The travertine plaza around the fountain, the opera house arches with the works hung where the murals are, the crystal chandeliers rising, the crowd in evening clothes.
Lincoln Center was built on 16 acres of the Upper West Side cleared under urban renewal in the 1950s, the neighborhood of San Juan Hill. President Eisenhower broke ground in 1959. Philharmonic Hall opened in 1962, and the Metropolitan Opera House opened in 1966, designed by Wallace K. Harrison with two murals by Marc Chagall in its lobby. Its chandeliers rise to the ceiling before each performance.
Source · Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts ↗
The travertine plaza with the round fountain at its centre, the five soaring arches of the opera house glowing through glass, the two great murals in the lobby, the starburst chandeliers, the flanking theaters with their colonnades. Mood: curtain in ten minutes. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.