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    Nathan Silver, Who Chronicled a Vanished New York, Dies at 89

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    An architect, he wrote in his book “Lost New York” about the many buildings that were destroyed before passage of the city’s landmarks preservation law.Nathan Silver, an architect whose elegiac 1967 book, “Lost New York,” offered a history lesson about the many buildings that were demolished before the city passed a landmarks preservation law that might have offered protection from the wrecking ball, died on May 19 in London. He was 89.His brother, Robert, who is also an architect, said that he died in a hospital after a fall and subsequent surgery to repair a torn knee ligament.Mr. Silver’s book — an outgrowth of an exhibition that he curated in 1964 while he was teaching at Columbia University’s architecture school — was an indispensable photographic guide to what had vanished over many decades. It was published as the city’s long-percolating preservation movement was working to prevent other worthy structures from being destroyed.“By 1963, it seemed urgent to make some sort of plea for architectural preservation in New York City,” he wrote. “It had been announced that Pennsylvania Station would be razed, a final solution seemed likely for the 39th Street Metropolitan Opera” — it was destroyed in 1967 — “and the commercial buildings of Worth Street were being pounded into landfill for a parking lot.”He added, “While cities must adapt if they are to remain responsive to the needs and wishes of their inhabitants, they need not change in a heedless and suicidal fashion.”He found images in archives of “first-rate architecture” that no longer existed, including a post office near City Hall; Madison Square Garden, at Madison Avenue and 26th Street; the art collector Richard Canfield’s gambling house, on 44th Street near Fifth Avenue; the 47-story Singer Tower, at Broadway and Liberty Street; the Produce Exchange, at Beaver Street and Bowling Green; and the Ziegfeld Theater, at 54th Street and Sixth Avenue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After a Fire, Rebuilding the National Museum of Brazil

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      Years after a devastating fire, Brazil is slowly rebuilding an institution dedicated to the country’s cultural heritage.This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What is history? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.Steel beams hanging in the air,twisted by the intense heat.Shattered glass scattered across the floor,melted by the flames.Iron intertwined in all directions,exposed by collapses.Walls blackened by soot,resulting from the burning of a country’s memory …I wrote these lines shortly after Sept. 2, 2018. It is a day I will never forget.That day, the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro was devastated by an intense fire. For those of us who work in Brazil’s cultural sector, the fire was the realization of our worst nightmare. The tragedy did not come without warning. The risks the museum faced were well-known. The lack of proper maintenance was obvious throughout the building. Along with my fellow museum officials, I frequently pushed government officials for more resources, but these efforts were not successful.If I had to choose one building in Brazil that should be protected and preserved, it would be the museum, and not just because of its collections. The site is connected to many notable moments in Brazil’s history. Since 1892, the museum has been housed in the former royal palace. The building was home to the Portuguese royal family after they fled to Rio de Janeiro to escape Napoleon. After Brazil’s independence, it was the residence of Brazil’s emperor.The museum, which was founded on June 6, 1818, by King John VI of Portugal, is Brazil’s first scientific institution. Before the fire, the museum contained over 20 million items, including unpublished documents from Empress Maria Leopoldina, ethnographic objects from Indigenous Brazilians, significant specimens of the country’s biodiversity, fossils and rare minerals. The blaze destroyed about 85 percent of the museum’s collection.The interior of the National Museum of Brazil following the fire in 2018. Many in Brazil blamed the fire on funding cuts and a lack of proper building maintenance.Diogo VasconcellosIn the aftermath, one of the hardest moments for me was paradoxically also one of the most inspiring. The day after the fire, while smoke was still everywhere, a large group of people, including some high school students, approached the remains of the museum. For security reasons, the police did not let them get close to the building. After some tense negotiations, the group was allowed to do what they came for: The members formed a human chain and embraced the remains of an institution that — in reality — belongs to them, the public. When I remember this scene, it is hard to hold back my tears. We, the guardians of their cultural heritage and history, failed them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In a Medieval Greek Fortress, Residents Feud Over ‘Pharaonic’ Cable Car Plan

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      The authorities in Monemvasia, founded in the sixth century, say people with limited mobility need access to the town’s peak. But critics say the project would destroy the identity of the site.Carved into a massive rock, the medieval fortress town of Monemvasia rises from the Myrtoan Sea in southern Greece, its Byzantine churches and crumbling palaces a draw for the thousands of visitors who walk its cobbled pathways every year.But there is trouble in this tranquil retreat. A plan to build a cable car to the peak above the town, where a beautifully preserved 12th-century church sits in relative isolation amid stunning views of the coast, has divided the community.The top of Monemvasia is currently accessible only via a winding, 240-yard stone path — a dizzying and exhausting climb.The authorities say the cable car, to be financed with around $7 million from the European Union, will make the site reachable for visitors with limited mobility.But the plan has been met with consternation, and legal challenges, from cultural groups and residents who say it will undermine the rock’s protected status.Standing over Monemvasia is a 12th-century church with stunning views of the Myrtoan Sea.Niki Kitsantonis for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Breuer Building Gets Landmark Status Before Sotheby’s Moves In

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      The modernist former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art had its interior designated for protection by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.The modernist Breuer building, formerly home to the Whitney Museum of American Art and purchased by Sotheby’s auction house in 2023, on Tuesday had much of its interior designated as a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.The designation, which was voted on Tuesday morning, will protect much of the building on Madison Avenue from any changes that had concerned preservationists as the building undergoes a renovation by the Pritzker-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron. The museum’s galleries were not included as part of the designation. The designation protects parts of the lower level facing Madison Avenue, as well as the first-floor lobby, coat check, vestibules and the main stairwell from the lower level through the fifth floor.“We would have preferred the galleries were included in the designation,” said Liz Waytkus, the executive director of Docomomo US, an organization dedicated to preserving modern architecture which filed the request with the Preservation Commission seeking interior landmark status for the Breuer. “But we’ve spoken to Sotheby’s and they have assured us they are treating all gallery surfaces as if they are designated and using a light hand in their restoration.”The 1966 building by Marcel Breuer has become an important symbol of Brutalist architecture, with its concrete grid ceilings and its inverted stepped pyramid exterior.The structure most recently housed the Frick Collection and served as an exhibition space for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary collection. The renovated building will contain Sotheby’s sales room, as well as exhibition and dining spaces. Work is expected to be completed by this fall.Herzog & de Meuron — known for projects such as Tate Modern in London, the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Park Avenue Armory in New York — has made a specialty of adaptive reuse, or transforming existing structures. The firm, based in Basel, Switzerland, is working with PBDW Architects, a New York firm, on the design.“We fully endorse the landmark designation, as reflected in our initial plans for the building,” said Steve Wrightson, Sotheby’s global head of real estate, in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming the public back and honoring the Breuer’s enduring legacy as we usher in a new chapter.” More

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      Trump’s Wishes Aside, Censoring Racial History May Prove Difficult

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      Late last month, when two federal grants to the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana were rescinded, the Trump administration seemed to be following through on its promise to root out what President Trump called “improper ideology” in cultural institutions focused on Black history.After all, the plantation’s mission was to show visitors what life was truly like for the enslaved, contrary to the watered-down Black history that the president seemed to back.Then just as quickly, the grants were restored a few weeks later, the Whitney Plantation’s executive director said in an interview.Because the money had already been approved, “maybe it was an exposure for lawsuits,” the executive director, Ashley Rogers, said, “but who knows?”Ever since Mr. Trump issued an executive order in March decrying cultural institutions that were trying to “rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” sites like the Whitney Plantation have lived with such uncertainty. An order specifically targeting the Smithsonian Institution tasked Vice President JD Vance and other White House officials with “seeking to remove improper ideology from such properties.”But reversals like the one in Louisiana and actions by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture seem to indicate some misgivings about the president’s order. They also show that putting historical knowledge back into the bottle after decades of reckoning with the nation’s racist history will be more difficult than the administration believes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Idea to Turn Alcatraz Back Into a Prison Draws Criticism From Tourists

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      Boatloads of tourists traipsed around Alcatraz Island on Monday morning and peered into tiny prison cells, learning about the most notorious inmates who stayed there — and the ones who tried to escape.The tour was standard at the revered San Francisco attraction, save for one topic that simply could not be avoided in the conversations echoing off the old cellblock walls.Can you believe that President Trump wants to convert Alcatraz back into a federal prison?The morning tour groups were full of international travelers, and many of them had received phone alerts about Trump’s plan or read news reports over breakfast. Some wondered if they might actually be among the last visitors allowed to wander the island. But nobody seemed to think the idea was nearly as brilliant as Mr. Trump thought it was.“I thought it was a joke,” said Philipp Neumann, who was visiting from Germany. “It’s a ruin, isn’t it, more or less?”A ruin, yes, with some buildings deteriorating so badly they no longer have roofs or complete walls. The cells have broken toilets, if they have any at all, with no running water or sewage system.The exterior walls of the cellblocks are so weak that they are reinforced with netting to prevent chunks of concrete from crumbling onto tourists’ heads. Bird deposits coat much of the island. All supplies from food to fuel must be brought in by boat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pierre Audi, Eminent Force in the Performing Arts, Dies at 67

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      After turning a derelict lecture hall into the daring Almeida Theater, he had a long career as a director and impresario in Europe and New York.Pierre Audi, the stage director and impresario whose transformation of a derelict London lecture hall into the cutting-edge Almeida Theater was the opening act in a long career as one of the world’s most eminent performing arts leaders, died on Friday night in Beijing. He was 67.His death, while he was in China for meetings related to future productions, was announced on social media by Rachida Dati, the minister of culture in France, where Mr. Audi had been the director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival since 2018. The announcement did not specify a cause.Mr. Audi was in his early 20s when he founded the Almeida, which opened in 1980 and swiftly became a center of experimental theater and music. He spent 30 years as the leader of the Dutch National Opera, and for part of that time was also in charge of the Holland Festival. For the past decade, he had been the artistic director of the Park Avenue Armory in New York.The Almeida Theater in London. Mr. Audi was in his early 20s when he founded it in 1980, and it soon became a center of experimental theater and music.View PicturesAll along, he continued working as a director at theaters around the world. Last year, when the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels cut ties with Romeo Castellucci halfway through his new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring,” the company turned to Mr. Audi as one of the few artists with the knowledge, experience and cool head to take over such an epic undertaking at short notice.“He profoundly renewed the language of opera,” Ms. Dati wrote in her announcement, “through his rigor, his freedom and his singular vision.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mass Grave From Roman Empire Found Under Vienna Soccer Field

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      Archaeologists found the remains of at least 129 people, many of them bearing the injuries of battle, dating to when Rome battled Germanic people nearly 2,000 years ago.Under a soccer field in a Vienna neighborhood along the Danube, archaeologists have found a mass grave dating to the era when the Roman Empire was battling Germanic tribes almost 2,000 years ago, experts announced this week.The grave was discovered in October by a construction company doing renovations for the field in Vienna’s Simmering district, a team of archaeologists and historians at the Vienna Museum said in announcing its findings. The extraordinary discovery was tied to what they called a “catastrophic” military event, possibly one where Roman troops were badly defeated and fled the site quickly.Radiocarbon dating traced the bones to approximately A.D. 80 to 234 — a period in which more than a dozen Roman emperors ruled, including Domitian and Trajan, who clashed with ancient Germanic people in the region. An analysis of other items found in the grave, including an iron dagger, lance points, scale armor and a cheek piece of a helmet, helped confirm the time period.Near the foot of one skeleton, the archaeologists also discovered shoe nails that came from distinctive Roman military shoes called caligae.The discovery of such skeletal remains is exceedingly rare, experts said, in part because ancient Romans almost exclusively practiced cremation until the third century A.D.“For all of middle Europe from the first century, we don’t have any unburned, uncremated human remains,” said Michaela Binder, the lead anthropologist on the project. “So aside from the military aspect, it is an absolute unique chance to study the life histories of people in the first century A.D.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Earthquake Devastates Myanmar’s Cultural Sites

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      The powerful earthquake that shook Myanmar on Friday took a considerable toll on historic and religious sites across the country, toppling pagodas, collapsing sections of Buddhist monasteries and reducing centuries-old monuments to rubble, according to photographs and videos shared by witnesses and verified by The New York Times.In its latest count on Saturday morning, Myanmar’s government said that over 3,000 buildings had been damaged, including about 150 mosques and pagodas.Southwest of Mandalay, the 200-year-old Me Nu Brick Monastery appeared to be largely destroyed. Tiers of the building’s distinctive balconies had collapsed around the bulky interior walls.Southeast of Mandalay, a video showed the ornate golden spire of the Shwe Sar Yan Pagoda toppling over, to the screams of onlookers.Verified video, via ReutersIn Mandalay city, a large pagoda that stood on the palace walls was left tilted at a sharp angle; elsewhere, a section of the walls crumbled.To the west of the city, a video showed Buddhist monks gathered around the ruins of a decorative clock tower that had served as a centerpiece of the New Masoeyein Monastery.@Ashin Tikkhanyarna Linkara/Facebook, via AFPSeconds later, video showed their five-story monastery building collapsing before them. Dozens of monks who lived at the monastery slept out on mats in nearby streets on Friday night. One of them, Moe Nat Ashin, photographed the scene.@Bar Ku/Facebook, via AFPPhotos shared by the Burma Human Rights Network showed fallen minarets and domes of mosques in several parts of the country. The online news outlet Mizzima, citing local officials and residents, reported that 490 people were killed in mosque collapses on Friday.In Pindaya, 70 miles from the epicenter, Buddhist monuments known as stupas that adorned a large monastery were toppled, and cracks split the foundations of others that survived.All around the stupas, the remains of golden spires and the red bricks common to the region littered the ground.In one witness video, onlookers wailed as the top of the monastery’s largest stupas crumbled in an aftershock.Ko Ye Win Naing, via TikTok“Pindaya felt some earthquakes before but not so strong like today’s,” said Tun Tun Aye, the administrator of a Facebook page for the monastery. He said that the stupas were believed to be more than a century old, and that he did not know how the monastery would be restored.In Nepal in 2015, billions of dollars were pledged toward reconstruction after two earthquakes devastated the country. Initially hampered by bureaucracy, the restoration led to a resurgence in traditional craftsmanship in the country.But in Myanmar, which is ruled by a military junta that has terrorized civilian areas as it battles a rebel movement, establishing a unified and internationally supported reconstruction effort is likely to be more challenging. More