DEVELOPMENT

Future of the Coliseum

**1985** Mortimer B. Zuckerman agrees to build a 2.9 million square foot project at Columbus Circle on the site of the Coliseum, owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority, that would include housing and retail space.

**1988** Mr. Zuckerman, scales down the plan with shorter, narrower towers that would include 500,000 square feet less than the original proposal.

square feet of space.

**1989** A redesign of the project leads to a contract between the transit authority and Mr. Zuckerman that calls for 2.1 million square feet of space.

**1993** On Nov. 30, Mr. Zuckerman submits a proposal that cuts the space to one million square feet and preserves the existing office building. The exhibition hall would be demolished.

Sources: Boston Properties; Metropolitan Transportation Authority

# How an Architectural Camel Shed Its Hump

## Columbus Center:
Introducing
A New Version,
In Angled Glass

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Four months ago, with demolition of the New York Coliseum under way, a final design had yet to be approved for Columbus Center, the project that would take its place on a two-block site from 58th to 60th Street. Instead, the developers, their architects and city officials were at an impasse.

About all they could agree on was this: Columbus Center had become a camel.

Architectural visions for the Columbus Circle site had begun with a gargantuan prism in 1985, and evolved into an overscaled Central Park West apartment tower in 1988 and then a glass-sheathed echo of Deco in 1998.

But by February, as the development group and a mayoral design advisory panel were negotiating over the percentage of stone in the facade, the vision had turned into two boxy towers; a horse designed by committee.

"Everybody's common denominator was not a good plan," said the chief architect, David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

With little time to lose, Mr. Childs drew up a new plan. The 55-story, 750-foot towers would shed their stone for broad planes of sheer glass. Shaped like parallelograms, they would skew to Broadway's angle. They would rise from a curved seven-story base hugging Columbus Circle, with a prow at one end announcing the presence of the company formed by the merger of American Online and Time Warner, and a midblock atrium, where 59th Street once ran, topped by a glass-walled performance space for Jazz at Lincoln Center.

"When I saw it, I liked it immediately," said Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is to unveil the design today at Columbus Circle. Mr. Giuliani gave credit to the five-member panel of civic leaders, architects and planners that advised him on "what they thought was the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing project."

"It worked very well," he said of the review process.

Asked about the occasional tumult that resulted, Mr. Giuliani laughed. "Luckily, I wasn't a part of it," he said. "Usually I'm in the middle of these things. By having a committee come to me, sometimes with Band-Aids on their faces, I didn't know about all the fighting. I just got the end result."

After much pushing and pulling — as well as some table pounding and gauntlet

Thomas W. Schaller/Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

The final design for Columbus Center, to be unveiled today, consists of two 55-story towers shaped like parallelograms that skew to the angle of Broadway.

## The Spirit of Jazz
Infuses the Plans
For a Vertical City

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

Columbus sailed west to discover Ella Fitzgerald. The new design for Columbus Center, the 55-story, 2.77-million-square-foot edifice that will take the place of the New York Coliseum, must be seen in light of this previously unreported fact.

An Appraisal

The sounds of Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Miles Davis and Antonio Carlos Jobim are among the richest treasures to turn up in the New World. Columbus Center is a monument to their art form. Though the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center will occupy only a small portion of this massive development, there is music throughout the design.

Designed by David M. Childs of the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Columbus Center will occupy a site that stretches west toward Ninth Avenue, between West 58th and West 60th Streets. In addition to Jazz at Lincoln Center, the building will house the headquarters for AOL-Time Warner. Its two glass towers will include apartments and an eight-story hotel. A retail galleria will occupy the curving base.

The new design departs substantially from any that have previously been made public, including several prepared by Mr. Childs. His earlier versions were highly derivative designs, plainly modeled after the Century and the Majestic, the great twin-towered apartment buildings designed by Irwin S. Chanin for Central

*Continued on Page B6*

Steve Rosenthal for Moshe Safdie & Associates

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Three earlier visions for Columbus Center, from left: the gargantuan prism (1985), the overscaled Central Park West apartment tower (1988), the echo of Deco (1998). Four months ago, the design had evolved into two boxy towers.

*Continued on Page B6*

## Changing Visions

The history of development plans for the Coliseum site on Columbus Circle produced a series of grand visions and an equal number of bitter battles. Here are a few of the proposals over the last 13 years.

**AIR TRUMP** In 1985, Donald J. Trump proposed the world's tallest building, a 137-story tower designed by Eli Attia that resembled a spaceship.

**BIG GAMBLE** Mortimer B. Zuckerman won the bidding in 1985, agreeing to pay $455.1 million and proposing a massive building designed by Moshe Safdie.

**TRYING AGAIN** Under fire, Zuckerman hired David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to design a smaller tower, but the project ultimately fell apart.

McCann

**NEW WINNER A** revised Childs design for the Related Companies was chosen in a new round of bidding. The complex will house Time Warner's headquarters.

# Architect's Landfall at Columbus Circle

## At the Coliseum Site, a Timid Exploration of New Worlds

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

More jazz, please. Less Colossi of Memnon. With less reverence toward history and more susceptibility to rhythm, the new plan to develop the Coliseum site on Columbus Circle could become the architectural breakthrough New York has been waiting for.

**An Appraisal** Not that there's anything wrong with turning the Colossi of Memnon into ritzy apartments. Those gigantic twin-seated monuments of New Kingdom Egypt would be swell to inhabit. Like the giant Good Humor bar Claes Oldenberg proposed for Park Avenue back in the 1960's, the concept has definite Dada appeal. What's missing at this point, though, is a layer of formal invention to state one simple idea: In this town, even colossi

Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the plan is a thoroughly reworked version of the scheme Mr. Childs prepared in the 1980's for the original developer of the Coliseum site, Mortimer B. Zuckerman. That plan, which aroused opposition from civic groups because of its size, was an explicit homage to the Century and the Majestic, Irwin S. Chanin's great twin-towered apartment buildings on Central Park West.

Mr. Childs's new design retains the old version's basic Art Deco silhouette. But instead of sheathing the project's two towers with masonry, the architect now proposes to dress them in glass. This is a major improvement, one that will open up this potentially hulking project to reflections of sky, light and space.

Mr. Childs has the best eye in the business for

piece of architecture. But I think we should regard it as a great beginning and then analyze where this design might go.

This plan was chosen for financial, not esthetic, reasons. With Time Warner pledged to join in as the building's major commercial tenant, the Related Companies offered the most substantial deal to develop the site. An Egyptologist might remark on the aptness of erecting a New Kingdom monument to the New World's worship of the almighty dollar. Media mavens might regard these twin towers as a suitable temple precinct for the informational realm in which Time Warner has set such high stakes.

But Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani deserves major credit for the decision to create a theater in the building's base that will be the permanent home

## AOL Time Warner Center

represents the creation of a 2.8 million square foot cultural center combining the highest quality retail, restaurant, entertainment, office, hotel, and residential uses in what is destined to become an icon for New York City and the preeminent mixed-use real estate development in the world.

AOL Time Warner Center