Archinect - News

Recalling Philippe Petit’s World Trade Center high-wire act after 50 years

2024-08-09T19:03:00-04:00

The walk can never be repeated, but it also can never be undone. You cannot fly a jetliner into a memory. In hindsight, the so-called art crime of the century has become a tribute to the lives of the 2,753 who were killed in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and whose stories, too, will always live on. When I see a photo of Mr. Petit in the air, it suggests to me that the lost were able to bridge that distance, too.

Philippe Petit’s early morning stunt on August 7, 1974, helped sway public opinion in favor of the recently opened NYC World Trade Center towers, which struggled financially until the Port Authority changed course and allowed financial services companies to begin leasing space by the end of the decade. The 75-year-old is currently on a media tour promoting his two-day performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where his daughter’s ashes are interned.

At the time of their 1973 opening, architect Minoru Yamasaki had said his towers were "a representation of man's belief in humanity." Fans have said this notion also courses through Petit’s life and art in the most serene and apparent, life-affirming ways.

Ennead completes dome rehabilitation for NYC's historic Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine

2022-12-28T12:03:00-05:00

But now, after a painstaking three-year, $17 million rehabilitation — and just in time for Christmas festivities — the dome’s 113-year-old aches and pains have been tended to. Its striking terra-cotta tile has been repaired, and a new copper exterior has been added. “The new roofing could easily last 50 to a hundred years and there’s no reason it couldn’t last for centuries with good maintenance,” said Kevin Seymour, associate principal of Ennead

The project follows a 2019 addition and related work to finish the entryway and roof of the unfinished north transept, which was left incomplete after construction was halted in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The new copper dome covers the also incomplete south transept and was originally designed in 1909 by Rafael Guastavino. Costs for the three-year project are estimated to be about $17 million.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by St. John the Divine (@stjohndivinenyc)

Letting a Mighty Nave Breathe, in Full View of a Neighborhood

2014-06-05T13:36:00-04:00

Workers are digging the foundation for a twin-towered apartment building that will obscure the great flying buttresses and stained-glass windows of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights. Preservationists, neighbors and architects are justly up in arms. [...] Even the developer laments how the approval process for new buildings in New York spews out too many projects that nobody really likes.