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entire article about Moynihan Train Hall in today’s paper but zero holistic context re: *who* the hall is named after and the troubled impact of “The Moynihan Report”, the 1965 report on “The Negro Family” written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
in the midst of a national convo about monuments, it feels like an oversight to not pay close mind to monumental architecture as a part of this discussion + what buildings hold space for, valorise
Including here 1987 excerpt from Hortense Spillers essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” where she addresses the Moynihan’s report + how he paints Black family as “pathology” (full PDF accessible here: https://people.ucsc.edu/~nmitchel/hortense_spillers_-_mamas_baby_papas_maybe.pdf)
what to me feels particularly insidious + ordinarily violent about this is that now the name of the building (and, in turn, the body / history it represents) becomes a constant meeting place in our colloquial vernacular re: transport and movement; “meet me at—“, “i’m at—“
by naming (monumental) buildings they become places of congregation and so we are housed within these names, the troubles they (re)present
