Perhaps no building in recent memory has been so thoroughly vilified as Charles Gwathmey's Sculpture for Living. Or at least no building in the greater Astor Place region has since that nasty brick-ass thing went up and Domino's took over the ground floor. Or Smith-Miller Hawkinson's wacky Cooper Union Starbucks. Or the dorm across the street. But we digress. And this is no time for digression; it's contrition time.

We don't need to apologize as much as Paul Goldberger should (or has?), but as the current masters of this site, we do need to recant, to cleanse the record for all those who have sinned in our shared name. And it's a doozy: The SFL is a wonder. A work of pure convulsive brilliance. Impeccable.

For all the time that we have been hating it—for most of the time that there has been an it to hate—the building has been standing out of context. "How is this possible," you will shriek. "Buildings don't move!" But wait, oh our Readers. Wait. Remember the Alamo? That edge-balanced confection of black steel that our cousin Reginald used to spin before she and her plaid and punctured posse disappeared into the liberties of St. Mark's? It was gone. And now it's back. And now—oh Charlie, forgive us!—it is as clear as day. What only the Master knew before, the student now can see. In its angularity giving softly into curves, then hitting us anew—shebang!—with hard, cold angles, the Sculpture for Living lives on the essence of the Sculpture for Spinning. Without the one the other wilts, without the other the one is dead. But our period in the aesthetic wilderness is over. The cube is here again. The scales have fallen from our eyes. Charlie is vindicated.

· The Alamo Returns to Astor Place [Pith]

Posted in Gotham