#199 Battle For The Skyline: How High Can It Go?

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2016

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This year is the one hundred anniversary of one of the most important laws ever passed in New York City -- the 1916 Zoning Law which dictated the rules for building big and tall in the city. So we thought we'd take this opportunity to ponder on the many changes to New York's beautiful skyline via the unique technical changes to construction rules. Why are areas of lower Manhattan darkened canyons, and why are there huge public plazas inside buildings in Midtown? Why do older buildings have graceful and elegant set-backs but newer structures feel like monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey? This is a layman's history of building tall -- our apologizes to architects for simplifying such sophisticated concepts -- and the important laws that changed the face of NYC forever.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Episode 199 of The Bowry Boys. Battle for the Skyline. How tall can it go?
0:07.0	Hey, it's The Bowry Boys.
0:09.0	Support for The Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners. Join us for as little as a dollar a month
0:16.0	by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:24.0	Hi there, welcome to The Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:27.0	And this is Tom Myers. With a very unconventional show for our run-up to episode 200.
0:33.0	Why is it unconventional Greg?
0:35.0	It's both a high concept and we're recording it outside.
0:40.0	We're actually going to be talking about the New York City Skyline or rather how it was created
0:46.0	via various laws and changes throughout the past 150 years.
0:51.0	Right, because really there are two big laws, one in 1916 and then another in 1961.
0:58.0	So nearly 50 years apart, but these laws were responsible for so many of the elements that go into the structures that we walk by every day
1:08.0	that we live in and that we work in.
1:10.0	In this show we're going to answer some questions like why are areas of lower Manhattan complete darkened canyons?
1:17.0	And why are there huge public plazas when you go to Midtown outside certain tall buildings?
1:23.0	Why do older buildings seem kind of graceful and elegant with these setbacks that kind of look like wedding cakes?
1:29.0	But newer buildings feel like monoliths from 2001 a space odyssey.
1:35.0	So this is a history of building tall in New York City.
1:38.0	And so then it seemed obvious, right, that if we're talking about these buildings and we're going to be describing these buildings,
1:45.0	well, it might just make sense to do this from the streets of New York.
1:49.0	So we're starting out today's show down in lower Manhattan, but we're going to move all over the island.
1:54.0	This show is a little wonky in concept, but in one sense it's probably the biggest idea we've ever recorded.
	...

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