Abstract
Recently, derelict artifacts of the industrial age such as railroad tracks and gantry cranes have emerged as prominent aesthetic features in New York City’s newest parks. This article documents and analyzes this new practice of historic preservation in three new parks, including the internationally acclaimed High Line. Socioeconomic data confirm that these industrial-themed parks exist in neighborhoods marked by dramatic postindustrial change. I argue that the trends are interrelated: that is, the injection of industrial remains into the city’s cultural and symbolic landscape not only represents the decline of the city’s industrial sector but also reinterprets and legitimizes this decline. The analysis highlights the political nature of historic preservation, which in this case helps nurture support for an elite-led postindustrial agenda in the face of recurring political challenges from progressives.
For half a century now remnants of the industrial past have been preserved and adapted for reuse in the construction of postindustrial New York City. Recently, however, this practice has evolved and industrial relics are appearing in forms and places not previously seen in the city. While industrial buildings have long been refashioned for upscale residential and commercial uses, it is increasingly common to see the raw materials of the industrial economy—railroad tracks, cranes, smokestacks, and more—incorporated as prominent aesthetic features in new city parks. In effect, New York’s industrial past is being repackaged and re-presented in the recreational landscape of the twenty-first-century city.
This article analyzes the emergence of this new form of historic preservation through the lens of three distinctive New York City parks: the internationally acclaimed High Line, snaking through several of Manhattan’s trendiest downtown neighborhoods; Gantry Plaza State Park, perched on the Queens riverfront opposite Midtown Manhattan; and Concrete Plant Park, nestled in an area of industrial decline in the impoverished South Bronx. I situate these new forms of industrial preservation in the context of ongoing decline in the city’s manufacturing sector and argue that the two trends are interrelated; that is, the injection of industrial artifacts into the city’s cultural and symbolic landscape not only represents the decline of the industrial sector but also, through the act of memorializing New York’s industrial past, reinterprets and legitimizes this decline. In this way, historic preservation operates as a political force nurturing support for (or softening opposition to) the consolidation of a postindustrial New York City. The analysis highlights the political-economic underpinnings of historic preservation practices and values, and draws attention to evolving forms and functions of historic preservation in an advanced postindustrial urban context.
The article proceeds as follows: first, a brief overview of historic preservation in New York City demonstrates that a new form of industrial preservation is indeed underway; second, short profiles of the three parks illustrate this new practice of industrial preservation in New York’s maturing postindustrial landscape; third, industrial preservation is situated in the context of political conflicts and fault lines that have accompanied the process of economic restructuring in New York; and, finally, historic preservation is considered in relation to urban politics more generally.
This research draws on a variety of sources, including New York City and State government data on parks and historic preservation; census data on New York City and its neighborhoods; public statements by landscape architects/designers; media reporting; and firsthand observation and photo-documentation of new parks in New York. It contributes to, and builds upon, the work of historians and other scholars seeking to understand and explain uses of history and historic preservation in their cultural, political, and economic contexts. 1
Historic Preservation and the Industrial Landscape in New York City
Historic preservation is not a neutral expression of preordained cultural value. The choices we make about what to preserve, and how, tell us as much about the present as they do about the past. As Randall Mason explains:
[An] important insight about heritage values is that they are contingent, not objectively given. The values of heritage are not simply “found” and fixed and unchanging, as was traditionally theorized in the conservation field (i.e., the notion of heritage values being intrinsic). Values are produced out of the interaction of an artifact and its contexts; they don’t emanate from the artifact itself. Values can thus only be understood with reference to social, historical, and even spatial contexts—through the lens of who is defining and articulating the value, why now, and why here?
2
A brief overview of historic preservation in New York City is useful in untangling these questions as they relate to new forms of industrial preservation.
Historic preservation has a long history in New York City. As Mason has shown, “preservation was really part of New York’s modern approach to city building” that took shape in the late nineteenth century. 3 At that time, preservation was shepherded by the same prominent civic leaders who were engaged in constructing the modern city. Preservation fit comfortably into their Progressive ethos of reform, which aimed to bring order, efficiency, and coherence to the city in a time of rapid and chaotic growth. Just as modern approaches to housing, transportation, parks, and other aspects of the urban environment would foster a healthy city, so too would a “memory infrastructure” of historic buildings, monuments, and commemorative plaques serve to orient the diverse populace in a period of destabilizing flux.
Although New York’s preservation movement was not born in the 1960s, that was a pivotal moment in its development. Preservation acquired more solid legal and institutional foundations in the face of aggressive urban renewal efforts that brought bulldozers to large swaths of the city. The destruction of the monumental Pennsylvania Station—a magnificent 1910 edifice, part Beaux-Arts and part Industrial Revolution—was a direct impetus for the landmarks law enacted in 1965. 4 The law created the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, “one of the strongest local-government preservation agencies in the country,” with broad regulatory powers over designated buildings, interiors, and even entire districts. 5
It would be a mistake, however, to interpret this as a shift by the preservation movement to an anti-market posture. Even in the post–urban renewal era, the preservation movement has maintained its symbiotic relationship with the market, as evidenced by the revitalization of SoHo, Times Square, and many other areas of the city. Heritage has operated as a tool for selling gentrified neighborhoods, creating festival marketplaces and other zones of consumption, and facilitating large urban renewal–scale development projects. In effect, historic preservation provided valuable cultural resources that aided New York as it made the economic transition from production to consumption. 6 Max Page and Randall Mason conclude that “the preservation field has lived a dual life when it comes to the market,” encompassing both “opposition to developers” and “a marriage with developers.” 7
An early beneficiary of the new landmarks law (as upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court) was Grand Central Terminal, another rail-era monument that became the focus of elite-led preservation efforts in the face of ambitious redevelopment initiatives. 8 The fact that preservation battles of the 1960s and 1970s revolved around train stations illustrates a longstanding affinity within the preservation movement for products of the industrial age. At its centennial birthday in 2013, Grand Central stood as a testament to the value of recycled industrial-era landmarks in the postindustrial city; once viewed as obsolete and threatened with demolition, Grand Central was transformed into a popular destination and coveted retail space featuring a distinctive food court, upscale restaurants, specialty shops, public art displays, and other staged events.
The SoHo neighborhood illustrates even more vividly how industrial preservation has served postindustrial New York. From a twenty-first-century vantage point, it can be difficult to imagine New York City as the global manufacturing center that it was in 1950, when nearly one million jobs were related to manufacturing, and half of them were crammed into Manhattan below Central Park. 9 A distinctive feature of the city’s manufacturing was its dispersal among small-scale enterprises operating in loft buildings of eight or ten stories (if not in residential tenements themselves) with wide open floors, where a few dozen sewing machines might occupy as many women. A notable architectural characteristic of these buildings—constructed before modernism’s functional aesthetic had taken root—were classical-looking facades fashioned from cast iron moldings.
The broad contours of the SoHo story are now familiar. 10 As the city’s industrial economy faded, artists began occupying the Downtown industrial lofts, drawn in by the large spaces and affordable rents. The artists began living in their rough loft spaces, supporting a network of small galleries, shops, cafes, and bars. Soon the cachet they brought to the neighborhood—now with a new name, SoHo—attracted new residents and new money. The designation of the SoHo Cast Iron Historic District in 1973 worked hand in hand with this process of neighborhood valorization. As residential and commercial rents soared, many artists were forced out. The area became a trendy location for upscale shopping, fine restaurants, and luxury housing. The SoHo formula—trendy, arty district in a preserved nineteenth-century industrial fabric—is now a familiar staple of urban landscapes across the United States.
Beginning in the late 1990s, the city’s industrial past began appearing on the postindustrial landscape in new ways. First, these were new types of industrial structures; the equipment and infrastructure that supported industrial activity rather than the buildings that housed industrial operations. Prominent examples of this industrial detritus are the large, rusted gantry cranes that once transferred railroad cars to and from barges connecting the freight-rail lines of New York and New Jersey. 11 Second, these industrial artifacts were preserved as aesthetic objects rather than adapted for residential and commercial uses. It is noteworthy that this preservation approach was not imposed through the formal process of designating historic landmarks but was adopted voluntarily as a landscape design strategy. Third, these industrial artifacts were appearing in public spaces devoted to recreation, specifically in the new parks, often lining the city’s old industrial waterfronts, that were being developed as complements to neighborhoods undergoing dramatic postindustrial change.
Table 1 presents a list of recently constructed parks with preserved industrial elements. 12 The parks range in size from the tiny Grand Ferry Park with its red brick smokestack tucked in a nook along the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Riverside Park South, which extends more than a half mile along the Hudson River in Manhattan, with a hulking rail transfer bridge and gantry crane listing just offshore. Other parks feature large cranes, railroad tracks, dilapidated piers, and industrial equipment, in some cases supplemented with interpretive signs that explain the area’s industrial past. The parks are distributed across four of the city’s five boroughs, and six of the seven, including all three in Brooklyn, are on river/waterfronts. They are an assorted progeny, with four constructed by the city, two by the state, and one by a private company (Erie Basin Park was built by IKEA in exchange for locating a big box store on the site of a shipbuilding operation in Red Hook, Brooklyn.)
Industrial-Themed Parks, NYC.
Source: Author.
Note: NYCDPR = New York City Department of Parks and Recreation; NYSOPRHC = New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.
James Dickinson has attempted to make sense of the growing prevalence of industrial landmarks in North America and Europe, noting that the vast “ruination mill” of industrial structures rendered obsolete by rapid technological change creates a fertile reservoir of potential “monuments of tomorrow.” 13 He chronicles wide-ranging examples of industrial preservation and classifies them into three forms: “recycling into new (primarily commercial) uses; transformation into historical monuments; or persistence in the landscape as conventional ruins.” 14 Although it is a well-conceived typology it does not fully capture the essence of the industrial landmarks adorning New York’s new parks. Recycling is evident in one of the industrial remains, but not in others, and not for primarily commercial purposes; none have the status of monuments with clearly articulated sets of meanings and significance; and those left untreated seem unlike conventional ruins in the ways that they interact with the hyper-designed landscapes of new parkland. In short, the industrial artifacts dotting New York’s newest parks represent the proliferation of an unusual form of historic preservation that has received little critical analysis.
To uncover the significance of these new landmarks, the following sections present cases from three different areas of New York City: the first in Manhattan, the heart of postindustrial New York; the second in Queens, a one-time stronghold of the white working class transformed by large-scale immigration; and the third in the South Bronx, poster child for urban decline in the 1970s. What these areas share in common—and with other cases of industrial artifacts in new city parks—is their location on the cutting edges of postindustrial change. We will return to the questions of significance—Mason’s “why now, and why here” questions 15 —in the subsequent discussion.
The High Line
The High Line on the lower west side of Manhattan stands out as the most celebrated and widely recognizable of all the examples of new industrial preservation in New York (see Figure 1). In a few short years of existence, it made Travel and Leisure’s list of the “world’s most popular landmarks,” joining the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum in Rome. 16 Its tourist hoards have even prompted anxious soul searching among New Yorkers, with one prominent blogger dubbing the High Line “Disney World on the Hudson.” 17 In some respects, it is also the most atypical of the new industrial landmarks because it comes closest to Dickinson’s notion of recycling; 18 that is, an industrial structure redeveloped for a new functional purpose. Nevertheless, at its core the High Line typifies the new strain of New York’s industrial landmarks and stands as the ultimate reflection of and catalyst for postindustrial New York City.
The High Line in Manhattan, featuring repurposed railroad tracks.
The High Line is a linear park constructed atop an abandoned, elevated freight-rail line meandering through several old industrial neighborhoods on Manhattan’s lower west side. The elevated structure was constructed in the 1930s to replace a dangerous street-level freight line; by 1980, when the final freight train rolled through (loaded with frozen turkeys), it had been rendered obsolete by trucking. The ensuing problem was what to do about the structure, which cut a mid-block path through assorted industrial buildings. Local business and property owners were convinced that it was an obstacle to development and wanted it demolished, and they found a determined ally in Mayor Giuliani. But two community activists, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, rallied support for preservation and redevelopment—including publicity and tens of millions of dollars—from wealthy elites in cultural industries like fashion and entertainment. Ultimately it was a no-nonsense cost-benefit analysis that secured the support of Giuliani’s successor, Michael Bloomberg, and his administration then overcame local opposition by coupling the High Line park with profitable new development rights. 19
It was not the high cost of demolishing the elevated structure ($30–$40 million 20 ) that made the numbers work; in fact, at a price of nearly $190 million, “the High Line cost more per acre than probably any park in human history,” 21 and despite substantial support from private donations and federal funds, the city was still left covering two-thirds of the tab. 22 Rather, the payoff was expected to come from economic activity generated by the new park, and indeed it has; with $2 billion worth of new development in the area just five years after construction of the High Line began, the payoff has far exceeded the original projections. 23 In effect, transforming the High Line into a park made economic sense as it meshed with Bloomberg’s vision of New York as a premiere luxury city in the global economy. 24
The downtown terminus of the first phase, which opened in 2010, is in the city’s Meatpacking District, an area of cobblestone streets and low-rise warehouses distinguished by the steel canopies that once supported tracks and hooks for transporting animal carcasses. The remaining canopies are now stylized versions of their earlier incarnations and function as design flourishes and protection from the elements for patrons of upscale restaurants and boutiques. A growing collection of luxury hotels and condominiums designed by celebrity architects now hug and straddle the High Line as it winds its way up through Chelsea (phase two, 2011) and into its final stretch (phase three, 2014) where the massive Hudson Yards development is taking form. 25
If the High Line differs from other examples of the new industrial preservation by putting industrial infrastructure to functional use, it also fits the new pattern of transforming industrial objects into aesthetic ones. To begin with, industrial elements are integrated into the park design to evoke, in a highly stylized form, the ambiance of an abandoned rail bed. The original tracks that were torn up to build the park have been laid down again amid grasses and flowers that were planted to replace/replicate wild flora that were also torn up in constructing the park. 26 Benches resembling wooden crates are mounted on steel wheels and can be rolled along the railroad tracks. The heavy steel railings also provide a powerful industrial-age frame for the park.
Additionally, the elevated structure itself serves as an aesthetic object for street-level pedestrians and the surrounding neighborhoods. As recently as the 1990s, when a renewed effort was launched to rescue the structure from demolition, it was an object of scorn among area residents, businesses, and property owners. Tellingly, though, the community activists who led the preservation fight were motivated to do so before ever ascending to the track bed and experiencing it from above (reportedly a sublime experience that made converts of later supporters). 27 As Hammond recalls, “I was in love with the steel structure, the rivets, the ruin.” 28 In the words of one of the park’s designers, “The idea was . . . to capture its postindustrial charm,” 29 and what was once an eyesore came to be seen as an aesthetic object exposing its “gorgeous steel underbelly” to those below. 30
Finally, to the extent that the High Line represents a case of recycling, it differs fundamentally from earlier instances of industrial recycling in that it serves a noncommercial function. No doubt the park has been a boon for commerce and real estate in the area, but aside from a few concessionaires it serves primarily as a kind of parade ground for fashionable New Yorkers and tourists.
Gantry Plaza State Park
Gantry Plaza State Park is located in the Hunter’s Point section of Long Island City (LIC) in the borough of Queens, one of the four so-called outer boroughs that surround the city’s Manhattan core. Historically Queens represented a base of white ethnic homeowner neighborhoods but the borough has been transformed by waves of immigration and by the spillover of postindustrial development from Manhattan across the East River. 31 With its easy subway access and valuable Manhattan views, LIC offers a natural extension for the office towers and upscale housing of overbuilt Manhattan. 32
The Queens West redevelopment plan hatched in the 1990s called for nineteen new commercial and residential buildings in the area. 33 Yet, despite the construction of the fifty-story Citigroup Building and corporate-led gentrification efforts in the 1990s, 34 Queens lagged behind Brooklyn as site of postindustrial growth. In order to spur development, LIC was incorporated in Mayor Bloomberg’s bid to lure the 2012 Olympics to New York. The Olympic Village proposed for the Queens waterfront would establish a housing stock that could be adapted for upscale residential use following the Olympic games. For the city elites, the Olympics plan was an instrumental means of accomplishing visionary redevelopment projects by tying them to hard deadlines. 35
Although the Olympic bid failed, large-scale redevelopment of the Queens waterfront proceeded, with at least ten new residential high-rises completed or in construction in Hunter’s Point as of 2014. Gantry Plaza State Park, the first phase of which opened in 1998, has been a key ingredient in this transformation from dilapidated industrial waterfront to Manhattan outpost. The park, constructed under the public-sector sponsorship of the Queens West Development Corporation, sits surrounded by a ring of bland, new residential high-rises and their expansive lawns.
Gantry Plaza State Park takes its name from its most prominent feature: two hulking gantry cranes that were used until the 1960s to transfer freight cars between float barges and the railroad tracks terminating at the river’s edge (see Figure 2). The description of the park provided by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (NYSOPRHP) highlights the integration of industrial and postindustrial elements:
Gantry Plaza State Park is a 12-acre riverside oasis that boasts spectacular views of the midtown Manhattan skyline, including the Empire State Building and the United Nations. Enjoy a relaxing stroll along the park’s four piers or through the park’s manicured gardens and unique mist fountain. Along the way take a moment to admire the rugged beauty of the park’s centerpieces—restored gantries. These industrial monuments were once used to load and unload rail car floats and barges; today they are striking reminders of our waterfront’s past. With the city skyline as a backdrop and the gantries as a stage, the park’s plaza is a wonderful place to enjoy a spring or summer concert.
36
Gantry Plaza State Park in Queens, featuring preserved gantry cranes.
The award-winning design was praised among landscape architects as “a new urban waterfront park paradigm where the past meets the present; where restored railroad gantries and rugged split faced granite blocks reflecting the site’s history and blue collar community are in harmony with stainless steel elements and follies that reach for the Manhattan skyline and the 21st century.” 37 Hailing this new breed of postindustrial park, New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp declared: “The curse that reduced New York’s landscape architects to creating Disney versions of Central Park has been at least temporarily lifted.” 38
Indeed, the landscape architects, Thomas Balsley and Associates, soon replicated the approach in their design for Riverside Park South, which abuts massive new residential development on Manhattan’s West Side. However, while the gantries at Gantry Park were touched up with fresh paint and positioned within the park, the dilapidated gantry crane and float bridge at Riverside Park were left listing offshore, “derelict as a Rust Belt steel plant decades after the final closing whistle.” 39 This creates a juxtaposition in which “the plain vanilla backdrop [of the adjacent Trump Place apartment towers] contrasts dramatically with the memento mori of this rusty monument.” 40 To complete the tableau, an actual New York Central locomotive sits amid the park’s wild grasses and wooden walkway.
In the northern extension of Gantry Park, another artifact of the area’s industrial past shines brightly; it is the trademark Pepsi Cola sign that marks the site where a bottling plant operated for more than seventy-five years. Although the plant was demolished after it closed in 1999, the iconic sign was retained and resurrected as a feature of the landscape when construction of the northern section of the park was completed in 2009.
Surrounded by a fortress-like ring of residential high-rises and pristine lawns, Gantry Park feels like the province of its affluent neighbors, with the entire package resembling an urban gated community. Yet there is a more complicated story inscribed in the park’s graffiti-scarred wooden railings and benches. Grafitti like “RIP Ito & Alejo” and “Killa Squad! 754” suggest a pattern of class mixing at odds with that envisioned by the park’s designers.
Concrete Plant Park
Concrete Plant Park, hugging the bank of the Bronx River in the South Bronx, stands in stark contrast to the parks discussed above. The Parks Department identifies the park as part of the Crotona Park East neighborhood but this is misleading. The park is located at the neighborhood’s fringe, hemmed in by an elevated subway line, an expressway, a grade-level high-speed rail line (and abandoned station), and several heavily trafficked streets lined with auto repair shops and other industrial uses. Access to the park is challenging if not treacherous. Dilapidated industrial structures line the opposite bank of the river and poke out from the river itself.
As its name indicates, Concrete Plant Park was the site of a concrete batch mix plant from the 1940s to the 1980s. 41 After the plant closed, community activists led by the local community empowerment organization Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice pushed the city to develop the site for public use. Once the City acquired the site, in 2000, designers in the parks department developed a plan for the park in collaboration with community organizations and the Bronx River Alliance, an advocacy group working to reclaim the river along its entire course through the Bronx. The park, which opened in 2010, is a modest one including a waterfront promenade, a shaded reading circle, and a small restored salt marsh with a launch site for kayaks and canoes. Most of the park’s $11.4-million price tag—a fraction of the $187 million spent on the three phases of the High Line 42 —“went to removing 32,000 tons of contaminated soil.” 43
Though modest, the park is defined by a striking visual element: The silos, hoppers, and conveyor structures originally built by the Transit Mix Concrete Corporation have been stabilized, fenced in, reset in concrete foundations and painted a kidney-bean pink to serve as a sculptural assemblage (and source of some shade) at the heart of the park (see Figure 3). A review in Architects Newspaper summed up the park experience as follows: “With railroad tracks, an elevated subway line, and the Sheridan Expressway on one side and the muddy and fragrant Bronx River on the other, the site of Concrete Plant Park is far from picturesque. But with its now unused silos and mixing bins retained as a folly—reminders of the site’s former use—the park has the uncanny effect of transforming this post-industrial landscape into a place of serenity and rugged beauty.” 44 The design earned the City Parks Department a 2010 “Designing the Parks” Merit Award. 45
Concrete Plant Park in The Bronx, featuring refashioned equipment from a former concrete plant.
Despite critical acclaim, Concrete Plant Park is off the radar for most New Yorkers given its location in the hard-scrabble South Bronx. Still, it is a valuable public space for a neighborhood short on amenities. In addition to the usual range of park activities—families picnicking, kids playing and biking, teens weaving through on skateboards, adults lounging on benches—it is not uncommon to see people fishing and crabbing among the tall grasses of the salt marsh, or even launching inflatable rafts equipped for a day of fishing on the river. In the context of the surrounding area, it seems remarkable.
Indeed, context is everything. In the upscale postindustrial parks of Manhattan and Queens, industrial relics are largely preserved and celebrated in their raw forms. They stand out as industrial chic among new glass condos and hyper-designed parkland. In Concrete Plant Park, however, where evidence of industrial decline is visible all around, the preservation of abandoned industrial structures could blend too easily into a landscape of decline. In this landscape, it takes a fresh coat of paint and sculpture-garden setting to transform the industrial remains into an expression of something positive. In this way, the park puts a bright face on the process of postindustrial change that has left the neighborhood visibly scarred.
Historic Preservation and Economic Restructuring
The practice of incorporating industrial elements into parks has been occurring since at least the 1970s as cities in North America and Europe have grappled with the effects of industrial decline. In Seattle, a defunct gasification plant was preserved in the award-winning Gas Works Park in 1975; in Lowell, Massachusetts, nineteenth-century textile mills became the material for the downtown Lowell National Historical Park in 1978; and in Germany, a vast ironworks plant was transformed into the visually striking Landschaftspark (Landscape Park) Duisburg-Nord in 1994. 46 And yet, while some parks have embraced an industrial aesthetic, for the most part they have featured industrial buildings recycled for other uses, such as (in the examples above) museums, concert venues, and play spaces. Outside of New York City, there appear to be few prominent examples of parks where industrial equipment serves purely as an aesthetic feature—especially in a design motif that is repeated in multiple parks across a city.
Furthermore, although the industrial aesthetic had emerged in park design by the 1970s—when Seattle’s Gas Works Park garnered praise in the New York Times as “one of the nation’s most advanced pieces of urban landscape design” 47 —the approach did not become widespread in New York until decades later. So, while it may be that preserving industrial elements in parks fits with a broader shift in urban landscapes from production to consumption, 48 a critical approach to preservation points us back to Mason’s key questions: “why here, and why now?” 49 To address these questions, it is necessary to examine more carefully the actual here and now of New York’s new parks, that is, the particular nature of their locations at the dawning of the twenty-first century. This analysis will show that these new spaces are deeply intertwined with the postindustrial transformation of New York City.
First, the park locations (the “here”): Concrete Plant Park is 10 miles from the High Line but by most measures the neighborhoods they occupy are light-years apart, reflecting the extremes of wealth and poverty in New York’s polarized landscape. Nevertheless, both areas are defined in relationship to the same context of postindustrial change. The difference is that the neighborhoods surrounding the High Line and Gantry Plaza State Park are places of postindustrial growth while the neighborhoods of Concrete Plant Park are places of industrial decline. Ultimately, though, they are two sides of the same coin.
The second issue is timing (the “now”). If the High Line, Gantry Plaza State Park, and Concrete Plant Park are all situated on the front lines of postindustrial change, they also came into existence at the point of New York’s near total transformation from industrial to postindustrial city. The decline of manufacturing is an essential element of the economic restructuring that has been underway in New York since the mid-twentieth century. 50 Whereas manufacturing accounted for nearly a million jobs in the city in 1950, it was reduced to roughly one-quarter of that number by the turn of the twenty-first century. 51 As of 2014, the New York State Department of Labor was reporting only 77,500 manufacturing jobs remaining in the city. 52 In the garment industry that once dominated the city’s manufacturing sector, the remaining jobs numbered only 16,000. In the context of 3.5 million private sector jobs citywide, manufacturing was reduced to a trace element in New York’s twenty-first-century economy.
Table 2 confirms that the new forms of industrial preservation are emerging in areas where postindustrial change has, for better or worse, been most dramatic. Abutting Concrete Plant Park, the Crotona Park East neighborhood was once a bastion of the South Bronx’s solid working-class population; but despite slight gains over the past two decades, incomes still hover below half of the citywide median, and the poverty rate is more than double that of the city as a whole. Manufacturing employment is subpar for the city and falling; and despite some employment gains, the area still lags in the finance and insurance sectors that characterize the postindustrial economy. Although the neighborhood is rebounding from the worst devastation of the 1970s, it continues to represent an extremely disadvantaged location in postindustrial New York.
Socioeconomic Data, New York City and Selected Neighborhoods, 1990–2011. a
Source: Infoshare.org: Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce.
Note: NYC = New York City; FI(RE) = finance, insurance (and real estate).
2007–2011, five-year average, American Community Survey.
Because the Census Bureau adopted a new system of occupational and industry classifications in 1997, industrial categories are not consistent or directly comparable between 1990 and 2011.
By contrast, Chelsea has ridden the wave of postindustrial change from working-class to trendy upscale neighborhood—a process fueled in part by construction of the High Line. 53 In 1990, manufacturing employment in Chelsea was above average for the city; two decades later, it had fallen below the city average. Meanwhile, employment in finance and insurance grew to more than 15 percent of the workforce, 50 percent above the citywide level. Incomes soared accordingly, from average for the city to a level two-thirds above the city median in two decades. This reflects a postindustrial employment mix oriented around “creative class” occupations. 54
Hunter’s Point, home to Gantry Plaza State Park, is another notable example of a once working-class neighborhood that has thrived in the context of postindustrial change. Manufacturing employment was more than double the citywide rate in 1990, while employment in FIRE sectors lagged; two decades later, manufacturing had declined in importance and gains in finance and insurance propelled the neighborhood level above the citywide norm. The change in occupational mix had a dramatic impact on incomes as the median for the area grew from a level nearly 25 percent below the citywide median to almost 45 percent above it in recent years. The poverty rate fell by more than half, from above the citywide level to less than half.
Why is it, then, that industrial artifacts are being preserved and celebrated at a time when the city’s manufacturing sector is in deep decline, and in places where the postindustrial transformation is most vividly revealed? As with many complex social phenomena, the forces at play are numerous. At one level, for example, this is about contemporary landscape architects and designers allowing the past to show through in forms of historical layering that edify and engage neighborhood residents. 55 According to Thomas Balsley and Associates, the firm behind Gantry Plaza State Park (and Riverside Park South, with its dilapidated rail transfer bridge), the challenge for a waterfront site that had “slowly succumbed to the realities of the Post-Industrial Age,” was to “coherently celebrate history, reflect current culture, look to the future, educate, respect it’s river ecology and serve a broad and diverse constituency, all within a compelling framework of space making and forms.” 56
Yet Mason alerts us that “all values attributed to heritage are, in fact, political.” 57 Thus, the ways that we “celebrate history, reflect culture, and look to the future” must be understood in a particular political context.
Industrial Preservation in the Context of New York City Politics
Throughout the late twentieth century, the decline of manufacturing proceeded in tandem with the landmarking and adaptive reuse of industrial structures in New York. At the same time, a succession of New York City mayors, most notably Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani, facilitated the city’s economic restructuring with neoliberal policies aimed at advancing the postindustrial transformation of the Manhattan core and its Brooklyn and Queens fringes. 58 A variety of policy tools—including tax subsidies, zoning bonuses, eminent domain, and more—were employed to spark the development of new office towers, luxury housing, upscale shopping districts, and family-friendly entertainment. This neoliberal approach appeared to pay off in a dramatic transformation of the Manhattan core and its surroundings during the 1980s and 1990s.
The process was not without its contradictions. As Manhattan boomed, there were mounting concerns about the city’s uneven growth. Among politicians, civic leaders, and scholars, talk of New York as a “dual city” divided into rich and poor was already evident in the 1980s. 59 Consequently, economic restructuring was not immune to political challenges. It took political skill to reconcile the interests of the business community with those of conservative outer-borough homeowners—interests that did not easily align on issues of postindustrial change—in order to suppress liberal and progressive challenges from working-class and minority communities. 60
At the dawn of the new millennium, the future of postindustrial New York remained unsettled. After two decades of economic restructuring, voters faced a referendum on their postindustrial city in the mayoral election of 2001. Leading the charge for a new direction was the Democratic candidate Fernando Ferrer, who built his campaign on the promise of extending the benefits of growth to “the other New York” of poor and working-class areas outside the Manhattan core. For a time it appeared that Ferrer’s appeal to economic justice was resonating with voters and that the city was poised to elect a liberal Latino mayor. 61 But the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center fundamentally altered the mayoral race, shifting the focus of debate from economic justice to economic recovery and boosting the prospects of the little-known but deep-pocketed Republican candidate, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg. 62 With a late-game endorsement from Mayor Giuliani, Bloomberg squeaked into office.
As Julian Brash has argued, Bloomberg’s mayoralty represented a fundamental reordering of political power and economic policy making in New York City. 63 Bloomberg was not simply a continuation of the pro-business, neoliberal mayoralties of Koch and Giuliani; rather, Bloomberg marked the ascension of the postindustrial elite itself into power in the city, and the marshaling of that power in the service of its own class interests. Bloomberg and his appointees, also drawn from the worlds of banking and finance, were eager to use city policy aggressively to orchestrate large-scale changes in the city. The overarching vision was a “luxury city” that would attract a global elite. In effect, they envisioned New York as the world’s premiere postindustrial city.
This is the political context for the preservation of industrial artifacts in New York’s new parks. Although Bloomberg arrived on the scene after planning for Gantry Plaza State Park was underway, his stamp is clearly evident in the High Line, Concrete Plant Park, and other major new park initiatives such as Brooklyn Bridge Park (where the steel-frame Manhattan Bridge and other elements are prominent industrial features, though they are not industrial remains preserved for aesthetic purposes). Indeed, the mayor and his influential planning director, Amanda Burden, are credited with helping to turn the tide in favor of the High Line, recognizing its transformative potential in a way that the previous mayor could not. 64 After all, what better way to celebrate the culmination of the postindustrial city than to commemorate the end of the industrial city? And what better way to signal the end of industry than to memorialize its remains as aesthetic objects? While demolishing remnants of the industrial era effectively clears the landscape for the new, the process of creative destruction has long been a contentious one. As David Lowenthal points out, historic preservation serves as a symbolic act of destruction that “celebrate[s] what is dead” and hails “the victory of the modern.” 65 In effect, New York, like Italo Calvino’s fictional Maurilia, “has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.” 66
Politically, the symbolism is important. Even as Bloomberg and his predecessors pursued policies that hastened industrial decline 67 progressives were calling for a more balanced economic policy that would increase opportunities for lower-skilled city residents. Following William Julius Wilson’s influential work on urban poverty, 68 progressives looked to a revived manufacturing sector as a source of well-paying jobs that could provide a ladder for upward mobility. Politicians, scholars, nonprofit groups, and others offered serious proposals for rejuvenating the city’s manufacturing, including upgrading the ports to accommodate more container shipping; constructing a cross-harbor freight tunnel to provide a direct rail link with New Jersey; and cultivating home-grown industries to serve the needs of the city’s vast mass transit system. 69
As these proposals indicate, the process of postindustrial change continued to be contested and voters’ resolve in seeing it through was uncertain. In fact, 9/11 opened a door to a critical reexamination of economic policies that had sacrificed industrial jobs for postindustrial change. 70 In this context, Bloomberg continued to pursue large-scale efforts to reshape the city in an image derived from his own class interests, that is, a luxury city for the postindustrial elite. 71 In the process, he lost some significant battles, including the fight for a new West Side stadium and convention center that was at the heart of the Olympics bid. But new parks in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx featuring preserved industrial relics served as victories in the cultural realm for Bloomberg’s vision of postindustrial New York. They conveyed the message to affluent progressives and struggling workers that the city’s industrial sector was history.
This interpretation squares well with Graham’s explanation of heritage as “a resource but simultaneously, several times so. Clearly, it is an economic resource; one exploited everywhere as a primary component of strategies to promote tourism, economic development and rural and urban regeneration. But heritage is also a knowledge, a cultural product and a political resource and thus possesses a crucial socio-political function.” 72 It may be tautological to conclude, as Graham does, that “we create the heritage that we require,” 73 but it is not wrong to highlight the instrumental aspect of historic preservation.
This is not to argue (nor is it an attempt to prove) a direct causal process in which those in power consciously use historic preservation as a tool of domination. No doubt there is circumstantial evidence that today’s elites see political as well as economic benefits in industrial preservation. For example, the developer behind a controversial plan for enormous new towers on the site of the historic Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn spent ten million dollars acquiring industrial equipment from the factory—including gantry cranes, railroad tracks, structural columns, tanks, bollards, and bucket elevators, as well as preserving the iconic Domino sign—for an “Artifact Walk” in a park at the new development. 74 Still, there is little indication that today’s city builders conceive of historic preservation as a political tool like their nineteenth-century predecessors, who sought to assimilate the immigrant working class with a comprehensive “memory infrastructure” of historic landmarks and monuments celebrating American values. 75 And even if contemporary elites did want to use preservation for explicit political goals, they would face a more competitive environment now that historic preservation is more solidly the purview of architecture and design professionals who do not conceive of their work as an instrument of social control. Yet power in modern societies often operates subtly in spatial practices that cannot be directly attributed to an identifiable agent imposing its will. 76 At its core, preservation is about ways of seeing the city, with all that implies; thus, it is inherently political in privileging some vision(s) over others. This study seeks to advance this political perspective by illustrating how historic preservation in New York has helped promote ways of seeing and understanding the city that align with dominant economic and political interests.
Conclusion
This study has documented a new form of historic preservation in New York City, in the form of obsolete industrial equipment that is preserved and incorporated as aesthetic objects in city parks. This new form of industrial preservation was situated in the context of ongoing decline in the city’s manufacturing sector and political conflicts over economic policies. I have argued that transforming industrial relics into historical objects of public art serves a political function as a symbolic declaration that the industrial era has ended. Thus, it helps secure the ascendance of contemporary elites and their vision of a postindustrial city over the city’s working classes and progressives who continue to advocate for industrial retention.
As with any case study, it is unclear to what extent a similar dynamic will be found in other cities. Given that the meaning and significance of preservation practices are contingent on the particulars of time and place, we would expect to find significant variations among cities with regard to what gets preserved, how, and why. Preservation contends with different contexts and meanings in New Orleans and San Diego and elsewhere. 77 At the same time social learning takes place as other cities, seeking to solidify their own postindustrial position, emulate practices occurring in New York—just as the new industrial preservation in New York parks has antecedents from Paris to Duisburg to Seattle. 78 Adaptations of the High Line are already in the works for Atlanta, Chicago, and elsewhere. 79 This portends more trouble for the nation’s urban working class, as the industrial fabric is increasingly dismantled and refashioned into its own memorials. At the same time, it is unlikely that New York’s progressive new mayor, Bill de Blasio, will continue to construct new industrial-themed parks that advance postindustrial change given his desire to focus resources on affordable housing and his concern for a more equitable distribution of park funding (so-called park equity). 80 An interesting test of the thesis presented here may be the mayor’s approach to two new High Line–inspired proposals for the city known as Queensway and the Lowline. 81
Although the particulars of each case will vary, this study supports the more general theoretical claim that the cultural realm is deeply implicated in the political economy of cities. Cultural practices like historic preservation have political significance in the ways that they reinforce, and sometimes challenge, dominant interests, ideologies, and classes. This is an essential point for scholars and activists to consider. For scholars, it means that we cannot overlook the “why here, why now” questions that direct us to the interconnections between the cultural and the political. The analysis of industrial preservation in New York can help us explain political outcomes that may otherwise appear hazy; for example, why many liberals and progressives, drawn to an engaging new recreational landscape, might support a billionaire businessman as mayor.
For activists, it means that the arena of conflict is broader and more multifaceted than traditionally conceived—and potentially richer and more open to creative new forms of political action. For example, if preserved industrial equipment serves to legitimize elite interests in postindustrial change (as I have argued) then progressives hoping to revive the industrial sector should acknowledge the political function of this historic preservation. They must recognize that the cultural realm is inherently political and is therefore a potential arena for political action. This opens the door to new types of political challenges: for example, preserved industrial relics might make spectacular backdrops for political demonstrations or street theater aimed at calling attention to lopsided economic policies.
The point here is not that preservation of the industrial fabric is a sinister plot of class oppression, nor that progressive-minded people cannot enjoy a stroll along the High Line. Historic preservation is an arena in which many layers of meanings and values coexist—including, no doubt, an appreciation for the beauty of naked industrial forms that traces back to the dawn of the modern era. Among the multiple meanings invested in historic preservation, however, there are political ones that function more often than not as supports for prevailing structures of power. Too often, political meanings remain concealed as a subtext behind more overt cultural meanings associated with marketing historical buildings for upscale consumption. For that reason, the industrial artifacts dotting the recreational landscape of New York offer a ripe case for exploring the political meanings that underlie evolving forms of industrial preservation in the city.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Tom Bender, Valmont Reichl, and the anonymous reviewer for JUH for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.