Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
Okay y’all the newsletter got a face lift!!! I’m trying out mailchimp to make these look a little more official. Anyways, onto the beef of it all! Tbh I barely found this one interesting (barely any juicy gossip) so I’m going to talk about me instead.
Long long ago in 2019, a fair maiden named Sara moved to New York City. She’s lived downtown over the last 4.5 years and has seen this project grow from a huge hole in the ground. Seemingly overnight (if you can call 4 years overnight), a giant marble cube was formed! A gift from aliens? A message from God? No! A performing arts center! Just what this city was lacking! 5 years and 2 different instances of DIY bangs later, the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center was opened! That’s a mouthful of a name! Let’s just call it PAC NYC.
original design
After 9/11, this whole area was allotted a frick ton of money (I’ll say how much later) to basically reinvent itself. Several new World Trade Centers were built along with memorial pools and a 9/11 museum. This performing arts center was the last building to be completed from this project and was 20 years in the making. The original design for this center (seen above) was really freaking cool, but took up too much space & money. The design was scrapped and in 2015, the Performing Arts Center announced that they had awarded the design architect contract to Joshua Ramus of REX. This man freaking loves cubes! My favorite thing from REX’s website is this mysterious section about a confidential McDonalds.
Inside this performing arts center are three theaters, one that holds 450 people, one that holds 250 people, and one that holds 99 people. How interesting! The Performing Arts Center measures 160 by 160 feet across and 117 feet tall. The building's facade consists of 5,000 panels of veined Portuguese marble. Direct quote from Wikipedia, “The panels contain lozenge-shaped patterns and turn an amber color at night.”
So this is how I find out lozenge is an actual name for a diamond shape? I thought they were talking about cough drops. I thought “who tf decided to describe something as ‘cough drop shaped’?” I was so ready to dunk on them, then I clicked that link and was humbled. Did y’all know that’s what lozenge means???? I’m having a panic attack.
Okay, so there is a little juicy gossip which I find fun. Ronald Perelman, a bald banker (amongst other things), donated $75 mil to the project, and the center was named after him. But?? He’s not even the biggest donor! The mayor at the time, Bloomberg (who gives me the creeps), announced that he would donate $100 mil from a federal fund dedicated to projects in Lower Manhattan (Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, or LMDC for short). This corporation received ahem 2.783 BILLION WITH A B dollars in federal grants dedicated to the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. Wowzah! That’s a lotta pizza dough!
Fun Facts
The entrance to this building is a FRACK ton of stairs. These stairs are steep as hell. Parker’s cousin Joe COULD NOT handle these (throwback for all you vessel edition fans). There is an elevator but DAMN! $200 million can’t afford an escalator? Fun fact about me: no matter how good of shape I am in, I will always be winded by stairs.
A big reason this project took 5ever is because LMDC and the Port Authority kept getting into squabbles about the funding of this project. I’d like to imagine the arguments went like this.
Barbra Streisand was named the chairwoman of the center's board. Okay, slay!
Outside of the construction site, there were mockup images with fake people scattered about. One of whom looked like Stanley Tucci. How interesting!
my current walk to Target (and a map of the WTC area)
what I saw for the better part of four years:
some scribbles for the architecture fanatics
That’s all for this week! Despite not finding this one very entertaining, I sure wrote a shit ton about it. Sorry about that! See you next week!
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