Looking Back to Look Forward | Kim Green | January 2012
“There’s no place like home.” Despite not being born and raised in NYC, it has always held a special place in my heart. Doesn’t the old adage tell us “home is where the heart is”? Every trip back is like catching up with an old friend after months of being apart and picking up right where we left off as if time had stood still. Like lyrics plucked right out of a Simon & Garfunkel song. To this day, I love everything about this city that never sleeps.
Perhaps this fondness comes from pure nostalgia on my part because, after all, I had made this city my home years earlier as I finished up my college studies there and subsequently landed my first professional job with, none other than, Harper’s Bazaar. On a recent trip back, I was fortunate enough to have a contact that got me and several of my colleagues inside access to the new and improved Hearst Tower. This ended up not only being the tour of a lifetime, but I got to witness NYC wake up at sunset from the 44th floor of this magnificent building. The view – well it simply does not get any better! Magical would be an understatement. I had an unobstructed view of the park, midtown and even across the river to New Jersey where I briefly called home. If Mr. William Randolph Hearst were alive today, I think he would be extremely proud not only of this completed architectural masterpiece but of his still privately held publishing legacy as well.
The original six-story building was completed in 1928. This was to be the foundation of a proper NYC skyscraper however construction was postponed due to the Great Depression. In 2006 more than seventy years later, the new tower was completed and at last all Hearst publications could be housed under one roof. Prior to this, they were scattered in separate buildings throughout Manhattan. I had last been in the original headquarters back in 1992 on a routine visit to our HR department. We at Harper’s Bazaar were operating out of a building at 1700 Broadway.
The award-winning new tower was the first “green” building in NYC and the first skyscraper to break ground post September 11, 2001. The British architect Lord Norman Foster makes a dramatic statement by mixing glass and steel with the original cast stone. He certainly makes no apologies about old meeting new. It is breath taking from the moment you step foot inside the atrium. You are met with a three-story escalator that literally comes through the cascading water feature appropriately coined Icefall. Here they use recycled rain water that is captured on the roof and utilize it throughout the building in numerous capacities.
As I marveled throughout our tour, it became obvious to me that not only had so much changed in the physical sense but equally in the world of media. I’m not speaking about Mazzola versus Tilberis, curvy versus waif, or even the reign of supermodel cover girls versus famous personalities. I’m referring to our recent shift into the digital media era. You know the endless land of YouTube, Facebook, blogging, Twitter, tablets, and iPhones. Where anyone can become an expert on anything to a generation that needs everything now. In a world where fact checking has become as extinct as the dinosaur. Where the topic around the dinner table has become do you read in print or on your Kindle and has left generations wondering if print will become a thing of the past much like our old friends 8 track and VHS.
I think Mr. Hearst would have a hard time believing we have gone through another recession but do believe his true entrepreneurial spirit would want us to embrace change. This in no way means we are dismissing the past. I think he would be thrilled at his world today how the new compliments the old in technology as well as architecture. With my former Harper’s Bazaar editor at one side and my current Charlatan editor at the other, we quickly descended back into reality and onto 57th Street. This is when I realized that in my time and place today, the future lies in appreciating mass messaging for what it was and still is yet at the same time celebrating organized social networking.
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