Events & News

Skyline: A Mid-Century Musical

August 23, 2014
4:45 p.m.
The Loreto Auditorium at Sheen Center

This past August the Archive Project was proud to help promote Skyline: A Mid-Century Musical, a production centered around the grassroots struggle to save Pennsylvania Station from demolition in the early 1960s. Featured as part of the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival—the largest multi-arts festival in North America, with more than 200 different productions throughout New York City—Skyline exposed the power and significance of preservation in a fresh and effective way. With a brisk, jazzy score, Skyline tells the story of the ordinary New Yorkers who banded together to try to save the grand Beaux Arts edifice. Each advocate has his or her own motivation for memorializing the now-iconic building, which together form an honest and sometimes heartbreaking narrative of personal histories and their connection to the built environment. The show brilliantly captures the highs and lows of advocacy battles—the near victories, the in-house squabbles, the compromises—and ultimately the importance of standing up individually and as a group for preservation.

Produced by Maureen FitzGerald, Taylor Williams, and the Present Company, and directed by Jason Blitman, this wonderful production is both a heartfelt love letter to New York City and a cautionary tale for any city and any age in which one kind of envisioned future threatens to sever our lifeline to the past. After one of the closing performances, the Archive Project joined fellow preservationists in raising a toast to the production team at cocktail lounge Madam Geneva, wishing them the best as they pursue support for future performances, and congratulating them on adding an inspiring new chapter to the Pennsylvania Station saga.

Location:
The Loreto Auditorium at Sheen Center
18 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10013
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Above: Promotional Image for Skyline: the Musical; Courtesy of Maureen FitzGerald