In a New York Times review (1.14.2001) of two proposed buildings in New York,
the critic Herbert Muschamp references an older building by Philip Johnson,
right across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, 1001 Fifth
Avenue built in 1980.  It is locally famous as the apartment house with the
"fake mansard" - to appease community opposition Johnson put a limestone skin
on the front with some stringcourses and, at the top, a humorously high
parapet wall (also in limestone) with battered sides, reminiscent of turn of
the century mansard roofs.

Although this building never fails to put a spring in my step, I have only
heard scandalized opinions about the horrid "fakery" of this building (quite
recently on a preservation listserv) but Muschamp writes:

<<<That earlier project [1001 Fifth Avenue], one of my favorite Johnson
designs, was also a contextual essay....  Johnson was hired to supply a
classical limestone mask for a modernoid building already designed.  He
responded with a piece of paper-thin limestone pastry, crowned with a cut-out
false-mansard roof, the latter propped up by plainly conspicuous struts.>>>

I am interested in this list's opinion as to the place of this building the
the pre-post-modern canon (or, perhaps, cannon).  Just a stunt (as the
Chrysler Building was described) or a deft, even prescient remark about our
regulated architectural environment?

Christopher Gray
Office for Metropolitan History
246 West 80th Street, #8, NYC  10024
212-799-0520  fax -0542
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