>> FEMALE SPEAKER: Major Funding for "Architect Robert A.M. Stern: Presence of the Past" is provided by the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture.

[singing] Heaven... >> Fred Astaire: Pop, you can pay the cab.

[singing]...I'm in heaven >> Robert Stern: You Know, I think Fred Astaire is a very elegant person.

I always thought, "Well, wouldn't it be great to be dancing with some beautiful woman like Ginger Rogers."

>> Geoffrey Baer: Once upon a time in Brooklyn, as Fred and Ginger danced on the silver screen, a neighborhood boy named Robert Stern sat mesmerized in a darkened movie house.

>> Robert Stern: I hated Brooklyn.

All I wanted to do was get out of Brooklyn.

>> Geoffrey Baer: The glamour of Astaire's Manhattan beckoned.

Stern later wrote "the proud towers across the East River seemed part of an Emerald City.

They were my personal Oz."

Stern dreamed of becoming an architect and adding elegant new buildings to that skyline.

>> Robert Stern: Architects have been charged with responsibilities of translating the dreams of American people into buildings which people can identify with.

You Know, everybody has a fantasy.

I tried to turn fantasy into reality.

>> Geoffrey Baer: And he did.

>> Robert Stern: We're building the American dream.

We make dreams lithic.

It's not a pure art.

It's a public art.

By the way, architecture is not de fined by the four walls of a building.

Who designed the gothic cathedral?

Nobody knows.

Yet, what a masterpiece.

Why'd you put- this is a bad spot.

We'll use this table here.

with a very broad - sort of first - >> Blair Kamin: Sure, yeah go ahead.

>> Robert Stern: This is confidential.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Who is Bob Stern?

>> Blair Kamin: Who is Bob Stern?

Oi, oi, oi.

>> Robert Stern: So where were we yesterday?

We were here.

>> Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk: Bob Stern is many people.

>> Johnny Cruz: So I think the challenge here, Bob, is... >> Peter Eisenman: He's intelligent, he's witty... >> Stanley Tigerman: He's sarcastic... >> Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk: He is of course an architect first and foremost.

>> Stanley Tigerman: Unspeakable.

>> Blair Kamin: A you know, eight thousand miles a minute.

>> Robert Stern: Let's not talk about the top yet.

>> Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk: Who writes... >> Peter Eisenman: A provocateur.

A bit of a rascal.

>> Stanley Tigerman: Impossible.

>> Peter Eisenman: Let's not think that we're talking about an angel, we're not.

>> Robert Stern: But this looks good.

>> Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk: He's also the dean of the Yale School of Architecture.

>> Blair Kamin: Bob is the quintessential New York dandy architect.

>> Robert Stern: How high are these canopies?

Remember yesterday I said >> Johnny Cruz: Fourteen.

>> Robert Stern: I said fourteen?

>> Stanley Tigerman: A once-in-a-lifetime character.

>> Robert Stern: This is where they should be.

>> Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk: It's quite remarkable that he is one person.

>> Johnny Cruz: What's your feeling on the material change?

>> Stanley Tigerman: And he ultimately is very warm, and giving.

>> Robert Stern: I mean a day like today if you have an iron spot it will really be - it will look like you're gonna, ummmmmmm, kind of dreary.

>> Johnny Cruz: It does provide some sparkle, a little bit of glitter.

No?

>> Robert Stern: No, maybe in Hoboken.

(Johnny laughs) He's dreaming of coming back across the river.

>> Johnny Cruz: Someday, I'll make it back to Manhattan.

Ok.

Thanks Bob.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Everyone calls him Bob.

His full name is Robert Arthur Morton Stern and he is the founder and senior partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, commonly called RAMSA.

While Stern himself is the star of the show, most of RAMSA's buildings are background players designed to fit seamlessly into their surroundings.

And RAMSA has designed hundreds of them.

>> Robert Stern: I don't believe buildings have to be 'me too' b to be 'me too' buildings; I think that one of the great responsibilities and pleasures in architecture is to extend the language of a place.

>> Geoffrey Baer: You call yourself, a modern traditionalist.

Is that an oxymoron?

>> Robert Stern: Um, Modern Traditionalism is not an oxymoron.

It's a real important concept in my view.

Can one mine the local cultures?

Can one dig in?

Can one speak the local languages of architecture in a fresh way?

Buildings that resonate to the local soils of places.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Stern doesn't just practice traditional architecture - he preaches it in writings so prolific he actually has co-authors on his payroll.

>> Stanley Tigerman:.

His writing machine on the penthouse of his office in New York, with those guys working and editing stuff.

He has written -- I don't know how many books, 11, 13, whatever the number is.

They're generally are about this thick -- they generally weigh about 11 pounds.

>> Paul Goldberger: You know, New York 1900, New York 1930, 1960, and 2000, those are phenomenally rich interesting books.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Why do you wanna do so much writing?

>> Robert Stern: I think writing, for architects, and publishing their work, has been a way to contribute the principles and explain the ideas behind what one does.

The other thing is, I rather enjoy it.

What would I do on Saturday?

I don't play golf.

>> Paul Goldberger: You know, it's hard to imagine anybody who's had a bigger overall impact on the importance of traditional architecture in this country, in the world really now than Bob Stern.

>> Robert Stern: A miracle here.

Clay!

>> Geoffrey Baer: That view got a big endorsement in 2011 when Stern was chosen to receive the prestigious Richard H. Driehaus Prize.

It's an international award for classical and traditional architects, administered by the classically based University of Notre Dame School of Architecture.

But being a champion for tradition has also made Stern a focus of criticism.

>> Paul Goldberger: there's a tendency sometimes in Bob's work to jump to something that is considered quote "appropriate" for a place... >> Blair Kamin: Whether it's collegiate gothic at Yale... >> Paul Goldberger: He will do a Georgian house in, you know, Greenwich... >> Blair Kamin: Or, you know, kind of Mediterranean at Stanford... >> Paul Goldberger: You don't push the art forward with that attitude.

>> Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk: We really are living in a time in which there is a great bias against tradition.

But bringing along one's roots and one's history is important if for no other reason than to recognize the generations of people preceding who've made an effort to bring us to the point that we are.

>> Melissa DelVecchio: The residential colleges at Yale are sort of based on the Oxford and Cambridge model of a residential college... >> Geoffrey Baer: Melissa DelVecchio is RAMSA's Project Architect for the new Yale Residential Colleges.

Like Stern, she's a Yale alum.

She also trained at Notre Dame's classical architecture program.

>> Melissa DelVecchio: That's not huge in terms of big buildings, but the... >> Geoffrey Baer: DelVecchio showed me the models her team uses to fine-tune their highly traditional neo-gothic design.

And there are these holes in the middle of the model?

>> Melissa DelVecchio: We've nicknamed "Bob Holes."

Sit in the chair - I recommend leaning forward, not back.

>> Geoffrey Baer: OK. >> Melissa DelVecchio: When you sense that you're under the hole... >> Geoffrey Baer: Oh yeah - oh, and look at the tower from up there.

Wow.

>> Melissa DelVecchio: It will be exciting to see.

It's always fun to see the buildings come together.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Alright, I'm leaving the Bob Hole now.

>> Paul Goldberger: The new colleges are more like the ones done 75, 80 years ago than the ones done 40 years ago.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Those older, much-loved colleges were designed in neo-gothic style by architect James Gamble Rogers.

>> Robert Stern: You know, the last college Rogers did at Yale was opened in 1940.

I was one year old then.

>> Melissa DelVecchio: Bob rips them apart and tapes them back together... >> Geoffrey Baer: So people were saying, "You can't do that anymore.

It's dead.

It belongs to another world."

I wondered, what will my mother and father think?

I mean, do they belong to another world?

Uh, Did I just slip in on the wrong side of the clock?

So what is this over here?

>> Melissa DelVecchio: The graveyard of towers.

>> Geoffrey Baer: In one corner of the room is proof that it takes a lot of trial and error to be true to a historic style.

>> Melissa DelVecchio: It started a bit more Gothic and then it had a little bit more classical influence come in.

And then always Harkness Tower is the main tallest tower at Yale.

>> Geoffrey Baer: This is an existing tower at Yale.

>> Melissa DelVecchio: This is an existing tower at the same scale.

So we're constantly sort of benchmarking the design and the scale of the design.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Is your goal with the residential colleges at Yale to replicate as closely as possible the pure gothic vocabulary?

>> Robert Stern: Not to replicate, to speak.

That's a difference.

When you speak English, you are not replicating Shakespeare's English or Walt Whitman's English or even Virginia Wolfe's English.

You are speaking it, and you have your own diction but you're still using most of the same words, most of the same grammar, and you're trying to speak it as well as somebody you admire before you.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Others criticize Stern for not being traditional enough.

He's created some surprisingly modern buildings when he thought that style was appropriate for the project or the place.

Like the Comcast Center, a soaring glass obelisk in Philadelphia.

Even here Stern says the past is present.

The building's state-of-the art video wall is a modern version of an age-old architectural element.

>> Robert Stern: It is a wonderful storytelling device, which enhances architecture the way that mural art and decorative arts have always enhanced architecture.

>> Blair Kamin: Bob has offended purists, uh, across the aesthetic spectrum.

>> Paul Goldberger: There's all kinds of routes to the kingdom of architectural heaven.

>> Stanley Tigerman: He's criticized by classicists for his so-called neo-modernist work - >> Paul Goldberger: I don't believe there is a single route.

>> Stanley Tigerman: and by modernism, people in the avant-garde because of his retardataire work because he is retrograde.

But that's all bull (expletive).

>> Blair Kamin: Bob is smart enough and flexible enough and pragmatic enough to realize that that's the way that cities are built.

They aren't one or the other.

>> Stanley Tigerman: Bob is genuinely an important American architect.

I want to make that distinction because America is the land of hybridization.

And Bob is - does hybridized work, if nothing else.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Even Stern's harshest critics applaud his work as dean of the Yale School of Architecture, his alma mater.

His appointment was initially greeted with protests from the avant-garde.

>> Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk: When Robert Stern became the dean at Yale, everyone groused about it and said oh he's going to make this into a school of classical and traditional interests.

>> Stanley Tigerman: They were miffed.

They forgot that what they're dealing with is an authentic, real scholar.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Stern has assembled a faculty and invited guest lecturers with wildly different views from his own.

Like the designer of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, modern architect Richard Meier.

>> Richard Meier: Well, maybe our connection to the past uh, is viewed differently.

We cannot ignore history.

History is a part of it.

We learn from history.

But that doesn't mean imitation of the past.

It doesn't mean copying the past.

It's about ideas, which existed in the past which are valid today.

>> Peter Eisenman: I think I'm different from Bob in lots of ways.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Peter Eisenman also teaches at Yale under Stern.

His work is aggressively modern, like this house that features upside down stairways and a couple's bedroom divided in half.

He's probably best known for the Arizona Cardinals Stadium with a retractable roof and field.

It hosted Super Bowl 42.

>> Peter Eisenman: We have staged a sort of mock combat throughout the years, you have to realize.

Bob would not necessarily believe in what I call the Zeitgeist which is a real problem - the spirit of the age Robert and I and I ultimately have a political difference.

I mean, architecture ultimately is political.

And ideological.

>> Frank Gehry: I can't escape my language, what I am and who I am.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Even the cutting edge architect Frank Gehry has taught in Stern's program.

>> Robert Stern: So these are the buildings you love to hate.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Clearly, Stern loves a good fight with worthy opponents.

But in allowing, in fact welcoming wide-ranging views at Yale, Stern seems to be trying to bridge a great divide.

>> Blair Kamin: In American architectural culture as in American culture, we have this polarized divide.

I mean it's almost like the red states and the blue states.

We have the modernist and the traditionalist.

They don't talk to each other.

They hate each other.

>> Robert Stern: You know, I am not an ideologue in my own work or in my beliefs.

I love architecture.

And what's important is architecture and architecture is a piling up of steps and missteps along the way.

Welcome to Brooklyn on the Gowanus.

I'm Robert Stern.

I'm an architect.

>> Geoffrey Baer: In 1986 Stern starred in his own public television series titled "Pride of Place: A Personal View by Robert A.M.

Stern."

True to form, his program featured people he disagreed with.

But the eight-hour epic gave Stern plenty of time to get his own points across.

>> Robert Stern: We got a new kind of building - big, impersonal boxes of architecture that rose undifferentiated from top to bottom.

Look at them, how boring they are.

>> Geoffrey Baer: With "Pride of Place" Stern brought to a wide TV audience his take on the central debate that had been raging in architecture circles since the 1960s: The battle between glass-box modernism and so-called post-modernism.

>> Robert Stern: We can talk about post-modern, but we don't have time.

We don't want to drive your viewers mad.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Well, briefly, post-modernists argued that new buildings must relate to the past, must be recognizable to the public and fit in with their surroundings - their context.

In the 60s, the debate was framed as a symbolic divide between the modernists, called the whites, and the post-modernists, dubbed the grays.

>> Peter Eisenman: Well Bob invented that.

You should know that.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Did he coin that term?

>> Paul Goldberger: I believe he actually coined the term the grays, the grays and the whites, yeah.

Bob loved the idea of stirring up the pot a little bit.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Stern's ideas were strongly formed at Yale University's School of Architecture in the early 1960s, under department chair Paul Rudolph.

Around the country developers were wiping out large swaths of cities and building glass towers like these in Midtown Manhattan.

But some teachers at Yale were challenging modernism.

>> Robert Stern: Modernist architecture, as my teacher Paul Rudolph said, runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Stern was listening.

And he was also making a big impression on his teachers and fellow students.

>> Stanley Tigerman: Arrogant, chutzpah -- the only guy that called Mr. Rudolph, "Paul."

>> Geoffrey Baer: The head of the department?

>> Stanley Tigerman: The head of the department.

This is before he became Robert A. M. Stern, which only heightened this sort of -- these characteristics to which I'm alluding.

>> Geoffrey Baer: At Yale, Stern first encountered established architects Robert Venturi and Philip Johnson who became leading post-modernists and mentors.

Stern later featured Johnson in his "Pride of Place" series.

>> Robert Stern: It's very American, it seems to me, to have an escape into the wilderness but to bring all your urban sophistication with you.

>> Philip Johnson: Yes, I think that's a good analysis, Professor Stern.

I don't think it occurred to me.

>> Stanley Tigerman: Those figures had a huge impact on Bob.

Bob was sort of a younger version of Philip.

Intellect, gadfly, fingers on the pulse of everything.

Gepetto.

>> Robert Stern: Just for the benefit of the camera this is the detailed development of the George Bush Library in Dallas, which is under construction.

Just dirt at this moment.

>> Blair Kamin: The Republicans tend to like traditional, right?

I don't think it's at all coincidental that it was a Republican president that selected Bob to design a presidential library.

>> Robert Stern: Let's take a look at the carvings in stone, OK?

>> Geoffrey Baer: RAMSA is designing of the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University.

>> Peter Eisenman: That last president is very clever.

Would he choose Peter Eisenman?

No way.

>> James Pearson: Thin bold.

>> Peter Eisenman: Or would he choose Frank Gehry?

No no no.

>> Augusta Barone: We're going to look at this up on top of the trailers, which is about the right height.

>> Peter Eisenman: He knows there's a different message.

>> James Pearson: Previously we had thought of going with something which is a little more delicate.

>> Peter Eisenman: He chose the appropriate architect.

>> Robert Stern: Can we put the two - the one you think you like over there next to the one I'm looking at now so I can... >> Peter Eisenman: I admire the choice that President Bush made because he understood the difference.

>> Robert Stern: Well it's amazing because it really comes into focus when you get far away.

I think the one on the left is nicer than the one on the right.

>> James Pearson: This one is the one that we liked.

>> Robert Stern: Oh.

>> James Pearson: Yeah.

>> Robert Stern: Well there you go.

>> James Pearson: I'm glad we're on the same page.

>> Robert Stern: Yeah we are.

OK!

Done!

Alright.

>> James Pearson: I think the last thing was over here in the rose garden.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Whereas the Bush Presidential Center is a classical temple where American conservatism is literally etched in stone, >> Robert Stern: So here we have the Museum for African Art.

>> Geoffrey Baer: The Museum for African Art at the top of Central Park in East Harlem is made of modern materials with ancient African motifs literally woven in.

>> Robert Stern: A lot of African art and some architecture is involved with weaving of things.

>> Geoffrey Baer: So this is kind of woven looking... >> Robert Stern: So this expression is a weave, a weave.

And this is a building that is made out of precast panels, it's not limestone.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Concrete.

>> Robert Stern: Pre-cast concrete panels, and this comes as close as any place to things we observed in our researches into certain kinds of African art - >> Elsie McCabe Thompson: Part of how he came up with this design was looking at African textiles and basketry.

I mean, the weaves.

>> Robert Stern: They are framing the view.

They do have a kind of non-Western quality to them.

You have a very strong axis of interest in here.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Yeah, well this is a big monumental space in here.

>> Robert Stern: It is indeed.

>> Geoffrey Baer: This?

>> Elsie McCabeThompson: This.

>> Geoffrey Baer: We got an inside look at the making of this monumental space when the museum's president Elsie McCabe Thompson showed us the construction site.

>> Elsie McCabe Thompson: The wall of windows is to show that, yeah, you can come in.

this is a non-traditional museum community.

We didn't wanna be one of those museums that was a fortress, because that's not who we are.

He took a client who only loosely knew what we wanted, and helped us find ourselves, architecturally.

>> Robert Stern: In all my modesty, as I'm sure the viewers of this program can appreciate, it came out very, very well.

>> Elsie McCabe Thompson: This building is the most un-Bob Stern building I've ever seen.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Of all the ways Stern can surprise you, this might be the most surprising.

New York's fabled 42nd street is alive and well and glittering, even garish, thanks in large part to Robert A. M. Stern.

But remember, this is the architect whose earliest inspiration was Fred Astaire.

>> Robert Stern: 42nd Street is one block - the highest concentration of theaters on any block in the world.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Stern's beloved 42nd Street had become seedy and even dangerous.

What was on 42nd Street at its nadir?

>> Robert Stern: Well, it was horrible.

If this wasn't public television I'd really tell you what it was like.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Go ahead.

>> Robert Stern: It was a (expletive) hole.

A complete embarrassment.

It was horrible.

>> Geoffrey Baer: What did you do?

>> Robert Stern: Oh, I wrought a miracle, that's the amazing thing.

>> Geoffrey Baer: At the turn of the 20th century, he helped to bring it back to life.

>> Robert Stern: 42nd Street had been a major entertainment street all through the 20th Century.

>> Robert Stern: "42nd Street" if you watch that movie and you can see how glamorous and exciting it was.

>> Geoffrey Baer: The decline began after World War II with the rise of television.

>> Robert Stern: If you see the movie "The Band Wagon," the film with Fred Astaire who had originally played in "The Band Wagon" on 42nd Street in the New Amsterdam Theater, he comes off the train comes out goes to 42nd Street sees the new 42nd Street... >> Fred Astaire: What's happened to 42nd Street?

>> Robert Stern: and it's pretty sad - he sings a song.

So 42nd Street itself had gone into a catastrophic decline.

>> Geoffrey Baer: The theatres went from showing second-rate action movies to pornographic films.

Finally the City and State of New York bought up much of the property, got rid of the adult entertainment industry and started leasing space to re-developers.

Stern was hired to create design guidelines for 42nd Street.

To pump up the energy, he turned traditional urban planning upside down.

Instead of setting the upper limits on pizzazz, he set only the minimum.

>> Robert Stern: We said, this is the level of light that you can't go less than that.

>> Geoffrey Baer: A minimum.

>> Robert Stern: Minimum.

A typical store on 42nd Street had a sign that you looked at, like I'm looking at you, had a sign overhead, it had a sign that was usually - like a foot sign.

>> Geoffrey Baer: So you mandate signage, like... >> Robert Stern: But, minimums.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Minimum.

>> Robert Stern: We knew we had a great success.

So many signs - such brightness.

Signs are one of the, of - like skyscrapers - the tallest is also then with signs the brightest, the flashiest, the most imaginative - I think Times Square beats Las Vegas.

>> Geoffrey Baer: I mean neon is not from Palladio right?

But this is a different kind of tradition.

>> Robert Stern: It's a completely modern place, which is all relying on communication.

.

You have now on 42nd Street this rebuilt place.

>> Geoffrey Baer: If 42nd Street is all about the glitz of old NY, Stern's new residential towers at 15 Central Park West recapture the glamour as fully as any buildings he has designed yet.

Stern even modeled the top of the building on a classic tower across the park.

>> Paul Goldberger: 15 Central Park West is definitely, you know, an homage to New York in the '30s.

You do see a lot of his own fantasy elements played out here.

>> Geoffrey Baer: Clearly Stern wasn't the only one with that fantasy.

Before the building was finished in 2008 every unit was under contract for a total of about 2 billion dollars according to critic Paul Goldberger, who called it the architectural equivalent of the highest grossing film in history.

Complete with the star power of apartment owners like Denzel Washington and Sting, according to published sources.

>> Geoffrey Baer: From the elegant lobby to the private library everything recalls the great apartment buildings of the past.

Stern even gave the building's modern amenities vintage names.

The driveway is a motor court.

He likens the subterranean health center to a Roman bath.

>> Robert Stern: I hate buildings being called condos or co-ops; those are financing methods.

What is the type?

Again, classical term; the typology.

It is an apartment house; a big house with many parts in it.

Apartments.

Wonderful material, limestone from Indiana, the stone was thick enough, we could have wonderful details.

Of course, the site was spectacular.

There hasn't been a site like that in Manhattan available to any architect in a very, very long time.

>> Paul Goldberger: Well, remember Bob was a kid in Brooklyn who grew up looking at Manhattan and seeing it as this center of glamour.

>> Robert Stern: 15 Central Park West is the fulfillment of my childlike view of what New York was like.

Absolutely.

>> Paul Goldberger: I'm, uh, surprised Bob didn't ask for permission to give a, a dance in the lobby or something when, when the building was finished.

>> Robert Stern: It's not me jumping out of a limo; it should be Fred with top hat, tails, you know, going to some fantastic party.

And to be part of that skyline, that's Bob Stern's dream.

[music] of Notre Dame School of Architecture.