By Philip Ryan
The architectural character of Williamsburg has changed and with it, the essential character of the place that has drawn so many to it since artists began “discovering” it in the 1980’s. This is not a new or unique process and it has not passed without the usual fits of gentrification angst and developer loathing. All of this has been documented within the pages of this magazine along with most every other publication in the city.
But beyond the socioeconomic reasons for this change, it is important to examine the dynamic that has set Williamsburg’s “evolution” apart from the previous gentrification shifts experienced in Tribeca and Soho. Those areas, like Williamsburg, experienced unprecedented changes in real estate values, crime rates, and commercial investment; however, the change occurred largely without the dramatic alterations to the existing physical environment. The alteration of the Williamsburg skyline is startling because the lack of an appreciable architecture that seeks to connect with the area has damaged the very character that draws people to it.
The buildings that were the backbone of the Williamsburg industrial growth were tectonically, like Soho and Tribeca; direct reflections of their commercial use. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, industrial buildings were constructed with load bearing masonry walls used to support heavy wood timber beams that carried the loads of trade goods. Floor to floor heights were maximized to draw natural light into the core of the buildings. Materials were selected based on their regional abundance and the availability of local labor promoted certain building types over another. In this way, buildings grew out of the geology and society of their place.
Companies filled the sites with buildings that created efficient, pure volumes of commerce. While the buildings were drawn from different owners and functions, the commonalities and limitations of the construction techniques coupled with the desire for efficiency were an unofficial architectural planning guide. Buildings of similar character, scale, and architectural style naturally grew out of these principles of good trade. As a result, Williamsburg began with a remarkably consistent set of buildings of careful form and weight.
504 Driggs Avenue: Weight and Rhythm
An example of one such building is 504 Driggs Avenue; built in 1930 and currently occupied by a series of retail stores and upscale living spaces. It is a simple rectilinear volume of masonry construction punctuated by a regular grid of fenestration, the design and placement of windows in a building. The frames of the windows, recently replaced, are recessed from the face of the brick to protect the fenestration from weathering, and partially shade the surface of the glass. This relief on the façade generates more depth and gives the building weight and presence that is translated perceptually into history, substance, and timelessness. At the corners, the rhythm of the windows stops and an enlarged band of brick turns the corner to intensify the articulation of the form of the building. The corners have the contradictory effect of framing a two dimensional composition of the windows, made more idiosyncratic by the activities within.
Following the introduction of steel and reinforced concrete, industry turned its attention to hybridized masonry/steel buildings and cast-in-place concrete. Using the same planning principles to maximize the efficiency of the spaces, Williamsburg gained a second layer of buildings that exhibited pure formal geometry, rigorous attention to straightforward details and material, and vast volumes of space designed to be engines for the U.S. economy in the pre and post war era.
The Austin, Nichols & Co. Warehouse: Plasticity of Construction
The Austin, Nichols & Co. Warehouse (184 Kent Avenue), recently classified as a landmark building by the city of New York, diverted from the common material character of Williamsburg by means of this exposed reinforced concrete building type. However, it still maintained a formal and scalar rigor in the articulation of the façade elements that is deeply connected to the surrounding neighborhood. Fenestration is handled in a consistent, rhythmic fashion interrupted by canopies, large-scale openings, and a cornice line that has been peeled from the building in a way that expresses the plasticity of its concrete skin. The façades become tapestries for the life within them, and the simple forms enhance the understanding of the buildings relationship to light and the complexity of the city around it.
When the search for studio and living space surged in the late 1990’s in Williamsburg, the inheritance of a then-defunct industrial district offered enormous potential for artists and residents alike. For the first ten years a fascinating re-engagement of an existing city landscape had begun as artists, craft industries, small white collar companies, and residents adjusted the common definition of working and living to fit the physical circumstances of their built environment.
This egalitarian use of the built environment of Williamsburg established a collaborative relationship between building and its diverse set of inhabitants. A respectful engagement in re-use and adaptation took place spurring the evolution of a strong and distinct new neighborhood. The energy and vitality of this coexistence was encapsulated in the creation of social events that were informed by and existed because of the identity of the surrounding built landscape. Bars inside of old garages, rooftop cinemas, A.I.R. signs, and Fourth of July fireworks from the rooftop of old rope factories were the outgrowth of this new urban coexistence. A modern use of the urban setting, in which the buildings were participants in social occasion, began to emerge.
Unfortunately, the new body of built work in Williamsburg does not participate in this collaboration. Instead, the work attempts to exploit the uniqueness of Williamsburg as a place and merge it with select characteristics of other places to create a homogenous, market driven architecture that does not respond to, remove itself from, or interact with the context it resides within. This architecture is large enough and numerous as to rob Williamsburg of the continuity, simplicity, and strength that it once possessed.
These buildings are without a sense of presence. They are a specific reaction to a set of market elements while being simultaneously unspecific about its place in the community. Living the supposed urban, gritty life in Williamsburg, without compromising Upper East Side balconies, Upper West Side floor to ceiling aluminum windows, or Greenwich Village garden terraces has become more vital than reflecting an understanding of the context they sit within. By being everything at once, the buildings are nothing.
The New Construction: Stage Set Architecture
To a passerby, the architectural refinements of the buildings “seem nice” but are oddly unsettling. The forms of the buildings are thin and counterintuitive reflecting the impermanence and casualness of their construction. The rigor and clarity of the industrial age buildings sheathed these buildings like Hollywood stage sets in an attempt to feign interest in a connection to the neighborhood. Corners do not turn as a single material, but morph into a multiplicity of materials that are similarly featured in near photo-reality in the ubiquitous marketing pamphlet. By allowing design to yield to the weight of marketing rather than inhabitation, the buildings are slogans and representations rather than unique situations in an urban experience.
The height of these buildings is also unsettling, not least because of the contrast to the rest of a relatively low-scale Williamsburg, but for the careful removal of the inhabitants from the vibrancy of the street life. This street life is not a Manhattan bustle, but rather a quirky, ambitious mixture of pretty and ugly things, strange and normal, isolated and claustrophobic. Paradoxically, the buildings are frequently extremely transparent, exhibiting a strange voyeurism that furthers the break with Williamsburg.
This higher plane of living is formally expressed as a longing look toward the Manhattan skyline as if the buildings will eventually grow up and move on to become bigger residential towers on 79th street. Perhaps that would be best for all of us.
