Imagining Manhattan: building the island and its discourses, 1811-present

Catalog description

For more than two centuries Manhattan has been both the object of urban thinkers' fantasies and a laboratory for urban movements and design strategies. Architects and urbanists in the 19th and 20th centuries imagined idealistic and dystopian plans for the great city, with roadways stacked five or ten stories high, aerial avenues of commuter airplanes, or uncontrolled speculative skyscrapers turning the city into a bleak lattice of canyons. But the islands realized dreams were often even more audacious; among the grandest of these was the 1811 legislation of the cities. Cartesian block grid at a moment when most of the island was farmland and forest. But no more timid are a town made from towers (Rockefeller Center), a neighborhood where the Hudson recently flowed (Battery Park City), and an 800-acre populist artificial garden made from the most valuable land in the world (Central Park). This course considers the movements, ideologies, and theoretical frameworks that transformed Manhattan into the island as it continues to rise today. Field visits will supplement in-depth analysis of the city's architecture and urban designs. In the course's hybrid component, students will investigate,collectively and individually, the history of a particular site of their choice, engaging not only with its original design, subsequent modifications, and present state, but also with the unrealized architectural and urban fantasies to which it has played host.