THE Landmarks Preservation Commission has twice designated as a landmark the 1935 Hayden Planetarium on West 81st Street. But the American Museum of Natural History is moving ahead with plans to demolish its mild, moderne structure -- with the landmarks commission's blessing, but amid dismay and suspicion by some preservation groups.
The American Museum of Natural History opened its first building in 1877, one unit in what was planned as a giant, gridded complex of 12 buildings enclosing four courtyards running from 77th to 81st Streets, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. Although the style changed, the museum announced at least three more times -- the 1890's, the 1920's and the 1970's -- that it would complete the original plan.
But by 1934 the scale of the undertaking and the Depression left the museum not even half complete. The Hayden Planetarium is the only structure built since that time.
In the 1920's the museum planned a five-story astronomical hall at the exact center of the projected complex. Its crowning ornament was to be a planetarium, a domed auditorium where special projectors could display the night skies. But the project stalled, in part because of money.
The modern projection planetarium was developed after World War I by Walter Bauersfeld, an engineer for the Carl Zeiss Optical Works. A craze for planetariums followed, and the first Zeiss-type planetarium in America was the dramatic Adler in Chicago, built in 1930.Continue reading the main story
In 1933 the American Museum of Natural History established the Planetarium Authority; its state charter allowed it to receive $650,000 in Federal funds from the Reconstruction Finance Authority. Charles Hayden, described by Time magazine as a ''dapper bachelor banker,'' gave $150,000 for the optics.
The revived planetarium project was shifted to one of the four projected courtyards of the complex. The architects Trowbridge & Livingston designed a severe brick rectangle with Art Moderne grillwork and doors, accented by floodlighting.
Even for the 1930's and even for a completely new building type, the Hayden is a puzzling structure, strangely disconnected from the rest of the museum and not much to look at.
Research by Higgins & Quasebarth, a preservation firm and consultant to the museum, indicates that the planetarium was expressly designed to be enveloped by the future museum complex and was thus, nominally, a temporary design.
BUT it was good enough to fool the writers of the 1939 ''W.P.A. Guide to New York City,'' who described it as ''among the most interesting examples of modern functional architecture.''
There was no other architectural criticism of the Hayden Planetarium, but its show of 9,000 stars of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres drew rave reviews and millions of visitors, as did its first-floor orrery, with moving models of the planets out to the orbit of Saturn.
Now the American Museum of Natural History believes that the Hayden Planetarium is out of date and wants to replace it by the year 2000.
Dr. Neil Tyson, the director, says that since 1935, the field of astronomy has profoundly changed. For instance, constellations were once a major part of astronomy texts but are now barely noticed.
Dr. Tyson foresees a sophisticated center where a computerized projector can display not just the stars as seen from the Earth, but black holes and other phenomena. The architects Polshek and Partners and the exhibit designer Ralph Appelbaum Associates have developed futuristic plans for a huge transparent cube containing a spherical planetarium inside and planetary models suspended in midair.
Another aspect of the design is a three-level parking garage next door -- lines of cars often back up into 81st Street waiting for spaces to open up in the museum's lot.
In 1967 the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the museum complex -- including the Hayden Planetarium -- as a landmark, and it was also included in the 1990 Central Park West Historic District. But last fall the commission reported favorably on the proposed demolition of the Hayden Planetarium, noting that the 1935 structure had received short shrift in previous designation reports. The Municipal Art Society and the New York Landmarks Conservancy also supported the demolition.
But other groups continue to oppose the destruction of the Planetarium and believe the museum has received a kind of preferential treatment for which private owners would not even hope.
The Historic Districts Council pointed out that the commission specifically protected the Hayden Planetarium in its earlier actions, even though it did exclude other museum structures. The council has suggested building the new planetarium on the open parking lot next door, reusing the Hayden and encouraging the use of mass transit.
Both groups, along with local preservationists like Samuel Leff, who lives on West 79th Street, suspect that the American Museum of Natural History is getting the same treatment the Metropolitan Museum of Art received 25 years ago, when its massive building campaign severely altered several landmark facades.
But although other permits are pending, most dissenters think the landmarks commission was the biggest hurdle. John Krawchuk, a spokesman for Landmark West!, a local preservation group, said that the Polshek plan is ''a good, solid design'' but that the adaptive reuse of the Hayden Planetarium is now a lost opportunity.
''Because of its humility, it bespeaks of an era of economy, and our landmarks need to tell the whole story of New York City,'' he said. ''We feel it is a dangerous precedent.''
However, Deborah Sack, a spokeswoman for the landmarks commission, said the commission found that the Hayden ''is not a distinguished example of planetarium architecture.'' She said the commission had allowed the demolition of other individual structures within landmark complexes, like the Central Park Zoo.Continue reading the main story