
The Price of Saving Grand Central Station - kposehn
https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/10/saving-grand-central-40-years-later-cautionary-tale/573208/
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julienchastang
For those of you commuting through GCT tonight, look up at the main course
ceiling. The ceiling was cleaned in the mid-1990s, but they purposely did not
clean a small area to show the drastic change. You can actually see it in this
picture

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/NYC_Gran...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/NYC_Grand_Central_Terminal_ceiling.jpg)

Look in the upper-right corner by the ecliptic.

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lostlogin
Thanks. The tiny bit that goes into the white marble?

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pgrote
I am not seeing it, either.

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pkamb
The hand of one of the Gemini twins?

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leoedin
The UK is absolutely full of Victorian buildings which we go to great lengths
to preserve. It's, I think, a reaction to the sixties when we were going to
great lengths to pull them down.

The problem is that you end up living in an architectural monoculture. There's
literally millions of Victorian terraced houses in the UK now and endless
endless rows of drab 30s semi-detached houses. It's a shame that there's less
of a drive to build new things. Yes, you end up with failures and
architectural mistakes, but you also end up with gems and truly interesting
buildings.

I don't know exactly what the answer is, but I think empowering more local
small scale development, even if it means we lose a small percentage of
Victorian terraces or semis, would be a start.

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NeedMoreTea
At least Victorian "monoculture" varied by region, city and often each estate
or build. Style, architecture, features, layout, colour and grade of brick or
stone and slate would all identify where in the country you were. Even trivia
like windows, mullions, ridge tiles and so on were of the region, and
sometimes even more local. This continued until maybe the 1950s.

New build use the same standard, shite, boxes across the whole country. 5
sizes and styles of shitty box per estate. If you live in a National Park or
similar your standard shitty box will be clad in local stone tiles.

Trouble with losing the Victorian build is they were built to last much longer
than those 1960s on. Current build are to a price (lowest possible).

I agree we should go back to regional and small scale development, and for
planning regs to require regional sympathy once again. I don't agree Victorian
buildings are drab. I'd far rather live in one of those than anything post
1970 as they tend to be much more solidly built. Sure they have a few issues
stemming from being 120 years old - the roof might be due its first
replacement by now (if slate) etc

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Joeri
_Trouble with losing the Victorian build is they were built to last much
longer than those 1960s on._

I’m highly skeptical the average house built then outlived the average house
built today, due to survivorship bias. The houses that remain are the ones
built to last.

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Spooky23
Have you ever lived in an older city?

My first apartment in my city was built in 1910, and it was one of the newer
buildings in that neighborhood. Even cheap railroad flats controlled by
slumlords for 50 years are in better shape than the crap built in the early
90s.

The fatal flaw of older frame houses is balloon frames, which burned many
down.

Growing up in the country, 100-150 year old farmhouses were common. I’m
personally acquainted with 1 house and 3 barns built in the Dutch colonial
period.

IMO, most things built now except for custom homes and some commercial
structures will be a pile of junk in 100 years. The wood sucks, the vinyl
sucks and the foundations are weak. Scaled up developments are built to
maximize tax benefits, period.

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Endama
Is there a middle ground where new buildings could be made with old-school
aesthetics? I understand there is a strange Ship of Theseus situation here,
but it seems that if the aesthetics are the concern, there shouldn't be any
reason why a larger capacity building could be built in the old style.

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bobthepanda
The problem is that during the wave of modernization we had an entire
generation of buildings that didn't need stonemasons, intricate woodwork, etc.
As a result, no one replaced existing workers in those fields, and now we have
nothing to draw from, at least in the US.

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Endama
Excuse my ignorance here, but couldn't we just create molds and pour concrete
to create the same columns accent pieces? Surely there are technological
advancements that have allowed us to mimic stonemasons?

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bobthepanda
The problem is weathering. Weathered stone looks much the same as current
stone; weathered concrete looks absolutely horrid. The Brutalist buildings
that were all concrete have aged very poorly, with water and rust stains and
moss present.

You'd also need someone to actually make custom molds for every project; if
you have nobody willing to do it at a reasonable price for stone, what makes
you think they'll do it making molds?

Plaster molds have been used to mimic this effect, but mostly it looks very
bad and is used for things like tacky McMansions.

Right now, the only material that works and looks good for the purpose is
stone. There is a reason why stone countertops have remained a central piece
of home furnishing throughout the years.

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gamblor956
You don't mold stone, you chisel it to detail. Concrete is molded, and sanded
to detail.

The cost of the mold is proportional to the level of detail required. A
plaster mold can be had for a few dollars. A finely detailed mold mimicking a
Grecian sculpture...a few tens of thousands. But that is simply because more
work goes into preparing the detailed mold, i.e., laser scans of the original,
the 3D print and finishing of the negative. This is still much, much cheaper
than paying a sculptor for the hundreds of hours it would take to recreate the
sculpture by hand.

Concrete buildings have aged poorly because they receive minimal maintenance.
That was kind of the point of Brutalist architecture. Stone buildings
receiving the same level of maintenance have the same water and rust stains,
and mold, but generally because stone buildings are older historic buildings,
they receive above-average levels of maintenance and therefore look like they
are in better shape.

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rmason
When I was a kid I used to visit the Michigan Central Depot in Detroit with my
dad. When I was in college I actually took a train from Lansing one
Thanksgiving into the grand old station. In it's day it matched Grand Central
Station for its beauty.

But for the past forty years it sat empty, lots of graffiti and broken
windows. You've probably seen it in pictures of Detroit, it frequently is used
to highlight the ruin of the city.

Ford announced they bought it to headquarter their autonomous car research
efforts. They're planning on filling the ground floor with shops and are
giving money away to community groups in the neighborhood.

I can't wait for the rehab to be finished, along with the old Packard plant
which is also being rebuilt there will be far fewer examples of what the
locals call 'ruin porn' for the press to use to write the Detroit story. In
fact the old depot can in the future be used to write the story of Detroit's
rebirth.

[https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-
city/20...](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-
city/2018/06/18/ford-rolls-out-plans-train-station/712142002/)

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GiraffeGlove
Cities could continue to modernize and add density if zoning would allow
hybrid architecture additions similar to several buildings in Toronto. The
outside facade and interior remains while larger, modern and dense buildings
are added around and above the older landmarks. A good example of this is the
current hockey hall of fame.
[https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/01/01/saving_torontos_...](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/01/01/saving_torontos_heritage_buildings_the_smart_way.html)

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Nrsolis
I can't take anything in the article seriously when they call Grand Central
Terminal by the incorrect "station" name.

Grand Central Terminal is called that because it's the end of the rail lines
that arrive there. People who don't know still call it "grand central
station".

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larrik
The article gets it right. The headline is wrong. It's possible the headline
was written by someone else than the author.

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geofft
For large news organizations, it's pretty common for headlines not to be
written by the article author and the author to have no control over the
headline.

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dsfyu404ed
> Preserving the building did not, the majority said, constitute a “taking” of
> the property, depriving the owners of the opportunity to build to such an
> extent that they should be compensated.

In the long term I see that being regarded among other high quality landmark
rulings such as Wickard v. Filburn (that's sarcasm btw). There is already a
means for the government to acquire control over private property, eminent
domain and it involves compensation. Giving the government a magic wand they
can wave at no cost to tell people what to do on their property is not
appropriate.

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andrewla
Add to that Kelo v. City of New London, which allowed the taking of private
property to give to another private party.

As an odd bit of trivia, the dissent to Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New
York City was authored by then-associate Justice Rehnquist and joined by J.P.
Stevens. The opinion of the court in Kelo was delivered by Stevens, and
Rehnquist, as chief justice, joined in the dissent. Rehnquist stood fast on
preventing the restriction of the takings clause, while Stevens relaxed his
stance.

