The Empire State Building in a Symbolic State of ‘Between and Betwixt’

Over the centuries, the area of New York city evolved from the agriculture districts of the first native and new coming Americans to the high-rise metropolis it is today perceived. For over a century, it managed to interrelate its name with a specific building typology while at the same time cultivating the uniqueness of individual structures as a trademark of the practices that were strictly linked with what is most commonly perceived as the American Dream. These buildings acted as promoters of the innovative applicable technologies of the time, while “manifesting the ambitions and desire for power of self – begotten individuals.”[1] They became the frameworks within which a new model of life, dictated by the American dream, flourished, fabricating the significance of the skyscraper in the process of shaping the presently perceived city’s fabric. If New York symbolizes the epitome of the picturesque typology of the skyscraper expanding over the limited space of Manhattan, one building more than others exemplifies the essence behind this ambitious megastructure that was introduced in the late 1800’s (see figure 1).

What is the first thing that comes to our mind when we hear the word New York City? For a majority of people is a specific megastructure, better known as the Empire State Building. For others, the constant reinvention of Manhattan itself with bolder and broader building forms. The Empire State Building “seem to overpower people like some science fiction prophecy come true. Where we really entering the ominous future proclaimed by Fritz Lang's terrifying metropolis?”[2] From the first quarter of the 20th century, the Empire State Building acts as the Ultimate manifestation of a ‘culture’ that is more relevant today than ever. It holds the key in unfolding the very essence of the skyscraper and hence the formation of the contemporary metropolis as it is now perceived. It was build and complete during the great depression of the 1930’s and incorporates the contribution of a new group of people, migrating to the USA as their new home for the 20th century. It could and should be seen as a mighty symbol of power, while at the same time the ‘deconstruction’ of the building’s history provides an amazing interpretation of the New York’s evolution over the last 150 years in becoming “the center of the known universe. A city based on the notion of cooperative diversity fed by the dreams of two centuries of immigrant culture. As people passed through the portals of Ellis Island to take a chance on the American dream, New York became a cradle for a new life. A land of opportunity and adventure.”[3] (see figure 2)

Furthermore, the Empire State Building could be seen as not just a new building typology but as a new medium as its Architecture is more function than ornament orientated. Marking a direct schism with the past and forming an open agency for the future. The demand of such populated structures gradually shifted the role of the architect beyond the aesthetic curator of a building and towards a mechanic enabler. “The elevator generates the first aesthetic based on the absence of articulation as the further it goes up, the more undesirable the circumstances it leaves behind.”[4]

Within this paper, I will try to contextualize the significance of the Empire State Building as something way more prominent than a tall structure by introducing the work of Michele Foucault, a French philosopher and one of the greatest social theorists of the 20th century. In a lecture given to a group of architects in 1967, translated into English as ‘Of Other Spaces’, he explicitly referred to a new way of spatial configuration, naming it heterotopia. There, he frames heterotopias as spaces in which an “alternative social ordering is performed, spaces in which a new way of ordering emerges that stands in contrast to the taken-for-granted mundane idea of social order that existed within society at that time.”[5] Such places of the ‘heteros’, the other, seemed to have acquired more layers of meaning and relationships than what meets the eye as to other places. Thus, through Foucault’s phrase, the idea of heterotopias connecting with utopia, a social idealistic condition, born out of necessity, due to the denial of people to accept reality is indisputable. And that symbolic notion of space holding a reserve of actions, could be best contextualized by using the Empire State Building as a case study.

“New York represent a new Athens, the only possible birthplace of new Parthenons.”[6] The Empire State Building, was the first building to manifest just that. It served more than a single agenda, while at the same time acting as the optimum celebration of the new world. A new America. Built by men, who perceived the building as their ‘passport’ in the process of acquiring both for themselves and their creation the new continental identity, the skyscraper and America had to offer. “Adopting the concept to tall buildings was the egos of the men who wanted them built. After all, the largest buildings in the city are always the ones that hold the greatest power. In the past, houses of worship owned the skyline but in 1913, New York developed a broader interpretation of the theme.”[7] That visionary implementation of future desires however, started to unsettle the unified agency of the city as it was perceived until the 20th century. It charged New York with a second identity or a second entity as in-between spaces within its own boundaries. A city within a city, a series of barriers and separations deriving from the idea of the center as a vast contiguous territory. It was “the passion to sell as an impelling force in American life.”[8] An aspiration towards the divine, heaven.

Skyscrapers and the Empire State Building in particular “embodied an architecture freed from many of the aesthetic restraints of the past. It was a building appropriate to a city upon which “the stamp of modernity was early put on”, as William Taylor notes, “by a succession of photographers and other graphic artists who were sensitive to the visual character that the city was assuming and who saw in these new shapes and forms a vision of the future.”[9].

In the process of understanding why I utilized the concept of Foucault’s heterotopia on the Empire State Buildings it is of great importance to understand the time period when this ambitious project was commenced. By 1929 the skyscraper was very present in New York City. More than 700 hundred example could be found in the island of Manhattan. However, these storm cloud structures were directly related to the economic prosperity of Wall Street. When the market collapsed during the great depression, the music suddenly stopped. People realized the dystopian community they had created and the inability of such place to provide them with resources of survival such as food. Steel and concrete replaced the ever-green farms of Manhattan making people reevaluate their fundamental principles upon which the American dream was conceived. In the Empire State Building “their plan was to erect the world's largest building as a practical monument to a culture they hoped would weather the hard times.”[10]

It may seem paradoxical for some to use a building as a case study that, at first glance ,has small architectural significance in terms of its design qualities and aesthetics. The Empire State Building is as much an experience as it is in assembly of steel columns and glazed frames. It brings people together, it stands alone as an imposing symbol of the will of the new world holding a reserve of admiration and astonishment until today.

For Foucault, space has that symbolic notion of holding a reserve of actions. Thus, by using the skyscrapers and the Empire State Building in particular in the process of unfolding Faucault’s notion about space and freedom, these megastructures can indeed be seen as such a place. “A place of “otherness” whose existence sets up unsettling juxtapositions of incommensurate “objects” that challenge the way we think, especially the way our thinking is ordered.”[11] That semi-real society which was formed around the skyscraper and birched the reincorporation of people to their socially structured everyday life can be contextualized in its most appropriate way using Foucault’s notion of heterotopia to define these marginal / paradoxical spaces or counter-sites. Exposing that even within them there is a mirror image of society.[12] The Empire State Building acquired a sense of heterotopic space as for New Yorkers it provided, and maybe in a way still provides, utter contrast with the rest of the space, “creating for instance, a meticulously arranged enclosure that exposed the jumbled mess that unfolded around it.”[13] Something even dystopian for some, making it not a part of some larger imposed conceptual body, and “through everyday life it turned abstract space into place.”[14] At the same time, the primary element making the enclosure of the Empire State Building so interesting in relation to the rest of the city is the notion of time along the way. It took a year and 45 days for the building to be build. New innovations and prefabricated materials made possible for the first time ever 4.5 stories to be built every week. That element of exuberance is marking this building a disruption of time compared to the turbulent life of New York, a city still under the influence of the great depression.

No one can deny the utopic characteristics of the skyscraper during the 19th century and implementing Foucault’s notion about the in-between spaces, the emergence of these alternative counter sites that he names heterotopias. For Foucault, “between utopias and these quite other sites, these heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint experience, which would be the mirror. The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.”[15]

For New York, the Empire State Building provided a passage to and through other heterotopias. That passage for New York was a transition of one status to another. Victor Turner, one of the main anthropologists who researched the idea of symbols and rituals, termed this transition as ‘rite of passage.’ His notion of ‘rites of passage’ will act as a catalyst in unfolding the significance of the Heterotopic space of the Empire State Building alongside Turner’s notion of social drama.

The Empire State Building could be reconstructed upon Turner’s notion of social drama. “For Turner, social drama was a sequence, a dynamic sequence of breach, crisis, redress of action and reintegration.”[16] According to Turner, underlying every drama is an example of fault lying. It may have not just given yet but there is a tension, most of the times existing before the play. In the case of New York, that underlying fault is the great depression of the 1930’s. In New York, the crisis is the precipitating event, that brings to a for the qualities of the breach. “Hence, the crisis brings to the for the underlying fault of the breach and then, becomes the redress of action.”[17]

For Turner, the redress of action was the most important part of social drama. It is during this time where all kind of processes are brought to heal the crisis, to bring things back to stability. However, in order to bring groups of tension back to harmony an exchange is needed.[18] This redress of action phase is what Turner called the ‘Liminal’ phase in traditional societies. In small-scale societies, liminal rituals, as rites of passage, are an important part of the life of the people. According to Turner, they also exist as means to self-understanding by a particular society and as means of renewal of that society through a process of restructuring.[19]

Most of New York’s ‘journey’ and hence the Empire State’s appears to reside there, as it is neither ‘prisoned’ nor free. In Turner’s terms it is betwixt and between because once it got separated from its identity group, its social group, it enters an initiatory or right of passage phase. It has yet not got its new identity but it has lost his old one.[20] Monica Ali interprets it as a result of “living between two worlds and as a consequence of being rootless, leading in a condition of having multiple identities, which are never fully established but constantly being made.”[21]

Hence, New York City is placed between its old lifestyle and the significance it acquired over time, open and exposed. It neither continuous as an ordinary city, nor it yet emerged in the Utopian community the Empire State Building intended it to be. Its life cycle is constituted around these special isolated places, the skyscrapers, which are part of its world but really fenced off at the same time. Its life could be incorporated within the liminal phase, characterized by acts of transgression or inversion of everyday, mundane practices.

It is an imitation, in a certain way, of the idea of the transformation that occurs very often among adolescents, in this case from the inside to the outside. In the end, the Empire State Building is reintegrated back in the community but at a different level. This is because this tragic phase presupposes a schism and then a reintegration. However, the reintegration taking place in New York is not constituted for the Empire State Building only. It is constituted for the whole social fabric, as in societies, such rituals embody not only acts of transgression but also the means of reintegration and order.[22]

“Liminal rituals involve constraints as well as freedom.”[23] “The structure of a society is symbolically inverted through the transgression of its moral codes, a period of anti- structure, such that a process of renewal and generation can occur.”[24] If then, according to Turner, the great depression fits in the liminal phase, the phase of the sick, the marginalized, The Empire State Building could be seen as a mean of attempting to restore order by creating new modes of social ordering that are utopian in intent. But, I don’t suggest that the Empire State Building can be seen as a utopia, my intension was instead “to treat it as a site of otherness that stood out as a place of difference because of the utopics it expressed in relation to common practices of order” until the 1930’s.[25] Through time, the Empire State Building conveys Foucault’s notion about the mirror. It reflects the cracks found in the social structure of a community. It provides you the opportunity to reflect, learn and as a result surpass it using it as a tool to question fundamental assumptions about experience. Through this comparison, my aim was to build up a tool for applying theoretical discussion in practical and spatial terms; fueled from Foucault’s notion that heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time, perhaps the most integral element of New York at the time.[26] After incorporating all the stimulations the liminal phase provided you, it is time for the reincorporation. The phase of reincorporation presupposes what you already knew, your everyday life and everything you have acquired through the liminal phase. For the Empire State Building, that liminal phase was portrayed as one form of ordering that found itself in. New York acted as a spatial context, socially and materially constituted, most significantly, for a short period of time in the mid-20th century, through which a utopic of the western world was expressed as an alternative social ordering. That ordering was defined by activities that were not only transgressing and resistant but also revolutionary for the given epoch.

The skyscraper of the 19th and early 20th century failed to acknowledge the underline desires of its inhabitants, proven by the few remaining structures in both cities, by “selling” a vision without action for some, or an action without vision for others. “The future must use the past as its foundation. And the foundation for the Empire State is a history measured in contrasts.”[27] The Empire State Building manage to stand and emerge to the iconic symbol it is now perceived as in dark times, was seen as a symbol of hope. As a symbol of what America was, but most importantly of what America could again become. It managed to bring hope back to a city that was suffering by using an architectural language which was not common at the time. It was a statement that proudly stood in a city that was about to reborn. “For the men who built the Empire State Building, making a living was foremost in their minds but building a monument who have vision of tomorrow was in their hearts. Their commitment to America and its future is at the very soul of the Empire State, a modern city within a city.”[28]

Bibliography

·       Ali, Monica. Brick Lane: A Novel. New York: Scribner, 2003.

·       Cohen, Jean-Louis. The Future of Architecture since 1889, Phaidon, 2012.

·       Deamer, Peggy. Architecture and Capitalism, Routledge, 2014.

·       Flowers, Benjamin. The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

·       Lefebvre, Henri. The Urban Revolution. Translated by Robert Bononno. University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

·       Simmel, Georg. Metropolis and Mental Life. Chicago: Syllabus Division, U of Chicago, 1961.

·       Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things; an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1973.

·       Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Monacelli, 1994.

·       Hetherington, K. ‘The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering,’ London: Routledge, 1997.

·       Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22

·       Stallybrass, Peter, Allon White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Cornell UP, 1986.

·       Bhabha, Homi K. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990.

·       Sullivan, Louis H. The Autobiography of an Idea. Dover Publications, 1956.

·       Willis, Carol. Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago. Princeton Architectural, 1995.

·       Wolner, Edward W. “The City-within-a-City and Skyscraper Patronage in the 1920's.” Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), vol. 42, no. 2, 1989.

·       John, Graham St. Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance. Berghahn, 2008.

·       Turner, V. ‘The Rituals Process’, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.

·       Turner, V. ‘Drama, Fields and Metaphors’, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974

·       Turner, V. ‘From Rituals to Theater’, New York: Arts Journal Publication, 1982

·       Turner, Victor W. Schism and Continuity in an African Society; a Study of Ndembu Village Life. Manchester, Eng.: Published on Behalf of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Northern Rhodesia, by Manchester UP, 1957.

·       Empire State Building. Prod. Andy Thomas. A&E Television Networks, 1993. American History in Video. Alexander Street. 20 Dec. 2016.

·       RoutledgeTextbooks. "Performance Studies: An Introduction - Victor Turner's Social Drama." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnsw5xFuXHE>.

·       RoutledgeTextbooks. "Performance Studies: An Introduction - Ritual." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhk-WQ37fTY>.

·       Kalantzopoulos Nikolaos. 'The Politics Of Fiction and Odysseus Boat As A Medium Of Their Repercussion’. Thesis, Plymouth University, 2014.

[1] Wolner, Edward W. “The City-within-a-City and Skyscraper Patronage in the 1920's.” Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), vol. 42, no. 2, 1989, p.10.

[2] Empire State Building. Prod. Andy Thomas. A&E Television Networks, 1993. American History in Video. Alexander Street. 20 Dec. 2016.

[3] Empire State Building. Prod. Andy Thomas. A&E Television Networks, 1993. American History in Video. Alexander Street. 20 Dec. 2016.

[4] Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Monacelli, 1994. p.82.

[5] Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22

[6] Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Monacelli, 1994. P.110.

[7] Empire State Building. Prod. Andy Thomas. A&E Television Networks, 1993. American History in Video. Alexander Street. 20 Dec. 2016.

[8] Sullivan, L. “Retrospect,” The Autobiography of an Idea, 1924. Dover, 1956, p.312.

[9] Flowers, B. Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009, p.15.

[10] Empire State Building. Prod. Andy Thomas. A&E Television Networks, 1993. American History in Video. Alexander Street. 20 Dec. 2016.

[11] Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things; an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1973. p.37.

[12] Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London: Methuen, 1986. p.18.

[13] Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22

[14] Bhabha, Homi K. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990. p.294.

[15] Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22

[16] RoutledgeTextbooks. "Performance Studies: An Introduction - Victor Turner's Social Drama." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnsw5xFuXHE>.

[17] RoutledgeTextbooks. "Performance Studies: An Introduction - Ritual." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhk-WQ37fTY>.

[18] RoutledgeTextbooks. "Performance Studies: An Introduction - Victor Turner's Social Drama." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnsw5xFuXHE>.

[19] Turner, V. ‘The Rituals Process’, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969, p.176.

[20] -. ‘The Rituals Process’, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969, p.175.

[21] Ali, Monica. Brick Lane: A Novel. New York: Scribner, 2003. p. 81.

[22] Turner, V. ‘Drama, Fields and Metaphors’, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974. P.69

[23] Turner, V. ‘From Rituals to Theater’, New York: Arts Journal Publication, 1982, p.33.

[24] Turner, V. ‘Drama, Fields and Metaphors’, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974. p.74.

[25] Hetherington, K. ‘The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering,’ London: Routledge, 1997,p.53.

[26] Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22

[27] Empire State Building. Prod. Andy Thomas. A&E Television Networks, 1993. American History in Video. Alexander Street. 20 Dec. 2016.

[28] Empire State Building. Prod. Andy Thomas. A&E Television Networks, 1993. American History in Video. Alexander Street. 20 Dec. 2016.