I mourn. For the lost opportunity to take the rarest of rare opportunities for a dense, mature city: a land mass in its heart, undeveloped. Good planning could have turned this into a new part of the city, embodying what we all like to think is the essence of New York: vital, inclusive, dense, mixed, and oh, did I say urban. When does such an opportunity ever happen? Mourn for what it might have been; and city planners, you have every reason to be ashamed for promulgating this. I'm looking at you, Amanda Burden, doyenne of the 1 percenters. And at you Michael Bloomberg. And at you, Dan Doctoroff. You are no doubt feeling very smug. But history will not be kind to you for this. Or, for that matter, all the other obscene towers you mid-wifed that are turning NY into a soulless Singapore.
26
On this day of Climate Marches all over the world. is Hudson Yards environmentally conscious, is it sustainable? Because if it is not, isn't already obsolete?
Slick and stupid? This would be a pity.
10
Forget about a hope for building new middle class communities, I would be impressed if NY had the courage to plan and invest in building, at the very least, a first-rate upper middle class community (like the intent behind Lincoln Towers) rather than another 1% village. Building nothing but housing for the mega wealthy simply can's sustain itself. The return on this investment to the local neighborhood economy populated with upper middle class citizens surely must be higher than the wealthy foreigner who buys an apartment that they never live in. There are only so many Prada stores a city can support. With the coming economic turndown, it won't be long before all of these high rise buildings are sitting vacant while upper middle class families (and, of course, middle class families) continue to be priced out of the city. I do not understand this.
15
Oh sure, that's just what we needed. Yet another luxury vanity project ready to sacrifice itself at the altar of wanton consumerism, while only a few feet away the huddled masses of this city's evicted and forgotten struggle to hold onto their jobs, their apartments and their lives.
Sorry. This is one native New Yorker who has a hard time reconciling with the newest, slickest, gated community and the recent sale of a $238 MILLION apartment that will remain empty for most of the year.
Honestly. Is this what we've come to?
Fine. The architecture and art is great and it certainly looks impressive on paper.
And just like when the World Trade Center was built, it has spawned a lot of aficionados and critics.
But do we "deserve" yet another monument to this kind of greed and exclusivity?
Just walk around the city, and get the answer for yourselves.
13
Great article and graphics.
8
Many years ago there was a New Yorker cartoon in which a real estate agent was talking to a prospective buyer on the balcony of an ugly high rise modern building in the middle of a quaint European village. The agent was saying that the apartment's spectacular view was not marred by the only ugly building in the village.
11
"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs should be (have been...) required reading for anyone who wants to be Mayor or who sits on any planning board of the city.
Jane Jacobs would be spinning in her grave...
18
The world of the spectacle of the here and now shows how dangerous money is in the wrong hands.
Unimaginable to live shaded by uncanny aberration.
10
Perfectly said. Hudson Yards is a disgrace.
8
Regarding The Shed...
I was stunned to receive a mailing from The Shed requesting a donation.
There are already so many arts organizations in NYC, many of which are struggling.
It is truly incredible that a new arts entity would be established - and it is not expected to be self-sustaining.
So this just adds to the cannibalization of funding for the arts.
Money will flock to the new glossy entity The Shed (which of course benefits Hudson Yard real estate interests), while other arts entities will be forgotten...
13
An Architectural petting zoo if petting knives is your thing. Jane Jacobs would kill herself.
As a former New Yorker I am increasingly unable to relate to the light- blocking forbidding architecture of the Central Park South area and now this. One of the great joys of living in New York was walking the Art Deco blocks and looking at the sheer beauty of the buildings, the casting of evening light on the streets, and the twice a year Manhattanhenge sunsets. Somewhere along the line, these developers decided that Las Vegas was the model for New York. It is painful and very sad.
PS/ people are shopping online especially younger people. Last time I walked Madison Avenue, there were more empty storefronts. Those same brands being lured into Hudson Yards were gone from 1 percentville.
23
Perfectly said. I lived in Manhattan from 1983-87. It was lovely then - a great place to walk. Well, that is gone now and Hudson Yards is disgusting.
5
The land lord should take out some flood insurance and enjoy the it while it
lasts, as should all New Yorkers, considering much of all the boroughs will be under water and all will experience Hurricane Sandy storms on a regular basis.
Even the military is planning for sea level rise. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/pentagon-fights-climate-change-sea-level-rise-defense-department-military/
Anyone living on the coasts are merely frogs (with their heads in the sand as well) idyllically sitting in a pan of water as the temperature rises.
Coastal real estate (including Manhattan) will sell for pennies on the dollar.
The smart money is selling and moving to higher more valuable ground
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article215421425.html
9
That was my first thought
4
This reminds me somewhat of Canary Wharf in London. When vast development sites become available, there's a hesitation on the part of the local government to look for creative solutions to make the most of it. It's hard to blame Relative and Oxford (Ontario employees' pension plan) for underwhelming the public, the development costs of the project were enormous and they did what they had to do to make sure they were going to get a return on investment.
It's up to city planners to use development and rebate dollars to greatest effect, which may have meant paying to bring the site to a develop-able standard on their own dime and then have developers bid on tranches of the project.
1
Too late to ask this question.
However, considering that it is the replacement for Hell's Kitchen? NO!
1
Obviously the Irish immigrants who built the place aren’t welcome anymore. Happy St. Pats.
3
Is this the neighbourhood NEW YORKERS deserve...YES if your’re a Manhattanite, and much less likely so if you don’t consider yourself one. If you want to know if you’re a Manhattanite, it’s most likely so if you not understanding this comment.....
1
So, please do enlighten us. As far as I know, "Manhattanites" exist in a hundred very different neighborhoods, from Battery Park City to Inwood...from Harlem to Soho...from East Village yo Columbus Circle. It often seems the only thing they have in common is that they live together on a very large island. If you think most of us, Uptown to Downtown, deserve this colossal monstrosity called Hudson Yards, I'm pretty sure you don't know Manhattanites from Mennonites.
14
Who approved this disgusting blight? They've ruined Manhattan.
12
Hudson Yards looks like a hostile place.
11
Sorry, but it's neither a profile in courage nor in aesthetics to lob this critique now that the paint is drying. Next time the NYT devotes this much column space or CGI enhanced illustrations, how bout beating the camel's nose under the tent?
8
Now that the gates are partially flung open to the public...now that people are actually going to "experience" the place, is EXACTLY the right time for such a critique. Bring it on! I was there this morning, and the whole thing is a monstrosity without a shred of elegance, humanity or context.
10
“ a Victorian matron wearing a bustle,” an architectural petting zoo,” crowded perfume bottles vying for attention in a department store window display.”
Mr. Kimmelman was born to write similes and metaphors! Wonderful writiing!
4
Except Victorian matrons did not wear bustles, Edwardian matrons did. Victorian matrons wore crinolines.
2
I never metaphor I didn't like, but in this article the burgundy smoke seemed a bit thick after a while. Normally I'd just enjoy the abundance of tasty fruits and nuts, but here I found myself wishing there were a little more plain cake between them. Spacing the metaphors and similes perhaps 20% further apart would have made for a less bumpy read. This piece actually served as a handy writing tip in that regard.
But if it brought you a simile, that's great.
4
A little late bringing up these concerns, aren't we, New York Times?
13
One never knows what the concerns will be based on a concept model. You have to wait for it to materialize...then you can critique. I believe that's the whole point here.
1
Lived in NYC years ago. While I have a general idea of where Hudson Yards is, it would have been informative if the Times indicated the street and avenue numbers which encompass this project. That said I'm not impressed.
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
9
A museum in our culture is an obfuscation of the term for a tomb. Sounds high falutin' but really just another hole in the ground with a big chunk of granite on top. A shell for relics of a dead culture, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum, etc. These structures are built on a scale to make a mere person become diminutive. Mr. Ross seems to believe that big and shiny and invariably expensive will separate him and his minions from the rest of humanity, that somehow they will rise from the rocks and be immortal. The histories of mankind are littered with the magnitude of this self-indulgent bilge, Mr. Ross is only the latest in a long line of shallow, materialistic mega-egos that have the cash to propagate these structures that celebrate the bankrupt soul of a human culture. Tombs indeed. But only god can make a tree.
4
I think you mean mausoleum, same culture, different meaning
2
And yet, many millions of intelligent people with many other options for how they spend their time FLOCK to the great museums of the world everyday. Why? It's an immense pleasure to experience first hand everything from dinosaur skeletons to digital art. Most people enjoy pondering the past, present and future. Try it some time!
Personally I like graveyards and museums, but I've never seen a body walk out of a graveyard or an idea come from a museum. Look but don't touch! Museums are places where ideas go to die. Collections of art, of bones, of machines are there ostensibly for the betterment of culture, and as a tax write-off and a way to show off wealth and describe power. And to give value to real estate. Please make a donation for these ideas or just plain fork it over. The Art in a museum really has nothing to do with the content of any given piece, it has value because it is part of a collection of things labeled valuable by a market. I've never seen a description of a J.Pollock or a Vermeer for that matter, that states the piece may not be what the "artist" intended. Who knows? The instant the painter releases his/her work to the public intrinsic meaningfulness is replaced by the market conditions of success. What if a piece is good but not successful, good luck with that, or a piece is dumb but successful, eat it? It is all superficial, even the most vaunted of great Art is reduced to a market value. Maybe the artist was saying that the "market" is sarpufulous (superficial, cynical and sarcastic) and not for everyone, but only those capable of seeing through cultural vanity or are intelligent, whatever that is.
1
I think it's a perfect microcosm for modern New York: boring, ugly, bland, soulless and massively overpriced.
And like modern New York, it offers a few subsidized scraps for the poor, grotesque luxury for the ultra-rich, and nothing for anyone else.
9
Beautiful buildings which will attract investment and opportunities for New Yorkers (for the ones who want to work of course). I hope socialists such as Ocasio-Cortez and others stay out this. The lost of the amazon campus broke my hart. Individuals who celebrate the end of 25k new jobs are not worthy of any vote.
Ada Huxtable clap. Greatest legit piece of urban criticism. Except the elipses are not a landscape. The Shed is the only temple in this food court and luxe burb. Thank you great feature.
1
Okay, okay. let's calm down people...
Mr. Kimmelman penned his magnum opus as many comments have noted.
I am truly excited by the promise of The Shed: the planning for the programming of events has been in development for years. I hope the price of tickets will be aimed at all New Yorkers, not just the .01 percent (also referred to in many comments).
My office is on 31st and 8th where I ma currently tesching Video Game Design.
Twenty years ago, I could watch incredible sunsets over the Hudson Yards from 33rd and 11th Ave while working at Thirteen. Can't see the sunsets from there no mo'... in fact that building was re-clad and is now masquerading as a 21st Century structure.
I've taught Architecture, Set Design, and now Game Design for decades and many of my former students became architects and my gut feeling here is that The Shed will be the jewel in the crown here.
DYK that the Empire Steak Building (sic) makes more $$$ from the Observation deck than anything else (rents, broadcasting fees mostly).
DYK that the Observation Deck at Hudson Yard$ is 15 feet taller than the O.D. @ the Entire State Building (sic)?
I'm jus' sayin'
Slickest gated community? Give us a break. As a resident of the neighborhood, I can tell you that open access (!) to much of this space, and all it offers, is an amazing bonus for locals.
2
Those last few sentences of this piece are pure brilliance.
At least now I know what that thing stuck on the side of that building is. First I wondered (as I’ve been seeing it from a distance) why they haven’t been able to lower that giant window washing platform for months. Then I thought maybe some wacko bought a boat and put it up there for art’s sake. Or that maybe it was the first of a bunch of hand grabs for a King Kong climbing wall. Turns out it’s a patio—well worth losing the iconic silhouette of the Empire State Building for. And I bet from up there it’s easy to see lots of tiny little people scraping cake from their ovens!
3
"Hudson Yards glorifies a kind of surface spectacle — as if the peak ambitions of city life were consuming luxury goods and enjoying a smooth, seductive, mindless materialism."
You nailed it, buster.
5
You should be ashamed of yourselves...Hudson Yards is an incredibly well orchestrated, monumental work of planning and commitment and investment in architecture. You should be commending the developers for taking such financial and design risks on such an ambitious project instead of accusing them of taking advantage of an uncertain time in New York and painting a picture of architectural branding. News flash: Some of the best things in our history have risen out of crisis, this project is probably one of them.
You are right, many scathing articles were written about Rockefeller Center as well--now you can be just like them, a naysayer sitting on the sidelines--and years later everyone that was critical looks like a fool because it is one of the great pieces of architecture in New York.
Try being less critical of those trying for forward movement and progress and more critical of those standing in the way--forward momentum above all else.
This is a desperate perspective and one that doesn't consider New York's need to compete on the world stage, which this project accomplishes.
4
@Allen, I suggest reading "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs who did actual boots-on-the-ground research about what physical attributes of city blocks and sections promote positive social results to create a vibrant area; and then you, too, might realize that this shiny, new conglomeration of glass and steel stuff has a good chance of becoming a ghost-town has-been as soon as some of the "new car smell" fades. So much of the usual "monumental planning and commitment" rely on immutable "givens" which have been taken as "truths" but which those planners have never actually researched (such as the long-accepted but simplistic (and often WRONG) ideas around "open space"). Jacobs did. In person. It is illuminating. Take a look.
3
May I suggest you pay a visit? If only there were even a hint of human scale to the place. If only it didn't look like a soulless glass and steel monument to real estate development. If only it weren't cramped with building, each screaming out for attention like ill-behaved children. If only there was some variation in building materials. If only the site opened up a spectacular view of the Hudson. If only it wasn't a slick corporate fortress with no relationship to the rest of New York City. If only...
7
Extraordinarily good journalism: both in the pungent ferocity of its criticism and its self-critical recognition that the legacy of this (now) monstrously ugly group of buildings is yet to be determined. The tinseltown of Hudson Yards may one day be transformed by the great people of NY into something more humane.
3
There may be a lot to criticize about the Hudson Yard development, but unfavorable comparison with Rockefeller Center, that earlier elite imposition on New York, barren tourist enclave echoing the architectural sensibility of its contemporary, Albert Speer, rather undermines the taste of the critic.
Daniel Doctoroff, who helped engineer Bloomberg's transformation of the city into a glittering 1% wasteland was his Albert Speer.
7
When will the New York Times stop with all of this envy of “those who have more than us.”
No, I’m not in the 0.01%. But, I can appreciate the hard work it takes to get into the top 20%, top 10%, top 1% and yes, even the top 0.01%. And sorry but, yes, there are people in the top 0.01% who are very nice people and who worked very hard to get there by building up huge companies, inventing very impressive and useful products/services to have gotten there (such as the home computer, iphones, etc).
So now, when developers take run down pieces of land or go into falling-apart neighborhoods and build beautiful buildings to be used as residences, offices, retail space, etc., the New York Times and a huge portion of their readership stokes the flames of jealousy and presents those developers as “horrible, evil, greedy people.” So, the developers should have spent billions to build all low-income housing and not make any profit for the capital they invested? They should make no money or even lose money? Why don’t you go to your job and refuse your paychecks? Or, how about you paying your employer to work at your job? If they’re going to invest their time and money, they’re going to do it in order to make a profit. They are businesses, not charities.
Don’t like it? Then don’t live there. Do like it and want to live there? Then invent something. Start a company that provides useful services and/or products that millions of people will want to pay money for.
1
Just wondering if the sign on the separate doors that the subsidized and non subsidized tenants have to walk through for the building they share are labeled "rich" and "poor"? Nothing is more anti-urban than this move. This seems completely Dickensian. Sickening to think this is also subsidized.
4
Any NIMBY out there guards their neighborhood with diligence. There is no closer neighbor to Hudson Yards than the New York Times. We've all had hysterical neighbors guarding the neighborhood. The Times is not a neutral bystander here, and they are obliged to disclose their interests.
3
Gosh. When you witness the magnificence and manifest of our contemporary capitalist might, how could David Wallace-Wells's book possibly have an audience that takes him seriously?
1
The design of this brilliantly insightful piece makes inspired use of current presentation tech, however in my reading there seems to be significant error in the flow of the body text near the beginning: ‘What can we call it?” directly follows mention of the Shed, but the next paragraphs describe Heatherwick’s object.
It all seems very Blade Runner, which is not a compliment. But, Mr. Kimmelman, New York's only currency IS money. A city is a place to make money or it is nothing. Everything else, Marx would say, is just superstructure derived from the way money is made and who makes it.
Having lived in NYC for most of my 75 years, I find Hudson Yards appalling in the extreme. It bears no resemblance to New York City or its history and could have been plunked down anywhere in the world or, for that matter, on Mars and fit in just as well. I won't be visiting soon. Leave it for others to gawk at the obscenity it represents.
10
I find most of the buildings on this site to be uninspired. I've have very few charitable things to say about what I've seen so far. And I find The Vessel to be one of the most preposterous projects I've ever seen; something that would never have been conceived by a New Yorker. The one thing we have plenty of is staircases.
Still, this is clearly a take-down piece and many of the insults go too far or misrepresent the facts. There's the appropriate criticism that this project feels like a museum of architecture but then that transitions to "architectural petting zoo" which seems like a somewhat ruder way to make the same point. There are multiple references to the "gated community" which is such a loaded term. Is it really more applicable here than to any other neighborhood in Manhattan where some buildings inaccessible to the public? There's the criticism of the public space as "a landscaped plaza overshadowed by office towers." Could this not describe countless other public spaces in Manhattan? Blackrock is given as an example of "shifting" jobs from other areas of midtown, ignoring the fact, presented a few sentences earlier, that this move and incentives hinges on the addition of 700 new jobs.
Hudson Yards should be criticized but good criticism doesn't need to resort to these kinds of moves.
Here's the bright side illustrated in the 3D models here. Hudson Yards is takes up a small bit of Manhattan. It is also out of the way. It should be easy to avoid.
3
I've visited the site multiple times this year, watching it grown in magnitude of pomposity and aloofness. The whole thing is overwhelming in its scale and utter lack of originality. Sitting on the handful of park benches looking up at the hulking towers, everyone I saw and talked to seemed to be underwhelmed if not confounded by it all. It looks and feels like a very flashy, updated version of downtown Houston. Shocking, really, that this is the best New York could do with the site.
4
The only way I will endorse this kind of development is if it provides ample housing for all the billionaires in the city at the very tippy top, and then gives the rest of us a key for turning off the elevators once they get up there.
8
End of the 7 train. Some of us QNZ people should visit regularly to add some patina.
4
Remarkably undistinguished architecture. Really, given all the other places to build and the scarcity of green space, they should have made it a park.
2
“Slightly more than 10 percent of those apartments will be subsidized housing...”
Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to replace the words “slightly more” with the words ‘less than?”
2
Hudson Yards may be an unmitigated disaster, but without it, we wouldn't have the pleasure of reading this masterful take-down.
6
As a City Planner by training and practice the Hudson Yards site plan is unsurprising. Designers need to adhere to the design approach of the clients/money sector. Coupled with the inherent economic value of developable property in a highly limited and desirable urban environment makes high rise and density the holy grail of development. No more Gramercy or Bryant Parks in this economic context.
2
It seems Hudson Yards offers "a quasi-gated condo community targeted at the 0.1 percent".
A quasi-gated solution is completely inadequate protection against hardened thieves and predators. If they want to get out, they'll find a way.
4
Can you ask the developer who said "This is New York as it should be, with
everything you want at your doorstep." where I can plant a garden, raise chickens, put my woodworking shop, and enjoy nature? Oh yeah, and it should be affordable without subsidization.
4
Since the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, Manhattan's successful growth has been predicated on satisfying the greed of real estate developers. Hudson Yards follows through on that. What's missing is a unifying theme, like Raymond Hood devised at Rock Center. Also, this well presented architectural criticism suggests that the pedestrian experience will not be anywhere near as much fun as Washington Square or Fifth Avenue.
5
If Henry Hudson knew the ways in which his name would be misused, I suspect he would have opted against the mutiny that ultimately led to his death.
This is like New York’s crown jewel of gentrification, and it’s an overpriced eyesore.
8
The development is nothing less than stunning.
2
that's one way of putting it...so is a stun gun
6
This being 2019, I see nothing in the article about the energy efficiency of the development or energy innovations. Should that not be a consideration for any new construction, and for any critique of new construction?
5
Michael Kimmelman may have done the best criticism of his career with this article. I think he's been polite. Hudson Yards reflects everything NYC has become. A forbidden city overtaken by greed and geared to the very wealthiest .1% who will stop for a fortnight. But never taking a subway or buying their own food or voting or sitting in a community board meeting. They will stare from their high vistas in complete but exciting disconnection seeing only themselves. Hudson Yards is not what New York wanted or needed. It is a disjointed vision of contemporary angst wishing for humanity but not able to reach it. The heights will provide distance from the real people who will never visit. The tourists will come in hordes and gawk, take selfies, and leave. The producers of this dystopia will count their money from penthouses. As for our Mayors and Governors who failed to consider their legacies, history will not look kindly.
17
Mr. Kimmelman is not fair to Singapore. I have just returned from two months in that incredible city-state. Whether you're in the downtown business district, the arts area, the museums, the outer developments, its hospitals, Orchard Street and other shopping meccas, or riding around town via its ultramodern subways or fleet of elegant clean buses, Singapore is a visitor's and architect's joy. If anyone here doubts what I'm writing, they haven't spent a couple of continuous weeks in Singapore.
1
Here is what I see: Where are the cutting-edge solar devices and wind cylinders integrated into the design for the 21st Century?
The New York planning officials only wanted 50% of the area to be open air. What about the new strain on the old electrical grid?
I mean the top of most skyscraper can be modified to support wind cylinder turbines that can be used as secondary electrical supply for lighting during flooding, brown outs and for shelter in place.
This is a museum of old projects that were on the shelf from the 1990’s and now being dusted off to receive low and moderated funding for mix used project. I would consider the intent socialistic and gaining the system. Now the City of New York then coughs up another 20 plus million is laughable.
3
It would be interesting to see if previous projects that had massive injections of public money actually returned a profit to the city.
Second, comparing this project to Rockefeller Center is a mistake. Rockefeller Center is a massive tower of plain stone. Beauty is not there, just impressive height.
2
These towers will be echoing Trump scream MAGA from one of his 80s Trump towers. Excellent write-up, thank you Mr. Kimmelman. I guess the City missed its chance to have Hudson Yards to be a more chic and comteporanean Midtown East with more green areas or a spot for a massive farmers market...something more in line with what New York City residents who survived the exodus to Brooklyn want. New Yorkers want the convenience of small town living here in the City. Instead, this development will look like what visitors expect New York to look - dense, tall and shining. Tourists, commuters and rich foreigners: enjoy the view!
4
"With its focus on the buildings’ shiny envelopes ...(it) glorifies a kind of surface spectacle — as if the peak ambitions of city life were consuming luxury goods and enjoying a smooth, seductive, mindless materialism."
I think you're reading way too much into it. You hold up Rockefeller Center as a paragon of city planning - are the tenants there not high-end restaurants, multi-national Fortune 500 companies and luxury retail?
Are you saying that new developments should house a Target, McD's and office space for the local CPA with 10 tax preparers?
1
Yawn. It's too easy these days to be a critic and to base the criticism on intangibles like look, feel, etc. (I get the author is an architecture critic by profession). People love to complain about each and every new thing that comes up. People seem to forget that everything in New York was new at some point and, knowing New Yorkers, derided at some point too. It's funny because at the end the author turns around and says that cities are organisms, but only after spending 90% of the article deriding how his personal conception of this space doesn't match what was built. New York has always been a place where money speaks and to think that the rest of the city wasn't built under the same ideology as Hudson Yards is naive at best. Once things get a bit older, we like to view them through a golden lens (as represented by the story of the borderline inhumane and uninhabitable tenements that were removed in the village, per this article), but it's just our imagination. Nearly every skyscraper in New York is a monument to the wealth and power the city has created over hundreds of years and Hudson Yards is no exception nor anything new.
4
Norman Roy Grutman, New York Magazine Dec 24 1984:
“We are a city dominated, intoxicated, overwhelmed and obsessed with materialism, selfishness, self-involvement and self-interest. One can scarcely sit in a restaurant, travel on a train or bus and not catch, in overheard conversation, talk about money, costs, things and material values. So absorbed in becoming “upscale” are New Yorkers that they wrap themselves in their own self-involvement and are impervious to their neighbors. People on subways who are nostril to nostril, or those elbow to elbow at soda counters, are farther away from one another than we are from the moon. In pursuit of fame and riches, New Yorkers hustle by the derelicts and homeless squatting on stoops and huddling in doorways, almost oblivious or indifferent to their plight. It is not enough that the drive and ambition of our overachievers have built our skyscrapers and created out of guilt or generosity what has lined our museums and public places. While at Christmas, the Salvation Army Santas collect the modest gifts offered, and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund collects not inconsiderable gifts for only a few, too many New Yorkers are making this city a place like Calcutta, where one can walk by the dead and starving as if they were so much refuse. Unless we recover our sense of moral values and differentiate the real from the dross, we may, amid our plenty, become a glossy, sterile desert.”
26
Another missed architectural opportunity! I'm sure when you are in the confines of the Yards, the scale, materiality and scope could be impressive, however that's not architecture. Isn't it suppose to meld into the landscape while saying something? From my view in lower Manhattan it is a complete eyesore especially 10 Hudson Yards with it's hideous cantilevered patio that looks like a something at cheap hotel in a third world country! The salt shack at Canal and the West Side Highway is the best structure built in NYC over the last 25 years!
16
Dear Max,
The salt shed is, somehow, life-affirming. The article well-describes the numbness of that development and its unwelcoming aura. It's heartbreaking to think of the effort and money that went into building something(s) so dehumanizing. Michael Kimmelman called them evidence of this city's obsession with materialism and money. What else could he say? I get a similar feeling from the 'Freedom Tower' and the collision of ugliness at Brookfield Place. The city felt more like life when it was falling apart.
3
Seems this is a monument to money laundering and tax abatement. 25 Billion could have gone a long way toward making New York better for those that live there - instead of building this for those who don't
Then there's the other nagging issue . . . sea level rise.
28
Is that a reference at the end to the author Maupassant's decision to eat every day in the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower so he wouldn't have to see it? Great article. You know there's something amiss when even the "Artist's impressions" are ugly. I live in Paris but get back to London regularly and fear that the same is happening there. After a sustained period of one architectural landmark after another going up (with the odd exception) it's now becoming a free for all. Paris is still weighing in the balance whether to allow any high-rise at all. I personally have nothing against high-rise, certainly when they're in NY and in most cases in London. But the minute they arrive in Paris, it will no longer be Paris (but then, didn't Maupassant say exactly the same all those year ago?).
5
Hopelessly tacky and out of step with the times, the reference to a Singapore gated community sounds spot on, thank you Michael Kimmelman for calling the Emperor's new clothes. As an aside, I happen to be an "affordable" tenant in another Related building further downtown. In my building there is one entrance for all, unlike the special entrance straight out of Dickens that Hudson Yards apparently will employ. Not only has my presence amongst more affluent tenants been a none issue, I've actually become good friends with some of the wealthier market rate tenants. I doubt it ever occurred to Mr. Ross that some of us dastardly 'affordable' tenants might add a type of caché to his buildings. What we lack in bank balance we make up for in other ways. In my case I'm a designer and have style and a good design education. It makes for a more interesting mix and living experience for people who are otherwise isolated in their work environments to have the opportunity to mix.
18
My office is on 34th St and 9th Ave. I've watched Hudson Yards go up every days since ground breaking. Now this monstrosity is visible to all. IMO it is hideous. What a shame the NYC skyline has been desecrated by this mirror house of extravagance.
11
Where are the middle class and the workers who make these buildings possible suppose to live? New York is Manhattan to most of the world and it was for centuries a place that was home of the full range of humanity. These days it gets most of its noise when it serves the fewest people. There is something deeply repellent about this kind of urban preening that does not relate to anything but cash on the line. These buildiing scream for attention like expensively dressed children at a birthday party staged by wealthy parents where the gloss and glitter takes all the humanity from a supposedly happy event. It is discouraging to be anywhere that is about people looking at each other and wanting to be looked at for the superficials of being in and not out as measured by their wallets. It should have been a newer version of Central Park.
19
Great piece. very well done. love the blend of text, photos, graphics, and video.
8
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." – President Roosevelt
2
Thank you so much for this appropriate take down.
The starchitect must die.
Still why no mention of Mr. Bloomberg? It's entirely his baby, he never stopped telling people that when he was Mayor for 12 years. Why let him off the hook.
I'm sorry to say I think the mall will wither on the vine, like the one Palm Springs just leveled 8 years after it was built — luxury brands already have boutiques scattered all over town and the airports. No one Uptown is heading out to Hudson Yards to buy a scarf from Ferragamo.
When that happens it will have to be gutted and completely repurposed. Hopefully then we'll get, dare I think it — working class housing for all those poor souls who will joylessly toil in the cubicles of these random giants. Perhaps even a tram to run up the Westside Highway and push some cars into the river? One can dream.
As for the river, what about water buses and water taxes that actually shuffle people from homes to offices instead of just overpriced sightseeing for tourists?
The "affordable housing list is an FBI investigation waiting to be born. These apartments won't go to needy people. they'll go to the moneyed upper middle class, who will willingly search for ways to move their names up on that waiting list which stretches to Philadelphia.
And hopefully none of these people will be inclined to walk near the water because they haven't added any piers or parks there for them to walk to and the ones to the north and south are already packed.
6
Thank you. If you haven't read it already I think you would enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson's "New York 2140" - https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/kim-stanley-robinsons-latest-novel-imagines-life-in-an-underwater-new-york
This is a gorgeous addition to the sky line, it gives us a signature look when seeing the city for the first time.
The restaurants seem to have amazing menus, the things for sale are dreamy, the views from above and around are without compare.
Meantime the cogs of the city work underground this beautiful mountain of steel concrete and glass, unseen workers orderly head down to their assigned jobs to prop the masters above.
Perhaps they will assign special days when Maria can bring the plebs like me, so can come see how the other 0.001% lives.
I never knew I was really living in Metropolis.
4
I think the towers say something good about NYC post 9/11. Does anyone else see the fillip to terrorism in having sky scrapers playfully intersected by planes? The HY Towers say to 9/11 "I will show you how to slice a tower with a plane pal!"
In a world with insane ultra-rich real estate sprouting everywhere, I think these 1% towers are adding something to the city that is better than 1% towers in Dubai or even SF. These towers ARE connected to the city by the Highline, Penn Station, subway, highway, and bikeway and they look cool on the waterfront. The Shed, Highline and Food Court are also nicer destinations than Times Square, which is a disaster. I expect the food court to downscale overtime as the ambitious frou frou chefs shake out in the market.
I think this terminus development on the LIRR, in the one of the most expensive real estate regions in the world, works. There are plenty of ways to slice and dice a tower, these are much better than any Trump try.
1
So many comments here bemoaning the Hudson Yards towers for failing to “blend in” with the rest of the city, or lacking soul and character. As if a brick from some other part of the city has more soul than a pane of glass or a steel beam. These are nothing more than materials, the latter merely being fashionable for the current time. Decades from now, with new perspective, we will look back on these buildings and marvel at the history, character, culture, and nostalgia of architecture from the 2010s. The complainers and detractors will be long forgotten, much like those who criticized other now-iconic buildings in their naissance (the Eiffel Tower comes to mind). Personally, I find the development stunningly sleek, modern and, frankly, beautiful.
I feel lucky to have unwittingly purchased an apartment in 2013 overlooking what was then the nearly-empty Hudson Yards site, and to have had the privilege of watching the development ascend building by building, bringing life to the surrounding neighborhood as it has progressed.
The economics of wealth inequality and the evidently developer-friendly tax policy that spawned such a massive development are a separate issue entirely; one that should certainly be addressed by our city’s policy-makers, but one I would hesitate to include in a critique of the development’s aesthetics.
4
Millions of birds die every year from flying into glass boxes and the Audabon Society has implored NYC to stop with the glass towers but they don't care. That brick has far more soul.
3
Thank you for this article. It expresses all of what I have been feeling not only about this project, but what is happening around me in Brooklyn. I have looked at this parcel of land from my aunt's balcony at Penn South since the 1960's. I also worked on massing models for Hudson Yards at my first job in an urban planning/architecture firm in 1986. It took a long time for anything to happen at Hudson Yards...it was a complex site to build on and the area was a no man's land. Unfortunately it still feels that way. Standing on my 93 year old aunt's balcony we would talk about how it looked like Godzilla , King Kong and a few of their buddies entered the room. It's not only the massive size of the buildings, but the reflection and lights that are unwelcome. Instead of drawing me in I want to stay away. Living in Williamsburg, it's has a different effect, in that the buildings are so large they remind me of the Emerald City or a fortress. They loom over everything else. I agree here and there some of the details are nice but as a whole it doesn't say good things about urban planning or architecture. Hudson Yards is reminiscent of Detroit's Renaissance Center which was much criticized when it was built. The buildings ignored the context around them and instead bringing people into a depressed city it was hostile to it.
5
Phenomenal piece of criticism Mr. Kimmelman! I haven’t walked around Hudson Yards, but I’ve seen the new buildings from other parts of the city, and you helped me understand what seemed so terribly off. The multimedia elements worked beautifully here, too. Great integration of text and image. Congratulations to the whole team.
11
Where have you gone, Jane Jacobs?
Yuck! What a lousy, cold and uninviting place. Do these celebrity architects even care about the urban layout in which they are participating? One should think they are wealthy enough to say no or to use their leverage for good urban design. It reminds me of high-end actors who do movies only for the check without regard to the quality of the art of the film.
But in the end, I blame City Hall. Namely, Bloomberg (who is chiefly responsible) and, of course, dear DeBlasio, who has no vision whatsoever for our great city. Both would have fit in well during the reign of Robert Moses.
15
Thanks to Michael Kimmelman for biting his tongue and not screaming epithets. Where is the remarkable building that will become an international icon (something like the Burj Khalifa or the Burj Al Arab only not as tall). Or just visit Jakarta, Indonesia and see the marvels of the skyline! Of Hudson Yards I can only say that Robert Moses would love it. In case some of your readers don't know it - saying Hudson Yards and Robert Moses in the same sentence is a curse! And Hudson Yards is a curse upon us - even curio merchants will spurn it! Don't expect to see little models of it or snow globes with it in them.
4
I think this article comes off as snarky. This is what this period of time is going to give us because it is a reflection of our current culture. I'm not sure what you can expect of NYC at this moment.
7
My house in Washington state is surrounded by fir and cedar trees. I can be out the front door and sailing among the islands in less than an hour. I come to NY (where I spent part of my childhood on the East Side) once a year. I go to the Met (both opera and museum), Zabar’s, get a big gulp of culture and nostalgia, and return to my trees. On my next visit, I will certainly not go to Hudson Yards. Why should I? But something about this article puzzles me. The author seems to have two beefs: the place is infernally ugly, and it’s a vulgar consumerist playground for filthy-rich people he despises. OK, got that. But what if the developers had hired a firm that cared about beauty? What if the design reflected humanism, unity, some overarching visual theme? But, at the same time, and given economic realities, it was still full of expensive shops, three-star restaurants, and astronomically priced condos? Would the author still indulge himself with the same bellyaching tone? In other words, where is the dividing line between trendy estheticism and trendy socio-economic criticism? These days, can you have one without the other? Yeah, it’s a dumb question. I know you can’t.
5
Why does it puzzle you that greed, poor taste, thoughtlessness and arrogance create ugliness? It is very interconnected.
1
This is okay, but Amazon and 25,000 lost jobs wasn't?
6
I just caught a glimpse of this development from 7th Avenue on a recent trip to the city after being gone for many years. It was a shocking sight—nondescript glass towers rising in the distance beyond 10th Avenue. My first reaction was who would want to go there? It appeared as a fortress, out of scale and not integrated at all with Manhattan’s grid. Kimmelman gets everything right in his review—this is what you get when urban planning is absent and architectural egos and developers have free reign at taxpayer expense. I pity the landscape architect who has to humanize this dreadful space. The comparison with Rockefeller Center illustrates too well the free fall from design in the public interest that now characterizes New York.
27
When in in New York City, I always gawk at the scale and design of Hudson Yards, not because I admire the design or the concept of it, but because it's simply monolithic and all-imposing. I think many can say the same, and it's much to the similarity of viewing a destructive force such as an atomic blast. The development is an alien being which has plonked itself onto Manhattan, and unlike the Rockefeller Center makes absolutely no attempt to meld with the existing grid. It's brash, gaudy, but gloriously transfixing. I think Hudson Yards is a monument to fleeting glassy consumerism. It's a sign of the times, and I can't say I like these times.
3
Wonderful piece on every level; most especially, the critic's courageously expressed opinion. The brief mention of Mr. Ross's planned penthouse is a perfect little nugget.
5
Kimmelan is definitely looking for his bona fides as an architectural critic with this article. No drawn punches; great commentary; extraordinary graphic presentation. One thinks of how this Op-Ed will be reproduced in future anthologies of seminal architectural criticisms from the first half of the 21st century. I hope that a lot more articles will interweave the graphic, historical, social and economic analysis featured in this article!
11
It's funny that this has been reviewed by the NYT architecture critic because this is not architecture at all - it's purely developer-driven creation of spaces and places.
5
As they said in the last gilded age, "Gag me with a pitchfork".
3
The author critiques the idealized urban life as "consuming luxury goods and enjoying a smooth, seductive, mindless materialism" and yet this is where much of the world's cities and their wealthy are heading. Hudson Yards is only New York playing catch up to the rest of the glass flowers blooming in deserts jungles and bays around the globe. Shame that it serves only the wealthy but isn't that the essence of Manhattan at this point? Tourists will enjoy it by the millions as they flood out from the Highline and the 7 train. Too bad the skyscraper designs are so banal - a missed opportunity to Dubai-ify New York with some Iconic new towers.
1
"From the deck, you can't see Hudson Yards", with apologies to Guy de Maupassant who ate lunch everyday at the base of The Eiffel Tower, because that was the only place in Paris from which he could not see it.
1
An emotionally cold, visually jagged, culturally vacuous, shopping mall fortress for the 1%.
At least they're being honest about what New York stands for these days.
7
I have long called them the Hudson Shards, I think we all should.
16
Why am I reminded of the dystopian Los Angeles in Blade Runner?
4
Where malls still matter, Manhattan.
4
Riding in to the city on New Jersey Transit, I always enjoyed the patch of sky as the train exited the tunnel and entered the rail yards at Penn Station. That modest vista is gone now, obliterated by the massive, dystopian Hudson Yards complex. Architecture critics have routinely condemned buildings that New Yorkers have embraced. The Time-Warner building is a good example. Will Hudson Yards have benches where people can sit after walking up on the High Line? Are there adequate public restrooms? And air-conditioned public spaces where people can chill out on a hot day? New York is so short of the most modest amenities, like clean restrooms and comfortable places to simply sit and pass the time. If Hudson Yards supplies these to the public, it's a success, not matter how impersonal the architecture.
4
The best architecture can bring a city to life. It can lift your spirits, make you feel at home, make you feel connected to a place and to other people. Maybe I'm too sensitive, but I think it's sad to see architecture used in a way that alienates, deadens, overwhelms and depresses you instead.
And yet a New York City developer once told me that he thinks a beautiful building is one that makes money. He must love Hudson Yards. Except for The Shed, it looks like that's what it's all about. Maybe developers are not the people who should be in charge.
9
Thank you for this beautiful article. Given the needs of today's NYC and this large swath of unused land connected to mass transit and so close to major employment centers, why this and not affordable housing? Why not a Co-op City for the 21st Century? It's too late for the east half of the yards, but why not abandon whatever one-percenter plans they have for the West Yards and turn them into a paradise of simple, well-built, affordable apartments? Our economy needs workers to prosper--give them a place to live!
4
As an old urban planner who hadn't seen the Hudson Yards in decades my bus was recently stuck in traffic for a long time in the HY neighborhood. I was horrified but perhaps more importantly the sheer enormity of the super towers and their density quite literally frightened me - this from someone who's seen many cities which are designed with human welfare in mind.
11
I couldn't put my finger on it until I read your comment but yes, these towers scare me. And yet, the taller Empire State Building fills me with joy and wonder. Its humanity stands in stark contrast to the brutality of Hudson Yards.
7
So basically a village for millionaires and billionaires, with most of the same stores that you can find on 5th Avenue and Downtown. Property prices will rise around the area, focring whoever was still living there to move. Most of the apartments will be purchased by LLC's to launder/hide money. Most of the buyers will never move in. Companies that have moved there (L'Oreal, Warner Media, etc) were already in Manhattan so now the area where they used to be will see business slow down with lunch crowds, etc. Honestly, this is pretty sad.
39
Outstanding, critical article with wonderful graphics. I have driven by the site many times in broad daylight and what always strikes me is how desperately dark the street are around the site. The tight grouping of such tall buildings eliminates so much light from entering the area. 10th Ave is so dark now between 30th and 34th Streets. At least we have the new Penn Station being completed up on 8th Ave. And don't get me started on how the Empire State Building is now obliterated from view when driving in to the Lincoln Tunnel from NJ.
10
Regardless how pretty these project are they are nothing more then tax scam.
Most of the money is raised overseas and no telling what was offered for that money, US tax money to pay for project for the world's wealth the 1% percent who can afford to live their. We sell these unit to foreigners with a US passport attach to it, for their investment. WHY must we keep paying taxes that fund these project that ONLY benefit the 1% who hide their money instead of paying taxes to fund these project. HOW many will ownership be hiding in tax shelters and shell corporations.
Only a matter of time before we see Trump/Kusher project build on the tax breaks they passed for themselves.
2
First, as others have stated here, this is a phenomenally designed article and the web graphics are incredible and eminently useful. I have visited the development site several times over the years and am not as put off as others commenting here, but do realize that there is a huge economic disparity issue at play here. So I ask, if not this, then what should have been built here? NYC residents are great at saying "NIMBY", but not so great at proposing solid and economically viable solutions.
5
"...from the observation deck, you can't see Hudson Yards."
The same was said of the Eiffel Tower. Only time will tell.
3
That animated map graphic at the beginning is absolutely amazing! How was it done?
4
A killer article in more ways than one. Bravissimo! My only disagreement with Kimmelman concerns his comments on Washington Square Village. I still think, after all these years, that it takes up too much space, creating a no man's demarcation zone between the Village and Soho that's out of whack with each of them.
Matthew Schnier's superb piece on Hudson Yards in the Times Style section is an apt accompaniment to Kimmelman's article. The 2 fit seamlessly together.
2
I agree, Washington Square South and Silver Towers are a terrible gash between two of New York's most vital neighborhoods, and time has not made it any better.
2
I am reminded of a horrible modern dormitory on my campus, one of the few skyscrapers in the area. The general opinion? It was good to live in Ugly Tower, because it was the only place on campus you couldn't see Ugly Tower from.
7
You mean the Newest, Sickest, Gated Community, don't you?
Besides the fact that whatever was built on this site should have been at least 90% affordable housing, the scale, the SCALE is a dehumanizing abomination!
A malignancy as symptomatic of the economics of Manhattan real estate.
7
I think it's very sad. There was an opportunity to make Hudon Yards something significant and instead greed took over as usual. It could have been a vibrant, artistic, mixed use neighborhood with affordable housing for people who work minimum wage jobs in the multitudes of restaurants and shops in Manhattan. How many overpriced "luxury" apartments does Manhattan need?
15
Excellent Review & Well Done Mulitmedia presentation. Pieces like this are why I subscribe to NYTimes. Have only viewed Hudson Yards from afar. Time will tell.
4
Love the interactive piece of it while reading the article. I appreciate the story even more!
4
The site doesn't seem to have any soul , or if it had was mortgaged by Mr Ross in conjunction with the local authority ! The comparison to the Rockefeller Centre is an apt one , with the Plaza being the catalyst within. Raymond Hood was a visionary, whose iconic but practical work has more than passed the test of time. Khon Pederson & Fox have unfortunately lost the opportunity of emulating that work and leaving a fit for purpose legacy .(Great article .)
2
I've had occasion to visit the site from time to time, and I always find it bewildering, cold, and lifeless. In fact, it gives me veritgo. I have a hard time believing it will become as lively and iconic as Rockefeller Plaza.
8
I really appreciate the tasteful multimedia production of this well-written piece. The author's "it occurred to me" in the last sentence was probably sourced in the identical adage about Foucault's opinion of the Eiffel Tower, wherein he purportedly lunched daily for the same reason: The Eiffel provided the only view of Paris unblemished by the spectacular arrogance of that structure.
1
Yup, Michael Kimmelman points out a great irony: Mr. Ross can't see his development from the observation deck no matter all the shards of reflective glass that are his buildings. Great architecture is never about oneself it is about the community, and so it goes, so goes NYC. Sad!
5
"Hudson Yards glorifies a kind of surface spectacle — as if the peak ambitions of city life were consuming luxury goods and enjoying a smooth, seductive, mindless materialism."
The New York I know is in my mind. The New York I see here is nothing I want to remember. This is how people like Steve Ross and their money destroy.
16
The mantra for all developers is maximize the square footage you can squeeze into the available footprint. Lucky for today's hack architects, the inevitable solution is a box. It's depressing that, despite having the most advanced software and fabrication techniques ever devised, the current crop of designers and architects are mentally incapable of thinking beyond planar surfaces, It probably goes along with their inability to draw. This defect is even reflected in the "amenities" so breathless detailed in the promotional literature. Rare and exotic materials are sourced from around the world, only to be turned into unadorned, polished slabs. Might as well just use Formica. There wasn't a craftsman or architect 100 years ago who couldn't run circles around these poseurs.
9
It looks to me that the Hudson Yards got to be the architectural playground that the Trade Towers site was not allowed to be. All that money and not a single place where working and middle class New Yorkers can live. Do we still have time to take over the development of the western part? We nixed the football stadium, surely we can demand that the western section of the development be the 21st century Stuy or Peter Cooper town sans the racial discrimination of those earlier complexes. Let's democratize the city once again!
12
In a 2007 blog post (www.niallferguson.com/journalism/finance-economics/new-york-the-new-venice) and his 2012 PBS airing of “Civilization: The West and The Rest”, Niall Ferguson comments that as he flew over Manhattan the view reminded him of something. He then realized it was reminiscent of Venice. He further states:
“Yet precisely because history did leave Venice behind, architecturally if not in other ways, this is the ideal place to ponder the vast economic changes we are witnessing in our time. For what befell Venice roughly 500 years ago may well be the imminent fate of the city's North American counterpart: New York.
While Hudson Yards is in a way more of a chaotic American style development and less a totalitarian utopian one I dread that it is a last gasp and empty of soul none the less.
As global civilization grinds on to its inevitable fate, the economic purpose of NYC has changed to the point where like Venice, locals observe the well meaning tourists obediently coming in to see what is no longer there. The esprit of old New York (good, bad and ugly) long gone, cleansed away with 0% money and made banal and Disney-like, by the “Glass box boys” and their Hedge Fund political class mates.
Perhaps the biggest secret of this development is the edifice built to his greatness, Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. Holy Spheniscidae Batman!
2
And with rising sea levels, it might yet become even more like Venice! Soon the tourists will be gadding about in Zodiacs to see the ruins.
I love these new interactive articles from the NY.
Really well done.
It uses the medium in a new way and is not annoying like a podcast or a video is.
8
What a travesty. What a horror.
NYC was such a great place. All of what made it great is gone.
Sigh.
4
Oh, please. We're talking about an old rail yard next to the Javits Center, not building over Washington Square Park.
Perfect or not, Hudson Yards is going to be enormously profitable for the city in the long run and it's infinitely better than having a stadium there.
2
I don't care about the economics, except for the illegal tax breaks, rather I care about the aesthetics and the soul of the city. This blight will pock-mark the skyline for decades to come.
1
When I look at the picture of this development taken from the Hudson River I see in the future the water rising from global warming, climate change.......and I can see people coming and going in rowboats.....will all of Manhattan be under water? I think there is a problem here....no one talks about it......the oceans are going to rise as the ice melts......Miami is already seeing itself drown,,,,,,can Manhattan and the other boroughs be different. I think not!
8
A tip of the hat for a well put together article...but let me count the ways that I detest this mega whatever,from a distance and up close,especially that stupid useless wastebasket. I took a walk over there the other day, to have a look, and experienced nothing but glass,steel,and alienation.
9
"...as if the peak ambitions of city life were consuming luxury goods and enjoying a smooth, seductive, mindless materialism."
I mean, these are the peak ambitions though. This is New York — no, this is America — in 2019. It has been this way for many years, and to deny this is to admit that one has been asleep at the wheel since the early 1900's.
3
Hudson Yards is a playground by, for and of the rich. When it comes to civic space, public space, or a return for the dollar on the MASSIVE tax breaks we gave them, it's as undemocratic as you can get. It's a perfect representation of our new Gilded Age.
23
if the future of cities includes extreme heat in summer and periodic downpours that flood our infrastructure and pollute our rivers, I wonder how does this development build in resilience to those threats?
1
I think there should be some sort of structure in Hudson Yards involved in medical or scientific research. Perhaps an institute that studies climate change? I'm sure there is a stunning edifice waiting to be designed that denotes quantum gravity or AI. Besides, It would be a shame if Hudson Yards had to be renamed the Hudson River Inlet, given how close it is to its rising namesake.
Meh: something new, that people think does not blend in enough with the surroundings. Is that a surprise?
In a decade or so people will see it as a part of the city that has always been there. Add another decade and people will be saying “oh look how they made their buildings in the 2010’s, isn’t it interesting?”. And then we will be happy we built tall: we couldn’t have fitted as much office space and housing in such a small space (relatively speaking) otherwise. Both being sorely needed according to the prices they go for.
I do agree however that the tax breaks that developers get are a scandal. There is no doubt that this is valuable space that developers would be interested in anyway.
3
Good article. Perhaps include the location, in terms of streets and avenues, for us out-of-towners?
It spans from West 30th to West 34th Streets, between 10th and 12th Avenues, wrapped by the end of the Highline and across the street from the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, if you plan on visiting, the last stop in Manhattan of the 7 train leaves you right in the middle of it.
One large law firm has already moved in. A profile of their lavish new digs has appeared in the press, with no mention that support staff are housed separately, in a nondescript building in the Wall Street area. How fitting.
5
Hudson Yards will never be a neighborhood in the conventional sense. Certainly, there will be no sense of belonging, no history, no warmth, just sterile hives of wealthy people, each barricaded in their shiny terrariums, and ordering in. This will turn out to be a huge bust for all involved, except of course for the developers, because as the recent Times expose on Trump's finances made clear, with every tax dodge known to man, it's impossible to lose money in NYC real estate. Who, aside from those who must schlep to work, is going to take the 7 train, much less trek to the Yards, and to do what? Climb that hideous glass and metal fruit basket so you can look at the other heaps of glass and metal - and then top it off with a $20 hot dog? Or, how about visiting the retail center so you can admire all the goods and services beyond your means? Not even tourists, with dozens of better choices, will find it worth the bother.
Bloomberg sought to give us a New York that was a reflection of his own warped self image. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, only not as he imagined. He saw himself as a modern day Cosimo de' Medici, but instead of 15th Century Florence, overflowing with talent and art, we got the embodiment of the true Michael Bloomberg, insipid, arrogant, and dismissive of anyone outside his enchanted circle. This monument to crony capitalism deserves to be the ghost town it will eventually become.
62
Oh, but it will be an ARTISENAL $20 hot dog!
3
The Hudson Yards reminds me of a building referred to as Big Pink in downtown Portland. It looms ridiculously while driving west on the Burnside Bridge. Nice restaurant on the 30th floor, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bancorp_Tower
2
"the object — I hesitate to call this a sculpture — is a 150-foot-high, $200 million, latticed, waste-basket-shaped stairway to nowhere, sheathed in a gaudy, copper-cladded steel."
sounds prophetic.
1
this visual format for stories is amazing please keep it up, this more than anything makes me feel like I am getting more than my moneys worth for just one article!
6
Great article. Comment about The Vessel manspreading across "public" space is wonderful. I live in LA, a city that for half the 20th century resisted canyonization of its downtown streets, but is now rapidly succumbing to mega tall high rise development. Such buildings bigfoot their neighborhoods, in return offering the dubious recompense of top floor bar/restaurant/viewing platforms.
Love the high end waste basket in the center. All the billionaires can throw the lawsuits they bring against each other for not being the kind of neighbors they insist upon having in there when they've settled. Not My New York #NMNY.
14
New York has already seen that what goes up can come down. Even if I could afford it I don't think I'd feel comfortable living in such a tempting target.
1
As someone who used to work on the 83rd floor of Two World Trade Center, I feel the same. You could not pay me enough to live in a skyscraper. In my home, I see trees up close, and can see and hear pretty birds outside my windows. Soon, I'll be seeing crocuses and daffodils coming up in my yard. I honestly do not understand why anyone would want to spend a fortune on a glass box.
12
As a non-New Yorker who loves any excuse to visit NYC, I found this production, and the review, utterly fabulous. Whatever one may think of Hudson Yards -- and I can't wait to come and experience it -- kudos to The Times and Michael Kimmelman for presenting us with this journalistic work of art.
15
None of these things make it easier to live in New York City. Trips back and forth from JFK is just as miserable as ever, more expensive and time consuming.
The amount of public service these private investments require is staggering. The contention that these things such as Amazon and Hudson Yards or the taxpayer built Yankee Stadium have not proven to me that they affect the lowering of the price of doing business here. Quite the opposite, and I am rewarded with a Taco Bell Cantina on my corner, which for those who are unfamiliar with the new Cantina service Taco Bell offers, it is alcohol. Yes, look inside a Taco Bell and you are apt to find a swirling slushy machine mixing margaritas that excite even the harshest critics of the current invasion.
Hudson Yards has meant clogged streets with emergency vehicles boxed in blowing horns and sirens day and night here in Chelsea. It means that any time an alarm or security breach in these buildings happens (50 times a day) there are 1st and 2nd and 3rd and 4th and 5th Responders.
The price of doing business in New York City goes up with these towers, the price you pay in quality of life is akin to being held hostage in a mall.
7
Thank you for this creative, illustrative article on the Hudson Yards development. If only such creativity was taken in the actual design of the complex.
4
Arguably, this is an even more egregious use of tax dollars than Amazon would have been, because in this case, they're just paying people to move from one part of Manhattan to another.
On the other hand, sticking a bunch of rich people on the 7 train on a regular basis might just lead to quicker subway improvements...
4
Rich people aren’t going to take the subway,but will riding in for hire cars,creating more traffic tie ups on the west side.
6
In any era, architecture and urban planning express the deepest values of the culture. There was a time when the Trinity Church steeple was the highest building in Manhattan. Then, the Brooklyn Bridge towers as a nation moved and knitted itself together, Then, the "cathedrals of commerce": Woolworth, Chrysler, Rockefeller, Empire.
Now Manhattan's tallest buildings are roosts for the very very very rich to look down on the rest of us: to remind those of us on the street of their lofty and unattainable power; to give them a perch from which to swoop and grab even more wealth and branded consumables.
Manhattan is indeed in a second gilded age -- with huge helpings of greed, corruption, and vulgarity at the expense of proportion, awareness, community.
71
Also, this is not an environment in which healthy children can be raised. Anyone born and raised in such an environment is not going to have sufficient exposure to microorganisms in the natural world to have a healthy immune system. And the quality of social interactions is another story.
1
At least in the first Gilded age we got Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Natural History. The only "culture" these modern aristocrats know is "fine cuisine", and not coincidentally, stuffing your face is the only thing left to do in Manhattan because all the other arts have been driven out by the likes of Mr. Ross.
15
The delicious irony of it all is when the towers west of the current site are completed, they will block the views of the towers that were just built!
3
I'll leave it to others to debate the author's conclusions, but I found the design and presentation (as well as the writing) of this piece masterful. An extraordinary use of the Internet's most promising storytelling features. A round of applause for all who put this together.
106
Imagine something similar plunked down in your beautiful city, which I've visited on more than one occasion. Out of scale, out of its surroundings, built for a tiny minority of the population. I suspect you'd be horrified.
1
A shiny bauble at the water's edge, now available for collectors and influencers of taste and means everywhere. /s
4
Been a follower of Mr. Kimmleman for decades, and this is one of his best written reviews. Bravo, Michael!
6
Michael Kimmelman does for architecture what Peter Wells does for dining or Vannessa Freidman does for fashion - they use their criticism to tell larger stories about our world and our culture. I'm always grateful to read their pieces, even if I never intend to visit that building or eat at that restaurant or wear that designer. It is just incredibly refreshing to read such thoughtful, powerful writing.
And I agree, as a New Yorker and a fan of his for years, this spot-on piece is among his best. Interestingly, it's also somewhat of a redo: one need only consult his piece about the World Trade Center Freedom Tower from 2014 to see similar criticisms of another all-glass trophy case development, completely out of human scale and devoid of any urban qualities that define New York's character. It was true downtown and now, sadly, it's true in midtown.
2
New York's charm comes largely from its low rise brownstones etc. They make the city accessible.
Many blocks also have a mix of low rises and high rises, both old and new, which seem to work. I am not sure what the ideal proportion is, perhaps 50/50, but the contrasts inspire.
The problems occur when high rises, denser and more profitable, take over like an invasive species, completely dominating and throwing into shadow the low rises. Then, the city becomes more crowded and anonymous. Perhaps city zoning laws can look at what the ideal mix of low and high should be in any block and/or neighborhood. New Yorkers should have some sort of vision of what makes for a livable, breathable city. Leaving aside the economic arguments, including those massive taxpayer subsidies, I doubt that vision would be a Hudson Yards.
22
a wonderfully written article...a big thank you for the graphics (they helped make it all clear)...why build so close to the water (especially the Western Yards) with the probable increase in water levels and storms in the coming decades?...also, who goes to Malls anymore?
17
"like a gated community in Singapore" seems a good description. Somehow overtime I hear "human scale" and "open space" and then see the new development, it turns out too spread out to have the buzz and energy of a real city and then also to dense to have the ease of parking and convenience of a suburb. It's just blah. Thank go there's the rest of manhattan.
No one ever went to or stayed in Manhattan for "open space." Funny how people flock there to the only real city in North America and then immediately demand "Open space." I say that's why we have the rest of the continent
5
I only have one thing to say about this article: Thank you. Thank you for stating the many uncomfortable truths about this well-wrought but deeply solipsistic development. If it weren't for the Shed it would have no soul.
35
I really don't understand why The Shed is being given a pass. It is an intrinsic part of this complex and explicitly shares it's materialistic values and unashamed display of excess.
If there is one thing that NYC used to have in abundance before rents started going really sky high was venues - both large and humble - for all manner of the arts. So many have closed due to rent pressure. This complex endorses the ideology that has led to the pushing of so many of these art venues out of business and proposes that it is instead just fine to replace them all with one massive $500M playground that wishes more to call attention to itself, rather than any event that might transpire there.
The Shed's engineering and design features are interesting only as gilded ornament: they lack conceptual grounding as they are not intrinsic to the advancement of an arguably necessary, useful technological goal, whether it be a bridge connecting the boroughs or a rocket to take us to the moon. It's gesture is: look what we can do. It is not: we are doing it this way and here is why. There is no why.
So to me, it's as empty as The Nest.
3
I don't know anyone who thinks of the former warehouse district due west of Penn Station as a neighborhood. This is an industrial and business district. The clutch of high-priced pied a tierre apartments near luxury office space does not make this a neighborhood.
29
A gated playground for the 0.1% subsidized through billions of dollars of tax-incentives...just what this aggressively unaffordable city needs.
I'm an Architect and while I applaud the beautiful and thoughtful designs, I can't get over the fact that this will not be enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers other than as a tourist attraction.
42
As others have noted - I greatly enjoyed the article and graphics used. Truly a great use of technology - really thoughtfully presented and I hope to see more articles / presentations like this. Kudos to all involved.
3
It sits literally three stories in the air above the street, designed not only so that it can't be used by passersby but so that their commonness will not hurt the eyes of their betters. I've been to the site. It's already crowded with tourists but there's a lonliness in the air that I think will never go away. Like being on an Atlantic Cruise. At first the Ocean startles with it's Size and uniformity, but then after several days monotony sets in and after that a sense of futility that genuinely oppresses. Only the dream of the next port holds back the melancholy. That's what this is, built for passing through on the way to a place that might shelter life.
3