restaurants, mostly. In recent years, things have picked up pace, with a brand-new theater (by Michael Graves) for a play company that relocated downtown, as well as loft housing developed by the Cultural Trust and a new Creative Arts High School, located right Downtown.

Anyway, this is an interesting example because it has undeniably turned around a significant portion of town, without much in the way of sapping energy from elsewhere. On the other hand, it has done it through the existing urban fabric, or by extending the existing fabric (the high school site was a on the riverfront). So is this in the pro-culture-as-catalyst category, or is it so different from complexes like Lincoln Center or Disney Hall that it doesn't bear on them at all?

[Ian]

I'm pretty sure Jane Jacobs commented on the Lincoln Centre in 'Death and Life of Great American Cities'. If I recall her argument correctly it was that concentration of lots of 'arts facilities' in one location was of no benefit because you were unlikely to go from one to the other in a single visit.

I'm not sure that matters, since there must be some impact from the mass of people visiting the collective of uses on other activities in the area - bars restaurants etc - but it would also be possible to argue that the dispersal of these activities into other neighbourhoods would spread the benefits. I don't know how much the activities at the Lincoln Centre and similar are in fact mutually interdependent in terms of administration and finance.

[Benjamin Hemric]

Hi, David! It was fun to run across this old post of yours.

I too think there's very little to the idea that Lincoln Center transformed the Upper West Side and I'm thinking of challenging this bit of conventional wisdom in an article I'm hoping write about the recent Moses exhibits and book. (The book is really catalog to the exhibits.) The working title of the article is "Moses vs. Jacobs and Defining Urban Dysfunctionalism Down."

Having lived my entire life in New York, I've been visiting the Lincoln Center area off and on since the late-1950s and my recollection is that the area was kind of a "backwater" area -- and actually very un-Manhattan-like -- well into at least the late-1970s, and even after that the area didn't REALLY pick up steam until the early or mid-1990s, or so, I think. (I'll have to check the exact dates).