A little more...

Is it ok to tear down buildings at the historic core of an old neighborhood? If so, what are the criteria we should use to determine which ones are fair game? Is the fact that this neighborhood has a working class history relevant? Why are the buildings on 5th Avenue being preserved? Surely, that avenue is well-traveled. Surely a shopping mall on, say, 86th and 5th would be profitable. Oh, yes, but that’s where the developers live. How about tearing down a section of the main street in Martha’s Vineyard? What about East Hampton? Do you see what I’m saying. Yorkville’s old buildings are considered fair game because Yorkville was a working class German, Irish, Hungarian, etc. neighborhood. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, it was seen by the wealthy elites as convenient because the laborers were near enough to the homes in which they worked. Now, they see it as a place to build tall buildings in which to house the junior associates of their massive firms. They do not see its history as worthy or important enough to preserve. And, the NYC landmarks and preservation commission and local land boards don’t have the integrity to stand up for this neighborhood. Because of these facts, when wealthy developers proposed to tear down two major sections of Yorkville’s historic core, there was no official opposition. That said, most people who know and love this charming old neighborhood were saddened and outraged. It’s now time to take a step back and decide whether we want to allow the rest of our neighborhood and our city to be torn down this way or whether we want to fight and preserve our history and our culture.

A Euology for Yorkville

It is never easy to write a eulogy. Eulogies are part of the closure process. How do you sum up so much in so few words? There is the pain you feel about the loss of someone you love, the joy you feel about having known this person, and your complicated feelings on life and death. Eulogies are not easy to write because there's so much going on. And so, you try your best, usually while still experiencing the pain of loss. The character of this pain varies depending on how and when this person died – whether the death was expected or unexpected, whether the person was young or old, whether they died peacefully or not. One way or another, for better or for worse, eulogies get written. They get written because they are part of the funeral ritual. We write and read eulogies for people just as we are born, live, die, and life goes on. It's all a cycle. Funerals and eulogies accompany death, and so like death, they are inevitable. We get closure and life goes on. We do this because it is natural.

As hard as it is to write a eulogy for a person, it is even harder to write a eulogy for a place we hold dear. Places are symbols. They provide continuity. They are the set of our lives. They add meaning to our lives and serve to hand meaning from one generation and one group to another. Over time, they become sacred. Unlike with people, we do not expect places to go away except in the most dire of circumstances. And in those circumstances, war, terrorist attack, tragic fires, earthquakes and other natural disasters, the trauma and enormity of the event itself becomes a symbol equal to the original symbol. As sore as we may be that our original symbol was lost, the new symbol holds the place of the old one. And we can either leave the space untouched, reconstruct the old place, or rebuild anew, while knowing what happened in that place. There are examples of this everywhere. For instance, the White House was destroyed by the British, and rebuilt. It maintained its importance and grew in stature. The Schloss of Heidelberg was left in ruins, but is still as meaningful as a place as was the intact castle. And the site of the World Trade Center will be built upon again. Likewise, all the places destroyed by great natural disasters such as the tsunami of 2004 will be rebuilt. But we know why. All these places hold great historical meaning. They are meaningful to so many people in so many ways. And so, often, when a place is destroyed, there is a reason for that destruction equal to the meaning of the original place. And the whole process is important and meaningful. Ultimately, as sad as it is to lose the place, in these situations, the circumstance is huge enough to overshadow the loss of the place and provides closure to the meaning of that original place. Likewise, it opens a new chapter in the meaning of those places – it changes their meaning.

Given the importance of places as symbols, though, we do not want to simply destroy a place without closure. That is, we do not want to destroy a symbol and put something new and alien in its place that does nothing to acknowledge the importance of the place that was destroyed. This offends the meaning of the original place. And it offends those to whom the place was meaningful. It goes against the dignity of places and symbols and those who hold those symbols. It degrades us as people. In circumstances like these, what are people to do? There is no symbol equal to the lost symbol to takes its place. There is no calamity to fill the void and create an understanding of the loss. There is simply a void, a memory. And in the place of the old meaningful symbol, there is the new thing. Those to whom the old symbol meant something tend to hate the new thing. The less the new thing tips its hat to the old symbol, the more profound the disregarding of the symbol, the more profound the utter debasement of what people hold to be sacred, the more people hate this new thing. And so this new thing breads anger. This is the natural and unfortunate reaction people have to the senseless destruction of sacred places. So, in a situation like this, what do people do to find the closure they yearn for? What if they are powerless to determine the fate of this place? How do we maintain the dignity of our places? How do we eulogize something, a place, we hold to be meaningful and sacred when it has been taken away from us and replaced with something that does not equal its meaning? In this case, we need one hell of a eulogy. This eulogy needs to take into account all the meaning of the old place, and it needs to ensure that the destruction of the old place is not in vain. It needs to ensure that somehow, even though the new place does not replace the meaning of the old place, the meaning of the old place somehow transcends its destruction. Somehow, somewhere, the meaning of that old place needs to be continued. And so, here is the eulogy of a sacred place…

Integrity then and now

I don't have much time to write, but this is on my mind:

This morning when I logged on to my computer, I saw two things that called to mind the topic of integrity. There was an article about a major US corporation that is apparently moving its operations overseas to avoid being taxed, even though it receives most of its revenue from tax dollars. I also got an email from my father about his recently deceased Uncle Felix. The fact that I saw these two bits of information at the same time was ironic because they represented such different ends of the spectrum when it comes to integrity.

Recently, my father told me that his Uncle Felix had passed away. I never knew Uncle Felix personally. But it has always been evident from the way my father spoke about him, that he was a good man from a very good family. My Dad's email had a picture he took at the funeral of Uncle Felix's Silver Star award letter. Apparently, Uncle Felix was a war hero in the Second World War. My father did not know this until the funeral. Like many in his generation, Uncle Felix was a good and humble man. This is the text of the letter:

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the SILVER STAR MEDAL to

First Lieutenant Felix A. Endico, United States Marine Corps Reserve, for service as set forth in the following CITATION:

“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity while serving as a Rifle Platoon Leader of Company F, Second Battalion, Ninth Marines, Third Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese Forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, from 24 February to 11 March 1945. During a night attack on 7 March, First Lieutenant Endico singlehandedly put a hostile tank out of action with hand grenades and, when his ammunition supply was expended, courageously engaged an enemy soldier in furious hand-to-hand combat before killing him with a blow from his carbine. Assuming command of a rifle company on 11 March, he gallantly lef his company in two assaults which resulted in the destruction of two hundred enemy troops and the reduction of thirty-five caves and pillboxes. By his aggressive leadership, fortitude and determination, First Lieutenant Endico upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

In diametric opposition to this, there was an article on the front page of a major website about how large corporation X had decided to skip town in order to avoid taxes.

Uncle Felix took his life in his hands 62 years ago this week to fight for this country. Read what he did - unbelieveable. And now we have a situation in which it has become tacitly acceptable to dodge taxation while at the same time reaping the benefits of tax dollars. I'm no communist, but it seems to me that there's something wrong with this picture. The lack of integrity of such a move is especially evident when you compare the individual bravey displayed by a man like Uncle Felix to the actions of this organization. It's even harder to believe that this organization represents itself as being on the same side as men like Uncle Felix.

Unfortunately, there appear to be less and less people like him around. Not the best way to wrap up, but I'm in a rush.

Who am I?

I'm a native New Yorker currently living overseas. I started this blog to publish an essay I'm writing about the great old neighborhood I grew up in, Yorkville. I think that will be pretty self-explanatory if you read it as I post it.

Check out the wikipedia entry on Yorkville: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkville%2C_Manhattan

There are some great links on that site.

Yorkville

It’s been killing me. I grew up in this special place. And I knew it was special because my mother told me about the history of the place and it seemed special in any case. All around there were old buildings and people from all these different far away places. They sold different kinds of food. The shops they ran smelled different. And they acted different and spoke different languages. And my mother told me about how my grandfather was a patrolman in this place and how my great grandfather helped to build that beautiful building with all the lights and how my great great grandfather used to take his nieces and nephews to play in that park by the river. To tell you the truth, I didn’t love this place at first, when we first came here from Long Island. But I grew to love it because I knew I was a part of it and because it was just lovable in any case.

I grew up here. And I identify with the place – its people, its buildings, its culture and its history. To me, Yorkville is home. It’s an old working class slum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan – not the Upper East Side, just on it, but its own place.

So it’s been killing me to watch it being torn down. As far back as I can remember, they’ve been taking down buildings in this neighborhood and replacing them with non-descript high-rise apartment buildings. The truth is, I grew up in one of those for the most part. So I certainly know that they’re not all bad. But that doesn’t change the fact that I can’t stand watching what’s going on.

The older I got, the more I understood where I came from and what my responsibilities were to this place as one of the last members of possibly the last generation of working class locals. And the more it has hurt to see them take down the old buildings. This summer they went what I think is too far. They tore down two sections of old buildings at the crossroads of the old neighborhood – 86th and 3rd and 86th and Lex.

For a couple of years, my buddies and I have all talked about this place in a nostalgic way. We’ve seen this city change in our lifetimes. We’ve seen this neighborhood being ripped down. But this latest change, I think it really stabbed at all of our hearts. In the 80’s it was funny to see the Yuppies coming into Yorkville. I remember nights when they’d be out in front of the yuppie bars fighting and we’d call the cops and watch as they showed up and threw the little fucks up against cars. It was amusing. But now, the yuppies are entrenched. In fact, it seems more and more each day like it’s their city and we’re the outsiders.

My friend calls Spanish Harlem the last frontier. He says when that goes, that’s it. And my brother tells me they’re now listing properties in Spanish Harlem as “Carnegie Hill.” Carnegie Hill is a wealthy section near Fifth Avenue. Spanish Harlem is not Carnegie Hill. There was a time when a wise white boy would not walk there. Now, we see recently arrived Ohioans freely strolling north of 96th street. It’s a sad day in the city. But I digress. The point of this little essay is to talk about Yorkville and its destruction. Like I said, I feel a responsibility as a member of perhaps the last generation of working class locals. I feel a responsibility to tell the story of this place and to appeal to any and all who would listen to stop butchering this special place, Yorkville, and New York, and to preserve and tell the story. Why? For our past, for our future. It’s important to us as the locals whose forefathers gave all to build this place because it is the story of who we are. It’s important to my niece and nephew to see and experience this place the way their forebears did. It’s important to the city because it’s part of the fabric of the city. It’s important because history has an intrinsic value. If nothing else, I want to confront naysayers with these questions: what is the goal? Is it to destroy all old buildings in NY? To destroy the culture of our city? Is it really progress to tear down buildings that have stood for 150 years? Or, do we wish to place a higher value on history and culture than on money? Ultimately, I think it’s time for a paradigm shift in development in New York City. We are losing our culture and history at a very fast pace. It’s time to start marking places where important things happened with plaques like they do in Europe. And it is time to start preserving buildings rather than tearing them down – even if it means someone will not make a fortune off the property. I don’t suggest we save all old buildings. But I do think development is off the deep end right now. And as far as my neighborhood’s concerned, Yorkville has suffered enough. To the developers, I suggest that you go several blocks west and knock down some of those buildings for a while. Or go to Nantucket and tear down the center of a town there. Leave Yorkville alone. It’s been victimized enough. Seriously, enough is enough. So, like I said, I want to tell this story and make my appeal. Hopefully my old buildings didn’t go away for no reason. I hope our loss serves a purpose.

Moronic Mitch

is my name.