★★★★★ 5.0
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Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Sixteen acres of Manhattan slums were demolished in 1955 to create what you're standing in right now – Lincoln Center Plaza in Lincoln Square. This wasn't just urban renewal; it was cultural warfare, with President Eisenhower himself breaking ground in 1959 alongside John D. Rockefeller III to build America's answer to European opera houses. Look around this travertine-clad plaza and you're seeing the work of architectural legends Philip Johnson, Wallace Harrison, and Eero Saarinen, who designed these buildings as stark Brutalist monuments. That fountain behind you? It's named for Revlon founder Charles Revson and contains exactly 140 water jets that dance in synchronized patterns. Most visitors never notice that the Metropolitan Opera House's facade features those massive arched windows specifically designed to showcase the glamorous lobby scene to passersby on Columbus Avenue. Here's what locals know: the New York City Ballet, which calls the David H. Koch Theater home, stages over 60 different ballets each season – that's the largest active repertoire of any American ballet company. George Balanchine himself choreographed many of these right here, transforming American dance forever. The complex spans from 62nd to 66th Streets, but what you can't see is how that imposing wall along Amsterdam Avenue was designed to separate this cultural oasis from the Amsterdam Houses public housing project – a controversial barrier that still sparks debate today about who Lincoln Center really serves.
Did You Know?
- Lincoln Center was built on the site of a vibrant, culturally rich neighborhood called San Juan Hill, which was home to a diverse, working-class community and a hotbed for ragtime, jazz, bebop, and Afro-Caribbean music before being demolished in the 1950s as part of an urban renewal project that displaced over 7,000 families and 800 businesses—today, Lincoln Center’s 'Legacies of San Juan Hill' initiative actively works to preserve and celebrate this erased history through art, education, and community engagement.
- The campus is an architectural landmark of American modernism, blending Formalism and Brutalism with striking geometric forms, minimal ornamentation, and a dramatic interplay between open plazas and massive concrete structures—designed by a dream team of mid-century architects including Philip Johnson, Wallace Harrison, Eero Saarinen, and Gordon Bunshaft, with landscape input from Dan Kiley.
- Jazz at Lincoln Center, founded in the late 1980s, became the first new constituent of Lincoln Center since 1987, and its Frederick P. Rose Hall is the world’s first performance space designed specifically for jazz, with acoustics and layout crafted to enhance the 'feeling of swing'—conceived by Wynton Marsalis and architect Rafael Viñoly, it’s a hidden gem for music lovers seeking an immersive jazz experience.