Access Restricted 2011
Lower Manhattan Revealed
Photo courtesy of The Woolworth Building Archives
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) presents the return of the immensely popular Access Restricted series with its fourth installment, Lower Manhattan Revealed.
This year’s program – Access Restricted: Lower Manhattan Revealed – is particularly well timed. As the history of the Financial District is increasingly memorialized and its future debated, one might wonder what of its history has been forgotten or overlooked. In six programs taking place at historic sites in Lower Manhattan, artists, writers, and scholars whose own work has focused on the area will discuss significant cultural phenomena from the recent history of Lower Manhattan as well as its more deeply rooted past. Occasionally, discussion will drift out of the confines of the district’s borders to position this important topic about cities at large in relation to our own.
As a special component this year, Art International Radio, a Downtown non-profit Internet radio station will audio record and file each event in their free online cultural archive. Each event is free, but capacity is limited and reservations are required. For more details, see the schedule below.
Season Schedule
Wednesday, January 19, 6:30PM:
A conversation between Clifford Chanin, Founder of The Legacy Project and Steven Davis, FAIA, Davis Brody Bond Aedas
“Cultural Memory”
7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich Street, 45th Floor
This Access Restricted lecture is at capacity. There is no waiting list for this event.
What are global issues of art in the aftermath of trauma and how does cultural memory inform design such as that of the National September 11 Memorial Museum? Completed in 2006, 7 World Trade Center replaced the last building to fall on 9/11 and offers not only a bird’s-eye view of Ground Zero construction, but also a panoramic outlook.
Check out a slideshow from the event.
Check out an audiorecording of the event on AIR.
Wednesday, February 2, 6:30PM:
A curatorial talk by Giovanna Borasi, Curator of Contemporary Architecture and Mirko Zardini, Director, both from The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal
“Actions: What You Can Do With the City”
195 Broadway, former AT&T Building, between Fulton and Dey Streets
This Access Restricted lecture has been cancelled due to inclement weather. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The curators of Actions: What You Can Do With the City, described as “99 actions that instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world,” discuss the exhibition and how citizens’ actions of walking, gardening, recycling, and playing have renewed and re-imagined cities. Actions was presented in 2009 by The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and the Graham Foundation in Chicago in 2010. Built in the neo-Classical style in 1912, the former AT&T headquarters features a forest of Doric columns in the lobby. The building was also the location from which the first trans-Atlantic call was made to London in 1927.
Check out an audiorecording of the event on AIR.
Wednesday, February 9, 6:30PM:
Journalist and author Jeff Byles (Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition) interviews Michael Sorkin, Distinguished Professor of Architecture and the Director of the Graduate Urban Design Program, City College of New York, and Principal, Michael Sorkin Studio
“Unbuilding New York”
The Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway, between Park Place and Barclay Street
This Access Restricted lecture is at capacity. There is no waiting list for this event.
The past decade’s building boom—and bust—has wrought unprecedented changes upon New York City’s urban fabric, particularly Downtown, where restless reconstruction has brought both crisis and opportunity. In this conversation, two authors of urban issues will discuss “unbuilding” to explore the potent urban, civic, and environmental impacts of this timely topic. The tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1913, the Woolworth Building with its signature neo-Gothic spire was originally marketed as the “Cathedral of Commerce.”
Check out a slideshow from the event.
Check out an audiorecording of the event on AIR.
Wednesday, March 9, 6:30PM:
A conversation between Greg Sholette, artist, author, activist, co-founder, REPOhistory and Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Queens College, New York, and John Kuo Wei Tchen, public historian, dumpster diver, co-founder of the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas and Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, Gallatin School, New York University, moderated by Frederick Kaufman, Professor at City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. Co-presented by Seaport Museum New York.
“Make History Now”
Seaport Museum New York, 12 Fulton Street
This Access Restricted lecture is at capacity. There is no waiting list for this event.
How can local history become a tool to reclaim time and space from master narratives? When is the process of forgetting convenient for urban development? And how has history itself become a hip marketable means of gentrification? This evening’s conversation will touch upon REPOhistory’s Lower Manhattan Sign Project (1992) and Tchen's "below the grid" history of the intermingled and creative port culture of Mannahatta, informing a discussion of the politics of public space. The Seaport Museum attic space once housed the old Fulton Ferry Hotel.
Please note: This program does not include a building tour.
Check out a slideshow from the event.
Check out an audiorecording of the event on AIR.
Wednesday, March 23, 6:30PM:
“Screening: Mixed Use, Manhattan”
Douglas Crimp, author, art historian, and Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester introduces an evening of films by artists Joan Jonas, Gordon Matta-Clark, James Nares, and Charles Simonds
Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education, The City College of New York (CUNY), 25 Broadway, 7th Floor Auditorium
This event is at capacity. There is no waiting list for this event.
Douglas Crimp, co-curator with Lynne Cooke of the exhibition Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices 1970s to the Present, shown at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia last year, introduces artists’ films from the exhibition that explore various uses of the former industrial areas of Lower Manhattan during a period of the area's transformation. City College CUNY Center for Worker Education is located at 25 Broadway in the former Cunard Line Building, along what was once "Steamship Row."
Please note: This program does not include a building tour.
Check out a slideshow from the event.
Wednesday, April 13, 11:30AM:
Lecture by Dr. David M. Oestreicher, curator (In Search of the Lenape: The Delaware Indians, Past and Present), lecturer, consultant, and independent scholar
“The Lenape: Lower New York's First Inhabitants
Pershing Hall, Governors Island; Free luncheon and ferry access are provided.
This event is at capacity. There is no waiting list for this event.
Combining archaeological and historical evidence with decades of firsthand ethnographic and linguistic research, this lecture covers the culture, prehistory, and history of the Lenape (Delaware Indians) in this region as well as their subsequent displacement and emigration to enclaves in Oklahoma, Ontario, and Wisconsin in the 18th and 19th centuries. Pershing Hall, one of the many historic buildings on Governors Island, features WPA murals depicting American military history.
Please arrive promptly at 11:30AM for ferry departure from the Battery Maritime Building, directly east of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Lower Manhattan. The lecture in Pershing Hall is a seven-minute walk from the Soissons Dock on Governors Island. The return ferry to Manhattan is by the 2PM ferry from Governors Island. For ADA access, please contact LMCC.
Please note: This program does not include a building tour. Additionally, the program is now scheduled for an earlier time (11:30AM). The ferry to Governors Island departs promptly from the Battery Maritime Building, so please be there no later than 11:30AM. Late comers will not be admitted.
Access Restricted is curated by Erin Donnelly.
ABOUT ACCESS RESTRICTED: Access Restricted is a free nomadic lecture series that opens rarely visited and often prohibited spaces in Lower Manhattan to the general public. Once inside these unique interiors, the audience is treated to a site-specific or closely related lecture and discussion addressing a range of topics revolving around issues of architectural history and preservation, social justice, and urban development. The aim of the series is to foster new perspectives by encouraging the public to explore locales and situations through the various lenses of architecture and planning, art, history, sociology, political science, and law.
Supporters of Access Restricted:
Special Thanks:
Art International Radio; The City College Center for Worker Education; L & L Holding Company, LLC; Seaport Museum New York; Silverstein Properties, Inc.; The Trust for Governors Island; and The Woolworth Building
