Paul Sharits (1943-1993)

Spirit of ’76 in Nation and New York: Self-Doubt, Hope and Pride

Despite Serious Ills City’s Chin Still Up

By John Russel

                New York City this weekend was what it was in the beginning: a place where astonishment stole in from the sea. It was Bleachersville; all eyes were turned one way. Not to care about the tall ships was heresy—a heresy confined to a small minority of bookworms, chess freaks, and burglars.

                We looked at the tall ships, and the people in the tall ships looked about at us, and New York was what it has been for a long, long time—the world’s No. 1 landfall.

                One or two senior seniors may have remembered the last excitement of the same kind—the day in 1909 when the tercentenary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in the Half Moon was marked by a flotilla of warships from all over the world.

                When those ships cast anchor all the way along the Hudson from 47^th Street to 22^nd Street, that was a terrific sight, too. But in 1909 the celebrations looked forward to the future, in that Wilbur Wright was on hand to make the first airplane flight over New York. Wilbur Wright stood for something new, just as Henry Hudson stood for something new when he eased the ship through The Narrows.

                New York could use a touch of the Wilburs right now. It could be argued that just about everything is wrong with the city. As to its finances, the less said the better. The only thing worse than the state of the roads is the state of the sidewalks. Racial discrimination, covert or overt, is still a fact of everyday life/ in no great city of Europe is such a high proportion of the population on relief.

                Sections of Central Park look ghastly. It is a small and happy minority that never has to face the facts of crime and corruption. Even the will to learn had new obstacles to overcome.

                Of the things on which New York has always prided itself—an unlimited hospitality to the poor and the unprivileged, above all—many are being eaten away be realities that no one cared to face. New York is the traditional goal of the immigrant, and New York has consistently taken on far more than its fair share of the immigrant’s necessities. It couldn’t go on forever, and a lot of people would like to see it stop now.

                So what New York needs on this morning-after morning is someone—or, better still, a lot of people—to give it a climate of reasoned confidence. Luckily it is not difficult to find such people. Brendan Gill—story-teller, drama critic, architectural enthusiast and all-purpose speechifier—said last week: “The Community Boards are the most important single thing in city government. When the citizens get a chance to help the city they do better than all the bankers and politicians put together. Poverty is the friend of the preservationist, and now that it no longer makes sense to build for building’s sake we have a unique opportunity to rehabilitate what is good about the city as it exists today.”

                New York is buildings, agreed. No one who has seen the restored Custom House will dispute that. And sometimes those buildings have to be coaxed back to life. “Rehabilitation can bring into being a whole new kind of…”

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