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nich2475 t1_itlzq36 wrote

If Europe is busy rebuilding entire historic blitzed areas the way they were before WWII, I think rebuilding the most beautiful civic building in history warrants such a restoration.

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nich2475 t1_itmkk8m wrote

And we’re infinitely richer, no excuse. Also, it wouldn’t cost any more than the cookie cutter glass buildings going up everywhere. Contemporary advancements in manufacturing have easily replaced skilled craftsmen used on historical classical buildings.

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doctor_van_n0strand t1_itphjrm wrote

As an architect I’ll just say this one isn’t true by a long shot. It is far more expensive today to build Penn Station true to technique and form than it was in 1910. It can certainly be done, but to produce anything that doesn’t read as an awkward facsimile would require tremendous expense.

Todays building industry is optimized towards curtain walls, prefab masonry panels, metal rainscreens and dropped paneled ceilings, not intricate custom stonework and cast iron ceiling vaults. Ever visit any “new classical” buildings? Even a lot of the good ones look fake as hell, save for those faithful reconstructions in Europe. The techniques used for construction 100 years ago have simply been replaced and forgotten over time. It’s a little akin to saying we could easily turn on a dime and start mass-producing Model T’s again because of the huge advances in automative technology. Doesn’t quite work that way. Without tons of money and extensive retooling you’d probably end up with something looking more like a PT cruiser. Same idea here. Building/construction technique is a huge factor in the end aesthetic of a building.

It’s possible and it’s been done in other parts of the world (Europe), but doing it right isn’t cheap or easy. I for one at not holding my breath that this will happen. As cool as it would be—I think the time to reverse this crime against architecture has come and gone. I think something similarly artistically magnificent, technically prodigious and more adapted to todays infrastructure needs and building technology can be envisioned.

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Wowzlul t1_its23el wrote

Guessing that those iconic 4 storey structural brick tenements with handsome ornaments are out of the cards nowadays too then, for similar reason?

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doctor_van_n0strand t1_its6r3n wrote

Yes. It’s not that we can’t build them, like obviously we could if we really wanted to. But the techniques (both in terms of construction detailing/design and the actual, physical construction techniques of assembly) used to build them are not practiced anymore. You can produce buildings that look very similar, but won’t be identical. For instance, let’s build your 4 story brick tenement—back then they’d be built using solid masonry construction and wood framed flooring. Not flying today. Breakdown of why:

1.) You would not find many, if any, contractors skilled enough in building multistory buildings with solid brick walls and wood framed floors. More likely you will have a brick rain screen (1 layer of brick) supported on walls framed either in CMU block or metal stud framing. Already this will lead to a difference in the way the detailing in the brick facade is expressed. It becomes more economical and controllable to use pre-assembled brick masonry panels that are then installed on the facade on-site. Instead of wood framed floors, you will have concrete slab floors, which also ends up affecting the overall detailing, and therefore architectural resolution, of the building.

2.) Those ornaments you see on prewar buildings were once mass-produced believe it or not. For more upmarket or higher budget buildings, industries of masons and craftspeople existed that created ornament per architectural drawings. No longer. Custom ornament is expensive, which is why on so many “new classical” buildings you’ll see ornamental figures that are reminiscent of the ornament seen on older buildings, but with much flatter profiles and lower resolution. Example: compare the street-level facade of Carnegie hall tower with that of its namesake neighbor.Probably a bad example since it’s behind scaffolding right now but you can Google it.

So, in aggregate all of these factors (and more) mean that you can’t really make buildings that look pre-war, let’s say, without going through a lot of expense. They’re viable as one-offs, for big-budgeted institutions. And there are many “new classical” or “new traditional” buildings going up all over the place–but to any trained architect, and probably to anyone with a little aesthetic sense, all but the most carefully-made ones look REALLY BAD.

That’s why I don’t think it’s worth rebuilding Penn station to its exact historic design. It’s sort of papering over the palimpsestual process that is city-making. The act of it’s destruction is so integral to the foundational myth of late-20th century New York that to me, rebuilding it outright would almost feel stranger than preserving its memory with something new.

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Brambleshire t1_itveta1 wrote

Do you know any specific examples of new classical buildings that were done well and some that were not?

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Riccma02 t1_itoy4wi wrote

> Contemporary advancements in manufacturing have easily replaced skilled craftsmen used on historical classical buildings.

No, they haven't at all. Quality and integrity have just been compromised and degenerating for the past century to meet the limited capabilities of consumer driven mass production. There still isn't a machine that can carve those corinthian capitals or hot rivet together the steel and glass vaulting. You'd either have to substitute a shitty imitation of the genuine article, or you would have to develop and automated technology capable of replicating what those skilled craftsman could do; which would take decades to develop. The truth is that it doesn't matter how much money we have; there is no longer a sufficient skilled labor pool. It would take a generation just to apprentice a sufficient number of new craftsman in order to be capable of executing a project of that scale.

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