By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
DOWNTOWN — A new exhibit at the downtown Skyscraper Musuem takes a look at an older time in New York, when now-posh areas like SoHo and TriBeCa were homes to sprawling factories.
The Vertical Urban Factory exhibit, which opened Wednesday, features factories of all materials, designs and time periods, such as the monumental Starrett-Lehigh building, designed in Chelsea in 1931 that used to have railroad tracks running through its bottom floor, to the present New York Times Building near Times Square.
The New York section of the exhibit highlights the time in the 1920s when New York was considered to be America's greatest manufacturing city.
"The idea, one of the points, was to show that New York really was a very diverse and complex industrial city," the museum's guest curator and architecture professor Nina Rappaport said before the exhibits opening Tuesday.
"It shows how factories were everywhere, not in just one isolated area."
From masonry workshops to concrete warehouses, cast-iron loft buildings to steel-framed skyscrapers, the New York section of the exhibit shows how high-rises developed as manufacturing sites everywhere from the Bronx to the Garment District, leading the way to both the ritzy lofts and run-down warehouses one might see today around the city.
The exhibit also delves into the construction of the Garment District, which was once the home to the world's highest concentration of clothing manufactoring, and the factors that led up to the famous zoning laws of the 1920's that sought to regulate industrial land use in the country.
In addition to photographs, the exhibit features maps, infographs and miniature history lessons for each building.
The entire exhibit surveys more than 30 projects, organized into modern factories, contemporary factories, New York factories and future factories.
In the future factories section, Rappaport takes a moment to contemplate the lessons factory owners have learned in the past, and how to integrate manufacturing into non-industrial areas of big cities like New York in the future.
In particular, the section focuses on design and energy-saving modules.
"What if there was manufacturing everywhere again because it was greener, cleaner, local and small?" Rappaport asked while perusing the future section.
"The industry has changed, and now there's new potential. So...why not?"
The exhibit will run through June 2011.
