The fountain at Lincoln Center, prominently featured in Ghostbusters, is being removed and replaced with a more ambitious, computer controlled fountain (a la the dancing fountains outside the Bellagio in Las Vegas.) Designed by architect Philip Johnson (who also designed the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center) and completed in 1964, the fountain has been a key landmark in many a New York film besides Ghostbusters, such as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.
The reconstruction designers have opted to retain the placement of the fountain, but to radically overhaul it at the same time.
“It’s the thing that upsets me most of all about what’s happened at Lincoln Center,” Mr. Dolkart [director of Columbia University’s historic preservation program] said. “They thought that they needed to spend a lot of money ripping out Philip Johnson’s fountain and putting in something new instead of restoring something that worked well.”
“A key issue in preservation is whether or not something is worth preserving,” he added, “not whether or not the new thing we replace it with might be wonderful also. You wouldn’t want to tear down Grand Central Terminal because Frank Gehry is going to design a masterpiece in its place.”
Thats a shame, I did the Ghostbusters tour in Manhattan and the Lincoln center was one of the stops. Did the Venkman spin and everything. I’m going to NY next weekend may have to make one last spin at the fountain lol
I was there at the beginning of July and the fountain was shut off and it looked like they were working on it. Turns out they were taking it down…
This sucks. Another idiotic example of unncessary change.
Definitely a waste of money, but I’m glad I saw the original from the movie.
welcome to bloom-turds new york
“welcome to bloom-turds new york”
Is that a knock on New York city’s current mayor Michael Bloomberg? Last I checked, the man had nothing to do with this project. I might call him out on the reconstruction at Ground Zero, but he has nothing to do with this fountain project.
As far as I knew, the fountain was gone in 2008. When I went to New York in the first week of May, in 2008, the fountain did not exist anymore, and there were panels all around with pictures of the new fountain on the sides. It was very disheartening.