Atco Properties' New Viewing and Sculpture Garden at 40 CPS;
Continues Family's 60-Year Tradition of Bringing Art to New York's Residents
On Tuesday, September 12th, Atco Properties and Management unveiled a new viewing and sculpture garden, located in the interior courtyard of their two midtown residential buildings, 40 Central Park South and 41 West 58th Street.
The new viewing garden is the creation of landscape architect Ken Smith and features a sculpture collection that includes a cast steel Isamu Noguchi torso titled "Man Aviator" from 1939, a mid-century cast copper by Chaim Gross and -- recently commissioned for the new garden -- a large bronze by Michele Oka Doner.
Ken Smith's garden is designed for viewing from a window-lined central hallway and rotunda space, as well as from the apartments surrounding and looking down on the garden. The ground plan is designed as a parterre of planted ground covers, crushed white marble, recycled black rubber and blue marbles which are under-lit, giving the garden a nighttime glow and sense of water. Ornamental plantings of Japanese Maple, Bamboo, and Magnolia are strategically sited within the garden and the screens are planted with climbing Hydrangea vines. A series of tall aluminum-stained wood screens divide the garden into overlapping layers of space creating a heightened sense of scale, depth and visual mystery.
"This courtyard viewing-garden is a place of respite and composure that humanizes the city," said Smith. "We spent time looking from each view to make sure each was spectacular."
Michele Oka Doner's bronze, "Guardian II," is situated within the crushed white marble and is a focal point of the new garden. Her gilded sculpture is a winged palm figure, based conceptually on The Winged Victory of Samothrace, and is intended to be evocative of the Biblical Tree of Life.
The new garden represents a culmination of 60 years of work by the Hemmerdinger family, owners of Atco Properties and Management. "Dale and Elizabeth Hemmerdinger continue the great tradition of private patronage for magical gardens secreted in the midst of our city," said Oka Doner. The Gross and Noguchi sculptures were acquired and installed by Carol Haussman, Dale Hemmerdinger's mother, beginning in the late 1940s. They have been restored, and were rededicated, at the September 12th event.
"Carol Haussman was really at the forefront of the art in modern architecture movement that began to take hold after the war," said Elizabeth Hemmerdinger. "We are honored to carry on what she started, and remain dedicated to supporting the ideals of art in residential architecture, and internal gardens embellished with sculpture."
Elizabeth & Dale Hemmerdinger and Douglas Blonsky, the president of the Central Park Conservancy & Central Park Administrator, hosted the Tuesday, September 12th event. Over 90 contributors to the Central Park Conservancy were in attendance as well as Ken, Michele, their guests, and members of the media. For the rededication of the Gross and Noguchi works, Chaim Gross's daughter Mimi Gross and Samuel Sachs, Chairman of the Isamu Noguchi Museum, also attended. Sarabeth's hosted the cocktail reception.
Photo credits: © Peter Mauss/Esto