Ralph Gardner Jr. admires (and covets) Paul Goldberger’s impressive collection of souvenir building models
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A spirited discussion about Manhattan building heights isn’t for everybody. But it can be fun when you run into a fellow nerd, such asPaul Goldberger, the architecture critic and Joseph Urban professor of design at Parsons School of Design.
We met last week at Mr. Goldberger’s apartment at the Beresford on Central Park West for an even nerdier reason—so I could admire his impressive collection of souvenir building models.
I invited myself over after I learned during an interview with television production designer Peter Baran that Mr. Goldberger owned dozens, perhaps hundreds of models.
My own collection—the most notable pieces are the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Twin Towers, the Eiffel Tower and the Jefferson Memorial—is relatively modest. Nonetheless, it gives me inexplicable pleasure every time I glance at my mantelpiece.
Trying to fathom why I gather such happiness from my tiny structures may have been a subconscious reason for wanting to compare notes with Mr. Goldberger.
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ENLARGEI suspected my collection was unworthy, the prophecy proving true as soon as Mr. Goldberger, the former architecture critic for The New Yorker and the New York Times, ushered me into his study.
He seems not to have counted the objects, at least not lately, probably because there are so many. And include everything from some of the same models on my shelves (though in multiples, many of them antiques) to Gaudi’s Sagrada Família confection of a church in Barcelona, Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasília, and the Dakota and the San Remo, two buildings on Central Park West where he lived before the Beresford.
I particularly coveted his model of Marcel Breuer’s Whitney Museum (now the Met Breuer) and Jean Nouvel’s 1,050-foot 53W53, often called the MoMA Tower. Mr. Goldberger wasn’t boasting, but he explained the model was a gift from the building’s developer.
Nonetheless, the majority of his collection came from scouring flea markets and airport gift shops. He said his obsession, though it has quieted lately, began innocently enough.
He was renting an apartment at Hotel Des Artistes on West 67th Street “when normal people could afford such things.” The apartment included two small niches, probably meant for flowers.
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ENLARGE“I was a single guy,” he remembered. “Almost as a joke, I bought an Empire State Building and a Statue of Liberty and plunked one in each niche.”
The collection grew from there; Mr. Goldberger joined organizations such as the Souvenir Building Collectors Society, swapping, buying and selling tiny Sears Towers, or whatever, with fellow collectors.
His wife, Susan Solomon, co-founder and chief executive of the New York Stem Cell Foundation, even encouraged him, suggesting a spot for his models when they moved into the San Remo.
“I think she had no idea things would get out of hand with both buildings and books,” he said.
Mr. Goldberger added that his wife remains reasonably supportive. Which is more than I can say for my own spouse, who recently relocated my Golden Gate Bridge without consulting me.
“She wants to make sure they do not migrate out of this room,” Mr. Goldberger said of Ms. Solomon. “She’s not a great fan of clutter.”
Mr. Goldberger and Ms. Solomon didn’t, for the record, move from the San Remo to the Beresford to accommodate his collection. She wanted a park view.
And she got it, as well as an unobstructed view of 432 Park Ave., the soaring Midtown condo that looms above the trees outside their apartment window.
Mr. Goldberger and I were both able to conjure the building’s height from memory—1,396 feet—because that’s something souvenir building nerds tend to be able to do, the talent typically dating back to childhood. (To the best of either of our knowledge, a model of 432 Park doesn’t yet exist and would probably look rather monotonous if it did.)
“Nine hundred eighty-four feet,” he said of the Eiffel Tower. “I remember the Chrysler Building was 1,084.”
I thought the Eiffel Tower was 988 feet, but he’s right. I checked.