New York is the oldest modern city in the world.That always surprises the tourists.The notion that ours is still the world’s newest city – that it is in a state of constant, heedless expansion upward and outward, that the whole place is one big altar to the gods of innovation – has long since ceased to be true. Since the 1960s, a variety of factors, from the emergence of the preservationist movement to Postmodern contextual architecture, has imbued New Yorkers with a richer sense of the past than ever before. In a thousand ways, the confrontation with the past imposes itself on the minds of the living.

In a few days, the map room of the 42nd Street Public Library will reopen, restored to its former glory after decades of neglect. Meanwhile, the original ceiling of the Palm Court at the Plaza is being re-created. And just last week, Mayor Bloomberg, who was entirely silent on the fate of 2 Columbus Circle, intervened to save the Austin Nichols warehouse between North 3rd and 4th Streets on the Williamsburg waterfront.

As concerns the warehouse, I can’t say that I care greatly whether it is saved or not. Nor do I care greatly that this large functional structure from 1913 is enlivened with a few Egyptian motifs or that it was designed by Cass Gilbert, better known for his Woolworth Tower (which surely does deserve to be preserved).

The Austin Nichols warehouse, together with the Domino Sugar Plant in Brooklyn, the Sohmer Piano Factory in Queens, and the former Con Ed Waterside Power Station near the United Nations, is the subject of “Preservation on the Edge: Our Threatened East River Heritage,” an exhibit of images and texts at the Urban Center through January 29. This diminutive show consists of several panels and texts devoted to each of these buildings that beetle over the East River. Running through all the panels is the implicit assumption that each structure is a thing of self-evident beauty.

But is that actually the case? Though the overwhelming crush of contemporary taste would seem to impel us to that assessment, there is little more than nostalgia and the inertial force of habit to cause us to see these four rotting, industrial-era artifacts as beautiful. The same is true of ten thousand other rusted wrecks, including the Tate Modern and the High-Line, which is about to be transformed into a park.

The urge toward reclamation of superannuated infrastructure and industry in the name of culture and leisure will surely be seen, years hence, as the defining element of contemporary urbanism and taste. Few people these days can look at these sites without an almost libidinous zeal to transform them into top-market condos, dance studios, or art galleries. This is the latest aesthetic reflex to set up shop in the human mind, fully as powerful as the one that, in the Victorian era, demanded that every building look like Westminster Abbey or, half a century later, that it look like the Parthenon, or, half a century later still, that it assume the self-evident perfection of the International Style.

It is that “self-evidence” that you must guard against with main force. Once you have done so, you are free to conclude that some of the buildings mentioned at the Urban Center are not without charm. Charm is a floating signifier, as I think the semioticians call it, and for the moment is has landed so emphatically upon these corroded hunks of metal, concrete, and brick that even those of us who resist it may concede something of their brutish power. All I ask is that we have the aesthetic honesty not to suppose that they are actually good architecture, for they rarely, if ever, are.

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Turning from the periphery of the island to its core, you will find further testament to the oldness of New York in the center of Central Park. If you have been to the Mall in recent years, you will have found that this quarter-mile promenade, just about the only uncurving element in Frederick Law Olmsted’s Greensward Plan, was suffering from badly corroded concrete and asphalt pavement, not to mention benches in various states of disrepair.

To rectify matters, the Central Park Conservancy has proposed an ambitious $1.5 million plan to repave the area with textured concrete that will recall the gravel path that existed on the site until the days of Robert Moses. The benches, which have already been replaced several times over the past 150 years, will be restored to their original cast-iron glory. The American elms that align the path will be pruned; the cast-iron railing, installed in the 1980s, will be restored, and new lighting and water fountains will reflect an earlier age.

All of this will be an unalloyed boon to the city, provided it can be done in short order. About a month and a half ago, I was told by a spokesperson for the conservancy that the work would be completed by the spring of 2006. But I have yet to see any work being done on the site, except, of course, for surrounding the whole area with massive chicken-wire fences, something the conservancy does spectacularly well. Given that the nearby Naumberg Bandshell took two years to overhaul, rather than the projected three months, I would be surprised if this latest venture weren’t a labor of years.

jgardner@nysun.com