{"id":84864,"date":"2019-11-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/old-new-york-in-brick-stone\/"},"modified":"2024-03-26T14:21:53","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T18:21:53","slug":"old-new-york-in-brick-stone","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/old-new-york-in-brick-stone\/","title":{"rendered":"Old New York in brick & stone"},"content":{"rendered":"

In <\/span>New York City, the meaning of architectural preservation has been the subject of an ongoing debate since the nineteenth century. In the late nineteenth century, leading architects and artists thought that only great buildings should be celebrated and protected, yet minor buildings more notable for their history than their aesthetic merit also had a constituency. Nonetheless, protecting architectural masterpieces became the dominant policy as various players considered which buildings to save. The preservation movement was then in its infancy; few valued such ordinary and ubiquitous New York City structures as the brownstone. Such nuanced ideas as adaptive reuse of buildings or architectural elements were discounted. In fact, The New York Times<\/span> rejected a scheme to salvage and relocate colossal columns from Colonnade Row on Lafayette Street in 1902 in an editorial edict: \u201cThe rule is simple and Scriptural. Let the dead past bury its dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the 1940s the city was on a well-chronicled downward slope that would lead to the edge of municipal bankruptcy in 1978. Since the Great Depression, construction had been sparse. Most new architecture, as seen in public housing projects and the Coliseum at Columbus Circle, was dismal. The few bold exceptions, the Chase Manhattan Tower sponsored by David Rockefeller and the World Trade Center, for instance, failed to lift the city from the depths of pessimism. New York City owned over eighty thousand housing units taken in tax foreclosures. Louis Auchincloss, who like Edith Wharton deftly connected the nuances of social standing to domestic architecture, cast a move from Park Avenue into a brownstone as the emblem of failure in the financial markets. The middle class and the rich were fleeing for the suburbs. The urban planner Roger Starr famously wrote an editorial in the Times<\/span> in 1976 endorsing \u201cPlanned Shrinkage,\u201d a policy that would save scarce city resources by nudging declining neighborhoods into oblivion.<\/p>\n

Despite this gloomy atmosphere, a citizens\u2019 movement gained strength, united by appreciation for the scale and character of old New York and by opposition to the grandiose and brutal interventions spawned by Robert Moses. The Municipal Art Society and allied groups marshaled the talents and influence of New Yorkers at two levels: in the courts, brilliant lawyers such as Ralph Menapace argued for the principle that government had an interest in protecting landmarks; in the streets, the mas<\/span> sponsored walking tours by Henry Hope Reed and Ada Louise Huxtable, mobilizing interest in the buildings and neighborhoods that were threatened by development. (This story, and many others about the nascent preservation movement, can be found in Gregory F. Gilmartin\u2019s 1995 Shaping the City: New York and the Municipal Art Society<\/span>.)<\/p>\n

In 1965, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was formed, and in 1978 the Supreme Court upheld the New York City Landmarks Preservation law. Once validated by the high court, preservation became a powerful force across the country. In New York, the small but committed group of urbanites that stubbornly stood by the city was driven as much by appreciation of the old buildings and streets as by a fear of more of the soulless modern architecture that came on the heels of slum-clearance and wanton development.<\/p>\n

By the 1960s, spurred by the growing awareness of preservation and a commitment to city living as opposed to suburban escape, a grassroots coalition emerged, one dedicated to renovating and living in brownstones\u2014the catch-all moniker for row houses in New York in brown limestone, brick, and even marble. Brownstones that had fallen into a sorry state, even those divided into small apartments, were purchased by do-it-yourself renovators. The brownstone movement, called \u201cbrownstone mania\u201d by New York<\/span> magazine, was in full force.<\/p>\n

In 1973, a \u201cBrownstone Fair\u201d at the Hotel Bossert in Brooklyn was mobbed by more than two thousand enthusiasts who came to hear about every tool\u2014from mortgages to plumbing\u2014that would be necessary to join the ranks of urban pioneers who were taking back these disused relics of nineteenth-century New York. The brownstoners, as these devotees came to be known, had political passion and<\/span> tool belts. This was a movement that could be committed to both social struggles and the appreciation of the finer points of Victorian hardware. Guides like Florence Adams\u2019s I Took a Hammer in My Hand: The Woman\u2019s Build It and Fix It Handbook <\/span>(1973), with its cover illustrating the Statue of Liberty wielding a hammer, sent a clear message: you could be an urban pioneer and do good for yourself and the city. But no book has had more impact on the brownstone movement and the broader interest in landmarks preservation than Charles Lockwood\u2019s 1972 Bricks & Brownstone<\/span>, now published by Rizzoli in its third edition, this time updated by Patrick W. Ciccone (for ease I\u2019ll refer to the author as Lockwood, since the majority of the text is still his).1<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cha<\/span>rles Lockwood started his project when he was an undergraduate at Princeton. When he requested a book on brownstones at the New York Public Library, he was told that \u201cit hasn\u2019t been written.\u201d He then fashioned his Princeton thesis into what would be the basis of his first publication in 1972, when he was just twenty-four years old. Not since Vincent Scully\u2019s The Shingle Style <\/span>had an academic thesis germinated such an influential architectural book. As the pioneer in exploring the basic building of New York streets, Lockwood wasted no time on architectural or planning theory but examined each chapter in the development of the brownstone on its own terms and let the success of each style be judged in context. Lockwood\u2019s deeply researched and deeply felt examination of the brownstone is now a source for students and practitioners of preservation, but in its early days, before academic programs and professional associations existed in the field, the book was considered a bible in the hardscrabble world of brownstoners.<\/p>\n

Though the book includes row house developments designed by such great architects as Alexander Jackson Davis, Henry Hardenberg, Lamb & Rich, and McKim, Mead & White, these are exceptions. As Lockwood shows, most brick and brownstone row house developments were built between 1830 and 1890, and almost all were built by unschooled but talented builder\/architects\u2014designed based on pattern books or inspired by the styles of other successful row house ventures. As they were not designed by trained architects, brownstones were mostly vernacular, taking part in what Huxtable called the \u201ccity of lesser masterpieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book covers the diverse and eclectic architecture that emerged within the limits of the sixteen- to twenty-five-foot-wide lots in the typical New York City block, examining the essential qualities of each, its precedents, and its details. Organized around successive styles including Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate, and Renaissance Revival, the author\u2019s appreciation of architecture is illuminating. Distilling the qualities of each style, Lockwood makes this a perfect guide to row house streetscapes, but his observations are set within a broader story that ranges from the specifics of domestic arrangements (for example how elegant parlors\u2014costly to decorate but infrequently used\u2014established the status of the household, even when shabbiness ruled upstairs) to the history of brownstone indoor plumbing.<\/p>\n

Bricks & Brownstone<\/span> presents the rich and complex story of houses instead of the dry erudition of a more academic approach. Examining the Federal row house, the dominant style after the Revolutionary War and into the 1830s, Lockwood connects these modest fa\u00e7ades to their roots in English Georgian architecture and the broader classical tradition. Though this is primarily a book about architecture, it is rich in trenchant reflections, such as the observation that the British character of the Federal style showed that the Revolutionary War \u201c[h]ad been a political, not a cultural, revolution.\u201d This comment is supported by an observer contemporaneous with Federal-style architecture, James Fenimore Cooper\u2019s imaginary \u201cEnglish gentleman\u201d in Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a Traveling Bachelor <\/span>(1828).<\/p>\n

Beyond providing a general portrait of the Federal row house, Lockwood explains each part, setting the house type in its social and historical context. The stoop, for example, is composed of\u2014given its etymology, its form, its practical and essential role in the plan of the house, and its anatomy\u2014steps, areaway, railings, and balusters. Lockwood also relates contemporary accounts of life in the city to tell us what a stoop meant in 1820. As noted by a British naval officer, \u201cit is customary to sit out of doors on the steps that ornament the entrances of the houses [where] friends assemble in the most agreeable and unceremonious manner. All sorts of cooling beverages and excellent confectionary are handed round, and the greatest good humor and gaiety prevail.\u201d<\/p>\n

The descriptions of each part of the house\u2014the bricks, stone, the basement, and the windows\u2014are free of architects\u2019 jargon. This is the writing of an insightful observer that guides the reader to understand the New York row house. When Lockwood extolls the \u201cpleasing contrast of the color and texture of brownstone on the red-brick house front,\u201d he adds Fanny Trollope\u2019s voice: she found it \u201ca beautiful stone.\u201d When Edith Wharton decries brownstone as \u201ccold chocolate sauce,\u201d we gain both an understanding of the central place of this stone in the character of New York and the resonant echoes of a conversation across time as its popularity waxes and wanes.<\/p>\n

New photography is an important addition to this edition. Dylan Chandler has documented some of the best brownstones, including details and interiors that show the enduring character of each successive style. Intact, sensitively restored interiors in full color are a helpful companion to the period photography. Some of the houses illustrated have been decorated in a spare modern taste. Though white walls and Barcelona chairs in a Victorian house may rankle some, there is a welcome vitality in the range of interior design that fits comfortably within the New York row house, and these photographs make it clear that adaptability and transformation have contributed to the success and continuing appeal of the brownstone.<\/p>\n

The<\/span> book offers significant lessons beyond its scope as a guide to homeowners, preservationists, and renovators: it shows architects and planners that respecting context and scale can lead to house designs that join together to make livable streetscapes. The beauty and longevity of row house streets and neighborhoods in New York show that this model of housing is not obsolete.<\/p>\n

That most of the houses illustrated were created without an architect might cause a thoughtful contemporary designer to check the impulse to attempt originality. As a thorough guide to the plans and details of brownstones, the book could be a starting point for an architect tasked with designing a row house and suggests many paths of inquiry: the photography might recommend a walk down a particular street to see the house with our own eyes; further on, a plate leads us to consider consulting an influential pattern book. Nothing in this book suggests that the brownstone is an artifact without relevance to current architectural practice. Instead, the book encourages a hands-on approach to appreciating architectural history.<\/p>\n

The history of brownstone development in Manhattan also challenges our assumptions about zoning policies and building codes. In the boom years following the Civil War, despite dry spells during the various financial panics, development marched north so swiftly that entire residential neighborhoods were overrun in a matter of years not decades. Commercial interests actually welcomed the New York City Zoning Resolution of 1916 as a measure that would protect the value of their properties. Until recently, however, relatively permissive codes allowed a fluid adaptation of the use and occupancy of brownstones. As the book shows, a house built for a wealthy banker in 1870 might accommodate lodgers to support a financially distressed family some decades later, then be converted to studio apartments in the 1940s, and finally in 1974 be bought by a \u201cbrownstoner\u201d for half of the original price, converting it back to single-family use. Today\u2019s overbearing zoning and building codes bar this degree of flexibility. The cycle of adaptation to the market is frozen.<\/p>\n

Sin<\/span>ce this book was first published, preservation has become a profession based on academic training, which started with the establishment of the first professional degree program at Columbia University in 1964. Today\u2019s salaried preservationist brings essential skills in important areas like conservation and material study, but the industry is saddled with doctrines and rules that can inhibit the energy displayed by the early \u201cI Took a Hammer in My Hand\u201d brownstoners. Despite the passing of the grassroots era of brownstoners, Bricks & Brownstone<\/span> remains an extraordinary document that conveys a love of New York City, its houses, and its people.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

1<\/a> Bricks & Brownstone: The New York Row House<\/span>, <\/span>by <\/span>Charles Lockwood and Patrick W. Ciccone, with Jonathan D. Taylor; Rizzoli, 352 pages, $85.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On <\/i>Bricks & Brownstone: The New York Row House by Charles Lockwood.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2108,"featured_media":132117,"template":"","tags":[654,1940,1938],"department_id":[563],"issue":[2910],"section":[],"acf":{"participants":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_65fd9fbaa0408","label":"Authors","name":"participants","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"user","value":null,"menu_order":0,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"role":"","return_format":"array","multiple":1,"allow_null":0,"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"participants","_valid":1}},"page_number":{"simple_value_formatted":17,"value_formatted":17,"value":"17","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_647e2bc0c860c","label":"Page 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