October 2011 Tours
Saturday, October 1, 11:00 a.m.
Catalysts for Change: East Midtown and the 1961 Code
Our second tour on the 1961 zoning code is devoted to the East Side. Following discussion of the Seagram Building and its handsome plaza, which played an important role in the law’s passage, we’ll examine what was built in the vicinity on Park Ave. and along the former route of the Third Ave. elevated railway. We’ll also visit the mixed-use Citigroup Center, a major example of late modernism, to see how innovative public amenities, including subway entrances, an entrance plaza and a multi-level shopping atrium, inspired revisions to the code in the mid-1970s.
Tour Leader: Matt Postal, architectural historian.
Meet at: N.W. corner of Park Ave. and 53rd St. MAP.
Cost of Tour:$15, $10 MAS members. Pay at tour.
Sunday, October 2, 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.Arts for Transit: Brighton Line (RSVP)
Learn more about the MTA Arts for Transit program as we tour new and notable contemporary public artworks permanently installed along the Brighton Line in Brooklyn. Traveling by subway, we will visit projects by Mary Temple, Jason Middlebrook, Rita MacDonald, and others (artists will be present). The tour will conclude with a visit to the rehabilitated Ocean Parkway Viaduct, which features terra cotta reliefs by artist Deborah Masters. Tiled art in photo: Brooklyn Seeds, by Jason Middlebrook.
Reservations required. Please RSVP online or call (212) 935-2075.
Bring a Metro Card.
Tour Leader: Amy Hausmann, assistant director, MTA Arts for Transit.
Meet at: Provided upon registration.
Cost of Tour:$15, $10 MAS members.
Sunday, October 9, 2:00 p.m.
East Village III: The Bowery (SOLD OUT)
Beginning in Cooper Square, we will explore the architecture and history of the fabled Bowery–once the working-class Broadway, later the street of lost souls, and now a trendy thoroughfare of chic hotels, restaurants, and apartment complexes. On this street of contradictions, the New Museum of Contemporary Art (2007) by the Pritzker Prize-winning SANAA stands two doors away from The Bowery Mission (founded 1879 and recipient of a 2011 Place Matters Award). And how long ago was it that the names “Avalon” and “Bowery” may have been the two most opposed terms in the language?
Reservations required. Please RSVP online or call (212) 935-2075.
Tour Leader: Francis Morrone, architectural historian.
Meet at: Provided upon registration.
Note: Please check MTA Weekender for up-to-date weekend transit information.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members.
Saturday, October 15, 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Starchitecture NYC, 2011 (SOLD OUT)
This tour will follow a similar itinerary to the September 24 tour.
Reservations required. Please call (212) 935-2075.
Tour Leader: Matt Postal, architectural historian.
Meet at: Provided upon registration.
Note: Please check MTA Weekender for up-to-date weekend transit information.
Cost of Tour: $55, $49 MAS members.
Sunday, October 16, 11:00 a.m.
Crown Heights North (SOLD OUT)
Remarkable stand-alone mansions, fine row houses, architecturally significant apartment houses and beautiful houses of worship, can be found in Crown Heights North, one of Brooklyn’s most beautiful, yet underappreciated neighborhoods. Largely developed between 1880 and 1932, today, Crown Heights North is a diverse community with a Caribbean lilt and a neighborhood on the rise. Join us in exploring the St. Marks District, Doctor’s Row and Brower Park as well as other highlights of this newly-expanded historic district.
Reservations required. Please RSVP online or call (212) 935-2075.
Tour Leaders: Suzanne Spellen, Crown Heights North-based writer and architectural historian, and Morgan Munsey, architect, historian, and resident of Bedford Stuyvesant.
Meet at: Provided upon registration.
Note: Please check MTA Weekender for up-to-date weekend transit information.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members.
Saturday, October 22, 11:00 a.m.
Chinatown-Little Italy Historic District (SOLD OUT)
Chinatown & Little Italy, forged in same dynamic period of American history, were declared a National Register historic district in 2010. The historic district’s remarkable architectural variety includes landmark examples of religious, civic and institutional architecture, standing alongside row houses and tenements that housed three centuries of immigrants from around the world. The Chinese and Italian immigrants who made this neighborhood their home shared many parallel experiences, from reasons for emigrating to distinctive food cultures. This single district encompassing the historic core of Little Italy and Chinatown acknowledges the long and ongoing relationship and common history of these two immigrant populations.
Reservations required. Please RSVP online or call (212) 935-2075.
Tour Leaders: Kerri Culhane, architectural historian.
Meet at: Provided upon registration.
Note: Please check MTA Weekender for up-to-date weekend transit information.
Cost of Tour:$15, $10 MAS members.
Sunday, October 23, 2:00 p.m.
Forest Hills: Garden City in the City
The “fairy book suburb of Forest Hills on Long Island” is how Sinclair Lewis described it in 1920 in his novel Main Street. Forest Hills Gardens exemplifies the garden city planning that Jane Jacobs criticized. But are there also Jacobsean virtues to Forest Hills? And what lessons does it hold for community design in the 21st century?
Tour Leader: Francis Morrone, architectural historian.
Transit: E,F,M,R, to Forest Hills, 71 Ave.
Meet at: Meet under the LIRR viaduct on Austin St. MAP.
Note: Please check MTA Weekender for up-to-date weekend transit information.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members. Pay at tour.
Saturday, October 29, 11:00 a.m.
Downtown’s Forgotten Neighborhood
In 1917, a local publication counted 27 nationalities living around the edge of the Financial District. By the end of the 19th century Arabs, Greeks, Turks and other peoples from the Middle East, along with various Slavic nationalities, had settled in the old Irish and German immigrant area on the Lower West Side. They created a vibrant multicultural melting pot that remained until the construction of the World Trade Center complex in the 1960s. Writer and poet Ameen Rihani, whose life’s work was to strive for cultural dialogue and peace, once lived in the heart of this neighborhood. We will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Rihani’s The Book of Khalid, the first Arab-American novel, as we view a landmarked former Syrian Church and a tenement on Washington St. just selected for a 2011 Place Matters Award. We’ll hear about immigrant life from urban historian Joe Svehlak, whose family settled here in the early 1900s, and learn from resident community activists about the struggles to protect the neighborhood from rampant redevelopment.
Tour Leader: Joe Svehlak, urban historian.
Transit: #1 and R trains to South Ferry/Whitehall St. #4, 5 trains to Bowling Green.
Meet at: Dutch pavilion café in Peter Minuit Plaza, in front of the Staten Island Ferry. By State St. and Whitehall St. MAP.
Note: Please check MTA Weekender for up-to-date weekend transit information.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members. Pay at tour.
Sunday, October 30, 12:00 p.m.
Beyond Sight: The September 11 & Irish Hunger Memorials (SOLD OUT)
September marked the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the opening of the memorial designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker. This tour offers visitors with visual impairments, and others, the possibility to learn about significant design through visual description and multi-sensory exploration. We’ll discuss the many possibilities and responsibilities of memorials, especially in a city like New York. From the WTC we will stroll to the Irish Hunger Memorial, designed by Brian Tolle, Gail Wittwer-Laird and 1100 Architect, to explore a very different and equally singular concept of memorial design.
Reservations required. Please RSVP online or call (212) 935-2075.
Tour Leader: Sylvia Laudien-Meo, art historian.
Meet at: Provided upon registration.
Note: Please check MTA Weekender for up-to-date weekend transit information.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members.