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Weekend in L.A.

I’ve never felt much of a draw to Los Angeles, but here are some reasons to make the trip, or at least to experience it vicariously over the Web:

There is a show of new works by Tim Hawkinson on display through September 9 at the Getty Center. If you were lucky enough to see his mid-career retrospective at the Whitney in 2005, you might also have been inspired to make the trip to 590 Madison Avenue to view the Überorgan, a colossal barrel organ/intestine built from plastic detritus and dime-store electronics. The piece will be shown in the Getty’s main atrium, along with an exhibit of zoological forms “using common household and industrial items and reconfigured images of his own body.” You might consider checking out some clips in this PBS video feature, or ponder the similarities between his piece Signature, which signs the artist's name over and over on small slips of paper, and the famous 18th-century automaton The Writer, designed by Swiss inventor Pierre Jacquet-Droz, which writes Descartes' totemic statement "Cogito ergo sum."

I also stumbled across an unusual enterprise co-directed by Margaret Wertheim, perhaps better known as a science writer whose work appears regularly in major publications. The Institute for Figuring is (for the time being) a primarily Web-based museum exploring the interface between art and mathematics. Visit the site to view several online exhibitions, including a feature on Jeanne Mosely and her Business Card Menger Sponge, which also appeared in the most recent issue of the excellent Cabinet magazine.

My interest has also been piqued in the Museum of Jurassic Technology and the Center for Land Use Interpretation. It’s exciting to see that closer to home the CLUI has an outpost in Troy, New York, and will be reopening an exhibit on points of interest along the Hudson River. Their website also features lots of online content focusing on unusual land uses across the country. Fans of letterpress printing might also be interested in checking out the International Printing Museum.

Scylla and Charybdis on the Morris Canal

I’ve probably driven past New Jersey’s Liberty State Park more than a hundred times on the way to the Holland Tunnel and Manhattan, but until this past weekend had never bothered to stop and linger. I’m sorry I waited so long, because I discovered that the promenade and the panoramic view of New York Harbor it offers make not only for exhilarating exercise, but also a window into some dynamics of a changing Hudson County waterfront.

The park is an ongoing project, reputedly begun at the instigation of Morris Pesin, a Jersey City activist and later politician, who in 1958 paddled a canoe from the city’s derelict post-industrial waterfront to Liberty Island to argue the need for a Jersey-side access to the statue. The beginning of construction would have to wait until the 1970s, with Pesin advocating for and successfully ensuring the development of uncommercialized, non-residential open space. Development of the park continues, burying land formerly claimed for a busy rail and shipping terminal under kite flyers, sunbathers, and pickup soccer matches.

At the north end of the park, situated in Communipaw Cove on the banks of the now obsolete Morris Canal, stands one of the last visible memorials of the area’s past life as a hub of industry and transportation. The Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal was designed by the Boston architectural firm Peabody & Stearns and opened in 1889, becoming a critical interchange for ferry passengers from Manhattan and Ellis Island bound for points west. It fell into disuse and disrepair as traffic through Ellis Island slowed and the state's highway systems grew, but some estimate that between 9 and 12 million new immigrants departed for the interior of the country from the terminal in its heyday. The canal was also a key link for supplying coal from the Pennsylvania mines to a growing New York City.

After passing beneath the graceful clock tower, one enters the terminal’s waiting area. It is open to visitors and in fine repair, and one is struck by the spectacularly light and delicately ornamented steelwork supporting a gracefully pitched, windowed roof. The secondary structures surrounding the showpiece terminal, however, show their age terribly, with the train platforms behind the station suffering from decades of neglect and the old wooden ferry gangplanks crumbling. Development of the park, including acres of parking lot, has obliterated nearly all traces of the miles of rail that once traced lines across the terrain, leaving the terminal itself incapable of evoking much sense of how dockworkers, railroad employees, and immigrants formerly experienced this site.

Planted immediately on the other side of the Morris Canal, and in jarring juxtaposition to this symbol of the industrial age is Cesar Pelli’s imposing 42-story glass tower at 30 Hudson Street. The tallest building in New Jersey, it was built on the site of a former Colgate factory, and became the home of Goldman Sachs following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center just across the river. If the CRRNJ was a stage for the hopes of millions of immigrants, 30 Hudson became a sign of the nation’s determination following a shocking and traumatic event. It was also hailed as a strong statement for the rebirth of a struggling city, and is indicative of the fever pitch of waterside construction that has happened not just in that town but also upstream in places like Hoboken, Weehawken, and Edgewater.

Despite these hopes, construction of a new Goldman Sachs headquarters is underway back in Manhattan, while planning continues for three additional office skyscrapers to rise above Ground Zero. Once the tide shifts eastward across the Hudson, one wonders if the Gold Coast market will be able to support so much luxury office space, and what consequence this could have for the waterfront and the livelihood of the towns that own it. One hopes that 30 Hudson will continue to lead the way in a permanent and sustainable revitalization of a landscape that for years suffered from obsolescence. But the CRRNJ terminal stands protected as a reminder of the kinds of social, economic, and technological forces that continually evolve and with which any development must contend.