New York’s urban landscape is an amalgam of innovative styles that span the gamut of American history, architectural and otherwise. A backdrop preferred by both Hollywood, television, photographers and artists, the New York skyline has evolved over the years as structures have been erected and demolished, and it is recognizable around the globe as a symbol of American innovation. Students of architecture and amateur aficionados will thrill at the number and variety of prime examples located throughout the city. What follows are a few architectural jewels that make this queen of American Cities sparkle. If you are interested in learning more, the AIA Guide to New York City and the Blue Guide New York are useful references. See also this New York architecture site for plenty of photos and background information.
In addition, architecture and urban planning fans will love a stop at the Municipal Arts Society. This fabulous organization offers exhibits, tours, and classes, and is one of the premier societies responsible for the preservation and promulgation of great architecture in NYC. Numerous tours to whet (and satiate) the appetite! And their incredible bookstore, same address, is tiny but jam-packed with thousands of great books, gifts, cards, even professional test preparation materials, for the architecture lover in your life.
6th and B Garden Avenue B and East 6th Street (below Tompkins Square Park)- Most visitors have no idea this place exists. Nestled in a lot that appears to have at one time been the site of a building, this place is a tribute to New York's weirdest and most wonderful denizens: the artists.
In the 1980's, the surrounding area called Alphabet City was epitomized by Tony Kushner in Angels in America through his character Louis: It's where the Jews lived when they first came to America, and now, a hundred years later, the place to which their more seriously f@$Ked up grandchildren repair." At one time, much of the area was once indeed a haven for Jewish refugees from the Pale of Settlement; by the late 1970s it was a place that landlords had abandoned in droves due to the energy crisis. By the early 1980s, drug dealers prowled the streets , preying on the poor, the prostitutes, and the outcasts that huddled in abandoned tenaments, some of which were over a hundred years old and falling apart. Violent crime was all too common and the need to escape at the prick of a heroin needle unfortunately also coincided with the rise of AIDS.
In spite of all this it was also the site of incredible artistic energy: Keith Haring, Neckface, Alan Ginsberg, Basquiat, the New York Dolls, and Blondie all claimed this area as their territory and many dozens more less famous thrived on a Bohemian vibe that could not be found above 14th Street.
The 6th and B Garden is one of a handful of attempts at a neighborhood trying to "take back what was rightfully theirs." It is a tribute to what young artists of the time with no money, no wealthy benefactor, no Andrew Lloyd Weber or Park Avenue endowment could do using only their imaginations. It shows what one can do with junk if one puts his mind to it: as the people who lived here were a veritable Salon des Refusés that the rich uptowners wouldn't touch with a bargepole. It is fitting that this park has a huge tower made entirely of refuse. No visitor is quite sure exactly why it was made by the local named Eddie (still believed to be at large somewhere in the East Village) but somehow, it works perfectly: 25 year old junk towards the top of the tower includes an old rocking horse, old shoes, stuffed animals and the remains of bits of string and cable. It blends well with the newer junk towards the bottom (for even stranger reasons people, especially students from the School of Visual Arts and NYU architecture students, keep adding to it) and the even weirder junk that is periodically interspersed with the blooming flowers and small trees: a blend of the organic and green that contrasts strongly with the plastic, concrete world the artists of the 1980's were boxed into. Leave a banana peel or plastic cup or two as a sign of appreciation and respect: you won't regret it, as any young art or architecture student will tell you that this is one of the purest, most humble forms of creativity in the entire city.(And do not worry: the drug dealers and thugs, thanks to the efforts of the last two mayors, Bloomberg and Giuliani, have long since scurried away like frightened rats.)
Brooklyn Bridge , ( website) This is a very famous national landmark and is one of the oldest suspension bridges of its kind in America. At the time of its completion in 1883 it was a revolutionary symbol of newfound industriousness: at first people were so shocked that it actually held together and was actually a reality they were frightened to try to cross it. Today it still serves a large portion of the traffic coming into and out of the city (on 9/11, thousands of the people who ran for their lives in downtown Manhattan crossed this bridge covered in soot to get home to points in Brooklyn and beyond, distances of up to 15 miles away or more.) For a new perspective on Manhattan and its history be sure to complete its span all the way to Brooklyn by renting a bicycle downtown or taking a leisurely walk-it works up an appetite and their are plenty of nice little nooks to duck into in Williamsburg and DUMBO with places to eat (American shopkeepers shall be sympathetic if you make the attempt in humid July weather: a free cold glass of water or large pitcher of iced tea is in order for the poor foreign tourist who comes in red faced and sweaty, unwitting that 95° F is roughly equal to 32°C.)
Cathedral of St. John the Divine , ( website) 1047 Amsterdam Avenue – located on the west side in Morningside Heights, this impressive gothic cathedral, when finished, will be the among the largest churches in the world: it is only 2/3 complete after 110 years. St. John the Divine is the headquarters of the Episcopal Church, a member of the Anglican communion. (It doesn't bear the Anglican name because as went the colonists against King George III as head of the Church, so did the congregations and clerics.) It is 186 meters long and has a nave ceiling roughly 38 m high, easily exceeding the same figures for Westminster in London and most of Notre Dame de Paris could fit inside it when it is complete. Unlike other European structures St. John reflects multiple styles of church architecture: Roman arches and columns separate the high altar and ambulatory, the attached chapels are Gothic but take inspiration from British, French, and Spanish interpretations of that period, and its older portions derive their inspiration from Romanesque, Norman, and Byzantine structures in France, Britain, and Italy. If one decides to visit, enquire about the Barberini tapestries by Raphael: some of these are property of the Vatican, but not all of them are in the hands of the Catholic Church!
Inside St. John The Divine, there is a Great Organ constructed in 1911 capable of playing 61 different notes and, quite frankly, is huge: it is concert standard and must be forceful enough to join in voice with the other four organs inside, it must blend into the surrounding architecture so as not to be too distracting, and above all, it has be heard way up in the pulpit. Damaged by fire in 2001 it is still being carefully restored, but the sheer power of this monster will amaze any with musical experience: the pipes require greater than average pressure to resonate and were built accordingly.
Chrysler Building , 405 Lexington Avenue – This is the building that Miss Hannigan wanted her beleaguered orphans to emulate in its shininess in the play Annie, although "shiny" doesn't quite do this juggernaut justice: she is simply beautiful.The Chrysler Building was one of the first to use stainless steel over a large exposed building surface and soars 319 meters into the sky; for the time of construction this would have made her the tallest in the world. She is very geometric in her layout, typical of Art Deco and very appropriate for her owners: Art Deco derives heavily from industrial shapes and concepts, and design elements inherent in cars built by Chrysler at this time are echoed in the radiator cap gargoyles near the top of the building. The lobby is accessible to the public and is a gorgeous display done in African marble inlaid with chrome; as the building gets taller the dominant decorative theme switches with every setback (tall buildings of this time were typically designed like a wedding cake, where each new "layer" became smaller the taller the structure got.) The Chrysler Building is topped by her signature starburst design of her topmost windows which typically reflect the blue sky around it in good weather, complimenting her shimmering crown.
Citigroup Center, 601 Lexington Avenue – the angled roof of this office tower is yet another well-known symbol of the Manhattan skyline. It was built in the 1970's and presented a very unusual engineering problem for its times: originally, the site on which it was to be built was occupied by a Lutheran church. The church agreed to move a block away to a vacant space but with only the explicit agreement that another small church could occupy a corner of the old space without any connections to the Citigroup building or columns going through it. So, the problem was solved basically by putting the entire structure on stilts: large structures at the bottom are masked in steel but bear the weight of over fifty stories above, plus a 350 metric ton tuned mass damper (this is a structure used in modern skyscrapers to stabilize buildings against winds.)
Eldridge Street Synagogue ( website) 12 Eldridge Street- "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." These words are much more associated with Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty out in the middle of the harbor, but it is a lesser known fact that Emma Lazarus may have been inspired by the plight of those living in the Pale of Settlement, Jews at the bitter mercy of Russian pogroms. If anything can be said, thus, about the Synagogue on Eldridge Street, it was where these people first landed and took their first deep breath of relief.
Eldridge Street Synagogue is one of the earliest surviving of its kind; it opened its doors in 1886 at a time where the Lower East Side had a decidedly heavier Yiddish accent. Inside it has the traditional elements of Jewish worship (ladies and men sit separately) is done in a decidedly Moorish Revival style with its ornamental keyhole windows and decorative painted elements with organic lines; sadly this also underlines its relationship to the much larger temples of Eastern Europe (many of these were destroyed during Kristallnacht and some have never been fully restored: this may be as close to those original palaces as it gets.) The front contains a large rose window and side windows depict impressive detail in their depiction of the word of Y-h--h. Today it is still a functioning shul for Orthodox Jews and visitors are welcome to visit the small museum the congregation has set up. (If you happen to see a congregationalist and wish to ask a question, most shall not mind so long as you are quiet and respectful-please leave them be if they are praying.)
Empire Diner 210 Tenth Avenue at 22nd Street-Blink
and you'll miss this little gem: by the standards of the New York City
eating scene, she's small and by far not as grand as anything Mario
Batali or Gordon Ramsay would cook up. On the other hand, she was never
designed for this. The Empire Diner was built during the period of
time in between when New York lunches were served out of movable chuck
wagons and when automats rather than Starbucks were where New Yorkers
spent their hard earned lunch break. On approach she looks just like
something out of an Edward Hopper painting: tucked into a street corner with classic industrial, Art Deco Lines that earned her a mention by Billy Joel in his song "Great Wall of China" . She has served generations of New Yorkers their
coffee on gleaming chrome countertops (yes, there is still a jukebox inside) and she is the real
McCoy, a real American diner built in 1947 and one of only a few of her kind still standing. It is not half bad idea to enjoy a malt here-where else can one EAT in history?
Empire State Building , (website) 350 Fifth Avenue – Arguably this is the most famous architectural landmark in the city: whether you've watched Sleepless in Seattle, An Affair to Remember, or King Kong one time too many, this Art Deco building is the city's heart and soul: its name is derived from the fact that New York State's nickname is the "Empire State" and its lofty motto is "Excelsior" (ever higher.) Constructed in 1931 as part of the public works program under FDR's New Deal, this building is a testament to a city's ability to bounce back: 2 years after the Stock Market Crash of '29, people were lining up for work again and through the public works program average citizens built this old girl piece by piece (even the blimp mooring at the top of the antenna that never came to pass.) Today it is lit up according to the season: red and green for Christmas, blue for Hannukah, red for Valentine's/Chinese New Year, and green for St. Patrick's Day. (Note: for reference on its photogenic properties, inspect prints of photographs by American photographer Margaret Bourke-White. Many of her pieces center around New York City architecture and the Empire State Building was one of her favorite subjects.)
Flatiron Building 175 Fifth Avenue – This building is one of the city's early skyscrapers. Constructed near Union Square in 1902 in Beaux Arts style, it has been used in the past 10 years as the exterior for the Daily Bugle for the Spiderman films. Mostly, this building is used for office space but its lowest floors contain some nice retail space.
Freedom Tower (website) 1 World Trade Center, Financial District- On 11th September 2001, two separate airplanes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center destroying them and taking thousands of lives and wounding countless others in the process. For nearly an entire decade the sad reminder of those who lost their lives has been a charred, burnt out pit in Downtown Manhattan named Ground Zero and tourists have lined up continually to see "where it happened" and read the explanations put up hastily to explain the events of that day.
However, New Yorkers are moving on, refusing to be brought to their knees by turmoil. This pit shall not remain much longer: by 2014 it is expected to be completely replaced. In 2003 famous artist and architect Daniel Liebskind (built Berlin's Jewish Museum) won the competition to become master architect for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site including the brand new Freedom Tower. The Freedom Tower, when complete, shall be a state of the art construction with cutting edge contemporary attributes. Including the planned antenna, it shall be 1,776 feet (541 m) high to mark the date 4th July, 1776 (America's official birthday.) The tower shall rise from a 61square meter base that shall be clad in more than 2,000 pieces of prismatic glass. The main themes running throughout shall be a sense of movement and light: it is designed to give a subtle glow, echoing Lady Liberty in the harbor and like both Liberty and the Empire State Building its top shall be able to cast colored light. Certain security details are (for good reason) kept top secret, but it is known that steps are being taken to avoid the same calamities that besieged its predecessor, like blast resistant plastics included in the window casings and much more modern technology than was available when the original towers were constructed in the 1960s. At the top, a brand new restaurant and observation deck shall replace the one that was destroyed in the blast and once again offer commanding views of New York Harbor.
The Freedom Tower is intended to be a "green" building inside and out: it shall overlook a large park dedicated to the memory of the victims of the 2001 terrorist attack and inside it shall use many of the newest innovations for renewable energy. Cooling systems shall use recycled rainwater the building collects from the outside. Grey water will be recycled for toilet use; an important feature in a building meant to serve many thousands at once. Reportedly fuel cell technology and wind energy are included in the blueprints somehow to electrify the building and currently the energy requirements exceed city code requirements by 20%. As of 2008, the base is already going up and in the coming six years any who get a snapshot of its construction may be witnesssing a municipal project the likes of which New York City hasn't undertaken in nearly 50 years: it is worth looking away from the pit for a moment to see this phoenix rise from the ashes.
George Washington Bridge : This bridge owes its name to a piece of history: In November 1776 under Lord Howe, 8,000 British and Hessian [German] troops descended upon New York City eventually sacking it. Effectively this made the Hudson River inaccesible, choking off supply to points in New England and posed a major threat to the lives of the Founding Fathers hidden away in Philadelphia.(A standing army less than five days ride to Independence Hall would have been a one way ticket to Tyburn if they were captured.) With a large amount of men captured, George Washington was forced to flee with what remained of his troops across the river to safety on the New Jersey side of the river at Fort Lee, the cannons roaring at Fort Washington and Fort Tryon behind him on the New York side of the river. Due to the foggy conditions, Washington barely escaped alive: those that didn't make it became guests of His Majesty aboard unsanitary prison ships, many never again to see the light of day nor the Independence their blood had purchased.
Today the George Washington Bridge stands not far from where he made his crossing and portions of the battlements of Fort Lee are still visible today from the bridge, perched high on a natural granite cliff called the New Jersey Palisades. (The fort is maintained as a National Historic Site and is one of a handful of colonial structures still standing within the city limits of New York.) For a time she held the title of longest suspension bridge in the world and she carries more traffic than the M1 into London; in the middle of her history engineers had to add a second deck locals jokingly nicknamed"Martha", after the nation's first First Lady, Martha Custis Washington.
Originally the George Washington was to be encased in heavy concrete; however after the fact it was decided to keep it in its current skeletal form as a nod to modern art; Le Corbusier praised the decision and today it serves a very large amount of traffic as it is in the middle of the corridor that forms Interstate 95, a highway that extends from Maine to Florida. (If one is planning to use this route as means to access Washington D.C. during one's trip take note that congestion is not unusual during rush hour.)
Grand Central Terminal , ( website) 42nd Street at Park Avenue . This beautiful, large Beaux Arts building was almost destroyed: its sister, the original Pennsylvania Station, had an arcade that bore a strong resemblance to St. Pancras's in London, but alas it was not enough to prevent its now much-regretted demise in 1964: architects and citzens today consider this one of the worst mistakes in the history of New York, only topped by the structure's replacement with a much lesser, hideously ugly building. (Today there are talks of relocating Penn Station to the Farley Post Office from its current place, the basement of Madison Square Garden; for reference as to what the original looked like, it bore a striking resemblance to this post office building across the street.) In 1968, it became clear to the public that Grand Central might meet the same fate when Marcel Breuer unveiled plans to replace the station with a tower larger than the Pan Am building and office space. Citizens, (led by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) were outraged and New York City filed suit to stop the construction, eventually resulting in its purchase by the people of New York and a restoration project that took thirty years to finish.
Grand Central currently has a large mural of the Western zodiac on its ceiling done in gold leaf set on a blue green legend: it took nearly a decade to restore this to its original glory as unfortunately it had been the victim of smoke from kerosene lamps and neglect from a rail company that treated it more like a commodity than a work of art. (A small portion of the mural in the corner has been left untouched so visitors can compare the difference.) This mural is best viewed at night when it is properly lit; this is done preferably from the très chic restaurant Métrazur dining with one's sweetheart, glass of wine in hand leaning over the East Balcony. The main windows have been restored to their original purpose to shed great amounts of light on the marble floors and ceilings, a nod to Beaux Arts's neoclassical roots (it resembles the effect of a Roman oculus when the weather is good.) Along the corridors on the top level are lots of little nooks for shops of all kinds and below level are a lot of nice places for the average joe to sit and have a reasonably priced lunch or snack: Grand Central, as far as the 300 year history of New York goes, is fairly old, but uses its spaces well blending old with new (and proving one can teach this old dog new tricks.) At Christmas, the place is dressed up in holly and pine; a laser light show is put on at night and the effect is one where a person feels like he is walking through a sea of stars, a good thing if one is on his way to the foyer where artisans set up little carts and stations to sell gifts like hand knit sweaters or funky glass ornaments.
Museum of Modern Art (also called MoMA)( website) 11 West 53rd Street – MoMA contains one of the world’s richest collections of contemporary art, newly renovated by architect Yoshio Taniguchi. This building has a distinctive Asian feel to it: the words Japanese minimalism come to mind. Its understatedness however does enhance the very broad collection of art from portraits by Lucian Freud to Basquiat to the original Van Gogh's Starry Night. It congregates itself around a central formation for escalators to ascend and descend and is one of the most tranquil, avant garde spaces in New York City.
New York Public Library , ( website) 5th Avenue and 42nd Street – Completed in 1911, this architectural masterpiece houses one of the country’s major research libraries: inside, one shall find nearly any book one wishes to read, accesible with a library card (since its inception this library has sought to educate the people of New York no matter their station by making most of their collection available by those who wish to read.) This library is the main branch of one of the largest library systems in America. It is served by both public funding and private endowment and thus is home to an enormous trove of treasures, easily giving some libraries like Oxford's Bodleian or Paris's Sorbonne a run for its money: the powers that be at this library often work in concert with the Library of Congress.
Many works found here relate to the city's and country's history, are written in multiple languages and a dozen different alphabets, and other portions of the collection are older than the library itself: prints by Currier and Ives or 19th century political cartoons from the British publication Punch. First editions of The Leatherstocking Tales, The Wizard of Oz, The Three Musketeers, Nabokov and Tolstoy in the original Russian and ancient copies of The Inferno by Dante Alighieri. Medieval codices, Gutenberg bibles, a rare, original draft copy of the Declaration of Independence and the writings of Thomas Paine: all of the above are kept and painstakingly preserved here and are made accesible to researchers and students upon written request. (Many of these are also subject to public viewing; history buffs and grad students may want to enquire about private ones months in advance so that the librarians may carefully prepare what could be an extremely frail and delicate document for exposure to light and air!)
The library building itself is as grand as the collection, an often overlooked piece of history by foreign tourists: the building is a National Historic Landmark and is made mostly out of white marble quarried in Massachusetts and New York. The main portico contains hand carved Beaux Arts decorative pieces and the staircases are as grand and elegant as they are very large. In its study rooms, it has sweeping murals painted on 16 m high ceilings and these are set in painstakingly carved wooden scrollwork typical of the late 19th and early 20th century. Some rooms on the top floor contain priceless pieces of art by early American painters like Gilbert Stuart and also others by American Impressionist John Singer Sargeant (the Library from time to time shall rotate the artwork patrons have donated over the past century for free.) The main study rooms have antique bookcases made from American red oak and contain thousands of reference books which, upon request at the main desk, shall be brought to a patron or if the person has difficulty finding it shall be assisted; the reference and study section alone has two separate floors. Certain floors also shall put on photography and print exhibits from time to time and the walls are carefully lit to enhance the appearance of photographic originals by Ansel Adams while blending in with the original architechture.All over the museum the tables and chairs are mostly original in their design and over the past 15 years the entire Library has been gingerly wired for wireless internet and computer catalog access without disturbing the delicate artwork around it as well. (If one is outside in Bryant Park, take note: one might be able to pick up the library's signal.) Outside the main entrance, the lions nicknamed "Patience" and "Fortitude" stand guard, rain or shine.
Plaza Hotel , 768 5th Avenue – ever the architectural landmark, the grand dame of New York hotels, once home to the fictional girl Eloise, closed in the spring of 2005 to be renovated into residential condo units. Many New Yorkers were sad to see it go the way it did, but luckily the ground floor has remained largely unscathed: Hand carved paneling and elaborate cornices are the rule inside this grand old lady and hark back to the late 19th and early 20th century when this old diva was a place designed for very wealthy robber baron types like J.P. Morgan that made New York City their castle and the adjacent Central Park with its bridal paths and heavily manicured landscapes a place to hold court. Inspect the Oak Room if you can: you might catch a glimpse of the well heeled doing business (or the ghosts said to haunt it thereof.)
Radio City Music Hall (website) 1260 6th Avenue- Part of the Rockefeller Center complex, this theatre deserves its own separate mention as it has served the City of New York for nearly eighty years. She is the grande dame of entertainment venues. She gets her name from a time period when radio was the primary source for entertainment and news; acts like Fanny Brice, Frank Sinatra, and Burns and Allen got their start here. She is a classic of Art Deco elegance that ladies will certainly enjoy: each toilet has an adjacent sitting room with the original, classic soft light fixtures and mirrors meant to be inspected for a "freshening up" for that special fella waiting for her. Each toilet, lounge, or [former] smoking room has an overlaying theme with murals dedicated to man's progress in art, science and industry-yet no individual mural is exactly the same.
Radio City Music Hall is one of the largest (and last) of her kind: during the Depression and on through to the Second World War, movie palaces were built on a grand scale, a form of escape into the much more glamorous lifestyle where one could be Humphrey Bogart or dance like Ginger Rogers. She is unique in the sense that she retains her extremely large movie screen (most palaces that still stand were compartmentalized into much smaller theatres long ago) and today this serves her well as she is able still to attract movie premieres: since 1933, over 700 of these have taken place, everything from the original King Kong to Pixar films. In her former life she would often host a floor show, a side attraction to the main event like the Ziegfeld Follies (a vestige of this is the Rockettes.) Today, with modern audio and lighting equipment enhancing her perfect acoustics she often hosts the MTV Video Music Awards and is perfectly able to withstand thousands of screaming teenagers at a rock concert. She is fully equipped with a full orchestra pit, stage elevators and special effects that are still usable even today: a full show is certainly not out of the question someday, so keep your eyes open.
Rockefeller Center , ( website) between 47th and 51st Streets from 5th to 7th Avenues – Like the nearby Empire State building, Rockefeller Center was built by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers. The original plaza comprised about 14 buildings and was constructed from 1930-1940, another public works program of the FDR era; to this day it is one of the largest projects New York City has ever undertaken in Manhattan. Many large companies make their headquarters here like General Electric (located in the building behind the large Prometheus statue) and NBC, one of the four major American television broadcasters. (One of their studios is visible from the plaza through plate glass.) Every winter the main courtyard becomes an ice skating rink and is wonderful for watching people; a visit here is a lovely thing.
Saint Brigid's Church- Avenue B and East 7th Street. This little church dedicated to Brigid of Kildare may not seem like much to the casual eye, but it's loaded with history: this church speaks volumes about the history of the people of New York. Patrick Keely (1816-1896) was the Irish born immigrant responsible for its construction and is an architect responsible for countless other churches dotting the East Coast; he worked at a time when the Holy See was only beginning to lay roots in America. Architecturally, it's style is Carpenter's Gothic: it has a second-story seating gallery fronted by elaborate wainscoting, and a beautiful vaulted ceiling. The windows are believed to be imported from Bavaria and the Stations of the Cross and hand carved altar are from Caen in France.
St. Brigid's Church is an important connection to New York's past and present as an immigrant landmark: its first parishoners were men and women who fled the ravishes and horrors of the Irish Potato Famine, survivors of coffin ships.(Those that were not so lucky had their names inscribed on the windows, many of these were only children.) Over time since then it has also served as a place for Slavs, Germans, and Puerto Ricans to worship and send their children to school. When the neighborhood was seized by poverty and the worst of the AIDS and crack epidemic in the 1980's, it was common practice for the pastor to assist by offering food or temporary shelter in the shanty towns that occupied nearby Tompkins Square Park and counsel to the sick and dying when there was great public controversy over HIV. During the past eight years it was nearly destroyed owing to the vast amounts of money the Archdiocese needed to settle with victims of sexual abuse: poetically perhaps, St. Brigid's took to heart Matthew 25: 40-46 in everything except herself because she saved little money for her own upkeep. Public ire was raised as soon as the wrecking balls appeared, figures as prominent as Frank and Malachy McCourt spoke out, and as of October 2008 St. Brigid's has been saved by the anonymous donation of 20 million dollars and full restoration is expected to begin posthaste. (If you are in New York during the renovations, ask a builder to peak inside: he will most likely oblige.)
Saint Mark's Church in-the-Bowery 131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue. This church is, technically, one of the oldest standing places of worship on Manhattan Island. In 1651, the area which today is the East Village/Alphabet City was part of the original Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam, forming its northeastern corner. The land then was extremely different looking than its present state, (most of the area today is occupied by converted tenements originally intended to house the incredible surge of immigrants that followed the end of the Civil War) being made up of a mix of lush meadows and salt marsh brimming with eelgrass. It was this type of land that the first colonial governor of New York, Peter Stuyvesant, purchased as an annex to his already sizeable bouwerie (farm) and later built his own family chapel to underscore his newfound prosperity.
In 1793, Peter's great-grandson, Petrus, made "improvements" to his great-grandfather's little church in order to donate it and the land surrounding it to the newly hatched Episcopal Church; Alexander Hamilton provided legal aid to ensure it would be the first Episcopal church parish independent of the already established Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. The church is made
up of granite quarried from New York and Massachusetts and though it is no longer under the care of the Dutch Reform Church it does bear a cursory resemblance to the buildings intended for worship left behind by the original Dutch colonists that still today dot the Hudson Valley and portions of New Jersey: many of the Neoclassical accents like the small colonnade at the front of the church were added after it opened its doors for the first time in 1799 and tastes shifted from traditional colonial to more cosmopolitan tastes.
Today Saint Mark's is a very versatile public space. it is a registered and restored National Historic Landmark that Dutch royalty have visited, it is a functioning parish which offers Sunday service in multiple tongues, and it is the neighborhood soap box for artists and activists to stand on: the church is equipped with its own lighting system for avant garde perfomances and comedy sketches and it has a nice little courtyard that people like to swarm at when there is an object of grievance to protest, most recently the Iraq War. St. Mark's also features a graveyard full of early denizens of New York City, some of them Revolutionary War soldiers. Others include Daniel D. Tompkins, the man who abolished slavery in New York City and, (if one looks to the building itself) Peter Stuyvesant himself, still buried in the crypt below the church.
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral , ( website) Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets. The mailing address and parish house is 460 Madison Avenue – Opened in 1878, this Midtown cathedral is headquarters for the Archdiocese of New York and is the main stomping grounds of one of only nine American cardinals. It is consecrated to the patron saint of New York City and, quite literally, the poor Irish immigrants that came to New York built it with their bare hands. During its construction through countless extra Sunday collections they contributed thousands upon thousands of pennies and many were hired as laborers to build their prize, their very own monument to God: New York in its earlier was a place of tension between the very Protestant natives and the very Catholic Irish. Worse yet, the land they left behind was certainly one where the Protestant Ascendancy treated the locals cruelly (the original mother cathedral in Armagh where St. Patrick is buried was seized during the Protestant Reformation and Irish monastic life and architecture that was even older than Merrie Olde England's was crushed.) This, more than anything, was their revenge.
In modern times it has become a very important center for religious life in New York City: a very large percent of the city's population is Catholic and even those who are not usually receive a warm welcome (Cardinal Egan often meets up with the heads of different faiths next door in the residence; ushers and priests that tend to St. Pat's upkeep have informally nicknamed this group "The God Squad.") Most popes that pass through New York have held a mass here (the last two notably), Whenever the city of New York has come upon difficult times or times of heartbreak, special Masses are often offered at the cathedral: during 9/11, many gathered here to pray for the souls of the murdered victims and gave pride of place to the bravery of the firefighters, policemen, and paramedics of the city. When John Paul the II passed away, Catholics and non Catholics alike came to lay roses near his bust at the rear of the church and light a candle in his honor. In 1968, this was where Ethel Kennedy, heavily pregnant, chose to have the funeral mass for her murdered husband, Robert F. Kennedy; the entire city greived.
It is constructed out of locally quarried marble and granite, and its roof is most unusually made out the decidedly modern material fiberglass, a wink to the fact that it is a much younger edifice than the European Gothic models it derives its inspiration from. It is further unusual in the fact that despite its modeling on French and Hibernian traditions, it contains no flying buttresses: in true Gothic cathedrals this would be necessary to support the weight of the stone but St. Pat's more modern methods render this obsolete. It's rose window is larger than the far more famous ones of Notre Dame or Sainte Chapelle but shares a kinship with the first in its dedication to the Blessed Mother.
The Seagram Building 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd-This is not a building one can enter casually as it is mostly used for office space, but it has left an indelible mark on American architecture, especially in regards to tall buildings. Designed by the German majordomo Mies Van Der Rohe, it is the epitome of the Modernist Movement of the time and is constructed in the International Style: simple cubic extruded rectangle forms, emphasis on structural detail (Van Der Rohe was specifically interested in the building displaying its structural elements) and the promotion of glass as a feature/a means to play with color and light. Unusual for a New York City skyscraper is the fact that it is set 100 feet back from Park Avenue with a decidedly (and delightfully) undecorative fountain on its plaza. (Take a look at the installation of public art by Alexander Calder that was installed later if you have the time: even if you do not understand the what and wherefore of the piece, it certainly is in keeping with its forward looking neighbor.)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , 1071 5th Avenue, Guggenheim –This museum is the other great store of modern and contemporary visual culture; its coolness is such that it often gets rented out by Fortune 500 companies for private functions. The Guggenheim Museum first opened its doors in 1959 as the very last brainchild of the infamous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright proposed an uncharacteristically organic flow to the piece because to him "an ideal American architecture should develop in the image of trees." From a landscaping perspective it strongly contradicts the chessboard type structure typical of New York skyscrapers and (as intended) forms a diaclectic rapport between form and function rather than than the casual one that was popular amongst leaders of the Modern Movement in the late 1950's.
Inside, each level of the museum is subtly bridged so that each floor forms a spiral shape, like an apple peeled in a curled strip. The diameter of the spiral as it curves upwards is designed to allow light to enter at each level, in turn meant to inspire in the patron a sense of tranquility and brightness. The continual spiral movement implies a more natural adhesion between the creator and the piece of art on the path. The top is crowned with a large skylight that stretches out over the whole main building adding much needed warmth to the great amounts of white space inside.
United Nations Headquarters , ( website) 1st Avenue between 42nd and 48th Streets(for tour information, click here) – This site is actually an architectural complex rather than a single building: it is set on seventeen acres of land that in modern money would be worth much more than the eight and a half million dollars it cost to donate. Overlooking the East River, this complex was overseen by a committee of no less than eleven architects, some (like Corbusier and Cormier) were the best and brightest of their generation. The exact details of each building are too numerous to mention here, but the location of the UN building certainly dictates a very eclectic mix of styles. The main public lobby, for example, houses a large stained glass window completed by artist Marc Chagall in 1964 and represents a wish for peace and harmony in the world. Not far from this (and very odd given the historical context of the Cold War) is a large bronze statue by Yevgeny Vuchetich called "Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares", commisioned by the Soviets in 1959 (and bearing a strong resemblance to many effigies made to honor Communist ideology.) Another installment called informally "The Knotted Gun" is an homage to disarmament commissioned by the Luxembourg government in 1988 (though why nobody told the artist that a knotted gun is actually more dangerous as it can explode just like the bombs he was protesting remains a mystery.)
Woolworth Building , 233 Broadway – Cass Gilbert incorporated gothic elements into this ornately-designed skyscraper, a technological innovation at its time.