September 2001 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Nelson Rockefeller, the Captain Kirk of Modern Art patrons, arranged for this UFO to land like a Vulcan acropolis in in the Center of New York state's capital city around 1972. One unfortunate byproduct of the Empire State Plaza and its accessory freeway ramps: they obliterated the south end of the city. Note the granite fortification wall where the freeway terminates, and the forbidding maw of darkness that the motorist is compelled to enter in order to gain access to the internal workings of this bureaucratic mega-machine. Governor Rockefeller regarded it as a kind of ultra-pop sculpture garden, best viewed from freeway ramps. What happened on the ground didn't matter.