SPRING 2012
Every year, I do half-a-dozen public Art Deco tours for the Municipal Art Society. The tours rotate among five itineraries. Once or twice a year I also do a walking tour for the Art Deco Society of New York, and sometimes teach a five-session course on the subject for New York University. And I occasionally lecture on Art Deco for events supported by the New York Council on the Humanities.
TOURS
Upper Upper West Side
Sunday, April 29th 2:00 p.m.Sponsored by the Art Deco Society of New York. $25 ($20 ADSNY members).
RSVP: Please call 212-679-3326
Meet at the northeast corner of Broadway and West 85th Street.Our walk starts at the northeast corner of Broadway and West 84th Street, and meanders back and forth across the upper west tracts of the Upper West Side, ending at Riverside Drive and 103rd Street. We see work by such stalwart Manhattan Deco icons as Sugarman & Berger, Boak & Paris, and Harvey Wiley Corbett, as well as architects less well known for their Deco productions, including Emery Roth and Rosario Candela. Most of the buildings on the tour are residential - highlights being Roth's Normandy Apartments and Corbett's Master Apartments. We also look at the Broadway Fashion Building - four-stories of commercial space in a Moderne glass box; Joan of Arc Junior High School; Boak & Paris's Midtown (now Metro) Theater; and one of Manhattan's last surviving Horn & Hardart automat buildings, with splendid Art Deco terra-cotta. If you've been on the tour of Art Deco on Central Park West, and wondered what else might be out there closer to the Hudson, this is your chance to find out! Wear the proverbial comfortable shoes.
Tour: Upper Crust Deco - Deco on the Upper East Side
Sunday, May 13th, 2:00 p.m.Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required: (212) 935-2075. $20 ($15 MAS members)
Join us for an Art Deco walk on Manhattan's Upper East Side. We see some of the city's earliest Deco apartment houses, including two by Blum & Blum, and the only apartment building designed by Raymond Hood (better known for the Daily News Building and Rockefeller Center). But it's not just apartment buildings. We will also see the legendary Hotel Carlyle, and one of Manhattan's very few Art Deco town houses, designed by Harry Allen Jacobs - an architect who used to preside over informal debates at the Architectural League between what he called "the three little Napoleons of modern architecture, Raymond M. Hood, Ralph Walker and Ely Kahn," and the "classicists."
Art Deco tours for the Municipal Art Society tentatively scheduled for July 12th and August 13th - check back later for more information.
TOURS
Van Cortlandt Village (Fort Independence Park), Bronx
Sunday, May 6th, 2:00 p.m.Sponsored by the Historic Districts Council. $10 ($5 members of HDC). RSVP online
Once the site of Revolutionary War-era Fort Independence, Van Cortlandt Village developed into a residential enclave in the 20th century. Built on a winding street plan designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, resopnsding to the hillls and views of the area, the neighborhood consists of small neo-Colonial and Tudor Revival homes and apartment buildings, including the Shalom Aleichem Houses, an early cooperative housing project. A representative of the Fort Independence Park Neighborhood Association will also attend to talk about their ongoing preservation and awareness efforts.