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"Architecture Matters"
Remarks by Paul Goldberger, on the completition of Urban Horizons
"When you see a project like this, you begin to wonder if maybe you can believe in things in New York again"
I'm very honored to be here, to say a word about this project, and the extraordinary effort it represents for the Bronx, and for the city at large. We are all accustomed to things going wrong in New York, or to things not happening; there is plenty of evidence to support the view that in this city, you cannot do anything, and if you try, you will get your head handed to you. Given all of this, it's hard not to want to praise the creators of this project, Nancy Biberman and her colleagues at the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation, first of all merely for making it happen. Turning the former Morrisania Hospital into housing and a comprehensive community-based economic development center is the sort of thing that strikes a cynical mind as just too logical, too naturally sensible a thing -- just too right -- to actually happen in New York.
So I want to begin by thanking Nancy and Bruce Becker and everyone who has worked on this project for helping bring all of us one step away from the cynicism that life in New York so naturally directs us towards. When you see a project like this, you begin to wonder if maybe you can believe in things in New York again -- and that alone, in and of itself--justifies the effort.
Of course, in truth there are plenty of good things happening in New York, and in particular in the Bronx, today; the Urban Horizons project is not alone. But there are several things that mark it as special, and I would like to talk about them for a moment or two.
Let me start with the building itself-- a remnant of an age when hospitals, like schools, were civic monuments, structures designed to symbolize the dignity and grandeur of the public realm, and in so doing, gave dignity and pride to every resident of the neighborhood around them. This fine Italian Renaissance building recalls a time when it was a natural thing for neighborhoods to have great public buildings as their centerpieces, and I think it is all to easy to forget today how powerfully such buildings were able to confer a sense of dignity on the individuals who lived near them--not only on those who walked through their doors, but on everyone who passed by them on the street.
The decision to keep this building, and convert it to new uses while restoring, even enhancing, its architectural quality, was an implicit acknowledgement of this, of the crucial role a building can play as a neighborhood anchor. By restoring this building, we are not only saying that the people of the Bronx deserve the best, we are demonstrating it beyond any doubt. Here is architecture designed to enhance the dignity and pride of a neighborhood, and after years of having architecture often do the opposite; years of seeing civic architecture that seemed intended only to treat a community with contempt -- I can't emphasize too much how important the restoration of this building is as a symbol.
This building exists to tell us that yes, architecture can matter, it can affect the quality of life. It can make life better for the people who walk through its doors, and it can even make life better for the people who merely pass it on the street. That the Urban Horizons building is visible from all over the Bronx, and is not just a little box on 168th Street, in and of itself makes it an even more powerful symbol.
If this building is a symbol in space, it is a symbol in time too, a reminder that there is a continuity to the Bronx, and to this neighborhood, that is worth preserving, and that can continue to enrich us all. It is important to feel that the strength that is growing in the Bronx today can come, at least in part, from the heritage of the Bronx that existed before, that it is not only a matter of building new things, but also of bringing new life to older ones. A healthy community gains its strength from connecting to a past, for in doing so it gains a sense of continuity; a community that has no past drifts without anchors, and has a much harder time building a future. So here we see all of that literally demonstrated by the preservation of a great part of the past, made better by turning it into a vehicle to create the future. Another way to put this is to say that here there is memory, and there is possibility we feel both of them, together, which is essential since every place needs both of these things, memory and possibility, to create and sustain a meaningful life.
I said a moment ago that this building proves that architecture can affect the quality of life. Of course it cannot do that as an empty symbol, with all due respect to the wonderful work done by Bruce Becker and his colleagues from Becker & Becker, who have restored this building with great sensitivity both to its architectural heritage and to the needs of its new users. If it were an empty shell, even a beautiful one, it would ultimately do little to help the neighborhood. The most impressive thing of all here is the way in which the values of architecture -- what we might call the esthetic values of beautiful brick and stone and terra cotta have been put together with the social values of economic development and housing and day care. This is not just a beautiful building, it is a beautiful building with a socially wise and knowing program, and therefore it stands a real chance of making a tremendous difference in the quality of life.
Architecture can never do it by itself. One of the great fallacies of people in my business, architects and architecture critics, is to indulge in the belief that a nice building in and of itself solves problems. It doesn't. The life that goes on within the building, the things that happen there, are what solve problems. But if you were to put this excellent economic development program in a less wonderful setting, it would not work as well, it would not do as much, because it would have lost the power of the symbol that this building possesses. So there is a connection, and an important one, and it is clear that the makers of this project understand it.
Architecture alone cannot make life better; but housing and economic development cannot make life better to their maximum potential without architecture. They need each other, and it is in the combination, the coming together of all of these values that the greatest promise lies. So if we salute anything today, let it be the understanding that architecture and preservation and community development and housing and economic development and medical care and day care and job creation are all one thing, and that they need to be seen as all one thing -- as all needing each other, and together making each other work.
I am delighted to congratulate everyone involved in the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation on an extraordinary project which, if I can return to my first words, helps restore my faith in New York.