Lethem Comes Out Swinging at Gehry
Author and lifelong Brooklynite Jonathan Lethem has drafted a personal letter to Frank Gehry that appeared in Slate yesterday. Here’s an excerpt: [Your design is] a nightmare for Brooklyn, one that, if built, would cause irreparable damage to the quality of our lives and, I’d think, to your legacy. Your reputation, in this case, is…
Author and lifelong Brooklynite Jonathan Lethem has drafted a personal letter to Frank Gehry that appeared in Slate yesterday. Here’s an excerpt:
[Your design is] a nightmare for Brooklyn, one that, if built, would cause irreparable damage to the quality of our lives and, I’d think, to your legacy. Your reputation, in this case, is the Trojan horse in a war to bring a commercially ambitious, but aesthetically—and socially—disastrous new development to Brooklyn. Your presence is intended to appease cultural tastemakers who might otherwise, correctly, recognize this atrocious plan for what it is, just as the notion of a basketball arena itself is a Trojan horse for the real plan: building a skyline suitable to some Sunbelt boomtown. I’ve been struggling to understand how someone of your sensibilities can have drifted into such an unfortunate alliance, with such potentially disastrous results.
The other zinger: “Your prestigious presence in this mercenary partnership reminds me of Colin Powell giving cover to the Cheney-Rumsfeld doctrine: If he’s on board, we’re meant to think, it can’t be as bad as it looks.” Ouch. Read on.
Brooklyn’s Trojan Horse [Slate]
Anon 4:13- I chose to live in Brooklyn because I loved the neighborhoods and the communities here. I don’t want Brooklyn to become Manhattan because I don’t want the noise, the crowds, the apartments without sunlight, the expense. For years Manhattan has gotten the majority of money and attention, and often at the expense of the other boroughs. But Brooklyn has its own distinctive character and I think the majority of Brooklynites love that. Manhattan has lots of wonderful things to offer, but I want Brooklyn to stay Brooklyn. Feel the same way about the Bronx, where I grew up. What makes NYC great is not Manhattan, it’s all the boroughs with all their diversity,culture and history.
CHP- spot on!
Great letter. Very, very well said. I wonder what will happen, or if Gehry will answer, or at best, think about some of the salient points.
I’m also incensed at Ratner’s cavalier remarks about the Mall, which I have to say I’ve only been in once. I remember marvelling in horror at the unfriendliness of the spaces, and the overall bad design. I vowed never to come back, and I haven’t. Tough kids – puhleeze. With that condescending attitude, and we’re supposed to flock like sheep to anything he deigns to throw at us? NOT!
I hope I don’t live here when this piece of crap gets built. Gehry is lame. I hate his buildings. Miss brooklyn? What are you 12 years old Frank? Geez Grow UP!!!
If you said in 10 years would look like Detroit or Buffalo I would take it as negative and be worried. But to say Manhattan? I doubt you perceive so negatively another borough and the economic center of your city that you would mean it as something to be worried about. After all, why would you live in this city if such an important part of it were something to be avoided.
No surprise I agreed with Lethem. But the point that makes me angriest is the one he makes about public lands being given to a private corporation (demapped streets, etc.) I live on Pacific and even this far down from the AY I can see how much the traffic will be affected. But more than that- since when do we give away public lands to a private developer? And for a pittance!
It is the moneyed elite (what do you think Bloomberg is, if not moneyed?) who sell out first. Their old boy network cares only about itself and making its members happy. If you think AY is the only travesty that will be built you’re in for a very big surprise. In ten years Brooklyn will be so much like Manhattan they’ll fill in the river and take down the Bridge.
I agree Gehry’s ‘Miss Brooklyn’ missive was ‘bleeechh’ but also much of Lethem’s letter made me want to ‘bleeechh’ also.
Gehry was patronizing and Lethem is
sounding way too provincial.
Lethem need not worry about blocking view of his clock from the BQE on way home from airport (guess he can’t afford a wristwatch) – because the proposal is south of the Wburg Bank bldg.
‘Brooklyn taxpayers’? — when did you ever pay taxes to Brooklyn?
And another thing, for all of you who think this will be a beautiful project — I have three words: Atlantic Center Mall.
The key is, as a prior poster said, that Brooklyn taxpayers will have to live with the consequences of this.
If you look carefully at Ratner’s agreement with the city to provide jobs and moderate-income housing, it’s pocked with loopholes that in essence say that he can take these “gifts” away should market conditions change.
And change they already have. So there goes the moderate-income apts, there go piddly amount of hot-dog vendor and building super jobs.
The one good thing is this bad market we’re entering in. Ratner-Gehery are scaling back the project a bit (not because of aesthetics, because they know the co-op condo market is glutted and prices are going down)