SkyscraperPage Forum - NYC Has Lost Countless Cultural & Historic Institutions In The Past Decade

A Decade Of Destruction In New York City

Dec 12, 2019

By Nathan Kensinger

Read More: https://ny.curbed.com/2019/12/12/210...de-photo-essay

Quote:

Over the last decade, the landscape of New York City has seen an unprecedented amount of change. Luxury towers and megaprojects rose across the city, and miles of previously off-limits coastline were transformed into new waterfront parks. Numerous neighborhoods were reconstructed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. And thousands of small businesses and historic buildings were wiped out by soaring rents and waves of gentrification.

- Many of these changes were set in motion by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the eighth-richest person in America, who was in office until 2014. Under his administration, approximately 40 percent of New York’s landmass was rezoned, allowing for the construction of over 214,000 new housing units. But the results have not been pretty, especially in the low-income and industrial neighborhoods that were bulldozed under the threat of eminent domain. --- “The city [Bloomberg] turned over to Bill de Blasio in 2014 was increasingly caricatured as a playground for the rich,” the New York Times recently wrote. “Slender new skyscrapers on Billionaire’s Row had begun to cast shadows on Central Park. Neighborhoods that had seen little investment in years were bracing for gentrification. Income inequality ranked among the widest of major cities in America.”

- Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the long-term impacts of the Bloomberg era have continued to play out. Despite de Blasio’s early campaign promises to help improve the lives of lower-income New Yorkers, “reducing the vast wealth of the city’s top earners is out of a mayor’s grasp,” and the problem of income inequality has not improved. Instead, de Blasio has been accused of “being chummy with the developers he promised to hold to account.” --- As new development projects and rezonings reshaped the city, it also lost countless historic buildings and cultural institutions; dive bars, bungalows, churches, and even entire neighborhoods were wiped off the map. The 10 buildings and neighborhoods below were just a few of the city’s unique places demolished during a decade of destruction.

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