Manhattan, 1969. The Lower Manhattan Plan adapted to include the contemporary master plan for Battery Park City. (Courtesy of New York City Department of City Planning)

SITE PLAN NEIGHBORHOOD 1

Directions:

From O'Hare Field (Chicago International Airport): Take the Kennedy Expressway (I-94) south to the Ohio/Ontario exit. Proceed east on Ohio street to Clark Street and turn right. Continue on Clark Street to Polk Street which is the northern boundary of the project.

Driving Time: 30 minutes in non-rush-hour traffic.

3. Park areas with tot lots are provided for each townhouse cluster.

4. Landscaped courtyards with benches and walkways help to provide a pedestrian atmosphere.

GREENWAY PLAZA

Houston, Texas

ARCHITECTS: Lloyd, Morgan & Jones
CONSULTING LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS:
Mormon, Mock & Jones
ARCHITECTS FOR RETAIL MALL:
Pujdak, Bielski & Associates

Greenway Plaza, located 5 miles from downtown Houston, is being developed on a 127-acre site. It is a self-contained complex of retail, business, and residential facilities. The site acquisition required negotiations with more than 300 homeowners. Its location is central to all points of the metropolitan area via the city's extensive freeway system.

The project is being planned in three phases. The first phase of construction started in 1968 and was scheduled for completion in 1975. This phase includes an underground shopping concourse, eight major office buildings, and a three-level parking structure for 3,500 cars. Of special interest is the "sculpture garden" in the plaza area. The bronze sculptures include life-size figures of three children and an old man feeding pigeons. The sculptor is Pat G. Foley, fine arts director and artist in residence of the Kinkaid School.

Phases two and three are scheduled to be completed by 1980 and will include a luxury hotel, a sports arena, an expansion of the underground retail concourse, a landing strip for short take off and landing (STOL) aircraft atop a 2,000-foot-long multistory parking structure (see model of master plan), and an extensive complex of multifamily housing units.

The developers are the Century Development Corporation.

Model of master plan.

Sculpture garden in plaza. (Sculptor: Pat G. Foley.)

80. LOOKING NORTH BETWEEN 50TH AND 51ST STREETS, c. 1923

81. LOOKING SOUTH AFTER 1928

78-81. Park Avenue

As a part of the redevelopment of Grand Central Station, the open rail yards which bisected Manhattan were covered between 42nd and 96th Streets (Figure 78). In their place, on an immense steel bridge, present-day Park Avenue came into being (Figure 79). The transition was dramatic. Soot, noise, and blight gave way. The depreciated East Side became a contender for new building and major investment. Park Avenue, by the 1920's, was laid out with a pleasant, meandering pedestrian mall with seating niches down its center (Figure 80). The road right-of-way was restricted to minimal space serving the luxurious new residential buildings. The park malls were destroyed in 1928 when they were squeezed down into traffic islands. The automobile took over. Park Avenue, appropriately named at the outset, became an urban speedway. The brief history of Park Avenue is a vivid illustration of how a multi-level urban transit corridor redevelopment can be gracefully and humanistically completed, only to be subsequently perverted by a misguided emphasis on the automobile.

A PROTOTYPE ACCESS TREE:
GRAND CENTRAL STATION

The rendering above shows the double-level loop system of tracks as well as how each movement system is meshed into Grand Central on different levels.

The perspective section below shows the "mixing chamber" or grand concourse level and how this reference level extends out to integrate other buildings in the complex.

The schematic plan at the right shows the horizontal movement systems: regional trains, metropolitan subways and local shuttles are indicated in blue. The grand concourse level (reference plenum) and its extension to 21 buildings in the complex are shown in gold, with the vertical movement system (elevators) in red. The image conveyed by this diagram is one of a single organism, or more simply, one building. This preoccupation with organic integration of all the various movement systems has made Grand Central the prototype of all multi-level, multi-use urban distribution centers.

GRAND CENTRAL VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL MOVEMENT SYSTEMS

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