Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, Helmut Schmidt and Andy Warhol – they all came here once not only to think about the relationship between Americans and Europeans, but also. Directly across from the New York Metropolitan Museum, on Fifth Avenue, is a particularly spectacular and valuable property owned by the Federal Republic. The villa with the number 1014 – long framed by two high-rise buildings – was built in 1907 in the ornamental Beaux Arts style and is today the last building of its kind in the block between 82nd and 83rd Streets.
The six-story townhouse once belonged to James W. Gerard, a former American ambassador to Germany. Then the German government bought the house and in 1961 housed the Goethe Institute as a center of transatlantic exchange. Lectures, concerts and language classes were held here for almost fifty years until the institute moved to new premises near Union Square in 2009. Villa 1014 urgently needed a renovation, and the fire protection was inadequate. But for years the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Bundestag could not agree on what should happen to the property.
The Federal Republic could also have sold the house – similar properties fetch prices in the tens of millions of dollars. But everyone who had something to decide and walked through the high rooms with their wall paneling, mirrors and chimneys in New York agreed: “We’ll keep that.” This is how Ulla Schmidt, member of the 1014 Advisory Board and former Federal Minister of Health, reports . A new beacon of transatlantic exchange should now arise here, which emphasizes the common values, said the former SPD member of the Bundestag.
To this end, the villa is now not only being renovated, but also completely rebuilt. British architect David Chipperfield recently won the competition for the best concept – it should be implemented by 2025. On Fifth Avenue, they do not want a new edition of the old one, according to the Foreign Office – the building should not simply become a new Goethe Institute or a center for German-American cultural exchange, as is the case in California in the form of the Thomas Mann House exists. The building is called “1014, Space for Ideas”, because here not only Germans and Americans should philosophize about their mutual relationship. The aim is to create a mix of transatlantic, global, political, cultural and also scientific approaches, says the director of the house, Katja Wiesbrock Donovan. Not only people who are interested in transatlantic topics should find inspiration here – the aim is to also address visitors with interesting speakers and events who have not yet heard of the German background of the house.
Photo exhibition about a butcher
Events can still take place in the unrenovated building – in a few weeks this will no longer be possible without further ado, because the new heating will only come with the renovation. After the discussions and workshops took place mainly online for over a year, these days there will be a foretaste of the future. For a weekend, the makers showed the New Yorkers the otherwise closed space, and architect Chipperfield spoke about his ideas. A few days later, two dozen German scholarship holders from the RIAS program are standing between the exhibition boards on the ground floor, eating snacks. At the same time, the curator Alexander Klose, who traveled from Berlin, is preparing a workshop with New York students. It’s about the future of the city without oil. Visions of a world after the dependence on oil has ended – videos, computer-generated works of art and an interactive installation that makes mushrooms and trees sprout on a canvas when you touch spongy rubber mushrooms like a joystick. Art, science, technology and politics should meet here.
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