Jimmy Fallon's Skyline

A few weeks ago, the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon made its big debut. I don't watch a lot of television, much less late at night, but think Jimmy Fallon is a really clever, energetic, creative entertainer, and nowadays its easy to watch a handful of clips on YouTube and feel like you're at least partly aware of what is going on.

The Tonight Show has an all-new set, which follows the standard desk-and-couches-on-a-soundstage format. What I immediately noticed was the backdrop, which is made up of a panoramic photo image of Mahattan, but in front of it what was especially notable is a collection of more than three dozen wood building models.

The buildings are arrayed randomly in the display—their arrangement doesn't correspond to their true relationships, and it doesn't appear as though the models are to scale with one another. This makes identification a bit difficult, and I am also not certain that all the models have been detailed with equal faith to their original appearance. There is a small, laser-cut Pan Am Building, visible second from left above; it is less-detailed and more diminutive than the finely detailed McKim frontage of the NYP Library and the Chrysler Building just over Jimmy's left shoulder, which seem to use a variety of materials and might even be from a model kit.

During Justin Timberlake's appearance, its easy to spot the AT&T Building, directly behind the microphone, 

with what might be the Daily News Building behind. 

The Woolworth Building is easy to spot behind Timberlake at far left. 

I am tempted to suggest that the Building to its right, behind Timberlake's head, 

is the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South.

There are some interesting choices here, besides the world-famous landmarks such as old as the Woolworth and Chrysler Buildings and as new as the One World Trade Center, there are secondary icons like Johnson's AT&T Building, Stubbin's Citicorp Center and Johnson’s Lipstick building. Some other notable inclusions include Piano’s New York Times Building, just behind Jimmy, and at the far left, normally not visible but clearly shown in these scenes of U2 and Will Smith, Foster’s Hearst Tower. Other recognizable but far less identifiable towers include post-modern art deco Trump Riverside, the bland corporate mid-rise of 4 World Financial Center, and the hipster Maritime Hotel.

The Chrysler Building shines behind Fallon's right shoulder, with the Lipstick Building in front. 

Behind Fallon's left shoulder, in the shadows at far right, is Piano's New York Times HQ, 

with a twin tower from Trump Riverside in front. 

There is a foreground layer of low-rise landmarks, too, including the Arch in Washington Square Park, the Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport, the Guggenheim, New York Public Library, the New York Stock Exchange, and the tripartite arrangement of Lincoln Center.

During U2's performance, 1 World Trade Center and the Hearst Tower are clearly seen behind the Edge. 

But still, I was only confident in labelled a little more than half of them: is that the Daily News Building just over Jimmy's right shoulder? Is that big, French-Empire Style manse behind the guests, with its green-copper roof, supposed to be the legendary Dakota apartments? Others, like the sample Tribeca warehouse and the prototypical SoHo cast iron façade, would be laborious to pinpoint to a specific real-life building. For all I know, a third of the models are just made-up, and not based on real buildings. I certainly suspect that is the case, even with the larger models such as those between the Chrysler and Citicorp to Fallon's left, at the far right of the background.

Kristen Wiig impersonating Jason Styles. Lincoln Center is clearly visible at left, 

with what appears to be a tiny Guggenheim Museum in front. 

Behind Kristen Wiig, on her right: A SoHo building, Pier 17, the Dakota? 

On her left: a TriBeCa warehouse, Lincoln Center at lower right, and the Maritime Hotel behind.

When Jerry Seinfeld visited the new show, while praising the show, he turned around admired the elaborate background:

”I love the set. I love the rich kid NY chess set. This is the upper east side kid's chess set. It's beautiful, but I would move the chrysler building to king 4...”

Here is a quick diagram I made of the display, with whatever buildings I could identify. Suggestions for changes or additions are welcome in the comments section: 

Wiederaufbau

Ten years ago, talk of rebuilding was already underway. Some proposed a literal reconstruction: the ultimate act of defiance, it was argued, would be to replicate exactly what had been there before. The World Trade Center would rise again.

This idea was never seriously considered by those who had control over the site's future. The merits were slim: the original towers never enjoyed the adulation they received in the afterlife. Their architecture was celebrated in visual eulogy, but the particular features of edifices, their mass, their facades, their positioning to each other and the ground, were still seen as commercial and aesthetic mistakes not to be revisited.

The program was different now, besides. That shadowy, windswept plaza had now become hollowed ground. Although the destroyed leasable office space, all of it, became an unquestionably essential element to any new construction, under the logic that guides the marking of a contemporary massacre, this could not be in the same spot, and was pushed outward. The center of the site, the erstwhile towers' lobbies, were declared the gravestones, to be visited by the busload.

Image courtesy Greatbuildings.com

No buildings could go here: these square territories were to be preserved. The towers' footprints were re-excavated, almost as if such an exact rebuilding had begun but was abandoned. Two great holes had once anchored tremendous, thousand-foot volumes of air-conditioned, flourescent-lit workspaces and their interstitial utility corridors. The exterior was erased as well: the metal frame and skin would be replaced by water, cascading into air.

Image courtesy Collision Detection (link below)

Yet, in a wonderful and unexpected result, the unloved, derided architecture of the towers, returns in memoriam. The jets of water that are the essence of Reflecting Absence mirror perfectly the World Trade Center's signature surface. What was once static metal is now kinetic fluid. The solid is void, yet those former spaces between the ribbons of aluminum strips on the faces of the towers have been molded into strands of liquid.

Image courtesy bbc.co.uk

Perhaps the most striking thing when the mock-up came into view, nestled incongruously in a suburban setting, was that the water walls were not the "thin sheets" described by the design jury that chose "Reflecting Absence" last year.
Rather, they were more like beaded curtains, with a striation that called to mind the vertical bands of the twin tower facades, dissolving in a cascade of tears.