More Art Deco Destruction at St. George Tower

By on November 9, 2009 3:20 pm in Landmark Preservation

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This just in [with photos] from BHB community member Andrew Porter:

They are throwing gorgeous pieces of yellow and green and black art deco terra cotta into the dumpster on the Pineapple Street side of the St George Tower, just across from my building. It’s there right now. I suspect the dumpster will be replaced with another one tomorrow, when Alt Side of the Street empties that side of the street.

I’m going over to try to save some of the pieces. They look round, like they’re from chimneys.

This is sadly similar to the demolition of an art deco tile mural from the Easter Athletic Club, housed within the St. George, earlier this year.

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  • my2cents

    I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the idea of historic preservation, and believe in it fervently. However, I differentiate between preservationism on the scale of saving buildings from destruction by developers and the city (as with Moses) vs. nosing around neighbors dumpsters and jumping to conclusions about their motives or integrity before getting all the information. Nabeguy, are you seriously equating these tiles with precious artifacts? I mean, do things have to be so black and white? Why can’t we make educated value judgements about the relative historical significance of things rather than have these knee-jerk overreactions all the time?

  • benita berman

    You are absolutely right Nabeguy. The original sculptures from Notre Dame are beautifully displayed in the Cluny Museum in Paris – not far from Notre Dame on the Left Bank.

  • nabeguy

    my2, the value judgements you refer to are dependent on how exactly you were educated. How would you define “precious”? Does an object have to be 1000 years old or of Byzantine quality to pass your test? Given the ready-made, disposable culture that we live in, I’m disturbed by our readiness and alacrity to chuck out everything that preceded us. If you truly believe in historic preservation, than why can’t you buy into the argument that these spires could have been removed and put aside for adaptive re-use rather than destroyed? They would have made impressive entry pieces n the 111 lobby. I’ve argued this before…the mindset that allows for small destruction only leads to larger swaths of it. I’ll have to stop now as I almost about smashed out the screen with my knee-jerk reaction.

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