1992: Amid building slowdown, architects turn to public projects
Fifteen years ago, with the city in the midst of a building slowdown, more designers turned to the public sector, and architecture firms in New York found themselves facing ever-stiffer competition for government jobs.
Statistics from the New York City Department of General Services showed that its list of qualified bidding contractors — which includes architects, as well as engineering and constructing management firms — tripled between 1986 and 1992, from 250 to 800.
According to one article in the New York Times, architecture firms began counting on government projects for 50 percent or more of their business, compared to an average of around 10 percent a decade earlier.
Such a large number of architects vying for bids drove down prices. It also allowed government agencies better choices of design. “We can explore better public architecture with better firms,” said Andrew Gerardi, director of design and construction for the Federal General Services Administration. “It’s like choosing between chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.”
Not only did the newly crowded market drive down the average fee architects could charge, but the firms began absorbing the up-front costs of contesting for a bid. Site analyses and project models — tools to help a firm win a bid — had made it fairly common for a firm to spend $40,000 or $50,000 in advance on a project, with no assurance that it would get the contract.
1972: Financial District building gets biggest permanent mortgage
In December 1972, just months before the ribbon-cutting for the World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan was experiencing a peak in commercial building. That month, developer Uris Buildings Corporation borrowed what was then the largest permanent mortgage ever granted for a single building. The property — an office tower at 55 Water Street — was also the world’s largest privately developed office building when built.
The Prudential Insurance Company purchased the record-breaking loan, which amounted to $130 million. Uris also promised Prudential the purchase of 25 percent equity in the building as part of the deal. (Chemical Bank, then-principal tenant of the 3.26-million-square-foot building, owned another 15 percent of the skyscraper.) The 56-story building, now headquarters to the Health Insurance Plan of New York, has an elevated plaza sitting on top of a 560-car parking garage.
When originally designed by M. Paul Friedberg & Associates, the plaza was to be part of a series of aerial public spaces along the East River, connected by walkways. However, the plaza at 55 Water Street was the only part of the proposed system that came to fruition. Now owned by Retirement Systems of Alabama, 55 Water has been the second-largest privately owned office building in the country since Sept. 11.
1957: JFK gets long-promised build-out
Fifty years ago this month, John F. Kennedy International Airport saw the beginning of a 13-year building spree, marked by the opening of its International Arrivals Building and Foreign-Flag Airline Wing Buildings.
Idlewild, as the airport was called prior to 1963, celebrated its first commercial flight in 1948, and for the following nine years operated with only one terminal. The Port Authority spent $30 million on the two buildings it opened in 1957, and expected a total cost of $150 million for the remainder of the airport’s terminals — a project the agency named Terminal City.
The construction of Terminal City, which included the much-praised TWA terminal designed by Eero Saarinen, continued until 1971. The project included the addition of eight new terminals and the expansion to 4,000 acres of land from the airport’s original 1,000-acre parcel.
In 2001, the Arrivals Building, also known as Terminal 4, became the airport’s first building to be entirely replaced. The replacement was part of a $10.3 billion redevelopment that is still under way. The new Terminal 4, which cost $1.4 billion to build, is managed by the Netherlands-based Schiphol Group, making it the first U.S. airport terminal to be operated by a foreign company.
Compiled by James Kelly