Is 2 Columbus Circle Really Worth Preserving?
Posted by JoeVare, 18 March 2005

The Museum of Art and Design (the former American Craft Museum that is currently across W53rd Street from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City) has been planning to move into an abandoned Edward Durell Stone building on the south side of Columbus Circle. Often referred to as the Lollipop Building, after former New York Times' architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable called it a "die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops." The building feels out of place, is clearly not the best designed building in the city and is slowly crumbling away.

The museum hired Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture to redesign the building. He is keeping the existing massing of the structure, but replacing the facade with terra cotta panels and a series of horizontal and vertical slit windows, part of a multilevel design that will bring light and (presumably) great views of the park into the museum. At street level he will preserve some of the lollipop columns behind a layer of glass. If anything his design is too respectful, one that will always remind you of the Edward Durell Stone building no matter how interesting the interior is.

The Museum's plans have been challenged in court by an organization called Landmarks West! (yes, they have an exclamation point in their organization's name). The organization is (according to their internet site) a "non-profit award-winning community group working to preserve the best of the Upper West Side's architectural heritage from 59th to 110th Streets between Central Park West and Riverside Drive." They have taken up the cause of preserving the Huntington Hartford (just south of 58th Street by the way). They justify their involvement in the case as follows: "... Edward Durell Stone's building is nothing if not challenging. It forces us to reconsider the traditional hallmarks of a “landmark”. Typically, we think of an ornate cornice, the soothing rhythm of stoops along a tree-lined block. What, then, are we to make of cool marble, spare lines, and inventive, even slightly irreverent, reinterpretations of classical forms? The jury is still out. Remember, in 1960 people thought the Chrysler Building was a joke."

At a panel discussion in 2003 that is posted on the Landmarks West! site, architect Billie Tsien spoke realistically about the future preservation of the building: "It has gone through some extremely hard times. Though it was the Department of Cultural Affairs that was in there, they weren’t very culturally careful about what they did to the building. It’s a wreck inside the building. But this is a building that has very good bones. I don’t think it’s…I respect the architecture of the building. Its bones are very interesting, but it is a very very problematic building to be a gallery space. I think one can respect its bones and work within those bones. So I believe that this building has interesting possibilities for change that will not destroy the integrity of the building. So I sort of brought it immediately into the sort of yea or nay architectural circle…so I’m sorry I took you off the topic. It’s important to recognize that it is a thoughtful and very very interesting building but that it can’t work and be a living building in the state that it is in now."

Architect Robert A.M. Stern has been promoting its preservation for some time, writing that "I'm well aware that some people think I'm out of my mind to want to preserve a building they think is so idiosyncratic -- and because they find it idiosyncratic, they think it ugly. But I see it differently. I think we must take the long view and not give in to the ever-present tendency to dismiss, or even revile, the recent past. Nor must we preserve only a partial view of the past. Lever House and the Seagram Building represent the epitome of the correct, the orthodox in Post-War Modernism; but New York is not a place of orthodoxies, much less single orthodoxies. New York is cosmopolitan. New York is where orthodoxies are challenged by new ideas. Two Columbus Circle was just such a challenge, and it clearly challenges us to this day. Its provocations are as important now as ever. It was and is a pot of paint flung in the face of the high Modernist establishment. For this reason, if no other, Two Columbus Circle must be preserved intact for future generations to enjoy, consider, debate, and learn from. Preserve this landmark whole. Preserve this public provocation, this embodiment of artistic risk-taking."

The truth is that everyone (with the exception of Stern) always qualify their position by pointing out that Stone's building isn't great. It brings up a larger question of what should be preserved and what shouldn't be. Landmarks West! basic position is that even though no one likes it now, tastes may change and eventually someone will love it. An odd position to take. Cloepfil's design saves the two most important parts of the building- its massing and its street level, terribly out of place lollipop columns. What preservationists are left fighting for is a blank facade and a dead building.

Landmarks West! and Docomomo sued the City of New York, claiming that the city failed to hold public preservation hearings about the building's future. In late February 2005, the preservations lost in court again, leading the museum to speculate that construction could begin as early as this year and be completed by 2007.