They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round
They all laughed when Edison
Recorded sound
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother
When they said a man could fly
They told Marconi
That wireless was a phony
It’s the same old cry
They all laughed at Rockefeller Center
Now they’re fighting to get in . . .
Who’s got the last laugh now[?]
—“They All Laughed,” composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin
Before you do it, it’s inconceivable.
After you do it, they wonder what all the fuss is about.
—ANONYMOUS
In 2008 I completed and had published a book entitled Yours for the Asking: An Indispensable Guide to Fundraising and Management.1 I wrote it to help others bridge the gap between the promise of the non-profit organizations to which they were devoted and their performance. Often the successful solicitation of funds made all the difference in realizing their goals.
To my surprise, the most quoted lines in the book, read to me word for word in astonishment by a moderator or a television or radio personality, are these: “Let me begin with a confession. I like raising money. I like everything about it.”
Naturally, I took Peter Martins’s exit line as a personal challenge. After all, no one else at Lincoln Center had pledged to take the lead in raising anything approaching $800 million, certainly not utilizing such funds to help realize the goals of their artistic neighbors or the needs of the general public. The other $400 million, more or less, is what the constituents set as their collective goal for new or renovated artistic facilities and for endowment.
Fund-raising took place virtually nonstop except for the interregnum after the Lehman Brothers collapse. It was both fun and exhausting. Figuring out what interested and motivated donors, who at Lincoln Center should best pop the question, and when and how much to request involved both solid research and well-organized consultations with experienced volunteer solicitors. While many donors shunned publicity, or even mention of themselves, there were some prospects for whom the size of their names etched on a building, or typed out in text, mattered a great deal. The larger, the better. Others truly cared about the amount of time their names appeared in a scrolling format on-screen. The longer, the better. In these minority of cases we found ourselves soliciting less and negotiating more.
We kept our spirits up, reminding ourselves how much rejection builds character. We could ask, short form or long. We became pretty adept at the elevator or bumper sticker pitch if that’s all that time permitted. When prospects cared most about the company they would be keeping if they responded to our plea affirmatively, we focused not on the cause, or on naming opportunities, but on who had already given, names hopefully familiar to our target of opportunity. And we made ourselves available wherever and whenever an existing or future donor wished—evenings, weekends, early breakfasts, vacation homes. We aimed to please.
By the time I left Lincoln Center at the end of January 2014, more than one hundred sources—individuals, corporations, and foundations—had pledged $1 million or more, twenty-two had donated $3 million and above, twenty-one $5 million and above, twelve $10 million and above, and seven $20 million and above. Because this campaign was broad-based and not top-heavy, we had achieved one of our most important objectives. The idea was always for us to leave Lincoln Center, after completing a successful campaign, with a wider pool of donors, contributing more on an annual basis than had been the case when we began.
In fiscal year 2006, Lincoln Center raised $30.5 million to support its operating budget. By fiscal year 2014, it had raised $38.7 million for the same purpose. In other words, even while amassing close to $780 million to pay for construction and to supplement Lincoln Center’s endowment, annual fund-raising grew simultaneously at 4 percent compounded for nine consecutive years.
Some first-time contributors to the capital campaign continued to donate to Lincoln Center for its annual needs when their pledge to the building and endowment initiative was fully paid. Moreover, when I arrived at Lincoln Center in 2002, its endowment stood at $133.7 million. At the end of my last fiscal year in office, it had grown to $236 million. Of this increase in the endowment, $43 million is attributable to funds raised during the campaign. Another $15 million more has also been pledged and is scheduled to be paid in the next few years. And Lincoln Center’s pension needs have been fully funded.
Is it any wonder that by 2014 our solicitors were fatigued and that our donors could be officially declared generous, by any measure: number, amount, source, and purpose?
Peter Martins’s question was, in the end, answered clearly and decisively.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF Lincoln Center took more than money. It took a new way of thinking and of operating.
An extraordinary dimension of Lincoln Center’s physical modernization is how much of it was devoted to investing in public spaces. Close to two-thirds of every dollar Lincoln Center raised was allocated for this purpose. In addition to the comprehensive work on campus infrastructure, there were other, more accessible features of this work. For example, new places to sit were built along 65th Street at Barclays Grove, on the Tisch Illumination Lawn, atop the Lincoln Ristorante, in the Credit Suisse Bleacher, and on the steps of Tully Plaza. Also included in the public space portion of redevelopment were more green, more shade, and more trees.
Two public spaces deserve special mention because no one demanded their creation and now so many cannot imagine life at Lincoln Center without them. The first is located on the corner of 62nd Street and Columbus Avenue, where immediately outside the stage door entrance to the David H. Koch Theater was a completely barren space. Having worked at AT&T, I am familiar with the uniformly dreary switching centers it owned. The three sides of the Koch Theater not facing Josie Robertson Plaza resemble them. Dark. Windowless. Inert. Now, at least, one large corner of the building is miraculously softened by aspen trees and granite benches lit underneath when darkness falls. The Charles Benenson Grove is fully utilized. What was once an abandoned space is today animated and joyful. If you wish to converse with your favorite New York City Ballet dancer or request an autograph, hang out there during the daytime. You are bound to find your heartthrob on a coffee, yogurt, or cigarette break.
The second space in need of a metamorphosis was not controlled or operated by Lincoln Center. It was a privately owned public space (a POPS for those in the know), one of 530 such sites in the city of New York. Owned by the condominium board at 61 West 62nd Street and adopting the name of the condo itself, it was called the Harmony Atrium. The 7,000 square feet of space spanning from Broadway to Columbus Avenue, east to west, was to be set aside and maintained for public use in exchange for the city allowing the developer to build 25,314 square feet of extra floor area (roughly the equivalent of one hundred apartments).
My assessment of this deal from the point of view of the city of New York is simply stated. It turned out to be a hoax perpetrated on the public. The apartments were built and occupied, but the atrium space had been virtually abandoned. It became a temporary refuge for the homeless. It was dank, desolate, and not code compliant. Poorly lit; devoid of food service, proper seating, and functioning bathrooms; and neither well heated in the winter nor air-conditioned in the summer, it was a place to be avoided, a blight on the neighborhood.
Why the city of New York tolerated such conditions in this space and failed to enforce the public part of the bargain, I do not know. But I was utterly sure that the condition I found this space in was a complete embarrassment to the community and, given its proximity to Lincoln Center, to me. I was also certain that it represented a huge opportunity.
Located across the street from the most prominent performing arts center in the world, the atrium, I felt, could be converted into something very special. A light-filled space for public assembly or for those who wish to read, work, or meet. A pre- and post-theater hangout for ticket holders who wish to order a salad or a sandwich and a glass of wine at very affordable prices. If you desire an office away from home, or a place to meet friends, or an alternative site for staff meetings, a job interview, or a book club discussion, the atrium would be there for you—in all seasons and all times of the day.
So close to Lincoln Center, the atrium could be used for performances, free to the public and on weekends for shows appealing to young children and their families. The constituent companies of Lincoln Center could not only perform, but also hold lecture demonstrations on work that had been or was soon to be performed. At once a civic space and a Lincoln Center Commons, the atrium would be open 365 days a year from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. It could serve both as an amenity for the Upper West Side and as an attraction for visitors from elsewhere in Manhattan and the other four boroughs of the city, or for American and foreign tourists.
The atrium could also be a civic space where nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Community Board or Landmark West, or the BID or our elected officials, could convene meetings. Nestled inside the atrium could be a discount ticket operation that would allow for the purchase of off-price seats for constituent performances. In addition, I hoped that well-trained volunteer docents could respond to questions of newcomers about the basic content of performances and about more mundane matters, like how best to return to one’s hotel by subway, or what restaurant would be most suitable for a family of five on a tight budget.
This inspiration of mine was not widely shared. Staff colleagues and trustees had a difficult time imagining precisely how the space would be used and occupied and why it was to Lincoln Center’s advantage, or in Lincoln Center’s interest, to invest so much time, effort, and funds in the atrium’s conversion. I remain extremely grateful to the trustees of Lincoln Center for giving me the freedom to take the lead in realizing this vision. It was a splendid vote of confidence, especially when construction budgets were already very tight and fund-raising goals were already very ambitious.
After some deft negotiating and patient maneuvering over the course of more than a year, Lincoln Center legally arranged to assume responsibility for the space from the Harmony Condominium on a ninety-nine-year lease. Doing so required finding construction documents that hadn’t been consulted since the creation of the space. It involved detailed negotiations with the city agency responsible for all POPS, the Department of City Planning, and with Harmony building board members.
We held an architectural competition and selected Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Their charge was to totally overhaul the space into an indoor plaza that would serve as a lounge, a café, a meeting space, a discount ticket booth, a contemplative place to read and relax, and a performance venue, all at once. It was also to be the site where guided tours of Lincoln Center began. Over forty thousand visitors annually walked through our sixteen-acre campus and peeked into many of its theater spaces, accompanied by experts who could respond to all kinds of questions and satisfy all sorts of curiosity.
Williams and Tsien worked magic. They deployed huge plant walls, creating a delightful indoor urban garden. They made clever use of water elements. The purchase of movable seats and tables and the design of fixed marble benches worked well for the space. They wisely decided to commission enormous felt paintings that hung on the north and south walls, made possible by a gift from Betty and John Levin. These works gave this space a cozy, inviting character, one also conducive to good acoustics.
The Lizzie and Jon Tisch Media Wall was located on the north side of the room, providing up-to-date information on what was being performed throughout the Lincoln Center campus. It was part and parcel of an overall infoscape design driven by the same software that animated the infoblades on 65th Street, the scrolling text across the stairs, and what we called an infopeel, another information dissemination device in full video tucked behind the bleacher facing Alice Tully Hall and fully accessible to the thousands of passersby each day along Broadway. The media wall, one of the largest such installations in New York City, was also used regularly for film showings and for live television transmissions of events like the Oscars and the Tonys and, of course, fashion shows that were taking place twice a year only yards away in Damrosch Park. And the Barbara and Donald Zucker Box Office made it possible for thousands of people to attend performances of all kinds at heavily discounted prices.
The idea for what this space might become was informed by my service as the executive director of the 92nd Street Y. The atrium was a version of a community center. I was certain that if designed with maximum flexibility in mind, it would be heavily utilized, even in ways that we could not then fully contemplate. And that is exactly what Williams and Tsien delivered: a pliable space, capable of being a breakfast meeting location at 9:00 a.m., a civic organization’s annual board meeting at noon, a reading room and study hall at 4:00 p.m., and a nightclub at 7:00 p.m.
By now, just five years after its opening, 1.75 million people have enjoyed the facility. I am confident that Lincoln Center can take credit for operating the single most popular and lively POPS in the city of New York. What pleases me immensely is that for so many working-class New Yorkers and schoolchildren, the atrium is their first encounter with Lincoln Center. It is their gateway and guide to what goes on throughout our bustling campus. Their exposure to Lincoln Center free of charge in such a delightful space is very gratifying.
To fully realize the design for the atrium and its enormous potential as a public space required raising from private sources over 90 percent of the capital cost of some $25 million. Lincoln Center also absorbed into its regular budget the $3 million annual operating expense of securing, cleaning, insuring, ventilating, programming, and staffing the facility. By city regulation, access to the space is completely free of charge, even for special events. There can be no earned income derived from the public utilizing this space. So offsetting the cost of the atrium year after year took marketing acumen (some very limited outside rental income was permitted), fund-raising hustle, and craftily resorting to the economics of scope and scale, since the atrium quickly became part and parcel of Lincoln Center’s overall operation.
The facility is named after David Rubenstein in recognition of his extremely generous gift. He decided to associate his good name with what was then not so much an attractive space as an act of the imagination of a determined CEO. The David Rubenstein Atrium is a contemporary example of what sociologist William H. Whyte meant when he wrote these lines:
I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or the even larger number who feel better about the city center for the knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we look.2
Consider this an invitation to follow your nose and happen on by.
IN ORDER FOR Lincoln Center’s redevelopment to be formally approved, a vote of the New York City Council was required, following many meetings with our council member, Gail Brewer; borough president Scott Stringer; and Community Board 7. At each step in the process we also needed a green light from the office of the mayor and his key departments. No fewer than fifteen of them were involved.3 Which had jurisdiction over what and when was a continuing source of either confusion or disagreement, even at the level of concurring on basic concept designs for redevelopment. When it came to drawings, bidding on contractors and subcontractors, and when construction would begin, no chain drugstore carried enough Extra-Strength Tylenol to see Lincoln Center staff through these tedious, excessive, and overlapping jurisdictions, all with their attendant delays.
To some extent, the price of building in New York City is making one’s way through a regulatory gauntlet. Since for more than a few years Lincoln Center redevelopment was the largest construction project not only in our town, but in the country (when it wasn’t second to the activity at the Ground Zero site), and since ours was so visible and newsworthy, normal oversight was ratcheted up, or so it seemed.
Beyond the formal players, there were those who influenced them. They enjoyed a voice—this being the Upper West Side, perhaps entitlement to a megaphone would be more accurate—but not a vote. They also could impede forward movement by appealing to state or federal departments or by reverting to litigation. Each in its own way—the Museum of Art and Design, the New York Public Library, New York University, the Museum of Modern Art, and Columbia University—would experience delays, constraints, and conditions in its own major building projects as a result of advocacy group activity.
In Lincoln Center’s case, among the key nongovernmental players with which we regularly dealt were the BID, the Municipal Arts Society, Docomomo International, and Landmark West. The latter was by far the most knowledgeable, vocal, passionate, and determined. My approach to this and to any other interested party, like cooperative apartment boards, condominium associations, restaurateurs, and retailers in the neighborhood, was to keep an open door, to treat all views and concerns respectfully, and most of all, to listen. And by listen I mean with a readiness to change my mind or alter Lincoln Center’s plans in response to solid studies, sound ideas, and well-articulated expressions of concern.
There were more than a few of those, and we adjusted our plans in response to them. There was also the usual mix of institutional self-interest, parochialism, showboating, and stridency on display. This is, after all, New York City.
We must have done something right. The ULURP process was completed without so much as a hiccup. No lawsuits were filed or even threatened. The accommodations that we made improved elements of the renovation. That so much time, energy, and money were devoted to public space improvement by Lincoln Center did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. And the fact that so many citizens deeply cared about its future was heartening. Their assembled data, perspectives, and points of view were worth taking fully into account—and we did. Repeatedly, D S + R and our staff were credited with being open to dialogue and faithful to a fair and thorough process. Our wide-open door won us much-needed goodwill.
And it established a precedent for the frequent communication required to prepare all Lincoln Center insiders and all of our neighbors for the noise, the dirt, the detours, the traffic snarls, and the inconveniences that would occur throughout the construction process. Here is how D S + R describe what Lincoln Center managed to accomplish:
In a fashion akin to emergency medicine, Lincoln Center masterminded open heart surgery on a patient that was wide awake, as the work had to be carefully planned, translated and executed while [all] Lincoln Center’s venues remained opened [except for Alice Tully Hall’s eighteen-month closure].4
Amazingly, five million people were accommodated by Lincoln Center each year, even at the height of construction. Through meticulous planning, not a single curtain rose late, not a single student or faculty member at the SAB or The Juilliard School was displaced, and only a rare handful of complaints ever reached public officials or me in any given calendar quarter. I am certain that Lincoln Center’s timely communication of construction plans helped keep our neighbors well informed and, by and large, content. But I am also convinced that E. B. White was on the money when he observed, “New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience—if they did, they would live elsewhere.”5
On time and under budget, the Lincoln Center development project team, led by Ron Austin, an experienced hand at building arts centers, performed masterfully. He was supported throughout by a superb chief financial officer, Dan Rubin.
We were also blessed with able and grateful subcontractor and construction employees. Most of them had been hired in the middle of America’s deepest recession. Lincoln Center had created the equivalent of one thousand full-time jobs, paying a total of $70 million in wages. I felt terrific that so many working-class families could be sustained by the work Lincoln Center had undertaken.
A NEW WAY of thinking and operating was both cause and consequence of redevelopment. It did not only apply to lofty ideas like creating an alluring community gathering place where there had been a forlorn, desolate space. It was also relevant to mundane but important matters like getting to and from Lincoln Center in a car as conveniently and hassle-free as possible.
Ask anyone who was deeply involved in the redevelopment of Lincoln Center about Joe Volpe, and you are sure to hear a favorite story about our own homegrown enfant terrible. All will offer an example of obstinacy and obstruction on one issue or another—sometimes procedural, sometimes substantive, often just an effort to impede progress, seemingly just for the sake of doing so.
At critical moments, when Volpe’s ultimatums reached their highest decibel level and crossed the boundary from being merely unreasonable to being simply outrageous, Bruce Crawford would see him and/or the Met Opera’s chair, William Morris, behind closed doors. Generally, after these quiet conversations, somehow negotiations were put back on track.
Crawford is elegant, extremely well read, sophisticated in his tastes—in food and wine, in clothing, in furniture, in books, and, of course, in the performing arts, not least opera. Having left the business of advertising to run the Met as its general manager for two and a half years and to rescue it from a colossal deficit in the 1983–1984 season of some $8 million (inflation adjusted, that would be over $25 million today), he came to know Volpe well.
Crawford dined regularly at Grenouille. Volpe preferred red sauce Italian. Crawford’s high-end shoes were never unshined. His clothing was impeccably chosen and worn. Joe’s suits and shirts were not just off the rack and the shelf; they seemed to come entirely from someone else’s closest, usually a size or two larger than he needed. Crawford is mild-mannered, rational, and even-tempered. Volpe is highly volatile. During his tenure at the Met, Bruce put the place back on a firm financial footing in a little less than three seasons. He then resumed his position as an important Met Opera board member and returned to corporate life as the president and CEO of Omnicom.
After a brief interval with a failed successor, Hugh Southern, Crawford neatly orchestrated Volpe’s succession. They have been friends ever since, and Joe’s treatment of Bruce in his own memoir—The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera6—is little short of laudatory.
Perhaps the most difficult issue to negotiate with Volpe and Morris was whether 65th Street would have any garage access at all and, if so, what kind. Some constituents wanted none. The Met wanted as much as possible. Volpe, supported by Morris, argued that the entrances on 62nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue were totally insufficient to satisfy Met patrons. Without a convenient way to enter and exit Lincoln Center’s underground garage from the major west to east block, 65th Street, the Met feared that it would lose business. A lot of it.
Actually, it was impossible to know for certain. The Met felt strongly that those most concerned with the safety of pedestrians were exaggerating. After all, multiple points of ingress and egress all across 65th Street on its south side had been totally eliminated. Ninety-four feet of curb cut in all was to be reduced to eleven feet only, with one point of ingress being proposed on the southwest side of the street. Others felt equally strongly that the Met’s representatives could hardly with a straight face claim that the future of its box office depended on the outcome of this one issue. The parties had squared off. Intransigence seemed to take over.
I offered Bruce several fresh options to consider negotiating as Lincoln Center’s emissary. A compromise was struck. One point of entry. Ingress only. But not just pre-curtain for a couple of hours. Rather, the entrance would be open all day, with a guard posted at the curb at all times to check car trunks and to control traffic.
After a lot of hemming, hawing, harrumphing, and the generation of other sounds common to tough negotiations, the solution was accepted by all parties. It has been in effect ever since.
Not a single word ever reached me about either problems with pedestrian safety or any adverse effect of the arrangement on Met Opera patrons. Compromise worked well. Someone should tell the leadership of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate.
All praise goes to my friend, Lincoln Center chair and ambassador at large to the Met Opera, Bruce Crawford. His successor, Frank Bennack, also recognized the importance of maintaining personal relationships between and among trustees. Only by building trust could difficult agreements be reached. Toward that end, Frank twice invited all constituent chairs and their spouses or partners for weekend trips to his formidable ranch in Texas. There, in Kerrville, one hour northwest of San Antonio by car, bonds were formed amid the skeet shooting, the hikes, the stargazing, the horseback riding, and the picnic barbecues. These forays, on which Frank and his wife Mary Lake played gracious hosts, were nowhere to be found in a chair’s job description. But, wow, did they help to engender closer relationships and open up personal lines of communication.
Apart from reminding us how much relationships matter, Bruce’s and Frank’s success was attributable to their natural sense of pragmatism. They believed that at a high level of abstraction, differences are accentuated. But by moving to facts, to on-the-ground realities, they often can be bridged. The redevelopment of Lincoln Center is a series of such practical settlements. Moving trustees and staff from dogmatism to practical alternatives, trade-offs could be formulated that all parties found reasonable. Lincoln Center became a specialist in identifying that third way between contending groups.
Trustees enjoy accomplishing things, making a difference, contributing to a determination of Lincoln Center’s direction, and helping it find the way across a finish line. They also enjoy being educated and having a little fun.
Katherine Farley regularly invited a single constituent to each meeting of the board of directors. The artistic or educational leaders of all resident organizations personally appeared before the board. They spoke about their accomplishments, their priorities, and their aspirations. Wynton Marsalis, Peter Martins, Peter Gelb, Joseph Polisi, Marjorie Van derCook, Andre Bishop, and Wu Han are among those who offered remarks and then engaged in a dialogue with trustees. These sessions built mutual understanding and a sense of community.
I endeavored not only to edify through extensive precirculated reading material and often through presentations by board committee chairs and senior staff, but also to lighten up the boardroom. Why just leave brochures on the seats of trustees, when staff costumed to impersonate a Shakespearean character, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or a jazz trombonist could hand the relevant literature to trustees as they came off the elevator?
Why just announce the renewal of the Big Apple Circus residency in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center, when one could have the silent clown Grandma suddenly enter the boardroom, sit on the laps of selected trustees, engage in some hijinks, and unfurl a “Thank You Lincoln Center” banner?
Why not encourage a Lincoln Center staff a cappella group I named “The Donations” to thank Frank Bennack for his distinguished service as chair of the board for five years by singing, complete with bath towels at the ready, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “We’re Going to Wash That Man Right Out of Our Hair and Send Him on His Way.” That’s a lot better than reading aloud a three-page resolution of gratitude, wouldn’t you say?
Farley’s regular meetings with all board chairs as a group, her special nights out together with a judicious mixture of Lincoln Center and constituent trustees, and her immediate response to the expressed needs of colleagues were all of a piece. These actions all aimed at building personal relationships and creating trust.
In her annual receptions at home for all Lincoln Center trustees, Katherine engaged in another form of personal diplomacy. Besides dinner parties, her calendar bulged with breakfast and lunch dates. Farley energetically reached out to secure the views of all trustees at Lincoln Center and among the constituents and to convey her own. These initiatives were respected. The investment of time and attention yielded dividends.
ANOTHER DIMENSION OF Lincoln Center’s massive renovation is how well D S + R coordinated their work with other distinguished architects. David Rockwell was assigned by the Lincoln Center Film Society to design the Eleanor Bunin Film Center, Hugh Hardy was commissioned to create the rooftop Claire Tow Theater, and Todd Williams and Billie Tsien were asked by Lincoln Center to work miracles on the privately owned public space soon to become the David Rubenstein Atrium.
Each of these architects drew inspiration and guidance from the context that D S + R had created. All worked closely together whenever necessary. Mutual support and mutual respect seemed to prevail.
That is quite a contrast from what transpired when Lincoln Center was originally conceived and constructed. There is an iconic photograph taken by Arnold Newman in 1959 that captures nine men sitting and standing around oversized models of what were to be the New York State Theater, the Metropolitan Opera, and Avery Fisher Hall. Attired in suits and ties, the original architects of Lincoln Center and its patriarch, John D. Rockefeller III, do not look happy.7
In 1985, Philip Johnson reported that when that picture was taken hardly anyone was on speaking terms with anyone else. “Everybody pretty well hated everybody.”8
A half century later, it was refreshing to witness a 180-degree change in the relationship of architects working for Lincoln Center and its constituents. Some important leaders even believed that vastly improved relationships extended well beyond the parties to redevelopment and the redevelopment process.
Truly present at the creation and a moving force behind Lincoln Center redevelopment, Bruce Kovner speaks with the authority of a major actor and with the detachment of an informed, insightful observer. What he has to say is very flattering and hopeful, particularly in view of the soon-to-be-described behavior of one constituent and the disappearance of another:
The renewal of Lincoln Center was much more than a renewal of physical space. It was a process that connected constituents together in a way that they had never been connected. In the past, Lincoln Center was famously a place of silos, and I don’t think it is anymore. Part of what happened during this whole process is we became much more of a community, a team trying to accomplish things that were important for all of us together. Speaking as a chairman of one of the constituent organizations [The Juilliard School], I can say there’s been a tremendous, almost revolutionary change in the relationship of the constituent organizations. We do more together and we help each other. A lot of that was born in the process of coming together for the physical renovation. It made a big difference.9
Could it be that the very project that almost tore Lincoln Center asunder in 2001 and 2002 was a decade later partially responsible for an unprecedented level of cooperation, coordination, and cohesion?
LINCOLN CENTER MAKES eminent sense as an economic set of entities cooperating on revenue generation and expense controls. By taking advantage of the economies of scope and scale that exist among twelve different organizations, whenever possible, there are financial gains to be secured. The ability of this many performing and educational organizations to work together from an artistic perspective is also facilitated by their proximity. Redevelopment may well have solidified relationships all over Lincoln Center’s campus. One of its consequences is that artistic cooperation seemed to increase appreciably.
It is no accident that Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, was selected to create and lead the first-ever matriculated major in jazz at The Juilliard School. Similarly, maestro Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, accepted a position as the head of The Juilliard School’s Conducting Program. Whenever special guest artists are performing for constituents, Juilliard’s president Polisi is attuned to how they might be invited to enrich the experience of students. Lectures, small-group discussions, and master classes abound.
Maestro Gilbert included a New York premiere of a Marsalis-composed jazz piece for the orchestra to open a New York Philharmonic season. Peter Martins commissioned Marsalis to compose a piece for the New York City Ballet. Lincoln Center retained Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to open its twenty-fifth anniversary Midsummer Night Swing outdoor dance series.
The Lincoln Center Festival has presented the New York Philharmonic playing the work of Varèse and jointly presented with the Metropolitan Opera the Kirov Opera Company and its orchestra performing a summer Ring Cycle conducted by Valery Gergiev. The festival also used the services of the New York City Opera Orchestra to accompany performances of the Ashton Festival at the Metropolitan Opera House in 2004, Julie Taymor’s Grendel at the New York City State Theater in 2006, and the San Francisco Ballet at the same place in the same year. And it jointly presented with the Chamber Music Society a Prokofiev Marathon in July 2003.
Lincoln Center has recently reached an agreement with the New York Philharmonic to perform three pathbreaking staged operas. They will be cocurated by both institutions. The first, scheduled for August, 2015, is Written on Skin by the composer George Benjamin and the librettist Martin Crimp and directed by Katie Mitchell. The second, The Importance of Being Earnest by the composer Gerald Barry, will be mounted in 2016. A third opera, soon to be announced, is in the planning stages for 2017. To produce these rarely played works in America is expensive. By joining forces, Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic will bring them to life in New York City. This major undertaking exemplifies artistic cooperation as between two constituents.
The Mostly Mozart Festival and the Great Performers series have frequently presented difficult-to-acquire films at the Walter Reade Theater with the cooperation of the Film Society.
When Lincoln Center reopened Alice Tully Hall and the New York City Ballet celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Balanchine, as many of the resident organizations as possible offered their artistry for these landmark occasions.
The Chamber Music Society frequently joined forces with Lincoln Center’s programming department. In 2013, inspired by the codirector of CMS, David Finckel, a concert entitled The Cellists of Lincoln Center was arranged. Drawing from that instrument’s repertoire, the first chair cello players of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society all participated enthusiastically. It was difficult to discern whether the players—or the standing-room-only audiences—enjoyed themselves more.
The Metropolitan Opera, under Peter Gelb, has taken special initiatives with many of Lincoln Center’s constituents. Perhaps the most notable has been joining forces with Andre Bishop at Lincoln Center Theater to develop new operas in workshop form. This process is guided by directors who frequently present plays at Lincoln Center Theater. Also notable is the Met Opera joining forces with The Juilliard School on the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, launched in 2009, and in the New York Choreographic Institute beginning in 2002. In addition, Alan Gilbert has been invited to conduct the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, as has Louis Langrée, the maestro of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Orchestra.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the largest of its kind in the world, draws many of its special exhibits from the work and history of the constituents. To select just three, it mounted Opera on the Air: The Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts Turn 75 (December 2005–May 2006); Historic Debuts at SAB’s Workshop Performances (April–July 2009); and Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years, a fiftieth-anniversary exhibition (October 2009–January 2010).
And of course for forty years the nationally televised program Live from Lincoln Center has featured constituent performances for exposure around the country. These have included virtually every resident organization, many on multiple occasions.
These are only illustrations of the many and varied forms of artistic collaboration regularly occurring at Lincoln Center. So it is a source of annoyance to my colleagues and to me whenever some critics complain of insufficient cooperation between and among Lincoln Center and its constituents. There is a term of art for such carping: baloney.
LINCOLN CENTER AND its constituents are estimated to pump $3.4 billion of economic activity into the metropolitan-area economy. Data on employment, tourism, real estate development, retail business, restaurants, and New York City’s sales and property tax revenue also support the revitalizing effect Lincoln Center has had on the Upper West Side.
But walking, over less than one square mile from the sixteen-acre campus, bordering from south to north, 57th Street to 79th Street, and from east to west, Central Park West to Twelfth Avenue, is just as telling. The changes are dramatic from the day I stepped foot on the campus on March 1, 2002, through almost thirteen years later. The streetscape, the skyline, and the rush of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, uptown, downtown, and crosstown, are not to be compared.
Not only has Lincoln Center been utterly transformed, but so have its surroundings. Just consider restaurants. On Lincoln Center’s territory proper, in 2002 there were the Metropolitan Opera’s dining establishment The Grand Tier and Arpeggio, a food service in Avery Fisher Hall. Eleven years later, they were joined by Tom Colicchio’s “wichcraft” in the David Rubenstein Atrium, Marcus Samuelsson’s American Table at Alice Tully Hall, a popular café called Indie tucked into the new Elinor Bunin Film Center, and of course, Jonathan Benno’s Lincoln Ristorante.
These new venues range so widely in their cuisine, price points, ambience, comfort, and speed of dining that every pocketbook, taste, and schedule can be satisfied. They have become places where audiences, artists, employees, and administrators hang out. Lincoln Center has begun to have the feel of a campus, a name that its acreage has often been called.
The facts and figures are impressive. In 2013, over one hundred thousand people enjoyed a meal at Lincoln alone, roughly half pre- and post-theater patrons and half destination diners. All of the restaurants on the campus together grossed in the vicinity of $20 million. As striking, they served more than 425,000 diners. In 2013, compared to 2002, Lincoln Center’s dining facilities were generating four times the dollar sum and serving five times the number of guests.
Beyond the statistics, they lured people to linger and enjoy themselves. Social encounter and cultural discourse became natural allies. Friends and companions found it easy to meet and anticipate the show to come or to share reactions soon after a curtain fell.
Artists and administrators, students and spectators, foreign tourists and domestic travelers, subway commuters, and drivers or taxi and black car customers all found common ground over a quick salad or sandwich or a repast that could run up an impressive bill and leave a wonderful memory of a terrific dining experience.
But as wide-ranging as are Lincoln Center’s food service offerings, they almost pale by comparison to the abundance of choice now on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, an area regarded before 2002 as a culinary wasteland.
Sure, there were a few preexisting standbys when I arrived at Lincoln Center, like Café Fiorello, Café Luxembourg, Gabriel’s, Picholine, and Shun Lee.
But now ticket holders and visitors can also dine at Asiate, The Atlantic Grill, A Voce, Bar Boulud, Bouchon Bakery, Boulud Sud, Ed’s Chowder House, Jean-Georges, Nougatine, Landmarc, The Leopard at des Artistes, Le Pain Quotidien, Masa, Nick and Toni’s Cafe, Per Se, PJ Clarke’s, Porter House, The Smith, and Telepan, all within six blocks of Lincoln Center!
But for those who would venture just a little further, are prepared to dine earlier to make curtain or catch a meal after the show, or are willing to hail a cab rather than walk, the choices are also delectable.10 Ask any of the chefs or investors in these establishments why they located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and one answer will inevitably pop up: Lincoln Center. Its year-round traffic is now estimated at 5.5 million people. They include 7,500 employees and 2,000 full-time students.
In a profession where few successful men or women are inclined to virtual anonymity, Lloyd Goldman is an exception: he’s a low-key developer. He told me over lunch that one of the key criteria he uses to determine what residential properties to buy is the presence of a two-, three-, or four-star restaurant with a long-term lease and staying power on the same block. Its location is, in his mind, highly correlated to low crime levels, to the high net wealth of residents, to an attractive clientele, and to a terrific neighborhood amenity.
Goldman’s observation underscores how development, once successfully started, can become a virtuous circle. The tremendous success of Steve Ross’s Related Companies’ Time Warner Center, which replaced the broken-down and forlorn New York Coliseum, helped to give those at the Hearst Corporation the confidence to build the first commercial skyscraper after 9/11, designed by Norman Foster.
Lenny Litwin built the Grand Tier Apartments in 2005 right across the street from Lincoln Center, charging rents two to three times the average of comparably located buildings. He is credited with proving that there existed a much more robust market for high-end rentals near Lincoln Center than was commonly believed.
Developers like Arthur Zeckendorf, Gary Barnett, Daniel Brodsky, John Avalon, Donald Trump, and Litwin himself all built major cooperative, condominium, or rental apartment houses near Lincoln Center during the period 2002–2014.11
And who, prior to 2002, would have ventured a guess that Apple, Barney’s, Best Buy, Brooks Brothers, Century 21, Helmut Lang, Hugo Boss, J. Crew, Lululemon, MAC Cosmetics, Patagonia, Pottery Barn, Rag & Bone, Samsung, Theory, West Elm, Williams-Sonoma, and Zara would all have opened shops up and down Broadway, Columbus, and Amsterdam Avenue? Today, the costs of retail space, commercial space, and condominiums and co-ops per square foot on these streets are comparable to or in excess of their counterparts on Madison Avenue, or for that matter, on Park, or on Fifth Avenue, or in Tribeca or SoHo.
Hotels, some at the very high end, like The Mandarin or The Trump or The Phillips Club, and others, more affordable but less well known, like The Empire, The Hudson, and The Milburn, enjoy high occupancy levels year-round. Business is thriving. Lincoln Center’s magnetic attraction to patrons and visitors contributes to that pleasant result.
Toward the end of my tenure, Glenn Dicterow, the first chair violinist of the New York Philharmonic, paid a visit to my office. Only twelve months before, after thirty-two years of service at “The Phil,” he had announced that he would retire to a teaching post at the University of Southern California. I asked him what he was most looking forward to enjoying. “The beach,” he said. He and his wife had bought a modest beachfront home where they could walk down a small flight of steps and be right on the sand to view the mighty Pacific Ocean.
In the early 1990s Glenn had purchased a condominium in the Harmony building. It was a very convenient place to live, located just steps away from Avery Fisher Hall. But the condo was poorly financed, poorly maintained, and adjacent to that much-neglected, non-code-compliant, seven-thousand-square-foot public space that had become a dismal hangout for the homeless: dark, dank, and poorly ventilated. Property values for Harmony residents plummeted accordingly. Now he revealed that following the completion of the David Rubenstein Atrium and more generally, Lincoln Center’s stunning modernization, the value of his apartment had zoomed. The impact of Lincoln Center’s renaissance enabled him to switch careers to teaching and occasional performing, while reserving plenty of time for glorious sunsets and glimmering seas.
“So, Reynold, I have come to thank you for making this future possible for me, my family, and countless others,” he said.
This is what economic development looks like when personified.
WHEN THE LINCOLN CENTER redevelopment project was stuck in the quicksand of controversy, extricating it required overcoming extensive negative print and broadcast coverage. Conversely, our success was aided and abetted by continued lavish public praise of each and every completed constituent project and of Lincoln Center’s physical transformation as a whole. Donors like to associate themselves with a winner. The chattering classes were beginning to think that when it came to architecture, design, and construction, Lincoln Center could do little wrong.
What follows are the views of three important critics about what Lincoln Center was able to accomplish for artists, audiences, students, and tourists. Clearly, the close of the year 2010 found Goldberger, Kennicott, and Tommasini reflecting on what Lincoln Center had wrought:
NEW YORK ARCHITECTURE: EVENTS OF THE YEAR
Their [D S + R] reconstruction of Josie Robertson Plaza, the central plaza of [Lincoln Center], brilliantly enhances the classical symmetry of this much admired but deeply flawed public space, yet at the same time, it sends clear signals that a new and different era arrived. Rarely has a change to a landmark been simultaneously so powerful and so subtle.
—Paul Goldberger, New Yorker, December 16, 2010
KENNEDY CENTER AND OTHERS SHOULD TAKE NOTE OF LINCOLN CENTER REDESIGN
And even on a blustery winter day, the 16-acre arts center, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009, is looking livelier, smarter, hipper and more inviting—it is a change that should be studied closely not just by the Kennedy Center and Washington’s public art institutions, but by anyone who cares about the peculiar freedoms of urban life.
The architects have lightened and enlivened the space, opened it up to the city and added touches of humor and eccentricity that suggest both a subtle aesthetic and a playful one. [They understand that] the arts are about access, exposure, serendipity and comingling.
—Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, December 29, 2010
A CITADEL OF CULTURE SHOWS A FRIENDLIER FACE
Now the main stairs to the plaza slope gently down to the Columbus Avenue sidewalk, creating an entrance to the center that practically shouts, “Step right up.”
. . . the radical transformation of [Alice Tully Hall’s] lobby is a triumph. What used to look like a bunker hidden under a pointless pedestrian bridge has become an airy, spacious gathering space with tall windowed walls.
—Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, December 29, 2010
And this critical acclaim had its counterpart in professional awards and recognition of all kinds. A partial list appears in Appendix B.
WHEN LINCOLN CENTER hired Diller + Scofidio, the firm employed only about a dozen full-time employees and had yet to design a completed building. In fact, our engagement of their studio took place even before Renfro had become a partner. Although the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston was a client Diller + Scofidio had acquired before we retained the firm, when Lincoln Center selected it a shovel had hardly hit the ground near Boston Harbor. And though Diller + Scofidio was enjoying a Whitney Museum twenty-year retrospective exhibit on its work, little seemed relevant to our massive project.
There were stage installations. There were set designs. There were conceptual sketches. There was the “Blur” building, a creation on the sea of nothing more than fog and a bar featuring more brands of the world’s bottled water than had ever been gathered in one place. Stuff like that.
It is no wonder that architects and critics expressed surprise that Lincoln Center would hire Diller, rather than the much “safer” finalists like Foster and Partners, Richard Meier, and Frank Gehry. All of these competitors had substantial track records to their credit. Of real buildings, commercial and residential. Of prestigious awards, like the Pritzker. Of avid and well-known clients. Of sterling name recognition. What possessed the Lincoln Center selection committee to opt for the relatively unknown and unproven?
Well, as it happened, there is no single person during my tenure at Lincoln Center from whom I learned more than from Liz Diller: about different ways to see space; about the relationship between human beings and the built environment; and about breaking down barriers, real and perceived, between Lincoln Center and the city around it.
I have always been taken by Oscar Wilde’s lament: “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” So Diller found in me a kindred soul when she wished to dip into Lincoln Center’s pocketbook to achieve her vision. But that soul was lodged in an owner’s representative. Me. And in that role I could not appreciate the value of everything at virtually any cost, often an architect’s (or an artist’s) propensity. I needed to avoid spending beyond the established budget.
So there was a natural tension between us. “Don’t let the very best be the enemy of the very good, Liz,” I would declaim, often in vain, at least initially. Eventually, Diller would find a way to achieve her aesthetic, functional, or design objective in rough proximity to what Lincoln Center could afford. Rarely were her ideas less than intriguing, imaginative, and thoughtful. She was a resourceful advocate for them, and as good as Lincoln Center’s redevelopment turned out to be, dozens upon dozens of additional excellent design ideas were left on the cutting room floor.
On more than one occasion, Diller would utter words that strike fear into the heart of any client, like, “What I am about to propose has never been done before, so I cannot take you to see something similar. It simply does not exist.” The curvature of the glass frontage in Alice Tully Hall had no precedent. Its “blushing” walls, which change color as the time for a performance approaches, did not exist elsewhere. The white text illuminating the grand stairs on the approach to Josie Robertson Plaza is unique to Lincoln Center, as is the scrolling text across the enlarged 65th Street entrance to the main campus. The dramatically contoured Tisch Illumination Lawn on the rooftop of Lincoln Ristorante has no equal.
These design ideas were greeted by some as impractical, too costly to build or maintain, or simply unnecessary. Diller persisted. She built exact prototypes to demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that the stair text could be seen even in the haze of a 98-degree, steamy dog day in August, and that it could be maintained even when rain turned to ice. Or that the grass roof of Lincoln would not leak into the restaurant and was not dangerous to the urban climber in search of adventure, ascending or descending.
Beyond Diller’s extraordinary strength as an architect, she had other very attractive qualities. She spoke compellingly and wrote persuasively. Her mind was restlessly creative. Her commitment to quality in design was ceaseless. She regularly crossed disciplinary, cultural, and geographic boundaries. Diller combines idealism with practicality. Something of a polymath, she holds a tenured post at Princeton University, and she and her husband, Ric Scofidio, were the first architects ever to win a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Prize.”
It was these qualities of mind and creative spirit that we detected in Liz and her colleagues. They also exhibited energy, ambition, and the capacity to listen and to learn. Diller expressed a fervent desire to improve what was best about Lincoln Center, rather than replace it. She delivered fully on that expression of intent.
As Lincoln Center’s redevelopment began to be realized, so did recognition of D S + R’s work in the media and by prospective clients. Now, Diller Scofidio + Renfro are contracted to design or have already completed the Henry Kravis Business School at Columbia University; the Eli Broad Museum in Los Angeles; the High Line; the Granoff School of the Arts at Brown University; the new campus of the Columbia Medical School; the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art; and performing arts centers at both the University of California at Berkeley and Rice University.
But Lincoln Center really won an admirer in the person of Steve Ross, a highly valued Lincoln Center trustee and the chair of Related Companies. Steve hired D S +R to design their first-ever office building as part of his ambitious Hudson Yards Project. He also commissioned the firm to become the architect of record for the Culture Shed, a new indoor-outdoor entertainment and exhibition center, one on which the Bloomberg administration bestowed $75 million of New York City funds just before the mayor’s term in office expired.
The very idea that Lincoln Center’s nonprofit architectural and entrepreneurial forays were being validated by well-known and successful developer billionaires looking for solutions to their own personal, civic, and business undertakings was a special form of endorsement.
We could not be more pleased for Liz Diller, Ric Scofidio, Charles Renfro, and their talented colleagues at D S + R. They are helping to transform the look and the feel of some of New York’s most important institutions, neighborhoods, and public spaces. They are also venturing far outside New York City, to California, Texas, Rhode Island, Rio de Janeiro, and China, among other places. It is nice to know that Lincoln Center was present at their validation and contributed to their studio’s success.
TO THE DEGREE that the total makeover of Lincoln Center has been viewed as a triumph, the victory is attributable to uncommon teamwork in staff and trustee ranks across many constituents. It required them to summon energy, persistence, and flexibility. It demanded of those of us at Lincoln Center even more.
During the course of design and construction and intensive fund-raising, we were preoccupied with refreshing and expanding Lincoln Center’s far-flung arts presentation program. We were also intent on strengthening our staff and board of directors. We drew a bead on managing the campus in ways that would generate pride in its maintenance and applause for converting a drain on constituent resources into operating surpluses. We were bound and determined to revamp the economic model for our own operations. There was much else on our minds and agendas and no risk of being accused of indolence.
But concurrently, the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Opera were otherwise occupied. Working through the distractions and upheaval they caused while keeping an eye on the prize of campus transformation and solidarity tested our mettle and our patience.
The stories of how badly the New York Philharmonic strayed off course and how severe were the self-inflicted wounds of the New York City Opera have never been fully told. Occurring as they did on my watch, describing and analyzing both episodes is, I suppose, a point of personal privilege. More important, it is also an obligation.
The only saving grace of both adventures that occurs to me is the lessons that can be learned from them, providing a sobering contrast to the transformative work accomplished across the Lincoln Center campus.