Age of Greed.

From Lost City::
A photo study in the current issue of House & Garden magazine aptly illustrates the kind of anti-culture, anti-heritage, pro-money, short-sighted mindset that is pervading the city just now. It concerns the little-known hive of studios that rest atop Carnegie Hall and have been home to various painters, composers, musicians, dancers and the like ever since old Andrew Carnegie deemed it should be so.

Since June 2007, the Carnegie Hall Coroporation (and, believe me, this outfit is more corporation than Carnegie) has been slipping little "Get Out!" notices under the doors of the studio's various (often elderly) tenants. Many have already left. Some 29 tenants remain in the original 170 studios. They're fighting their evictions in court. Carnegie Hall Corporation wants to use the studios for educational programs that are currently conducted elsewhere.

House and Garden Writes:
Photographer Josef Astor lives and works in one of the last occupied studios Andrew Carnegie had built on the roof of the great concert hall in 1897, hoping to provide rental income to the then struggling hall. Of the original 170 studios like Astor's, only 29 are still used by artists, as Carnegie intended.

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Even allegedly non for profit institutions are on a relentless quest to make sure every square inch generates maximum profit. So what if Carnegie donated the money and intended for it to serve artists....as long as you can legally wrangle the language, thanks to slick lawyer you 'win' there's no right or wrong here, right? ....such is the ethos of "anything goes" baby boom generation.

When the bottom line is the bottom line what else matters? The only question is exactly what sort of city will this become...what sort of city has it become?