NYC Architecture: The Journalist as Catalyst

The article in the Oct. 7 issue of The Economist on the planned LMVH building in Paris, designed by Frank Gehry to house Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s corporate art collection and temporary exhibitions, brought to mind a paradigm-shifting architectural moment, more than a decade ago in New York. Perhaps its very first built manifestation was the critically acclaimed LVMH Tower, completed in 1999 on 57th Street, commissioned by the same luxury-goods firm.
The reinvigoration of New York architecture was preceded, if not prompted, by a landmark article published in the NY Times on Sept. 24, 1995 by its then architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, in which he noted that New York was “a place where almost any cultural appetite can be satisfied.” Then came the kicker:
But if your appetite is for contemporary architecture, you’re out of luck. If you go to Paris, London, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Tokyo and many other cities, there’s usually a new building that you have to see, or you will die. You may hate it, but your life depends on it. But when visitors from abroad come here, what do you show them? There’s the skyline, of course, and the street gridiron, two of the greatest architectural spectacles of all time. But when it comes to recent buildings of stature, where do you look?
…Thirty years ago, the cityscape found room for works by Mies van der Rohe, Wallace Harrison, Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius and Gordon Bunshaft. Not all of their buildings were great; some were terrible. But what they contributed was much more than a handful of potential future landmarks.
…It should be a source of civic pride that some of the world’s most celebrated architects live and work in Manhattan and a matter of shame that many of the most gifted seldom build here.
It took a while to gather steam, but the starchitect invasion of the New York streetscape began in earnest after Muschamp issued this request for proposals. Now we’ve got (or will soon get): Calatrava, Diller Scofidio+Refro, Foster, Gehry, Meier, Piano and Taniguchi, among others.
Sheer coincidence? Or is this a case where the Times bully pulpit had a strong, beneficial and lasting influence?