New York City has a pretty distinctive skyline, would you say?
We mean, when a contemporary movie pans over our skyline, can you tell right away that you're looking at NYC?
Here's how we feel about the situation. We enjoyed watching movies' NYC skyline shots much more when we still had the Twin Towers.
The devastating loss of the Twin Towers hasn't been the only alteration of NYC's skyline over the years, though.
We also lost the Singer Building, which was, at one point, the tallest building in the world.
We also lost the gorgeous original Penn Station, and switched it out for a much more terrible alternative, plus, 5Pointz and the Gas Light Cafe. What other beloved buildings' losses has NYC suffered?
Read on to find out which 6 landmarks New Yorkers miss the most.
1. The Twin Towers
nyc_twin_towers The World Financial Center in the shadow of the Twin Towers. #worldtradecenter #twintowers #building #Newyork #skyline #worldfinancialcenter #oneworldtradecenter
Of course what we miss most of all are the Twin Towers. When the Twin Towers stood erect in our skyline, NYC felt much more like home than it does today.
Before airplanes smashed into the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, we still had 2,977 living people we wouldn't have on September 12th, 2001. We still had our mothers, our fathers, our sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends.
We miss the people we tragically lost on September 11th an incalculable amount, more than we could ever say. Their absence is a shock to the city every single day.
We also miss those two towering buildings in the skyline. We miss when the beginning of a movie would pan across the sky, and there they'd be, jutting up downtown. In that one instant, we'd know we were in New York.
Now, when we watch the hundreds of films in which the Twin Towers appeared, we're met with a lurching in our stomach because of how much we miss them, and how much we miss the simpler, more innocent time they represent.
2. The Gaslight Cafe
gaslightcafekl Here's the Path... #gaslightcafekl #coffeeculture #recordstore #folkmusic #artspace #gaslightcafe
The Gaslight Cafe used to stand at 116 MacDougal Street, and was the central location for folksingers and standup comics in the 1960s.
It opened in 1958 and became a quintessential venue for counter culture performances.
It had no liquor license (yes, people drank from brown paper bags), and hosted performances by musicians like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and beat poets like Allen Ginsberg.
The threat of a police raid for noise, overcrowding, or not having paid off the mob was ever present, but the club was still iconic.
"On MacDougal Street, playing the Gaslight was like playing Carnegie Hall," the New York Times wrote, regarding Bob Dlyan.
Sadly, it closed in 1971.
3. 5Pointz
5Pointz used to be the graffiti mecca of NYC. As the epicenter of the graffiti scene, it bore paintings from artists from all over the world; from Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, and all over the United States.
Its name signifies the five boroughs coming together as one. Jordan Cohen, better known as "Meres One," used to dream about converting the five-story, block-long industrial complex in Long Island City into a graffiti art museum. Meres One eventually actualized that dream.
5Pointz was the quintessential outdoor art exhibit space in NYC, until it was whitewashed over on November 19th, 2013. The Wolkoff family, after 40 years of ownership, decided to develop the site.
The New York City Planning Commission approved plans to build condos on the property, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected the artists' landmark status nomination because 5Pointz was less than 30 years old at the time.
Wolkoff hired a dozen or so men to whitewash the property in the middle of the night, destroying any further hope of rescuing the artwork.
,4. The Singer Building
Plenty of NYC buildings have traded places as the city's tallest building. The buildings that have taken their turns at this title include the Singer Building, which was tallest in the world when it was opened to the public in 1908, where it stood at 149 Broadway.
60 years later, it became the tallest building in the world to be peacefully demolished.
The Singer Building stood at 612-feet, and held 47-stories. It was the headquarters of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and was a landmark in downtown Manhattan for decades.
However, in 1961 the Singer Company proclaimed that they'd be moving their headquarters to Midtown.
William Zeckendorf, the chairman of Webb & Knapp, bought the Singer Tower and the rest of the block, hoping to get the New York Stock Exchange to relocate there.
Zeckendorf, however, couldn't generate corporate interest in the space because the building's narrow tower was counter to the growth of modern business, which demanded more office space.
In 1964, the property was sold to United States steel to be demolished. The demolition of The Singer Building is considered by some to be one of the greatest failures of the early preservation movement.
[via NY Times]
5. The Hippodrome
britsinnyc On this day in 1905 The Hippodrome opens in #NYC - later to influence Peter Stringfellow when he opened the namesake in #london - #thehippodrome #nightlife #circus #entertainment #legendary
The Hippodrome was once the world's largest theater.
It was located on Sixth Avenue between West 43rd Street and West 44th Street, and had a seating capacity of 5,200.
It hosted spectacles that included elephants, Civil War battles, and airships. It remains to this day one of the most bizarre theatrical venues that's ever existed.
It was created by Frederic Thompson and Elmer Dundy, the same people who created Luna Park entertainment center in Coney Island. The Hippodrome's exterior was decorated with with a Roman Renaissance screen of red brick.
Its doorway was flanked by giant columns, and a sculpture of a huge elephant's head. It also had a 14-foot deep water tank within the 200-foot-wide stage.
It was demolished in 1939 and used as a parking lot.
[via NY Times]
6. The original Penn Station
michaeldimaio 50 Years Ago today New York City lost its best piece of architecture. Hopefully New Yorkers will one day enter NYC like a God again rather than like a rat in a basement. 10.28.1963
We all hate Penn Station, because it's the complete worst obviously. It's a squat, crowded, dirty hole that we all dread having to catch a train from.
However, this wasn't always the case.
The original Penn Station, built in 1910 and surrounded by Doric columns, had a 150-foot vaulted ceiling and was actually quite lovely.
In the 1950s, however, a plan arose to flatten the existing Penn Station to build an underground one instead. On a hot evening in 1962, more than a hundred protestors gathered to circle Penn Station's entrance, but their efforts weren't enough.
In the aftermath of the original Penn Station's demolition, the city's historical preservation movement gained considerable traction.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission was established to save the city's historic landmarks and avoid the embarrassment of ripping down beautiful buildings just to build ugly underground ones.
[via City Lab]
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