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Today water no longer pours through the New Amsterdam's ceiling dome, once again surrounded by a thick garland of red berries and hydrangea wreaths, blue-glazed peacocks and 10-ft.-long angels. The work involved many subtle calibrations. The architect, Hugh Hardy, aimed for a final product that would return the theater to its original state yet allow it to look as if it had been gently lived in for 30 years or so. "There is," he observes, "an inherent conflict in preservation between conservation, which means you keep everything that's original and try not to have it deteriorate further, and restoration, which is the other extreme. If you restore everything and make it look brand-new, you rob the place of a sense of history. You have to be careful not to get stuck at either extreme. It's all about memory, and memory is not science."
He's referring to the theater, but he could just as easily be talking about the block as a whole--which begs the question of whose memories you take as your signpost. Rudolph Giuliani's? Those of the kids who used to watch kung-fu movies in the old New Amsterdam? John Barrymore's? With the mix of live and canned entertainment, shopping, restaurants and tourist attractions, and with the hoped-for blend of high, middle and low brow, 42nd Street's caretakers are aiming to re-create the traditional ambiance and uses of 42nd Street in a late-'90s context. Since 42nd Street's traditional ambiance is chaotic, the city and state are in the odd position of planning something that is supposed to appear unplanned. Conundrum or not, they so far seem to have succeeded, despite critics' fears that the block would become an 800-ft.-long Disney World. "This is 42nd Street," Cahan reminds us. "It rains. Big trucks go across it. There is no climate control here. It smells. This is not City Walk at Universal City. This is a very real street. It is going to be more of what it once was than ever."
One hopes that will include at least a little room for organic, noncorporate funk. "I would like them to leave a little of New York for the old-timers, for New Yorkers," says Fred Hakim, who owns the aforementioned lunch counter and has been working in the area for 56 years. He is still waiting to find out if he will be able to continue operating in his space.
--With reporting by Daniel S. Levy/New York