As I cross 59th St. on my way to Whole Foods in the Time Warner Center, I am shocked by the ease of walking effortlessly through the middle of Columbus Circle, never once having to break my stride or have to sprint or halt for an interminable amount of time as a result of car congestion. I can remember some twenty-five years ago what it was like to try and traverse the intersection – a torturous experience through a lifeless landscape. Today, thanks to the new Circle designed by Olin Partnership, the space has been transformed into a sanctuary of civic pride and civic identity right amidst the traffic rotary. To me now, no matter how many times I walk this route, it is astounding to note how well the new design works. What was once a contorted traffic diagram has morphed into a wonderful, inviting and fluid space. The new Columbus Circle is an exceptional reminder about how good design solves problems and transforms environments for general benefit.

The history of Columbus Circle is fascinating. Designed as a rotary by William Eno in 1905, it is unique to the city and somewhat of an enigma for much of its life. At the time, Eno promoted rotary traffic flow as the way of the future, but it never really caught on in New York. He went on to develop such designs for other cities including the rotary around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The Circle is named for Christopher Columbus and the statue that is positioned at its center, commemorating the 400th anniversary of his discovery of the Americas. A circular form with an obelisk monument at its center with radiating roadways outward, it is one of the most unique places along Broadway if not the entire city. Inherent in the physical form is a clear center and strong spatial order emitting outward. The Circle has long been a place of potential greatness, though it has continually struggled to assert itself as the defining order in the district.

Strategically located at the intersection of these major avenues and positioned as the Gateway to Central Park, the Circle has long been a place of departure rather than arrival. Designed as a terminus and central point, it has been on the edge of something as opposed to the middle for much of its history. It was for some time the northern end of the city, then the end of Eight Avenue and finally the beginning of Central Park as well as the stepping off point to what has become known as the Upper West Side. The neighborhoods around the circle languished for decades bypassed by the rapidly expanding urban sprawl that purportedly moved northward for decades at a mile per year, the only thing comparable to such rapid expansion today is China’s 10% annual economic growth rates. It remained underutilized farmland or when absorbed into the city fabric as an uneven district of undistinguished character, including transient hotels, tenements and warehouses. An amalgam of bits and pieces, the sum always seemed less than its parts.

As part of the original design for Central Park by Olmstead and LeVoux, the four corners were envisioned as major squares with formal entrances into the Park. Being one of those corners with the Merchants Gate and Maine Monument to mark the entrance and linked to Broadway and the adjoining street system, the potential for a forceful center and defining spatial order was always part of its nature. Eno’s vision of a broad open circle with a towering obelisk at its center is a clear design gesture to manifesting this centric concept. Over the years many things have been added to Columbus Circle and in themselves an interesting lot. Theaters and hotels abounded the area some of note and notoriety. In fact the amount of theaters in and round Columbus Circle began to rival that of the Broadway Theater District immediately to the South. Randolph Hearst planned his newspaper headquarters nearby, but the ill fated project never made it past the sixth floor and remained as such an incomplete building for some 100 plus years only to be just recently completed with a new glass tower on top of the original stone base. One might after some consideration, see this situation as emblematic of Columbus Circle itself, starting with a powerful flourish, but never finished only to find itself a millennium later completed by a method that is totally foreign to its original inception. The Time Warner center and the recent renovation by the Olin Partnership of the monument and surrounding area is a promising new chapter in the Circle’s history. As to its past, there have been many interesting developments that have occurred along the way. The Circle and its surrounding district have much to tell us, and the outcome is in itself quite an extraordinary piece of design work.

William Eno is an interesting character and a man of his times. Into real estate and an eye for design, he transformed a business career into one of public service. He is the de facto father of traffic engineering, if not for the country, certainly for New York. The Eno Transportation Foundation operates today as a national organization dedicated to the improvement of traffic safety and innovation, a legacy to Eno and to New York. It is not without some irony that the man who originated for New York, the stop sign, one-way traffic and the initial traffic rules for the city distrusted automobiles and never rode in one. If originally for concern for his own safety and then not wanting to break the pattern, he never experienced riding in a car, but was able to envision its use and integration into the city. He promoted and innovated traffic rules and concepts that were original and fundamental to the way we operate today. He had a grand vision of how the city’s transportation systems should work. He argued against controlled signals and promoted instead for stop signs and rotaries believing that they would keep traffic flowing and avoid congestion.

Columbus Circle is a product of such thinking. However, one can see looking back from the present that the general response to the rotary was full of ambivalence. Initially, street cars traversed the circle cutting right through it and as late as the 1980’s, vehicular traffic moving north from 8th Avenue cut right through the circle as it moved up Broadway violating the sanctity of the monument and isolating the environment from any thought of pedestrian use. In fact from Eno’s time when the car was much more of a novelty and the openness of the street was not a forbidden realm to pedestrians, there was much more interaction and use of the streets by pedestrian. Today, we see a complete separation of mixed uses with the automobile as dominating the roadway. As mass produced object and available to everyone, it has become the overriding element in planning and public safety. It has become fully embedded into an overall vision of the city. How could one see it otherwise, and why? Is it propaganda of the automobile industry or our own sense of personal destiny that compels us? City planning concepts have slowly begun to change their thinking, and it’s time to reassess the prominence of the automobile in the experience of the city. In certain districts and roadways, the car needs to be slowed down, limited access or outright eliminated.

An interesting anecdote to complete this entry: the first fatality by an automobile happened not far from Columbus Circle – on Central Park West and 74th St. In 1899, a Mr. Henry H. Bliss was helping a woman exit a street car when he was struck down and crushed by an electric-powered cab. Certainly, the automobile has been revolutionary and continues to be an essential component of modern life, but it comes at a price. In an urban environment and one that has existed in much the same form before the auto as it does now, there needs to be a reevaluation of its presence, and reestablish a holistic urban experience with the automobile subordinate to other uses and forms of transportation.