Why did anyone ever think building a stadium in Manhattan was a good idea, asks Ada Louise Huxtable. “A stadium should never–repeat, never–be built on the midtown Manhattan waterfront; this is a flagrant violation of everything we know about urban land use. It is axiomatic that you do not put industrial-size blockbusters in uniquely desirable locations; they destroy an enormous potential for profit and pleasure while denying access to one of the city’s most valuable amenities. Located next to the convention center, the stadium would have doubled the mass and length of the huge bunker against the river already established by that “lump of black coal”–as essayist Phillip Lopate described its dark bulk in his literary trip around the edges of Manhattan–cutting off views and access with nearly a mile of hulking wall.”