The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.

AUTHORS' TALKS ARCHIVE

The Skyscraper Museum videotapes its public programs and makes them available on line. The list of authors and titles below links to a page with a description of the book and the program video. Click on a title to link to the page.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm

Michele H. Bogart Book Talk

Sculpture in Gotham
Art and Urban Renewal in New York City

Reaktion Books, 2018

In Sculpture in Gotham, Michele Bogart recounts how the City of New York became committed to public art patronage. From the mid-1960s, cultural activists and City officials, for a time, shifted away from traditional monuments and joined forces to sponsor ambitious sculptural projects as instruments for urban revitalization. Bogart, an art historian who also served as a Commissioner on the NYC Public Design Commission, describes how public art became socially and politically relevant during a time when art theories and styles were evolving dramatically and when local government was overwhelmed with economic decline and civil rights issues. Sculpture in Gotham sheds new light on civic activism and collaboration as a force for cultural change in urban America.

Michele H. Bogart is professor of art history and criticism at Stony Brook University. She served on the Art Commission from 1998 to 2003. Her previous books include Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890–1930 (2nd edn 1997), Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (1995) and The Politics of Urban Beauty: New York and Its Art Commission (2006).

Tuesday, June 19, 2017 4:00-8:00 pm

Night at the Museums

The museums and historic landmarks of Lower Manhattan are an American treasure. Explore one of the most diverse and concentrated groups of museums in the world – 15 sites all within comfortable walking distance of each other. This annual event takes place rain or shine.

Free Admission at The Skyscraper Museum and participating sister museums.

Curator's tour at 5pm.

FOR DETAILS AND A MAP VISIT WWW.NIGHTATTHEMUSEUMS.ORG

Tuesday, June 12, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm

Fran Leadon Book Talk

Broadway
A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles

W.W. Norton & Company, 2018

Architect and scholar Fran Leadon offers an eye-opening history of Broadway, Manhattan’s most famous street. Once a cow path in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony, “Brede Wegh” transformed across time and space into the Great White Way. Leadon shows us, mile by mile, from Bowling Green to Marble Hill, how small taverns and farmland gradually grew into department stores, theaters, hotels, apartments, and skyscrapers to become one of America’s most vibrant, complex, and storied thoroughfares.

Fran Leadon is an architect and professor at the City College of New York. In addition to Broadway, he is the co-author of the AIA Guide to New York City (fifth edition).

Wednesday, May 23, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm

Kurt C. Schlichting Book Talk

Waterfront Manhattan:
From Henry Hudson to the High Line

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018

For hundreds of years, the shorefront of Manhattan served as the country’s center of trade, shipping, and commerce. It was a world of docks, ships, tugboats, ferries, and freight, as well as a place where millions of immigrants entered the Promised Land. The waterfront also presented the city with a monumental challenge: finding the necessary capital to build and expand the maritime infrastructure. In Waterfront Manhattan, Kurt C. Schlichting recounts the story of its initial construction by private interests, the takeover by the City of New York in the second half of the 19th century, the steady decline in the 20th century as containerization changed shipping patterns, and recent rebirth as parkland and luxury housing. Join us for a discussion of the struggle between public and private control of New York’s priceless asset.

Kurt C. Schlichting is the E. Gerald Corrigan ’63 Chair in Humanities and Social Sciences at Fairfield University, where he is a professor of sociology. He is the author of Grand Central’s Engineer: William J. Wilgus and the Planning of Modern Manhattan and Grand Central Terminal: Railroads, Engineering, and Architecture in New York City.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm

Jae In Choi and Stephen DeSimone

125 Greenwich Street

The one constant in the evolution of the design of the 912-foot tall, super-slender condominium at 125 Greenwich Street, just south of the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, is its postage-stamp site, barely 83' x 119 ft. After several early schemes, which ranged in height from 1,100 to nearly 1,400 ft., the tower now under construction will top out at 912 ft./ 278 meters. Offering insights into their strategies of design and structural engineering of the skyscraper are Jae In Choi, the project architect from Rafael Vinoly Architects, and structural engineer Stephen DeSimone of DeSimone Consulting Engineers.

In the changing market for luxury units and the evolving Downtown demographics, the developer’s continuing analysis led to a rethinking of the mix of apartments and placement of amenity floors and, thus, a revised structural approach and expression in the tower’s form. Choi and DeSimone will detail how the current design answers the challenges of mixed floor plans, maximized views, and wind engineering, among other issues.

125 Greenwich Street is being developed by Bizzi & Partners, a global real estate firm with offices in Milan, New York, San Paolo and Tallinn. In addition to Rafael Vinoly Architects and DeSimone Consulting Engineers, consultants to the project include Reginald D. Hough Associates, Cosentini Associates, and Robert Schwartz & Associates.

Join the speakers for another program in the Museum's continuing series of Skyscraper Seminars, exploring subjects of theory and practice for design professionals.

Jae In Choi, AIA, NCARB is a Project Manager at Rafael Vinoly Architects, where is managing 125 Greenwich Street. He has worked at RVA since 2010, where he has been the Project Manager for 432 Park Avenue, among other buildings.

DeSimone Consulting Engineers was established in New York in 1969. Stephen V. DeSimone joined the firm in 1988 and is now President and CEO. In addition to the specialty of super-slender towers in Manhattan that DeSimone has designed, including 220 Central Park South, 50 West Street, 111 Murray, and 45 E. 22 Street, the firm works on a wide range of building types nationally and internationally.

Thursday, April 12, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm

Charles Waldheim

The New Heliomorphism

In the Museum's continuing series of Skyscraper Seminars exploring subjects of theory and practice for design professionals, Charles Waldheim discusses “The New Heliomorphism.” Recent projects by a number of leading architects and urbanists have suggested new forms of urban order through solar orientation. At the 2017 Chicago Biennial, Waldheim and a team from the Harvard GSD Office for Urbanization, with Siena Sharff Design, presented the installation Heliomorphic Chicago, which re-imagined the Loop's buildings adjusted to a complex and contradictory economy of solar performance. In this talk, Waldheim will discuss a hypothetical Heliomorphic Manhattan, formulated on ideas of revising and extending the ecological urbanism agenda by returning to values of solar performance. Click here for the full program description

Charles Waldheim is a noted architect, urbanist, and educator whose research examines the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. He is the John E. Irving Professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he directs the School’s Office for Urbanization. Waldheim is the author of Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory and editor of The Landscape Urbanism Reader, among many other publications. Click to watch the video

Tuesday, April 3, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm



"WHEN WALL STREET WAS UNOCCUPIED":
How Downtown Changed in the Decade
Before and After 9/11

In conjunction with its exhibition MILLENNIUM: Lower Manhattan in the 1990s, The Skyscraper Museum will present a panel discussion that reflects on the extraordinary changes, planned and unplanned, that took place in New York's oldest neighborhood. No place in the mid-1990s was more ripe for reinvention than lower Manhattan – especially the historic Financial District, where, in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash and savings-and-loan crisis, vacancy rates rose to nearly 30 percent. Planning policy, government incentives, Landmarks regulation, new cultural organizations, and eventually a reviving real estate market were beginning to change the FiDi's essential character by the first year of the 21st century. Then unexpected change happened.

A panel of key players responsible for the fate and future of Downtown in the last decade of the millennium will come together to reflect on lower Manhattan, then and now. Two past Chairs of the Landmarks Preservation Commission whose tenures spanned the Nineties, Laurie Beckelman and Jennifer Raab, Joe Rose, Chairman of the NYC Planning Commission from 1993-2002 in the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Carl Weisbrod, who in 1995 left the Economic Development Corporation (EDC), of which he was the first President, to head the new The Alliance for Downtown New York, the BID established to help address the decline of the Financial District and its 30 million square feet of vacant space.

The program will be introduced by Museum Director Carol Willis and the discussion will be moderated by Lynne Sagalyn. The panel includes Laurie Beckelman, Jennifer Raab, Joe Rose, and Carl Weisbrod.

Click to watch the video

Tuesday, February 20, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm

Steven Cohen Book Talk

The Sustainable City

Columbia University Press, 2017

The transition to a green economy depends on cities. In The Sustainable City, Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, provides a broad and engaging overview of the urban systems of the 21st century, surveying policies and projects already under way in cities around the world and pointing to ways that the urban infrastructure of the future--renewable energy, energy efficiency, mass and personal transit, and advanced waste management--can be improved. The Sustainable City provides invaluable lessons for anyone seeking to link public policy to promoting a sustainable lifestyle.

Steven Cohen is executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and a professor in the practice of public affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He is the director of the Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy, the Master of Science in Sustainability Management, and the Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management at Columbia. His books include Sustainability Management: Lessons from and for New York City, America, and the Planet and Understanding Environmental Policy.

Click here to watch the program.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm

Alison Isenberg Book Talk

Designing San Francisco
Art, Land, and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay

Princeton University Press, 2017

Designing San Francisco is the untold story of the formative postwar decades when U.S. cities took their modern shape amid clashing visions of the future. An evocative portrait of San Francisco between the 1940s and 1970s, the book focuses on the artists, activists, and others who played pivotal roles in rebuilding the city as it underwent large-scale redevelopment. Join us as Alison Isenberg discusses a new paradigm for understanding past and present struggles to define an urban future, and compares and contrasts the well-known example of midcentury Manhattan (think Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs) with equally contentious San Francisco.

Alison Isenberg is Professor of History at Princeton University, where she codirects the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. She is the author of Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It.
Click here to watch the program.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018 6:30-8:00 pm

Cassim Shepard Book Talk

Citymakers: The Culture and Craft of Practical Urbanism
Written by Cassim Shepard, Photographer Alex Fradkin, Foreword by Rosalie Genevro

The Monacelli Press, 2017

Drawing on six years as the editor of Urban Omnibus, one of the leading publications charting innovations in urban practice, Cassim Shepard explores a broad variety of projects in New York, a city at the forefront of experimental and practical research. Cities are the laboratories of the future, and in Citymakers, Shepard offers a vivid survey of urbanism today, showing that it is no longer just the domain of planners, politicians, and power brokers, but of an array of citizens working at the vanguard of increasingly diverse practices, from community gardeners to architects to housing advocates.

Cassim Shepard is the Principal of SQ Projects, a media consulting and production practice. Shepard was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Urban Omnibus, an online publication of the Architectural League of New York. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia GSAPP.
Click here to watch the program.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Barbara Mensch Book Talk

South Street

Columbia University Press, 2007

South Street is a remarkable visual essay, collecting Barbara Mensch’s photographs of the lost world of Fulton Fish Market from 1979-1983. With lively commentary, Mensch documents the tight knit world of fishmongers and the market, which was, in the words of Phillip Lopate, a “last vestige of historic Gotham.” Join us as Barbara Mensch discusses her work, which includes numerous photographs that feature prominently in the Museum’s current exhibition.

Barbara Mensch has lived in the Seaport area since 1979. She holds a BFA degree from Hunter College. Her work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions and countless group exhibitions, as well as in museums including MoMA and the Brooklyn Museum. Click here to watch the program.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Mike Wallace Book Talk

Greater Gotham
A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919

Oxford University Press, 2017

Picking up in 1898, where the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gotham left off, Greater Gotham doubles down on detail to cover a remarkable period in New York City's history. Beginning with the consolidation of the five boroughs and ending just after WW1, this long-awaited sequel surveys two decisive decades that saw the city’s physical and population growth into the world's second-largest metropolis and a center of global finance. Join us as Mike Wallace discusses the remarkable book that Publisher's Weekly writes "sets a standard for urban history, capturing both New York's particularities and its protean dynamism."

Mike Wallace is a Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, specializing in the history of New York City. Gotham, written with Edwin G. Burrows, won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in History. In 2000, Wallace founded The Gotham Center for New York City History at The Graduate Center, CUNY.

The Skyscraper Museum offered 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

John Hill Book Talk

How to Build a Skyscraper

RotoVision, 2017

In How to Build a Skyscraper, John Hill examines 45 noteworthy skyscrapers from across the decades and around the world – from our hometown Flatiron Building to the world's current tallest, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE – and highlights unique characteristics of their history, design, construction, and function. Each iconic building is described in concise text, beautiful photography, and bespoke drawings that reveal the tower's internal structure. Join us as Hill discusses selections from a book that promises to be a best-seller in The Skyscraper Museum's book store!

John Hill is an architect, editor-in-chief of the Daily News section of World-Architects.com, and founder/editor-in-chief of the popular blog A Daily Dose of Architecture, where he publishes daily articles about architecture news and book reviews. He is the author of Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture and 100 Years, 100 Buildings.

The Skyscraper Museum offered 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Thursday, October 12, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Kevin D. Murphy Book Talk

Skyscraper Gothic
Medieval Style and Modernist Buildings

The University of Virginia Press, 2017

Skyscrapers, emblems of the modernity in American cities in late 19th and 20th century, commonly drew upon styles reminiscent of the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe. Skyscraper Gothic brings together a group of renowned scholars to explore what the appearance of Gothic forms on radically new buildings meant urbanistically, architecturally, and socially. Please join us as Kevin D. Murphy, co-editor and contributor to the volume, discusses the under-examined interplay between skyscraper design and the Gothic vocabulary.

Kevin D. Murphy is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities and Professor and Chair of History of Art at Vanderbilt University. His publications include the book Memory and Modernity: Viollet-le-Duc at Vézelay (2000), Jonathan Fisher of Blue Hill, Maine: Commerce, Culture and Community on the Eastern Frontier (2010), several co-edited volumes, and numerous journal articles.

The Skyscraper Museum offered 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Thursday, September 7, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Leslie Robertson Book Talk

The Structure of Design
An Engineer's Extraordinary Life in Architecture

The Monacelli Press, 2017

In The Structure of Design, Leslie Earl Robertson offers a personal and accessible chronicle of the partnerships and problem-solving that forged so many classics of modern architecture. He recounts his famous collaborations with architects, including Minoru Yamasaki, Philip Johnson, and I. M. Pei, among many others, and his delight in working with leading sculptors such as Richard Serra and Beverly Pepper. Join us for an illustrated talk that combines personal refections and professional insights on "An Engineer's Extraordinary Life in Architecture."

Leslie Robertson moved to New York City to work on the structural design of the World Trade Center for the Seattle firm Skilling, Helle, Christiansen, and soon added his name to the partnership. He established the firm Leslie E. Robertson Associates in 1986. The firm’s many innovative skyscrapers around the world include the U.S. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, the Shanghai World Financial Center, and Lotte World Tower in Seoul. He retired as a partner at the end of 1994 and continued to work on LERA projects through 2012. He now practices as Leslie Earl Robertson, Structural Engineer, LLC.

The Skyscraper Museum offered 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Anthony W. Robins Book Talk

New York Art Deco
A Guide to Gotham's Jazz Age Architecture

SUNY Press, 2017

Lively and informative, New York Art Deco leads readers step-by-step past the monuments of the 1920s and ’30s that recast New York as the world’s modern metropolis. Anthony W. Robins new walking tour guidebook traces itineraries in Manhattan and across the boroughs. Maps by John Tauranac and color plates by Art Deco photographer Randy Juster enrich the mix. Join Tony for a talk that distills his thirty years experience hunting the urban Art Deco.

A native New Yorker, Anthony W. Robins is the author of books on Grand Central Terminal, the World Trade Center, and the art and architecture of the New York subway system. A popular leader of walking tours all over the city, he specializes in Art Deco, having organized series for many organizations, including the Art Deco Society of New York and the Municipal Art Society. He is the recipient of the 2017 Guiding Spirit Award from the Guides Association of New York City.

The Skyscraper Museum offered 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Sarah Williams Goldhagen Book Talk

Welcome to Your World:
How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives

Harper, 2016

Drawing on new discoveries in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, in her new book Welcome to Your World, architecture critic and historian Sarah Williams Goldhagen probes how environments profoundly shape our feelings, memories, and well-being. In this Skyscraper Seminar, conceived as a conversation with design professionals, Goldhagen will focus on issues of high-rise living and urban density. Drawing on the examples from her book, she'll suggest how to bring new research and insights to construct a world better suited to human experience.

Sarah Williams Goldhagen is a writer, lecturer, and contributing editor to the Architectural Record and Art in America. Previously, she was the architecture critic at the New Republic and a lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Her essays and criticism on the topic of the built environment have appeared in both scholarly and general-interest publications.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017 4:00-8:00 pm

Night at the Museums

The museums and historic landmarks of Lower Manhattan are an American treasure. Explore one of the most diverse and concentrated groups of museums in the world – 15 sites all within comfortable walking distance of each other. This annual event takes place rain or shine.

Free Admission at The Skyscraper Museum and participating sister museums.

Curator's tour at 5pm.

FOR DETAILS AND A MAP VISIT WWW.NIGHTATTHEMUSEUMS.ORG

Tuesday, May 23, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

John Hill Book Talk

100 Years, 100 Buildings

Prestel, 2016

Lists are fun. In 100 Years, 100 Buildings, John Hill, founder/editor-in-chief of the blog A Daily Dose of Architecture, casts his critical eye back into a century of great architecture. He sifts a superb international collection of the best existing structures, one for each year from 1916 to the present. Starting with H. P. Berlage’s Holland House in London and closing with Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Broad Museum in Los Angeles, Hill combs the globe for iconic buildings which are able to be seen and explored by the average enthusiast. Featuring large color photographs and short text for each building, as well as an introductory essay and timeline of important architectural events, 100 Years, 100 Buildings surveys the underlying themes and developments in the world of architecture.

John Hill is an architect, editor-in-chief of the Daily News section of World-Architects.com, and founder/editor-in-chief of the blog A Daily Dose of Architecture, where he publishes daily articles about architecture news and book reviews. He is the author of Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture.

The Skyscraper Museum offers 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Monday, May 1, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring
discuss “The Second Jane Jacobs Century” and their book

Vital Little Plans:
The Short Works of Jane Jacobs

Penguin Random House, 2016

Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring, urban historians and co-editors of the book of collected short essays by Jane Jacobs entitled Vital Little Plans, celebrate her 101st birthday week with a conversation on her continuing influence. While many know Jacobs for her defense of traditional urbanism and local economies, far fewer think of her as a futurist. As we begin the “second Jane Jacobs century,” what can her writings tell us about the city of tomorrow? In an age of polarized politics, what did she make of xenophobia, separatism and the state of our democracy? In the knowledge age, how did she perceive the relationship between innovation, inequality and facing our greatest existential threats like climate change? And of course, in the age of megacities, what did she think of skyscrapers, slums, and the making of new cities? 



 Samuel Zipp, an Associate Professor of American Studies and Urban Studies at Brown University is a cultural, intellectual, and urban historian with particular interest in 20th century cities  and United States cultural and political history since World War II. He is the author of Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (OUP, 2010).

Nathan Storring describes himself as a “writer, curator, designer, and media producer with a focus on interpreting architecture, city planning, and urban issues for a general audience.” Working with the non-profit Project for Public Spaces, he is a research associate and communications manager for the Bass Initiative on Innovation & Placemaking. He lives in Brooklyn.

The Skyscraper Museum offers 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

John Freeman Gill Book Talk

The Gargoyle Hunters

Penguin Random House, 2017

Join us as John Freeman Gill discusses his debut novel The Gargoyle Hunters. Hilarious and poignant, the book is a love letter to a vanishing city and a deeply emotional story of fathers and sons. Intimately portraying New York’s relationship with time, the novel presents the mystery of a brazen and seemingly impossible architectural heist— the theft of an entire historic Manhattan building. Through the voice of thirteen-year-old Griffin Watts, Gill implores readers to look at New York with a new perspective. The Washington Post writes, “After a few chapters with Watts, it’s impossible not to turn your gaze toward the sky. You’ll never look at the Woolworth Building the same way again.”

John Freeman Gill is a long time New York Times contributor as well as the architecture and real estate editor of Avenue magazine. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Observer, The Washington Monthly, The International Herald Tribune, the website of New York magazine, Premiere, the New York Times op-ed page, and The New York Times Book Review.

Thursday & Friday, March 9 & 10, 2017

TEN & TALLER Symposium
The Rise of the Skyscraper City: ​
All the Tall Buildings in Manhattan, 1874-1900

In conjunction with its current exhibition ​​TEN & TALLER, 1874-1900, The Skyscraper Museum presents symposium that explores new narratives of the first decades of high-rise history. Organized into four sessions, on Thursday evening, March 9 and on Friday morning and afternoon, March 10, the symposium brings together a range of scholars and authors who have studied nineteenth-century New York from the perspectives of architecture, engineering, and urban history.

Reservations are required, and priority is given to Members and Corporate Member firms and their employees. All guests MUST RSVP to [email protected] to assure admittance to the event. Not a member? Become a Museum member today!

Sessions 1 and 2 will be held at The Skyscraper Museum, 39 Battery Place
Sessions 3 and 4 will be held at the Cornell AAP facility at 26 Broadway

Support for the symposium has been generously provided by
ELISE JAFFE + JEFFREY BROWN.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Thomas Leslie Book Talk

Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934

University of Illinois Press, 2013

This history of Chicago's skyscrapers begins in the key period of reconstruction after the Great Fire of 1871 and ends a chapter in 1934 amid the Great Depression that brought construction to a standstill. Thomas Leslie covers these years in his book ​​Chicago Skyscrapers ​, detailing building methods, foundation materials, framing structures, and electric lighting, and other technical innovations. Leslie also considers how the city's infamous political climate contributed to its architecture, as building and zoning codes were often disputed by shifting networks of rivals, labor unions, professional organizations, and municipal bodies.

Thomas Leslie is the Morrill Pickard Chilton Professor in Architecture at Iowa State University, where he researches the integration of building sciences and arts both historically and in contemporary practice. He is the author of​​ Louis I. Kahn: Building Art​​, Building Science (2005) and, with Jason Alread and Robert Whitehead, Design-Tech: Building Science for Architects (2014). A winner of the 2013 Booth Family Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome, he is at work on a study of the buildings of the Italian engineer and architect Pier Luigi Nervi.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Stefan Al

Mall City: Hong Kong's Dreamworlds of Consumption

University of Hawaii Press, 2016

In his new book, MALL City: Hong Kong's Dreamworlds of Consumption, Stefan Al analyzes Hong Kong as the world’s laboratory of vertical urbanism. The city continues to build ever-higher-density mega-complexes of residential and office towers standing on a podium shopping mall, often integrated with railway infrastructure. These podium-tower developments are cities in and of themselves, accommodating up to tens of thousands of people who live, work and play within a single structure. Stretching up to 26 stories and incorporating stunning vertical atria with dynamic “expresscalators,” these complexes have become one of Hong Kong’s basic units of urban development, like the skyscraper is of New York City. Highly efficient urban forms, they also set in stone a culture of consumerism.

Stefan Al is an architect and urban designer. An Associate Professor of Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania, he teaches courses and studios on Urban Design and co-teaches, with Jonathan Barnett and Gary Hack, an online Coursera class "Designing Cities" that reaches more than 65,000 students. A leading expert on urbanization in developing countries, high-density cities, and cities of spectacle and entertainment, Als has authored and edited numerous books, including ​​Factory Towns of South China, Villages in the City, Mall City, ​​and ​​Macau and the Casino Complex,​​ as well as a recent work on Las Vegas, ​​The Strip​​. Stefan Al holds a doctorate in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley, an M.Arch. from The Bartlett, and an M.Sc. from Delft University of Technology.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

Clifton Hood Book Talk

In Pursuit of Privilege
A History of New York City's
Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis

Columbia University Press, 2016

In his new book In Pursuit of Privilege, Clifton Hood recounts how, throughout the city's history, upper-class New Yorkers have struggled to create a distinct world, guarded against outsiders, even as economic growth and democratic opportunity enabled new aspirants to gain entrance. Yet despite their efforts, the privileged class has been drawn into the larger story of the city, both through class conflict and through their role in institution building. Hood limns the famous and infamous characters, from the elite families and wealthy tycoons of the 18th and 19th centuries to Wall Street executives today. Surveying decades of upheaval and change, he shows that New York's upper class did not rise exclusively from the Gilded Age, but from a relentless pursuit of privilege, affecting not just the urban elite, but the city's entire cultural, economic, and political fabric.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016 6:30-8:00 pm

Camilo Vergara Book Talk

Detroit Is No Dry Bones

University of Michigan Press, 2016

Over the past 25 years, award-winning ethnographer and photographer Camilo José Vergara has traveled annually to Detroit to document not only the city’s precipitous decline, but also how its residents have survived. From the 1970s through the 1990s, changes in Detroit were almost all for the worse, as the fabric of the city was erased through neglect and abandonment. But over the last decade, the city has seen the beginnings of a positive transformation. Vergara's photographs, collected in Detroit Is No Dry Bones, provide unique documentation of revival. Beyond the fate of the city’s buildings, Vergara captures the distinct culture of this largely African-American city and documents re-purposed structures, including local churches that have re-occupied old bank buildings and other institutions of the past that carry unexpectedly powerful architectural and spiritual force.

Camilo Jose Vergara was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2002 and received a Berlin Prize Fellowship in 2010. In 2013, he became the first photographer to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He is author of numerous books, including ​​Silent Cities: The Evolution of the American Cemetery; The New American Ghetto; ​​and ​​Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto.​​

The Skyscraper Museum offers 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016 6:30-8:00 pm

Stephen Graham and Keller Easterling, in conversation

Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers

Verso Books, 2016

As the urban landscape grows ever more vertical, extending from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground, Stephen Graham argues it is time for a revolutionary re-imagining of our cities. Starting at the edge of earth’s atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers. In his new book Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers, Graham argues that it is time for a revolutionary re-imagining of our cities.

To celebrate the launch of his new book, Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers, The Skyscraper Museum will host a conversation between Professor Graham and writer and architect Keller Easterling about our vertical cities and the geographies of inequality.

Keller Easterling is an award-winning writer, architect and Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. She is the author of Organization Space and Enduring Innocence, which was named Archinect’s Best Book of 2005. Easterling is also the author of two essay-length books: an ebook, The Action Is the Form: Victor Hugo’s TED Talk and a forthcoming book Subtraction. Easterling lectures widely in the US and abroad and contributes to, among others, Domus, Artforum, Grey Room, E-Flux, Cabinet, and Volume.

The Skyscraper Museum offers 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Lynne B. Sagalyn Book Talk

Power at Ground Zero​
Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan

Oxford University Press, 2016

The destruction of the World Trade Center complex on 9/11 set in motion a chain of events that fundamentally transformed both the United States and the wider world. War has raged in the Middle East, and Americans have become accustomed to surveillance, enhanced security, and periodic terrorist attacks. But the symbolic locus of the post-9/11 era has always been "Ground Zero" – the sixteen acres in Manhattan's financial district where the twin towers fell.

In ​​Power at Ground Zero​, Lynne Sagalyn presents the definitive account of one of the greatest reconstruction projects in modern history. The culmination of over a decade of research, her book is both epic in scope and granular in detail. While the emotional dimension of 9/11 shaped the rebuilding effort, supercharging its sanctity and complexity with truly unique politics, Sagalyn shows the process was also a classic New York story.

​​Lynne B. Sagalyn​​, author of ​Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon​, is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate and Director of the MBA Real Estate Program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

All book talks are free and open to the public. The gallery opens at 6:00pm.

All guests must RSVP to [email protected] to assure admittance.

Please be aware that reservation priority is given to members of The Skyscraper Museum. Not a member? Become a Museum member today!

Wednesday, October 5, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Alexander Garvin Book Talk

What Makes a Great City

Island Press, 2016

What makes a great city? Not a good city, or a functional city, but a great city that people admire, learn from, and replicate. Planner and architect Alexander Garvin sets out to answer this question by closely observing successful cities such as Paris, London, New York, and Vienna. He argues that a great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Most importantly, it is the interplay between people and public realm that creates great cities.

Garvin analyzes how particular components of the public realm (squares in London, parks in Minneapolis, and streets in Madrid) have shaped people’s daily lives, and he shows how 21st- century initiatives in Paris, Houston, Atlanta, Brooklyn, and Toronto are making an already fine public realm even better.

​​Alexander Garvin is a noted architect and urban planner. He is an adjunct professor of urban planning and management at Yale University. He heads a planning and design firm and lives in New York. Some of his previous books include The Planning Game: Lessons for Great Cities; Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities;​​ and ​​The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Linda Jacobs Book Talk
The Syrian Colony of New York City, 1880-1900

Strangers in the West

Kalimah Press, 2015

​Strangers in the West is the never-before-told story of the Arab-speaking immigrants – primarily from the region known as "Greater Syria – who, beginning in 1880, settled in New York City. The center of their community was "Little Syria," an area on the lower west side of Manhattan just south of the future site of the World Trade Center, as well as just a few blocks from the future home of The Skyscraper Museum.​

Tuesday, August 16, 2016 6:30-8 pm

The Bowery Boys Book Talk

Adventures in Old New York

Ulysses Press, 2016

If you are a fan of the Bowery Boys podcasts, you'll be excited at the opportunity to see the engaging pair in person, with pictures, in a talk about their new book Adventures in Old New York. Greg Young and Tom Meyers, co-founders of the popular podcasts, have for the first time published on paper their most engaging stories, covering historic neighborhoods of Manhattan, exploring well-known destinations and hidden gems that will surprise and enthrall even lifetime New Yorkers who consider themselves history buffs.

​​Greg Young​ has worked for many years in the music industry and has also written for ​New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly​​, and ​​Esquire​​. In 2007 he cofounded the ​​Bowery Boys: New York City History​​ podcast and blog, along with ​ Tom Meyers , founder, editor and chief hotel reviewer of the budget travel website EuroCheapo.com.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Jason Barr Book Talk

Building the Skyline
The Birth and Growth of Manhattan's Skyscrapers

Oxford University Press, 2016

Wednesday, June 8, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Judith Dupré Book Talk

One World Trade Center: Biography of the Building

Little, Brown and Company, 2016

Best-selling Skyscrapers author Judith Dupré chronicles the rise of One World Trade Center from the building's groundbreaking design and engineering, through the initial excavation to the final placement of the spire. For this first “authorized biography” of the emotion-charged and technically complex project, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey granted Dupré unprecedented access to the World Trade Center site, suppliers, and archives. Rich with hundreds of photographs, drawings, models, and plans, including a timeline of construction milestones and annotated 360-degree views from the One World Observatory, the book captures the hope, resiliency, and pride of those who built it.

Judith Dupré writes about art and architecture. The many editions of Skyscrapers have been a publishing phenom and a worldwide bestseller. Above all, she seeks to engage and delight those who profess "not to know much" about architecture.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Peter L. Laurence Book Talk

Becoming Jane Jacobs

University of Pennsylvania Press (2016)

Jane Jacobs was born on May 4, 1916. Forty-five years later, she published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which she wrote between 1958 and 1961, and which stands today of the most influential books on urbanism ever written. The Skyscraper Museum celebrates Jacobs’s birthday and the beginning of her centennial year with a talk by Prof. Peter Laurence on his new book, Becoming Jane Jacobs, an intellectual biography that focuses on Jacobs's early life and writing career leading up to her great book.

In praise of Laurence’s work, urban historian Robert Fishman observes: “Jane Jacobs taught the world to perceive the city with new eyes, but she first had to teach herself to see. In this superbly researched and wonderfully original book, Peter L. Laurence for the first time reveals the depth and complexity of Jacobs's self-education…. This book is both a worthy tribute to Jacobs's genius and a brilliant exposition of the broader context of designs and ideas that made her work possible."

Peter L. Laurence is director of graduate studies in architecture and associate professor of architectural history, theory, and design at Clemson University School of Architecture.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Matthew Lasner and Nicholas Dagen Bloom Book Talk

Affordable Housing in New York:
The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City

Princeton University Press, 2016

The astonishing range of high-quality affordable housing efforts realized in New York over more than a century are the subject of Affordable Housing in New York. a smart and handsomely illustrated volume that highlights, as its subtitle suggests, "The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City." Editors and authors Nicholas Dagen Bloom and Matthew Gordon Lasner frame an essential overview of the subject, drawing together targeted essays by leading historians in the field, illustrated with historic and contemporary humanizing portraits that make clear the continuing importance of subsidized housing in the life of the city.

Matthew Gordon Lasner is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies and planning at Hunter College, City University of New York, where he teaches courses on urbanism, US and global housing, and the built environment. He is the author of High-Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century.

Nicholas Dagen Bloom is an Associate Professor of Social Sciences, Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Director of the Urban Administration and Core Curriculum programs at New York Institute of Technology. He is the author or editor of eight books about urban development, including Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century and American Tourism: Constructing a National Tradition.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016 6:30-8 pm

James Lindgren Book Talk

Preserving South Street Seaport

NYU Press, 2014

In Preserving South Street Seaport James Lindgren tells the story of the South Street Seaport, a landmarked historic district that is home to the largest concentration of early 19th-century mercantile buildings in the city, a maritime museum with a (shrinking) fleet of renovated sailing ships, and a modern urban festival market, a retail, entertainment, and tourist destination once more in the process of redevelopment. Focusing on the history of the past half century, Lindgren explains how preservationists mobilized in 1966 to save the last piece of lower Manhattan’s old port and how urban renewal plans by the City failed to find a formula that could sustain the complex goals for the museum and the broader economic development project.

Dr. James M. Lindgren is part of the history faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh where he teaches courses on America’s maritime heritage and its preservation. His previous books include, Preserving Maritime America: Public Culture and Memory in the Making of the Nation’s Great Marine Museums and Preserving Historic New England: Preservation, Progressivism, and the Remaking of Memory.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Bob Bowen

On Creating a 4D Video Sculpture: The Lower Manhattan Shoreline through Time, Extracted from Archival Footage

A screening by artist Robert Bowen and a conversation with historian Carol Willis

Photographer and video artist Robert Bowen has long been fascinated by New York’s skyscrapers. His interest in the city’s architecture and in early moving images come together in this project in which 3-D hyper-stereoscopic depth is digitally extracted from archival 2D film footage. As Bowen writes:

One day in 1903, the filmmaker, J.B. Smith, on assignment for the Thomas A. Edison Co. of West Orange, NJ, took a boat ride around Lower Manhattan. This project takes off from a digital stereoscopic conversion of what Smith saw, what he didn't see, what we see now, what's missing, and what's been added since.
This video presentation is based on Bowen's experimental media project, N.Y. Background. The film will be followed by a conversation between the artist and Museum Director Carol Willis.

ROBERT BOWEN is a New York-based new (and old) media artist whose work includes site-specific visualizations, performances, and screenings combining computational photographic approaches, in particular, temporal montage. He teaches courses on Photo/Video, and Computer Art in the MFA Program of the School of Visual Arts.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016 6:30-8 pm

Gerard Koeppel Book Talk

City on a Grid: How New York Became New York

Da Capo Press, 2015

No other grid in Western civilization was so large and uniform as the one ordained in New York in 1811. Not without reason. At the time, the city was just under two hundred years old, an overgrown town at the southern tip of Manhattan, a notorious jumble of streets laid at the whim of landowners. To bring order beyond the chaos—and good real estate to market—the street planning commission came up with a monolithic grid for the rest of the island. Mannahatta—the native "island of hills"—became a place of rectangles, in thousands of blocks on the flattened landscape, and many more thousands of right-angled buildings rising in vertical mimicry.

Gerard Koeppel is a native New Yorker, historian, and writer. He is the author of Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire and Water for Gotham: A History. Koeppel has contributed to numerous other books, including the Encyclopedia of New York City, of which he was an associate editor, and The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan.

All book talks are free and open to the public. The gallery opens at 6:00pm.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016 6:30-8 pm

SKYSCRAPER SEMINARS

Jay Berman: World One & The World Towers, Mumbai

Currently under construction and slated to rise 117 stories above Central Mumbai, World One Tower will be the tallest building in Mumbai and one of the tallest residential towers in the world. Along with companions—World Crest (65 stories) and World View (95 stories)—the skyscraper forms the core of a mixed-use development comprising more than 6 million sf on a 17-acre former textile mill site. A development of this scale in the center of Mumbai has posed unique construction challenges, presented important design opportunities, and occasioned questions of conventional local residential typologies and the role of tall-building development vis-à-vis urban fabric in one of the world’s most populous and rapidly redeveloping metropolises.

Jay L. Berman, AIA, is a design partner at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, where he has led some of the firm’s most important building and planning assignments. His practice is focused on planning and design of complex projects that frequently straddle the boundary between public and private realms, usually involve diverse stakeholders, and often require extensive public approvals, community review, and government sanctions. As a designer, Mr. Berman has played a leading role in the conception and development of academic, institutional, residential, commercial, corporate headquarters, and tall building projects. As a planner, he has been a driver of the firm’s master planning and development planning practice in the United States and internationally.

The program is free to Museum Members. Reservations are required, and priority is given to Corporate Member firms and their employees. All guests MUST RSVP to [email protected] to assure admittance to the event. Not a member? Become a Museum member today! Click here for more information on our upcoming programs.

AIA Members can earn 1.5 LUs for this program.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Barry Bergdoll Book Talk

Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson

Monacelli Press, 2015

Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson, a catalog that accompanies an exhibition opening in 2016 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, chronicles the collaboration of two key figures who in the 1920s and 1930s helped to establish the Museum of Modern Art and to introduce Modern Architecture – the European avant-garde movement that became known as the International Style – to New York and America. In this volume of essays edited by David A. Hanks, Barry Bergdoll, who himself served in the position of The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art from 2007-2013, examines the context of New York’s architectural cultures in the late Twenties and the catalytic role of the 1932 MoMA exhibition curated by Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock, called Modern Architecture: International Exhibition.

Architectural historian Barry Bergdoll is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archeology at Columbia University, where he studied as an undergraduate, received his PhD., and has taught since 1986, specializing in modern architecture and culture in the broadest sense. The author of numerous books, articles, and distinguished lecture series, Bergdoll spent six years, through 2013, as the Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, during which time he organized and curated a series of influential exhibitions, ranging from the contemporary inquiries "Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront" and "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling," to scholarly surveys of the works of Henri Labrouste and Le Corbusier, as well as the 2015 "Latin America in Construction: 1955-1980."

Monday, November 16, 2015 6:30-8 pm

SKYSCRAPER SEMINARS

Forth Bagley: Chow Tai Fook Centre in Guangzhou

Continuing our series of close examinations of the typology of supertalls, this seminar led by Forth Bagley of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates will focus on the 530-meter Chow Tai Fook Centre in Guangzhou, China. When completed late next year, the CTF Centre will be the city's tallest building, a symbol of Guangzhou's growing economic might within the Pearl River Delta and one of the most programmatically complex super tall towers ever constructed. Housing office, residential, hotel and retail program within a high-tech "breathing" facade made of glazed terra cotta and metal, the tower has become a model of sustainable, high-density, center-city architecture.

Forth Bagley is a Director at KPF with over ten years of experience in the design and management of a range of commercial projects, including hotel, retail, residential and mixed-use projects in the United States, England, China, Thailand, and India. He has focused on issues of density, the intersection of public and private space, and the intricate programmatic relationships of some of the most complex projects in the contemporary city.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Judith Gura & Kate Wood Book Talk

Interior Landmarks: Treasures of New York

Monacelli Press, 2015

In the fifty years since its passage in 1965, the New York City Landmarks Law has preserved outstanding buildings of cultural, social, economic, political, and architectural history. Interiors, though, have only been protected since 1973, as the new book Interior Landmarks: Treasures of New York recounts. Authors Judith Gura and Kate Wood focus on 47 colorful examples of the city’s current 117 interior landmarks. From the infamous Tweed Courthouse, centerpiece of the largest corruption case in New York history, to the glamorous Art Deco Rainbow Room, to the modernist Ford Foundation Building, whose garden-filled atrium prefigures green design, Gura and Wood examine the original construction and style, exceptional design features, materials, and architectural details, as well as the challenges to preserving these landmark interiors.

Design historian Judith Gura is on the faculty of the New York School of Interior Design and serves as a contributing editor to Art+ Auction magazine. Her previous books include Guide to Period Styles for Interiors, A History of Interior Design, Design After Modernism, and New York Interior Design, 1935–1985.

Kate Wood is the President of the preservation advocacy group Landmark West! and teaches in the Historic Preservation Program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Nan A. Rothschild and Diana diZerega Wall Book Talk

The Archaeology of American Cities

University Press of Florida, 2015

New York has been built, altered, redeveloped, destroyed, reimagined, and rebuilt for centuries. When new construction projects require digging, literally, into the city’s past, urban archeologists are presented with the challenging problems of reconstructing from limited data, a picture of the material culture of the past and of the social forces that drive urban development.

At the forefront of this academic discipline, Professors Nan Rothschild and Diana Wall introduce their fascinating field of research to a broad readership. Focusing on case studies of work undertaken in New York, Philadelphia, Tucson, West Oakland, The Archaeology of American Cities uses the material culture of former centuries to highlight recurring themes that reflect distinctive characteristics of urban life in the United States.

Nan A. Rothschild, director of the Museum Studies Program and professor of anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University, is the author of three books, including New York City Neighborhoods: The 18th Century.

Diana diZerega Wall, professor of anthropology at the City College of the City University of New York, is the author of The Archaeology of Genderand the coauthor of Unearthing Gotham.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Andrew Alpern Book Talk

The Dakota: A History of the World's Best-Known Apartment Building

Princeton Architectural Press, 2015

Built more than 130 years ago, New York's first true luxury apartment house, the Dakota, is still the gold standard against which all others are weighed. Historian Andrew Alpern recounts how Singer sewing magnate Edward Clark erected a building luxurious enough to coax the wealthy from their mansions downtown to ultra-modern living on the former swamplands of the Upper West Side. Redrawn plans, published here for the first time, show how Clark created glamorous apartments that made life under a shared roof as acceptable in Manhattan as in Europe's grand capitals, revolutionizing apartment life in New York City. This internationally renowned building is now accessible to us all—at least in print, if not in its ultra-private, well-guarded reality.

Andrew Alpern is a much-published architectural historian, architect, and attorney. A preëminent expert on historic apartment houses, he has authored nine prior books on the subject, as well as scores of articles. Since 2002 Alpern has served as general counsel and chief compliance officer for an SEC-registered investment adviser firm. He has been a resident of Manhattan since 1938.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Jake Rajs & Francis Morrone Book Talk

New York City Landmarks

Antique Collectors Club, 2015

In the second edition of New York City Landmarks,Jake Rajs’ amazing eye captures more than 70 of New York City’s most celebrated architecture in vivid new images, including the newest additions to New York’s landscape, One World Trade Center and the new Whitney Museum of American Art. Each image is accompanied by a short text, written by Francis Morrone, providing a comprehensive history and lively anecdotes.

Born in Poland, Jake Rajs moved to Israel before immigrating to Brooklyn at age eight. His work has been featured in more than 10,000 publications and numerous books including New New York, New York: City of Island, Manhattan: an Island in Focus, and The Hudson River: From Tear of the Clouds to Manhattan.

Francis Morrone is an author, critic, columnist, literary historian, and teacher at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. His books include An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn,and An Architectural Guidebook to New York City. He also regularly leads architectural walking tours of New York City for the Municipal Art Society.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Andrew Dolkart Book Talk

Saving Place: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks

The Monacelli Press, 2015

From irrefutable icons to lesser-known structures throughout the city, much of what makes New York City unique owes its existence to the New York City Landmarks Law. Born out of the destruction of McKim, Mead & White’s monumental Pennsylvania Station, the Landmarks Law established the parameters for protecting the places that represent New York City’s rich cultural, social, political, and architectural history. Today there are more than 31,000 landmark properties woven into daily life, many located in 111 historic districts across the city — including 1,347 individual buildings, 117 interior landmarks, and 10 scenic landmarks.

Published in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Landmarks Law, and a major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, Saving Place tells its story in essays by notable New Yorkers and preservationists, including Robert A.M. Stern, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, Andrew S. Dolkart, Françoise Bollack, Anthony C. Wood, and Claudette Brady.

Andrew S. Dolkart is the Director of the Historic Preservation Program and Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He is the author of numerous books on the architecture and urban development of New York City, focusing in particular on the city's everyday, vernacular building types, including Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development, Biography of a Tenement House in New York City: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street, and The Row House Reborn: Architecture and Neighborhoods in New York City 1908-1929.

All book talks are free and open to the public. The Gallery opens at 6:00pm.
All guests must RSVP to programs[at]skyscraper[dot]org to assure admittance to the event. Please be aware that reservation priority is given to members of The Skyscraper Museum.

    The Skyscraper Museum supports the NYC Landmarks50 Alliance

Tuesday, July 21, 2015   6:30 pm

SKYSCRAPER SEMINARS

David Malott: Supertall: Reshaping our Vertical Habitat

Beyond transforming skylines, the Supertall is at the center of compact and connected cities. David Malott of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates will share his insights into a building type which can hold the key to our sustainable urban future. In focus are three projects for which David was Senior Designer: the Shanghai World Financial Center, the Hong Kong ICC, and the topped-out 600+ meter Ping An Financial Center in Shenzhen.

David Malott is a Principal at KPF and the current Chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. With over 15 years of experience as an architectural designer, then as project director with buildings throughout Asia, he is a leading contributor to KPF’s strong presence in China, Japan, and Hong Kong.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Tom Miller Book Talk

Seeking New York:
The Stories Behind the Historic Architecture of Manhattan--
One Building at a Time

Rizzoli, 2015

Beautifully illustrated with line drawings and photographs, engagingly presented, and organized by neighborhoods, this richly detailed guide takes a narrative approach, telling stories that illuminate the architectural, personal, and social histories of Manhattan, building by building. Alongside details about each architect, dates, and styles, author Tom Miller reveals the joys, tragedies, and scandals of those who lived within. In addition to iconic structures, the book includes many off-the-beaten-path buildings, as well as notable buildings that no longer stand but remain key to Manhattan’s architectural history.

Tom Miller moved to New York City in 1979 from Dayton, Ohio, bringing with him a passion for buildings. He currently holds the rank of deputy inspector within the NYPD’s Auxiliary Police Force. In 2009 he started a blog, "Daytonian in Manhattan", which has now reviewed over a thousand buildings, statues, and other points of interest.

Click here to watch the program.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Annice M. Alt Book Talk

Boak & Paris / Boak & Raad: New York Architects

Xlibris, 2014

Architectural historian Annice Alt has relentlessly tracked the buildings and careers of the New York architect Russell Boak and his successive partners Hyman Paris and Thomas Raad, researching their work from the earliest Art Deco examples in the late 1920s through their mid-century Modern work of the 1950s and 1960s. Her book reconstructs the firm's four-decade practice, focusing in particular on their many residential high-rises, viewed in the context of the speculative real estate development that has significantly shaped streetscapes and neighborhoods across the city. In a testament to the architects work, one of his key clients, developer Elihu Rose of Rose Associates, recalled Russell Boak was "an unsung architect who was incapable of doing a bad drawing, a bad design. No one (was) comparable.

Raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Annice Alt began her immersion in the architectural history of New York City began after her retirement from her work in early childhood education. Boak & Paris / Boak & Raad: New York Architects is her first book

Click here to watch the program.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015 3:00 pm

TEN TOPS: Curator's Tour

Director Carol Willis lead a curator's tour of the museum's current exhibition TEN TOPS.

Thursday, May 7, 2015   6:30 pm

SKYSCRAPER SEMINARS

Chris Wilkinson: Four Towers on Four Continents

Following the success of WilkinsonEyres 440m Guangzhou IFC tower, the practice has been commissioned to design towers in Sydney, Toronto and London. Chris, will give an illustrated talk about his experience of designing four towers on four continents, each one taking a very different architectural approach, responding to its particular context and brief.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Marta Gutman Book Talk

A CITY FOR CHILDREN:
WOMEN, ARCHITECTURE, AND THE CHARITABLE LANDSCAPES
OF OAKLAND, 1850-1950

University of Chicago Press, 2014

In her path-breaking study of everyday architecture and 19th- and early 20th-century urban reformers who were women, Marta Gutman focuses on the use and adaptive reuse of everyday buildings in Oakland, California, to make the city a better place for children. She explores the ways in which women turned private houses in Oakland into orphanages, kindergartens, settlement houses, and day care centers, and in the process built the charitable landscape. These urban transformations created a network of places critical for the betterment of children, families, and public life. Spanning one hundred years of history, A City for Children provides a compelling model for building urban institutions and demonstrates the central role children, women, charity, and the built environment play in our understanding of modern cities.

Marta Gutman is associate professor of architectural and urban history at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York and visiting professor of art history at the Graduate Center, City College of New York, as well as an editor for Designing Modern Childhoods. She is a licensed architect.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Daniel Rose Book Talk

MAKING A LIVING, MAKING A LIFE

Half Moon Press, 2014

Among New Yorks famed families of real estate, the Roses of Rose Associates are most closely identified with the residential sector. During his 60-year career in development and management, Daniel Rose, Chairman of Rose Associates, has also created large-scale mixed-use properties, including the award-winning Pentagon City complex in Arlington, Virginia and the One Financial Center office tower in Boston. As an institutional consultant, his credits include the creation and implementation of the "housing for the performing arts" concept for New York's Manhattan Plaza.

The winner of numerous awards, Daniel Rose has long pursued a broad range of professional, civic, and non-profit activities. He teaches, lectures, and writes on a variety of real estate, urban planning and economic subjects. Winner of a number of national Cicero speechwriting awards, he has received Honorary Doctorates in Humane Letters from Long Island University; in Engineering from NYU/Polytechnic; and in Science from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Making A Living, Making A Life brings together many of his best essays and speeches.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015 6:30-8 pm

Vicky Ward Book Talk

The LIAR'S BALL:THE EXTRAORDINARY SAGA OF HOW ONE BUILDING BROKE THE WORLD'S TOUGHEST TYCOONS

Wiley 2014

The Liars Ball describes the desperate scramble that ensued when the worlds most expensive building went on the auction block. The iconic GM Building brought out the best and worst in New Yorks real estate royalty, and led a few of them to ruin.

A story of naked, unregulated capitalism, of the sometimes bloody free-for all of the free market, The Liars Ball is tale of brilliant and enormously ambitious billionaires fighting bare-knuckled to get what they want. And they all wanted the GM Building. Through over 200 interviews with real estates best and brightestDonald Trump, Harry Macklowe, Samuel Zell, Mort Zuckerman and many moreWard exposes the lies and schemes and insecurities behind the deals made by some of the worlds biggest egos.

Vicky Ward is the New York-based, British-born author of the New York Times bestseller The Devils Casino: Friendship, Betrayal and the High-Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers (Wiley, 2010). A former contributing editor to Vanity Fair for 11 years, she is the former executive editor of Talk and the former news features editor of the New York Post. She holds a masters in English literature from Cambridge University.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015 6:30-8 pm

David Smiley Book Talk

PEDESTRIAN MODERN: SHOPPING AND AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE, 1925-1956

University of Minnesota Press, 2013

In Pedestrian Modern, David Smiley reveals how the design for places of consumptionstores and shopping centersinformed emerging modernist tenets. Tracing the history of architectures relationship with retail environments during a time of significant transformation in urban centers and in open suburban landscapes, Pedestrian Modern expands and qualifies the making of American modernism.

David Smiley is an architect who teaches architectural and urban theory, design and practice at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. Dr. Smiley has written on contemporary urban and suburban issues, large-scale urban interventions, the re-use of shopping malls and the recent history of urban planning and urban design in the Journal of Architectural Education, Perspecta, and the Journal of Urban History. He has taught at Yale University's School of Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis, and Texas A & M University.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014 6:30-8 pm

Anthony Flint Book Talk

Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow.

Amazon Publishing 2014

Arguably the most important architect of the twentieth century, Le Corbusier invented new ways of building and thinking. In Modern Man, Anthony Flint offers a popular biography of a constant self-inventor, as well as a sweeping tale filled with exotic locales and high-stakes projects. Flints Corbusier isnt just the grandfather of modern architecture but a man who sought to remake the world according to his vision, dispelling the Victorian style and replacing it with something entirely new. If his s legacy remains controversial today, the evidence of his genius is secure.

Anthony Flint is the author of two previous books: Wrestling with Moses and This Land. A former Boston Globe reporter, he is a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and contributes to The Atlantic Cities website.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014 6:30-8 pm

Judith Dupré Book Talk
Judith Dupr�, in conversation with Alice Bloom

Skyscrapers
A History of the World's Most Extraordinary Buildings
Fourth Edition

(Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers; November 2013)

Skyscrapers captivate the eye, excite the imagination, and inspire awe and reverence. Wonders of artistic creativity and engineering ingenuity, of hard work and playful dreaming, skyscrapers embody the best of our practical achievements and reflect our highest aspirations. Judith Dupr�s Skyscrapers invites you to enjoy the stunning works born of that quest, introducing readers to the worlds most remarkable and beloved buildings while also exploring both the ancient roots of skyscrapers and visionary cities of the future.

This is a revised and updated version of Dupre's popular skyscraper survey, first published in 1996.

A graduate of Brown and Yale Universities, Judith Dupr� is the author of several acclaimed books about architecture, including Bridges (BD&L), New York Times bestselling Churches and Monuments. A resident of New York, Dupr� consults on large scale infrastructure projects and lectures at Yale and other universities.

Alice Bloom is the producer and host of A Town... And Village Two, a cable show broadcast widely in the metropolitan area that features interviews with leaders in the arts, education, business, and public service. Trained as an attorney, Alice segued into media and communications through her public service work.

Monday, October 27, 2014 6:30-8PM

Lynne Sagalyn Book Talk

Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon

(MIT Press)

In 2001, Lynne B. Sagalyn published Times Square Roulette, the definitive history of Times Square's redevelopment. Debunking the myth of an overnight urban miracle performed by Disney and Mayor Giuliani, she tells the far more complex and commanding tale of a twenty-year process of public controversy, nonstop litigation, and interminable delay. On the occasion of the Museum's exhibition TIMES SQUARE, 1984, she gave a talk about the process of researching and writing the book and her thoughts on Times Square today.

From its beginning as Longacre Square, Times Square's commercialism, signage, cultural diversity, and social tolerance have been deeply embedded in New York City's psyche. Its symbolic role guaranteed that any plan for its renewal would push the hot buttons of public controversy: free speech, property-taking through eminent domain, development density, tax subsidy, and historic preservation. Times Square Roulette details the complex relationship between planning and politics and the role of market forces in reshaping Times Square, demonstrating how policy was wedded to deal making and how persistent individuals and groups forged both.

Lynne B. Sagalyn is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate and Director of the MBA Real Estate Program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. She is currently finishing a book on the rebuilding of T he World Trade Center.

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Tuesday, September 30, 2014 6:30-8:00.

TIMES SQUARE, 1984 PROGRAM SERIES

TIMES SQUARE REVISITED: Urban Planning and Urban Design

How Today's Times Square's Design Was Encoded in the Eighties.

Monday, September 29, 2014 6:30PM-8PM

Scott Johnson Book Talk

PERFORMATIVE SKYSCRAPER: TALL BUILDING DESIGN NOW

(Princeton Architectural Press, June 2014)

In recent years, contemporary architectural theory and practice have shifted from a focus on how a building appears to how it performs. In the field of skyscraper design, the emergence of ultra-performing materials, interactive processing systems, and digital design and fabrication techniques are making remarkable new structures possible. In Performative Skyscraper, architect Scott Johnson describes how the combination of sophisticated modeling software and demands for ever-increasing environmental sustainability have led to an emphasis on high performance. From advanced window-walls to vertical mixed-use towers, Johnson captures the breadth and immediacy of skyscraper design now.

Scott Johnson is the founding design partner of the Los Angeles architecture firm, Johnson Fain. He has designed a wide variety of buildings worldwide and is currently working on high-rise buildings in Jakarta, Taichung City, and L.A., as well as mixed-use projects throughout the West Coast. He is a former Director of the Master of Architecture Programs at the USC School of Architecture and frequently lectures on the evolution of modern cities and the emergence of new building typologies. His previous books include The Big Idea: Criticality + Practice in Contemporary Architecture and Tall Building: Imagining the Skyscraper.

July 22, 2014 6:30PM-8PM

John Tauranac Book Talk

THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING: THE MAKING OF A LANDMARK

(First Published 1995; New Edition, Cornell University Press; March 2014)

The Empire State Building is the landmark book on one of the worlds most famous skyscrapers. John Tauranac focuses on the inception and construction of the building, as well as its history through the interwar years. In a new epilogue to the Cornell edition, Tauranac highlights the continuing resonance and influence of the Empire State Building in the rapidly changing post-9/11 cityscape.

John Tauranac writes on New York's architectural history, teaches and lectures, and gives tours of the city. �He is also a mapmaker. In 1997, he was the guest curator of A Dream Well Planned: The Empire State Building at the Museum of the City of New York. His books include New York from the Air, Elegant New York, Essential New York, and Seeing New York. A�frequent contributor to New York newspapers and magazines,Tauranac is an adjunct associate professor at NYUs School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

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June 26, 2014 6:30PM-8PM

Donald L. Miller Book Talk

SUPREME CITY: HOW JAZZ AGE MANHATTAN GAVE BIRTH TO MODERN AMERICA

(Simon & Schuster; May 2014)

The 1920s Jazz Age in New York was a decade of rapid cultural and urban transformation. Innovations such as radio, tabloid newspapers, and movies with sound began to command the attention of New Yorkers, and as Times Square became Americas movie mecca, the center of New Yorks cultural life shifted from downtown to Midtown. In Supreme City, Donald Miller charts Manhattans modernization by delving into the era's brilliantly ambitious personalities and the engineering triumphs, including Grand Central Terminal and the Holland Tunnel, which shifted New Yorks commercial, social, and cultural hub to Midtown.

Donald Miller is the John Henry MacCracken professor of history at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. He is the New York Times best-selling author of 7 books including Masters of Air: Americas Bomber Boys Fought the Air War Against Nazi German. One of the country's most respected authorities of WWII and U.S. History, he is a consultant and advisor to historical productions on HBO and PBS.

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June 11, 2014 3:00PM

SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis will lead a tour of the current exhibit SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury.

May 22, 2014 6:30PM-8PM

William W. Buzbee Book Talk

FIGHTING WESTWAY: ENVIRONMENTAL LAW, CITIZEN ACTIVISM, AND THE REGULATORY WAR THAT TRANSFORMED NEW YORK CITY

(Cornell University Press; April 2014)

From 1971 to 1985, legal and political battles raged over Westway, the controversial multibillion-dollar highway, development, and park project conceived for the Hudson River edge on Manhattans Lower West Side. The most expensive highway project ever proposed, Westway provoked one of the highest stakes legal battles of its day. Drawing on archival records and interviews, legal scholar William W. Buzbee probes beneath the veneer of government actions and court rulings to illuminate the political pressures and strategic moves that shaped the Westway wars. Involving all branches of government, environmental laws, scientific conflict, strategic citizen action, trials and court cases, the history of Westway illuminates how urban priorities are contested and how separation of powers and federalism frameworks structure legal and political conflict.

William W. Buzbee is currently Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law and will be joining the law faculty at Georgetown University Law Center in the fall of 2014. He is co-author of Environmental Protection: Law and Policy and editor of Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question. He has published in many leading law reviews.

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May 14 and 28, 2014 3:00PM

SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury.

April 29, 2014 6:30PM-8PM

James Sanders Book Talk

SCENES FROM THE CITY: FILMMAKING IN NEW YORK CITY

(Rizzoli; March 2014)

Film historian and documentary writer James Sanders delighted his audience with a trove of movie memories taken from the new edition of Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in New York. This revised and expanded edition, first published in 2006, is a celebration of the rise of New York-shot films, covering in particular the decades since NYC aggressively promoted the film industry through the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, established in 1966. James Sanders updates the past dozen years of filmmaking under the Bloomberg administration and adds a section on women filmmakers, as well as rare, behind-the-scenes shots directly from studio archives. The book also explores the recent growth of the City's television industry. Today the entertainment industry employs 130,000 New Yorkers and contributes more than $7 billion to the local economy each year.

James Sanders, an architect, co-wrote the Emmy Award-winning PBS series New York: A Documentary Film and its companion volume, New York: An Illustrated History, as well as Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies. He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair and Architectural Record. He has also participated in important design projects in and around the city.

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April 2, 16, and 30, 2014 3:00PM

SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury.

March 25, 2014 6:30PM-8PM
May Joseph Book Talk

FLUID NEW YORK: COSMOPOLITAN URBANISM AND THE GREEN IMAGINATION

(Duke University Press Books; July 2013)

Hurricane Sandy was a fierce demonstration of the ecological vulnerability of New York, a city of islands. Yet the storm also revealed the resilience of a metropolis that has started during the past decade to reckon with its aqueous topography. In Fluid New York, May Joseph describes the many ways that the city and its citizens have begun to incorporate the urban archipelago ecology into plans for a livable and sustainable future.

May Joseph's reflections reach back to the city's heyday as a world-class porta past embodied in a Dutch East India Company cannon recently unearthed from the rubble at the World Trade Center site. They also encompass the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy and suggest that the city's future lies in the reclamation of its great water resourcesfor artistic creativity, civic engagement, and ecological sustainability.

May Joseph is Professor of Social Science at the Pratt Institute, where she teaches urbanism, global studies, and visual culture. She is the founder of Harmattan Theater, which produces site-specific outdoor productions exploring the history of New York City through its architecture, design, and natural environment Joseph is also the author of Nomadic Identities: The Performance of Citizenship and a coeditor of Performing Hybridity.

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March 11, 2014 6:30PM-8:00PM

Mirror, mirror... who is the slenderest of them all?

111 W. 57TH ST.

At Edmond J. Safra Hall, Museum of Jewish Heritage
36 Battery Place, across the street from The Skyscraper Museum.

Speakers:
Vishaan Chakrabarti, Partner, SHoP Architects
Gregg Pasquarelli, Partner, SHoP Architects
Silvian Marcus, Principal in Charge, WSP Group

Panel discussion, moderated by Carol Willis, Director of the Skyscraper Museum:
SHoP Architects, WSP Group, and developer Michael Stern, Managing Partner, JDS Development Group

Among the extraordinary new crop of New York's super-slim, ultra-luxury residential towers surveyed in The Skyscraper Museum's exhibition SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury, the most slender of all is the 111 W. 57th St., designed by SHoP Architects, with structural engineering by WSP Group for JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group. With a ratio of the width of the base to height of 1:23, the 1,350+ ft tower will be the most slender building in the world.

SHoP's design harkens back to the quality, materiality, and emphatic verticality of historic NYC skyscrapers, while utilizing advanced engineering and technology to craft a contemporary contribution to the skyline. The tower's silhouette rises in an elegant series of feathered setbacks, while the façade reads at multiple scales and vantage points. An intricate pattern of shaped terracotta panels and bronze latticework on the east and west façades creates a sweeping play of light and shadow, while a glass curtain wall on the north and south façades provide sweeping views of Central Park and Midtown.

SHoP Architects was founded in 1996 on a premise of proving that intelligent and evocative architecture can be made in the real world, with real world constraints, and has made a name for itself by pioneering the use of innovative technologies to produce both iconic architectural forms and a new model for the profession.

WSP is one of the world's leading professional services firms. Its New York-based structural engineer, the WSP Group (formerly Cantor Seinuk) are the designers of the structural systems for a majority of the city's super-slender towers now under construction.

The exhibition was open to the public from 5:00 to 6:30 before the lecture.

This lecture was presented with the generous support of JDS Development Group.

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March 5 and 19, 2014 3:00PM

SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury.

February 24, 2014 6:30PM-8PM

Rafael Vi�oly Lecture

432 PARK AVENUE AND OTHER TOWERS

This lecture was held in the auditorium of the National Museum of the
American Indian, Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, 1 Bowling Green

Rafael Viñoly is the founding principal of Rafael Vi�oly Architects PC, a New York-based firm with an international practice. Vi�olys award-winning designs include museums, performing arts centers, convention centers, and numerous research and academic buildings and complexes. His commercial high-rise work began in the 1980s, and he explored innovative forms and structural strategies in several projects, including the post-9/11 WTC competition, in which the collaborative design of the THINK team for a World Cultural Center was a finalist.

Taller than the rooftop of either the original or current 1 WTC, 432 Park Avenue will top out in 2015 at 1,396 feet, making itin the words of its developers Macklowe Properties and the CIM Groupthe loftiest residence in the Western Hemisphere. Exemplifying the logic of luxury, the tower's soaring height is predicated on its compact 93-foot square floor plate and extra-high ceilings, which produce its slenderness ratio of 1:15. The emphatic white grid of the concrete frame, divided into six sections by open mechanical floors, represents an integration of the elegant architectural concept and structural logic that sets 432 Park Avenue apart from curtain-wall contemporaries.

Rafael Vi�oly discussed the design of 432 Park Avenue in the context of his high-rise work and design philosophy.

There was be a Q & A after the talk moderated by Cathleen McGuigan, editor in chief of Architectural Record.

This lecture was presented with generous support of Enclos.

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February 21 and 28, 2014 5:00PM

SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury.

February 18, 2014 6:30PM-8PM

Alexandros Washburn Book Talk

THE NATURE OF URBAN DESIGN: A NEW YORK PERSPECTIVE ON RESILIENCE

(Island Press; May 2013)

In his visually rich book The Nature of Urban Design, Alexandros Washburn argues that the best cities become an ingrained part of their residents identities and that the strength of our communities will determine how we respond to crises like Hurricane Sandy, whose floodwaters he watched from his home in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Urban design is the key to this process, but all too often, citizens abandon it to professionals, unable to see a way to express what they love and value in their own neighborhoods. His book strives to empower urbanites and offer a new approach to design that will help cities to prosper in an uncertain future.

Alexandros Washburn is a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, former Chief Urban Designer of the New York City Department of City Planning and former Public Works Advisor and chief architect for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

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February 5, 2014 3:00PM

SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury.

February 4, 2014 6:30PM-8PM
*Previously scheduled for January 28, 2014.

Vishaan Chakrabarti Book Talk

A COUNTRY OF CITIES: A MANIFESTO FOR AN URBAN AMERICA

(Metropolis Books; May 2013)

In A Country of Cities, Vishaan Chakrabarti argues that well-designed cities are the key to solving America's great national challenges: environmental degradation, unsustainable consumption, economic stagnation, rising public health costs and decreased social mobility. If we develop them wisely in the future, our cities can be the force leading us into a new era of progressive and prosperous stewardship of our nation. Through clear, accessible prose and a distinct visual language of original illustrations created by SHoP Architects, Chakrabarti delivers a wealth of information about cities, suburbs and exurbs, looking at how they developed across the 50 states and their roles in prosperity and globalization, sustainability and resilience, and heath and joy.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the director of Columbia Universitys Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE). An architect and planner, Chakrabarti has worked in both the public and private sectors: as a director at the New York City Planning Commission; an associate partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; a transportation planner for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and as an executive at the Related Companies. In March 2012, Chakrabarti became a partner at SHoP Architects.

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January 14, 2014 6:30PM-8PM

Constance Rosenblum Book Talk

HABITATS: PRIVATE LIVES IN THE BIG CITY

(New York University Press; March 2013)

There may be eight million stories in the Naked City, but there are also nearly three million dwelling places, ranging from Park Avenue palaces to Dickensian garrets and encompassing much in between. The doorways to these residences are tantalizing portals opening onto largely invisible lives. Habitats offers 40 vivid and intimate stories about how New Yorkers really live in their brownstones, their apartments, their mansions, their lofts, and as a whole presents a rich, multi-textured portrait of what it means to make a home in the worlds most varied and powerful city.

Constance Rosenblum, most recently author of the Habitats column published in the Real Estate section The New York Times, was the longtime editor of Times's City section and a former editor of the papers Arts and Leisure section. She is the author of Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak and Hope along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

Constance was joined in conversation with Boris Fishman, a subject of one of her Habitats profiles, who is also the author of the novel A Replacement Life, forthcoming from HarperCollins in June 2014.

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December 10, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Phyllis Lambert Book Talk

BUILDING SEAGRAM

(Yale University Press; April 2013)

On December 10, Phyllis Lambert will discuss her book Building Seagram, published by Yale University Press. Her illustrated talk will be followed by a dialogue with Museum Director Carol Willis.

Considered one of the greatest icons of twentieth-century architecture, the Seagram Building was commissioned by Samuel Bronfman, founder of the Canadian distillery dynasty Seagram. Bronfmans daughter Phyllis was twenty-seven when she took over the search for the project's architect and chose Mies van der Rohe (18861969), a pioneering modern master of what he termed skin and bones architecture.

Building Seagram is a comprehensive personal and scholarly history of a major building and its architectural, cultural, and urban legacies. Lambert makes use of previously unpublished personal archives, company correspondence, and photographs to to tell the ultimate insiders view of the debates, resolutions, and unknown dramas of the buildings construction, as well as its crucial role in the history of modern art and architectural culture.

Phyllis Lambert is the founding director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. A licensed architect, she has contributed essays to numerous books and is the subject of the 2007 documentary film "Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture."

November 19, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Erica Stoller Book Talk

LOOKING TWICE: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CONSTRUCTION THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHS

(Yale University Press; December 2012)

Ezra Stoller Photographer, the book by Nina Rappaport and Erica Stoller, considers the scope of work by Stoller, known as the dean of American architectural photographers. His iconic photographs of 20th-century architectural masterpieces, such as Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, are often cited in aiding the rise of modernism in America. Stoller (19152004) elevated architectural photography to an art form, capturing the mood of numerous buildings in their best light.

On November 19, Erica Stoller will take a close look at rarely-seen images of models, construction and final views made in the '50s and '60s of the most important Modern buildings along Park Avenue and other New York City sites. Looking beyond the content, one can begin to understand the photographer's decisions about where, when and how the images were made.

Erica Stoller is director of Esto, the photographic agency founded by Ezra Stoller. She is the co-author with Nina Rappaport of Ezra Stoller, Photographer.

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November 13 and 20; December 4 and 18, 2013 3:00PM

SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit SKY HIGH & the logic of luxury.

October 29, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Matthew Gordon Lasner Book Talk

HIGH LIFE: CONDO LIVING IN THE SUBURBAN CENTURY

(Yale University Press; October 2012)

Today, one in five homeowners in American cities and suburbs lives in a multifamily home rather than a single-family dwelling. As the American dream evolves, precipitated by declining real estate prices and a renewed interest in city living, many predict that condos will become the predominant form of housing in the 21st century. In this unprecedented study Matthew Gordon Lasner explores the history of co-owned multifamily housing in the United States, from New York City's first co-op, in 1881, to contemporary condo and townhouse complexes coast to coast. Lasner explains the complicated social, economic, and political factors that have increased demand for this way of living, situating the trend within the larger housing market and broad shifts in residential architecture. He contrasts the prevalence and popularity of condos, townhouses, and other privately governed communities with their ambiguous economic, legal, and social standing, as well as their striking absence from urban and architectural history.

Matthew Gordon Lasner is assistant professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College.

September 11, 2013 3:00PM

9/11 Gallery Talk

On the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, director and curator Carol Willis gave a gallery talk in the World Trade Center permanent exhibitions.

September 5, 2013 3:00PM and September 12, 2013 1:00PM
1411 Broadway, corner of 40th St.

Urban Fabric 2: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit Urban Fabric 2. This event was free and open to the public.

August 21 and September 4, 2013 3:00PM

Woolworth Building @ 100: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit The Woolworth Building @ 100.

July 24, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Marguerite Holloway Book Talk

THE MEASURE OF MANHATTAN: THE TUMULTUOUS CAREER AND SURPRISING LEGACY OF JOHN RANDEL, JR., CARTOGRAPHER, SURVEYOR, INVENTOR

(W. W. Norton & Company; February 2013)

John Randel Jr. (1787-1865) was an eccentric and flamboyant 19th-century surveyor who plotted Manhattan's famous defining grid, the 1811 Commissioners' Plan. Unearthing Randel's engrossing and dramatic life story for the first time, Marguerite Holloway's eye-opening biography resurrects this unheralded pioneer of American engineering and mapmaking.The Measure of Manhattan illuminates the ways in which surveying and cartography change the ground beneath our feet. Bringing Randel's story into the present, Holloway travels with contemporary surveyors and scientists trying to envision Manhattan as a wild island once again.

Marguerite Holloway, the director of Science and Environmental Journalism at Columbia University, has written for Scientific American, Discover, the New York Times, Natural History, and Wired

July 10, 2013 3:00PM

Woolworth Building @ 100: Curator's Tour

Director and Curator Carol Willis conducted a tour of the current exhibit The Woolworth Building @ 100.

June 26, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

David Anderson Book Talk

ON WALL STREET: ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHS OF LOWER MANHATTAN, 19802000

(George F. Thompson Publishing; January 2013)

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, as big glass and steel boxes rose across the city, photographer David Anderson dedicated himself to a project to document Wall Street's classic architecture. Avoiding the focus on people, traffic, and street life, he concentrates attention on architectural details or certain profiles to reveal built form, energy, and a larger sense of place within the city's urban fabric.

Architectural historian Gail Fenske observes: "David Anderson's poignant photographs capture the coldness, power, and impregnability of the mythical Wall Street. Devoid of the flux of street movement and crowds, the monuments speak. Creatures keep watch, frozen in stone, while surprising traces of decay and delicate detail suggest the contingency, even frailty, of human existence. Paul Goldberger's masterful introduction guides us as well in seeing and appreciating this historic citadel of American finance."

David Anderson is an architectural photographer who was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. He moved to New York City at a young age, beginning his photographic career at the Daily News. He served in the U.S. Army as a cameraman, and from 1969-1983, he worked as a cinematographer, specializing in commercials and documentaries. He now lives in the Hudson River Valley.

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June 14, 2013 1PM-5PM

Medieval or Modern?

WOOLWORTH BUILDING CENTENNIAL

In conjunction with the exhibition The Woolworth Building @ 100, the Skyscraper Museum presented an afternoon of illustrated talks, inquiry, and dialogue inspired by the centennial of New York Citys great Gothic tower, The Cathedral of Commerce.

Our distinguished speakers included Mary Beth Betts, Gail Fenske, Joanna Merwood-Salibury, Kevin Murphy, Dietrich Neumann, Suzanne Stephens, and Mary Woods.

This program was held in the rear lobby arcade of the Woolworth Building.

This program was presented with the generous support of
ELISE JAFFE + JEFFREY BROWN.

Click here for further details.

May 15, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Donald Friedman Lecture

THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING: ENGINEERING HEIGHT

Completed in 1913, the 792-foot Woolworth Building doubled the height of the tallest skyscraper of 1900, the neighboring Park Row Building, and surpassed the 1908 SInger Building by 180 feet. The rapid rise in height, from Park Row, to Singer, to the 700-foot Metropolitan Life Tower in 1909, reflects the arrival of mature steel-frame technology.

Gunvald Aus, the chief engineer of the Woolworth Building, was one of a group of turn-of-the-century structural engineers who were designing ever-larger steel-frame buildings and openly debating the best engineering methods for high-rise design and construction. At a time when the building codes and engineering education was still catching up to the reality of skyscrapers, this professional debate on the proper methods of dealing with foundations, wind loads, and supporting masonry curtain walls served as a method of technology transfer that allowed engineers who had not previously designed tall steel-frame buildings to understand key issues.

Donald Friedman, a structural engineer, is the president of Old Structures Engineering and lives in New York City. He is the author of Historical Building Construction; After 9-11: An Engineers Work at the World Trade Center; The Investigation of Buildings; The Design of Renovations, with Nathaniel Oppenheimer; and Building the Empire State with Carol Willis.

May 7, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Gail Fenske Lecture

THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING: HIGHEST IN THE WORLD

On July 1st, 1912, structural ironworkers topped off the Woolworth Building's steel frame with an American flag and New Yorkers celebrated the "Highest in the World." Yet the project had started out as a mere 20-story office building. Only after Frank W. Woolworth's disjointed process of parcel acquisition and Cass Gilbert's erratic, protracted sequence of design did the Woolworth Building's spectacular 792-foot high tower rise to command its surroundings.

And while both Gilbert and Woolworth participated in the day's obsession with big spatial ideas, Gilbert had romantically aspired to build the world's tallest tower and Woolworth simply to erect a "giant signboard" to advertise his chain of stores around the world. How did Gilbert and Woolworth negotiate such aims with the realities of the marketplace to construct what the New York Times called "The Worlds Greatest Skyscraper"?

Gail Fenske is author of The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York (University of Chicago Press, 2008). She is professor of architecture in the School of Architecture, Art & Historic Preservation at Roger Williams University, and has taught as a visiting professor at Cornell, Wellesley, and MIT. She is also a licensed architect and has practiced architecture in Boston and New York. She holds a Ph.D. in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture from MIT.

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April 22, 2013 6PM-8PM

Gail Fenske lecture and reception at the Center for Architecture

THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING: THE MAKING OF A NEW YORK LANDMARK

This event, co-sponsored by The Woolworth Centennial Celebration Committee, the AIA New York Chapter Historic Buildings Committe, and The Skyscraper Museum, was held at the Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, New York.

When the Woolworth Building was completed in 1913, critics hailed Cass Gilberts design as a spectacular feat of engineering and wondrous Gothic tower. The highest skyscraper in the world, it secured the emblematic status of New Yorks skyline as a city of towers. But the Woolworth Buildings fame as a landmark belies the differing aims of its architect, client, and builder, each of whom had a unique relationship to the city. How did Gilbert reconcile his vision for the Woolworth Building with that of his client, F. W. Woolworth, and builder, Louis Horowitz of the Thompson-Starrett Company, to create the artistic masterwork and exemplar of urbanity that we recognize today?

Gail Fenske is author of The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York (University of Chicago Press, 2008). She is professor of architecture in the School of Architecture, Art & Historic Preservation at Roger Williams University, and has taught as a visiting professor at Cornell, Wellesley, and MIT. She is also a licensed architect and has practiced architecture in Boston and New York. She holds a Ph.D. in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture from MIT.

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April 15, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Aurora Wallace Book Talk

MEDIA CAPITAL: ARCHITECTURE AND COMMUNICATIONS IN NEW YORK CITY

(University of Illinois Press; October 2012)

With a unique focus on corporate headquarters as embodiments of the values of the press and as signposts for understanding media culture, Media Capital demonstrates the mutually supporting relationship between the media and urban space. Aurora Wallace considers how architecture contributed to the power of the press, the nature of the reading public, the commercialization of media, and corporate branding in the media industry. Tracing the rise and concentration of the media industry in New York City from the mid-nineteenth century to the presentincluding the great skyscraper headquarters of Newspaper Row and Times SquareWallace analyzes physical and discursive space, as well as labor, technology, and aesthetics, to understand the entwined development of the mass media and late capitalism.

Aurora Wallace is a professor in the department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and the author of Newspapers and the Making of Modern America.

The Skyscraper Museum continues its WHATS UP? series on international skyscraper design and development.

April 10, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Christoph Ingenhoven Lecture

WHY I LOVE SKYSCRAPERS

This lecture will be held in the auditorium of the National Museum of the American Indian, Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, 1 Bowling Green

1 Bligh Street. Image credit: H.G. Esch.

Christoph Ingenhoven is the founding principal of ingenhoven architects, a Dusseldorf-based firm with an increasingly international practice. His assertively modernist work emphasizes ecological principles in combination with innovative engineering and close attention to the public realm. In 2012, his sleek, sustainable, and elegant design for 1 Bligh Street in Sydney, Australia (with Architectus) won the International High-Rise Award of the DAM, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, the Best Tall Building in Asia & Australasia Award of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, as well as numerous other prizes.

This lecture was presented in collaboration with the Facades + Performance NYC conference, April 11+12, and is free to its registrants. The conference is presented by The Architects Newspaper and enclos.

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March 22, 2013 10:00AM-5:30PM

Society of Architectural Historians Study Program

STUDY DAY AT THE SKYSCRAPER MUSEUM:
"WOOLWORTH BUILDING @ 100"

Join the Society of Architectural Historians at the The Skyscraper Museums exhibition, Woolworth Building @ 100, on March 22, 2013. SAH will be presenting a customized study day that will offer participants an opportunity for an in-depth look at the exhibition with the curators Gail Fenske, Susan Tunick, and Carol Willis along with a tour of Cass Gilberts buildings in lower Manhattan led by Andrew Dolkart and Gail Fenske, featuring the United States Custom House, the West Street Building, and the Broadway-Chambers Building, concluding with a visit to the Woolworth Building.

The exhibition features original design drawings by Cass Gilbert and his office staff, along with original documents, photographs, and artifacts. The original drawings will be available only for a limited time. The study day will end with a tour of the Woolworth Building, which will include a visit of a typical office space and view what remains of the designs European-inspired interiors. There will be a reception held at The Skyscraper Museum to follow.

Read the full description of the "Woolworth @ 100" Study Day.

General registration ($199 per person, non-refundable) opens January 15, 2013 on the SAH website. A Study Tour Fellowship will be awarded and applications will be accepted November 20 - December 20, 2012.

An all-day program, organized by the Society of Architectural Historians will begin at the Skyscraper Museum

For details and registration, please visit the SAH website

March 19, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Alexander Garvin Book Talk

THE PLANNING GAME: LESSONS FROM GREAT CITIES

(W.W. Norton & Company; March 2013)

The Planning Game: Lessons from Great Cities provides a focused, thorough, and sophisticated overview of how planning works. Generously illustrated with 200 colorful photographs, diagrams, and maps, the book presents the public-realm approach to planningemphasizing the importance of public investments in streets, squares, parks, infrastructure, and public buildings. The book examines planning at every level, explaining the activities necessary to successfully transform a community. The Lessons from Great Cities draw on four historical examples and their colorful motive forces: Paris (Baron Georges-Eug�ne Haussmann), New York (Robert Moses), Chicago (Daniel Burnham), and Philadelphia (Edmund Bacon).

Alexander Garvin is a noted architect and urban planner. He is an adjunct professor of urban planning and management at Yale University. He heads a planning and design firm and lives in New York.

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March 7, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Elihu Rubin Book Talk

INSURING THE CITY: THE PRUDENTIAL CENTER AND THE POSTWAR URBAN LANDSCAPE

(Yale University; June 2012)

One of the most significant urban developments of the 1950s and 60s, the Prudential Center anchors the Boston skyline with its tall gray tower. It is also a historical beacon, representing a midcentury moment when insurance companies like Prudential paid particular attention to how their physical presence and civic engagement reflected on their intangible product: financial security.

For Prudential executives, the construction of a new complex of buildings was not only a way to house the companys regional headquarters, but was also an investment in central Boson at a pivotal time in the citys history. To carry out its ambitious project, the private insurance company succeeded in establishing itself as a quasi-public entity, permitted by city planners to use real estate development as a means of fighting urban blight. Architectural historian Elihu Rubin tells the full story of The Pru, placing it in the political, economic, and architectural contexts of the period, and providing new insights into urban renewal in postwar America.

Elihu Rubin is an architectural historian, city planner, and documentary filmmaker. He is assistant professor of urbanism at the Yale School of Architecture.

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February 5, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Mary Anne Hunting Book Talk

EDWARD DURELL STONE: MODERNISM'S POPULIST ARCHITECT

(W. W. Norton & Co; November 2012)

Colossus, visionary, giant are terms used to describe Edward Durell Stone (19021978), the mid-twentieth century celebrity architect whose popular aesthetic of new romanticism played a role in defining postwar American modernism. Architectural historian Mary Anne Hunting will discuss the recent interest in Stones architecture, which has been spurred by the reconsideration of a number of his buildingsespecially the controversial conversion of his most flamboyant New York building, former Gallery of Modern Art (195864) at 2 Columbus Circle.

Stone's skyscrapers included commissions for New York's 50-story General Motors Building (1963-58) and the 83-story Standard Oil Building (1970-1974) in Chicago. Mary Anne Hunting will discuss Stones work, placing his aspirations of giving form to the aspirations of an emerging consumer culture.

Mary Anne Hunting received her doctorate from the City University of New Yorks Graduate Center and a masters degree in the history of decorative arts and design from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum/Parsons School of Design.

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January 14, 2013 6:30PM-8PM

Kurt Schlichting Book Talk

GRAND CENTRAL'S ENGINEER: WILLIAM J. WILGUS
AND THE PLANNING OF MODERN MANHATTAN

(Johns Hopkins University Press; March 2012)

In the centennial year of New York's great Grand Central Terminal, we celebrate the chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad, William J. Wilgus. Few people have had as profound an impact on the history of New York City. Prof. Kurt C. Schlichting will discuss the remarkable career of this innovator, revealing how his tireless work moving people and goods over and under Manhattan Island and its surrounding waterways forever changed New Yorks bustling transportation system. After his herculean efforts on behalf of Grand Central, the most complicated construction project in New Yorks history, Wilgus turned to solving the citys transportation quandary: Manhattanthe financial, commercial, and cultural hub of the United States in the twentieth centurywas separated from the mainland by two major rivers to the west and east, a deep-water estuary to the south, and the Harlem River to the north.

Kurt Schlichting is the E. Gerald Corrigan Endowed Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of sociology and anthropology at Fairfield University. He is also the author of Grand Central Terminal: Railroads, Architecture and Engineering in New York.

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JANUARY 8, 2013

THE COLOR REVOLUTION

Regina Lee Blaszczyk Book Talk

(The MIT Press; August 2012)

When the fashion industry declares that lime green is the new black, or instructs us to think pink!, it is not the result of a backroom deal forged by a secretive cabal of fashion journalists, designers, manufacturers, and the editor of Vogue. It is the latest development of a color revolution that have been unfolding for more than a century. In this book, the award-winning historian Reggie Blaszczyk traces the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of the color profession in consumer culture.

In The Color Revolution, Blaszczyk examines the evolution of the color profession from 1850 to 1970, telling the stories of innovators who managed the color cornucopia that modern artificial dyes and pigments made possible. These color stylists, color forecasters, and color engineers helped corporations understand the art of illusion and the psychology of color. Blaszczyk describes the strategic burst of color that took place in the 1920s, when General Motors introduced a bright blue sedan to compete with Fords all-black Model T and when housewares became available in a range of brilliant hues. She explains the process of color forecasting--not a conspiracy to manipulate hapless consumers but a careful reading of cultural trends and consumer taste. And she shows how color information flowed from the fashion houses of Paris to textile mills in New Jersey.

As a tie-in to the Urban Fabric exhibition, Blaszczyk focused her talk on Americas first color forecasters and their relationship to Seventh Avenue garment manufacturers and Fifth Avenue retailers in the 1920s and 1930s.

Reggie Blaszczyk is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and an editor at the Journal of Design History. She is the author of seven books, including Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning; Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers; and American Consumer Society, 1865-2005: From Hearth to HDTV.

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2012 PROGRAMS

December 5, 2012

CHOSEN CAPITAL: THE JEWISH ENCOUNTER WITH AMERICAN CAPITALISM

Rebecca Kobrin & Andrew Dolkart Book Talk

(Rutgers University Press; August 2012)

Edited by Prof. Rebecca Kobrin of Columbia University, the collection of essays in Chosen Capital examines the impact of Jewish immigrants and residents on American capitalism as both its architectsthrough their participation in specific industriesand as its most vocal critics through their support of unionism and radical political movements. Two chapters address New York's garment industry, including one by Andrew Dolkart, who traces the rags-to-riches career of developer Abraham E. Lefcourt. After an overview based on her introduction, "The Chosen People in the Chosen Land," Professors Kobrin and Dolkart will discuss the extraordinary dominance of Jews in the creation and culture of "Seventh Avenue."

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Assistant Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University. She has published widely on issues concerning American Jewish history and East European Jewish migration and is the author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Andrew S. Dolkart is the guest curator for URBAN FABRIC.

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November 29, 2012

NEW YORK NEON

Thomas Rinaldi Book Talk

Thomas E. Rinaldi treats New York City like an open-air museum of signs, capturing the glow of 200 surviving early- and mid-twentieth-century signs. In a generously illustrated introduction, drawing on documents including rare period trade publications, Rinaldi recounts the development of signage and the technological evolution of neon and examines its role in the streets of New York, in Americas cultural identity, and in our collective consciousness.

Raised near Poughkeepsie in upstate New York, Thomas E. Rinaldi visited New York City frequently before moving there in 2004. His life-long interest in the citys built landscape drove him to pursue a career in architecture: he works as a designer for Thornton Tomasetti, a leading engineering and architecture firm. Rinaldi holds degrees in history from Georgetown University and in historic preservation from Columbia University. He is the coauthor, with Robert J. Yasinsac, of Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape.

October 15, 2012

WOHA: BREATHING ARCHITECTURE

Richard Hassell Lecture

The Skyscraper Museum introduced a new lecture series WHAT'S UP? which highlights innovative high-rise architecture around the world. The series started with the work of WOHA, an internationally-acclaimed practice based in Singapore, established in 1994 by Richard Hassell and Wong Mun Summ. With a particular focus on Asia and the tropics, WOHA explores architectural strategies in response to contemporary issues of urbanization, density, sustainability, and climate. Their award-winning 69-story skyscraper in the heart of Bangkok, The Met, is a naturally-ventilated green tower that employs both public and private sky terraces and gardens in a new model for high-density urbanism.

Richard Hassell, co-Founding Director of WOHA, discussed Breathing Architecture, an overview of the firms recent work, from high-rise public housing to a visionary city of 5 million on just 45 square kilometres. The title refers to the climate-based approaches to sustainable design explored in the firms recent monograph and in a travelling exhibition of their work organized by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany.

Comment: Cathleen McGuigan, Editor in Chief, Architectural Record

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October 9, 2012

ALMOST ANONYMOUS & UBIQUITOUS:
THE SPECULATIVE ARCHITECTURE OF GEORGE & EDWARD BLUM

Susan Tunick and Andrew S. Dolkart

In the 1910s and 1920s, the prolific architectural firm of George & Edward Blum worked closely with speculative builders to design a large number of New York City's apartment buildings and commercial structures. The Blum brothers were among the most active architects in the Garment District, designing nineteen lofts.

Susan Tunick and Andrew Dolkart, guest curator for URBAN FABRIC, are co-authors of George & Edward Blum: Texture and Design in New York Apartment House Architecture (1986). They expand their close study of the firm's characteristic aesthetics, focusing in this illustrated lecture on their commercial loft buildings.

Susan Tunick is a national spokesperson for the preservation of architectural terra cotta and an established artist living and working in New York. She is the president of the Friends of Terra Cotta and has written extensively on terra cotta and tile, contributing to a renewed interest in the use and preservation of architectural ceramics. She is the author of Terra-Cotta Skyline (Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), which won that year's New York Society Library Award: Best Book on NYC.

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October 7, 2012 1:00PM-2:30PM

Walking Tour of the Garment District

Exhibition curator Andrew S. Dolkart led a 90-minute walking tour of the Garment District, focusing on the history of the key developers and architectural firms who designed and built in the 1920s the high-rise lofts and showrooms that constitute the greatest concentration of skyscraper factories in the world.

October 4, 2012 3:25PM-4:25PM

Carol Willis at Architectural Record's Innovation Conference

SUPERTALL CASE STUDIES: TECHNIQUE, PRACTICE & DESIGN

More SUPERTALL!
Museum Director Carol Willis moderated a panel discussion on "Supertall Case Studies: Technique, Practice & Design" at the annual Architectural Record Innovation Conference on October 4th. The speakers included the "cloud club" of designers of the world's tallest buildings:

William F. Baker, PE, SE, FASCE, FIStructE, Structural & Civil Engineering Partner, SOM, LLP
Gordon Gill, AIA, Partner, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
William Pedersen, FAIA FAAR, Vice Chairman, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

September 12, 2012

URBAN FABRIC: CURATORS TOUR

Guest-curator Andrew Dolkart conducted a tour of the current exhibit, Urban Fabric.

September 6, 2012

SAVING THE LIONS' CAGE: NYPL'S MULTI-STORY STACKS

Charles D. Warren

In this lecture of approximately one hour, architect and author Charles Warren discusses the history and construction of the stacks and their integral role in one of New Yorks most celebrated civic buildings.

The New York Public Librarys plan to remove millions of books from its century-old building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street has elicited a roar from many writers and scholars. But there has been little comment about the historic value of the remarkable book stacks that will be destroyed once the shelves are emptied. This construction of steel and iron, like a skyscraper frame threaded with curtain-walls of books, is the innovation at the core of the Librarys ingenious organizational scheme. The characters involved in its invention and construction include a celebrated surgeon, an unsung engineer, a Southern foundryman, and several of the most important architects of the era.

Charles D. Warren is principal of the Manhattan firm, Charles Warren Architect. He is the co-author of the two-volume monograph, Carrere & Hastings Architects and author of other books and essays on architecture and town planning.

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August 7, 2012

TUBES: A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE INTERNET

Andrew Blum

Everyone thinks they know the Internet. The most powerful information network ever conceivedan indispensable tool and constant companion in both our professional and personal lives. Were all connected but connected to what? In TUBES: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum, acclaimed young journalist Andrew Blum takes readers on a fascinating journey to find out.

Andrew Blum writes about architecture, infrastructure and technology for many publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek,, Slate, and Popular Science. He is a correspondent for Wired, a contributing editor to Metropolis, and lives in his hometown of New York City.

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July 31, 2012

BOULEVARD OF DREAMS: HEADY TIMES, HEARTBREAK, AND HOPE ALONG THE GRAND CONCOURSE IN THE BRONX

Constance Rosenblum

Stretching over four miles through the center of the West Bronx, the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, known simply as the Grand Concourse, has gracefully served as silent witness to the changing face of the Bronx and New York City. For a century,�it has truly been a boulevard of dreams for various upwardly mobile immigrant and ethnic groups. Constance Rosenblum unearths the colorful history of this grand street and its interlinked neighborhoods. With a seasoned journalists eye for detail, she paints an evocative portrait of the Concourse through compelling life stories and historical vignettes. The story of the creation and transformation of the Grand Concourse is the story of New Yorkand Americawrit large, and Rosenblum examines the Grand Concourse from its earliest days to the blighted 1960s and 1970s, right up to the current period of renewal.

Constance Rosenblum was the longtime editor of the City section of The New York Times, a Sunday section that used the techniques of narrative nonfiction to explore issues affecting New York City and the texture of life in the five boroughs. From 1990 to 1997, she was editor of the papers Arts and Leisure section, and previous to that she was deputy Arts and Leisure editor. Prior to joining The Times, she was culture editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and a reporter and editor at The New York Daily News.

In addition to Boulevard of Dreams, she is the author of Gold Digger: The Outrageous Life and Times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a biography of a Jazz Age celebrity, published by Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt. She is also the editor of two collections of essays: New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of The New York Times and "More New York Stories," both published by NYU Press. Rosenblum currently writes the Habitats column in the Sunday Real Estate section of The Times, and a collection of her columns will be published next year by NYU Press.

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July 27, 2012

DEVELOPING THE GARMENT DISTRICT

Andrew Dolkart

The Ladies' Garment Industry was New York City's largest employer in the first half of the 20th century, and "Seventh Avenue" was the city's most famous industry. While much has been written about the history of the unions and of fashion in general, this lecture and the related URBAN FABRIC exhibition focus on the architecture and development of the Garment District. Curator Andrew Dolkart discusses the character of the high-rise lofts and the forces that led to the creation of one of New York's most distinctive neighborhoods.

Andrew Dolkart is the James Marston Fitch Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He has written extensively about the architecture and development of New York, including the award-winning Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development and the Guide to New York City Landmarks. He has curated numerous exhibitions and is well-known for his walking tours of New York City neighborhoods.

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June 19, 2012

THE URBAN TOWERS HANDBOOK

Eric Firley

For well over a century, the modern skyscraper has provided an ingenious solution to high-density living and working. In the contemporary context of drastic urban growth, its role can only gain in importance. Firley analyzes fifty case studiesfrom Rockefeller Center in Manhattan to Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, from Hong Kong to S�o Pauloto explore how planning authorities use tall buildings to realize their urban goals and visions, and addresses the uneasy relationship between high-rise structures and sustainability.

Eric Firley is a French-German architect and urban designer. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture and heads an international research consultancy. In addition to The Urban Towers Handbook, Firley is the author of The Urban Housing Handbook (Wiley, 2011), written with Caroline Stahl.

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May 2, 25 & June 6, 2012
Curator's Tour

Museum Director and Curator Carol Willis led tours of the current exhibit News PAPER Spires.

June 5

BUILDING / TYPE: New York's Newspaper Towers

Carol Willis

Curator Carol Willis reflects on the research for the exhibition News PAPER Spires and proposes that New York's early newspaper headquarters represent an extraordinary new form of high-rise: vertical urban factories that exploit technological advances in both printing and building construction to multiply the real estate advantages of prime locations. The lecture traces the rise of the signature towers of "Newspaper Row," on the east side of City Hall Park, from the 1870s through the early 1900s, then the migration uptown that spawned both Times Square and the E. 42nd Street axis with the headquarters of the Daily News.

Carol Willis is the founder and director of the Skyscraper Museum and a professor of Urban Studies at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning. She is also the author of Form Follows Finance and co-author of Building the Empire State with Donald Friedman.

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May 23, 2012

GOOD GUYS, WISEGUYS, AND PUTTING UP BUILDINGS:

Samuel C. Florman

After more than five decades as a general contractor in New York City, Samuel Florman, chairman of Kreisler Borg Florman General Construction Company, has many stories to tell. An engineer with a gift for prose, he has published six books, including The Existential Pleasures of Engineering and The Introspective Engineer, as well as more than 250 articles. His new autobiographical volume Good Guys, Wiseguys, and Putting Up Buildings: A Life in Construction, recounts his career from the 1950s, amidst the rise of the notorious Mafia families and evolution of the Civil Rights Movement. Along with the rousing adventures, Florman writes of his enchantment with seeing architecture made real and the pride of creating housing, hospitals, schools, places of worshipshelter for the body and nourishment for the spirit. After a conversation about his career with the museums director, Carol Willis, Florman engaged in Q & A with the audience.

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April 25, 2012

James McGrath Morris Book Talk

PULITZER: A LIFE IN POLITICS, PRINT, AND POWER

(Harper Collins, February 2010)

Like Alfred Nobel, Joseph Pulitzer is better known today for the prize that bears his name than his contribution to history. Yet, in 19th-century industrial America, while Carnegie provided the steel, Rockefeller the oil, Morgan the money, and Vanderbilt the railroads, Pulitzer invented the modern mass media. Pulitzer traces the epic story of this Jewish Hungarian immigrant’s rise through American politics and into journalism, where he accumulated immense power and wealth, only to fall blind and become a lonely tormented recluse wandering the globe -- but not before Pulitzer transformed American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and immense influence.

James McGrath Morris is the editor of the monthly Biographer’s Craft and serves as the Executive Director of Biographers International Organization. His previous book, The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism, was selected as a Washington Post Best Book of the Year for 2004. He is currently working on the biography of journalist Ethel L. Payne.

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April 24, 2012

STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS OF EARLY SKYSCRAPERS:
THE CASE FOR NEW YORK

Donald Friedman

Donald Friedman, a structural engineer, is the president of Old Structures Engineering and lives in New York City. He is the author of Historical Building Construction; After 9-11: An Engineer's Work at the World Trade Center; The Investigation of Buildings; The Design of Renovations, with Nathaniel Oppenheimer; and Building the Empire State with Carol Willis.

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April 18 & 25, & May 2, 2012
Curator's Tour

Museum Director and Curator Carol Willis led tours of the current exhibit News PAPER Spires.

April 10, 2012

THE 1875 NEW YORK TRIBUNE BUILDING:"
THE TALL TOWER OF WHITELAW REID

Lee Gray

Lee Gray is an Associate Professor of Architectural History in the School of Architecture and Associate Dean in the College of Arts + Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. An expert on early commercial buildings, Lee Gray is the author of From Ascending Rooms to Express Elevators: A History of the Passenger Elevator in the 19th Century. He has written monthly articles on the history of vertical transportation for Elevator World Magazine since 2003.

March 19, 2012

A TOWER TO "WAKE UP THE NATION:"
THE NEW YORK TIMES IN TIMES SQUARE

Kathryn Holliday

Kathryn Holliday is an architectural historian and Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her research focuses on American architecture and theory, particularly interactions with Europe. Her book Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age (W. W. Norton, 2008) won the 2008 Book of the Year Award from the southeast chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her new book Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century will be published by Rizzoli this fall.

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March 7 & 14, 2012
Curator's Tour

Museum Director and Curator Carol Willis led tours of the current exhibit News PAPER Spires.

March 7, 2012

CROSSING UNDER THE HUDSON: THE STORY OF THE HOLLAND AND LINCOLN TUNNELS

Angus Kress Gillespie

Crossing under the Hudson takes a fresh look at the planning and construction of two key links in the transportation infrastructure of New York and New Jersey--the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels. Writing in an accessible style that incorporates historical accounts with a lively and entertaining approach, Gillespie explores these two monumental works of civil engineering and the public who embraced them. He describes and analyzes the building of the tunnels, introduces readers to the people who worked there--then and now--and places the structures into a meaningful cultural context with the music, art, literature, and motion pictures that these tunnels, engineering marvels of their day, have inspired over the years.

Angus Kress Gillespie is a Fulbright professor and teaches American Studies at Rutgers University. Gillespie is also the author of Twin Towers: The Life of New York Citys Trade Center and the coauthor of Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike (both Rutgers University Press).

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February 22, 2012

GUIDE TO CONTEMPORARY NEW YORK CITY ARCHITECTURE

John Hill

This essential walking companion and guide features 200 of the most notable buildings and spaces constructed in New York's five boroughs since 2000. Projects include the High Line, by James Corner Field Operations/Diller Scofidio + Renfro; 100 Eleventh Avenue, by Ateliers Jean Nouvel; Brooklyn Children's Museum, by Rafael Vinoly Architects; 41 Cooper Square, by Morphosis; Poe Park Visitors Center, by Toshiko Mori Architect; and One Bryant Park, by Cook + Fox. Grouped by neighborhood, the richly illustrated guide allows for easy, self-guided tours, with photos, maps, and directions. We joined the author for an engaging talk on some of his favorites.

John Hill is a registered architect who writes about contemporary architecture and "archi-tourism." He is the U.S. representative and editor for WorldArchitects.com and has publilshed articles in Architect Magazine, The Architect's Newspaper and eVolo, and was a contributing editor to the Chicago-based art/architecture magaizine TENbyTEN.

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January 10, 2012

John Tauranac Book Talk

NEW YORK FROM THE AIR: A STORY OF ARCHITECTURE

(Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Photographer)

(Harry Abrams, September 2011)

John Tauranac knows architectural New York, but even he was stumped by some of the subjects that the great aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand shot for their newest book. Tauranac takes it all with a sense of humor and more than a dash of humility as he discusses some of the mysteries with which he was presented. He will share the stories with you, and he’ll show some of his favorite photographs from this glorious book and tell the tales behind them.

John Tauranac writes on New York's architectural history, teaches the subject, gives tours of the city, and designs maps. He also teaches New York history and architecture at NYU's School of Continuing & Professional Studies, where he is an adjunct associate professor. He was named a Centennial Historian of the City of New York by the Mayor's Office for his work in history in 1999, and he was awarded a Commendation for Design Excellence by the U. S. Department of Transportation and the National Endowment of the Arts in 1980 for his design contributions to the 1979 subway map.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a world famous photographer renowned for his aerial photography. His work includes the bestseller The Earth from Above, which has sold over a million copies. He lives in France.

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2011 PROGRAMS

December 7 & 14, 2011

Curator's Tour

Museum Director and Curator Carol Willis led a gallery tour of the current exhibit Supertall!

December 1, 2011

THE HEIGHTS: ANATOMY OF A SKYSCRAPER

Kate Ascher

The skyscraper is perhaps the most recognizable icon of the modern urban landscape. Providing offices, homes, restaurants, and shopping to thousands of inhabitants, modern skyscrapers function as small cities- with infrastructure not unlike that hidden beneath our streets. Clean water is provided to floors thousands of feet in the sky; elevators move people swiftly and safely throughout the building; and telecom networks allow virtual meetings with people on other continents. How are these services-considered essential, but largely taken for granted- possible in such a complex structure? What does it really take to sustain human life at such enormous heights?

Exploring the interconnected systems that make life livable in the sky is the task of Kate Ascher's stunningly illustrated The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper. Ascher examines skyscrapers from around the world to learn how these incredible structures operate. Along the way, The Heights introduces the reader to every type of person involved in designing, building, and maintaining a skyscraper: the designers who calculate how weight and weather will affect their structures, the workers who dig the foundations and raise the lightning rods, the crews who clean the windows and maintain the air ducts, and the firefighters whose special equipment allows blazes to be fought at unprecedented heights.

Kate Ascher is author of The Works: Anatomy of a City. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in government from the London School of Economics and her B.A. in political science from Brown University. She formerly served as assistant director of the Port at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and worked overseas in corporate finance, before her previous position as executive vice president of the Economic Development Corporation for City of New York. Currently, she is a Principal at Happold Consulting in New York and in fall 2011 will begin to serve as the new Milstein Professor of Urban Development at Columbia University, GSAPP.

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November 9, 2011

LAST CALL: THE RISE AND FALL OF PROHIBITION

Daniel Okrent

That Americans would ever agree to relinquish alcohol was as improbable as it was astonishing. Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent's dazzling explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans changed the country forever.

Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women's suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax.

Daniel Okrent was the first public editor of The New York Times, editor-at-large of Time, Inc., and managing editor of Life magazine. He worked in book publishing as an editor at Knopf and Viking, and was editor-in-chief of general books at Harcourt Brace. He is author of four books, one of which, Great Fortune, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history. Okrent was also a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he remains an Associate. He lives in Manhattan and on Cape Cod with his wife, poet Rebecca Okrent.

October 12, 19, 2011

CURATOR'S TOUR

SUPERTALL! exhibit

Museum Director and Curator Carol Willis led a gallery tour of the current exhibit Supertall!

October 5, 2011

HELVETICA AND THE NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY SYSTEM

Paul Shaw

More than a tale of a typeface. If you use subways or select fonts, you'll enjoy this book talk! There is a common belief, reinforced by Gary Hustwit's documentary film "Helvetica," that Helvetica is the signage typeface of the New York City subway system. But it is not true - or rather, it is only somewhat true. Helvetica is the official typeface of the MTA today, but it was not the typeface specified by Unimark International when they created the signage system at the end of the 1960s. Why was Helvetica not chosen originally? what was chosen in its place? why is Helvetica now used? when did the changeover occur? Paul Shaw answers these questions and then goes beyond them to look at how the subway's signage system has evolved over the past forty years. The resulting story is more than a tale of a typeface. It is a look at the forces that have molded a signage system.

Paul Shaw an award-winning graphic designer, typographer, and calligrapher in New York City, teaches at Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts. He is the coauthor of Blackletter: Type and National Identity and writes about letter design in the blog Blue Pencil.

September 27, 2011

HOLDOUTS! THE BUILDINGS THAT GOT IN THE WAY

Andrew Alpern

Holdouts are often thought of as David versus Goliath battles, but is David the little homeowner who doesn't want to abandon his hearth to the big heartless developer? Or is David the harried builder who has invested huge sums of money in buying up ninety percent of the land needed for development - whose benefits would be enjoyed by thousands of citizens - but whose plans are thwarted by the one landowner who controls the critical land parcel without which the project is doomed?

Holdouts! depicts with vivid clarity the colorful personalities and outrageous actions that emerge in these stark confrontations. It describes epic battles that have been fought to erect buildings in New York. More than 200 illustrations and photographs show the holdouts before, during, and after the construction they delayed. This unique pictorial history will delight architecture buffs, New Yorkers, urban historians, indeed anyone interested in the sometimes hectic, sometimes pathetic, and sometimes hilarious struggles of individuals against real estate developers whose projects are so essential to the continuing economic viability of our large cities.

This is the third appearance of a unique view of New York's real estate and architecture by Andrew Alpern and Seymour Durst with an additional foreword and revisions.

Andrew Alpern is a much-published architectural historian, architect, and attorney. His co-author, the late Seymour Durst, was a major real estate developer whose own encounters with holdouts were the impetus for the book's original version more than 25 years ago.

September 11, 2011

GALLERY TALK

John Bartelstone

John Bartelstone gave a talk about his photographs, featured in our gallery, on the decade of recovery and rebuilding at Ground Zero.

August 3, 10, 24, 2011

CURATOR'S TOUR

SUPERTALL! exhibit

Museum Director and Curator Carol Willis led gallery tours and discussions of the current exhibit Supertall!.

August 2, 2011

A HISTORY OF DESIGN FROM THE VICTORIAN ERA TO THE PRESENT Second Edition

Ann Ferebee & Jeff Byles

A unique cross-disciplinary survey of design history, A History of Design from the Victorian Era to the Present offers a concise overview of the modern milestones of architecture, interior design, graphic design, product design, and photography from the Crystal Palace of 1851 to the iPhone at the turn of the twenty-first century. This abundantly illustrated volume traces modern design across continents and cultures, highlighting the key movements and design traditions that have shaped the world around us.

July 21, 2011

BEYOND THE ARCHITECT'S EYE: PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE AMERICAN BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Mary Woods

Typical architectural photography freezes buildings in an ideal moment and rarely captures what photographer Berenice Abbott called the medium's power to depict "how the past jostled the present." In Beyond the Architect's Eye, Mary N. Woods expands on this range of images through a rich analysis that commingles art, amateur, and documentary photography, genres usually not considered architectural but that often take the built environment as their subject.

Woods explores how photographers used their built environment to capture the disparate American landscapes prior to World War II, when urban and rural areas grew further apart in the face of skyscrapers, massive industrialization, and profound cultural shifts.

Mary N. Woods is Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory at Cornell University. She is the author of From Craft to Profession: The Practice of Architecture in Nineteenth-Century America.

July 13, 2011

CURATOR'S TOUR AND CLOSING RECEPTION

Factory Conversation Series

Guest-curator and architectural historian Nina Rappaport led an evening gallery tour and discussion of the impetus behind VUF and the state of manufacturing in cities. A closing party to celebrate the exhibition followed the tour.

Rappaport is the Publications Director at the Yale School of Architecture, author of Support and Resist: Structural Engineers and Design Innovation (Monacelli Press 2007), and an adjunct professor in the Syracuse in NYC program.

June 28, 2011

THE AGILE CITY

James S. Russell

Click here for a video archive of the program

In a very short time the developed world has realized that global warming poses real challenges to the our future. The Agile City engages the fundamental question: what to do about it? Journalist and urban analyst James S. Russell argues that we'll more quickly slow global warming and blunt its effects by retrofitting cities, suburbs, and towns. The Agile City shows that change undertaken at the building and community level can reach carbon-reduction goals rapidly.

James S. Russell is the architecture columnist for Bloomberg News. He has written about cities, architecture, and environmental design for more than 20 years.

June 20, 2011

DOMINO: OLD AND NEW

Factory Conversation Series

Click here for a video archive of the program

In the ongoing reinvention of Williamsburg's richly historic industrial waterfront into a burgeoning residential neighborhood, the massive Domino Sugar complex remains the greatest challenge and opportunity. The program featured presentations by the principals of the development, design, engineering and construction teams, followed by a panel discussion and Q & A.

June 2, 2011

TOUR OF THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD

Factory Conversation Series

A tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, America's model for sustainable urban manufacturing, was held on the afternoon Thursday, June 2.

June 1, 2011

THE FUTURE OF URBAN MANUFACTURING

Factory Conversation Series, At Trespa Design Centre

Nina Rappaport, architectural historian and guest-curator of Vertical Urban Factory; Henn Architekten's Markus Jacobi, architect of the Volkswagen Factory in Dresden; and Rob Lane, Director of the Design Program at the Regional Plan Association offered a rich dialogue across various fields. The panelists addressed the questions: What is the potential of revival of urban manufacturing in the density of cities and how does manufacturing contribute to a sustainable economic and ecological system?

May 22, 2011

CURATOR'S TOUR

Factory Conversation Series

Guest-curator and architectural historian Nina Rappaport led a gallery tour and discussion of the impetus behind VUF and the state of manufacturing in cities.

May 11, 2011

VUF EVENING WITH DOCOMOMO

Factory Conversation Series

Nina Rappaport, guest-curator of Vertical Urban Factory and DOCOMOMO-NY/Tri-State board member, joined The Skyscraper Museum for an evening gallery talk and reception.

May 6, 2011

CURATOR'S TOUR

Factory Conversation Series

Guest-curator and architectural historian Nina Rappaport led a gallery tour and discussed of the impetus behind VUF and the state of manufacturing in cities.

May 5, 2011

ARCHITECTURE IN UNIFORM

Jean Louis Cohen

Architectural Historian Jean Louis Cohen discussed Architecture in Uniform (Yale University Press 2011), offering a new perspective on the architectural history of the Second World War, which previous accounts viewed as a hiatus between peaceful periods of production.

April 20, 2011

MANUFACTURING SPACE

Factory Conversation Series

Click here to watch our video of the lecture and to read more.

Manufacturers discussed their space and the industrial squeeze in New York. The evening featured Jonathon Taylor and Stephen Lynch of Caliper Studios, Williamsburg; Michael Pinkus of Sussman Corp., Long Island City; and Joseph Sultan of Chilewich, Manhattan. Read More.

April 12, 2011

NEWTOWN CREEK

Anthony Hamboussi

Click here to watch the slideshow from the lecture and to read more.

Newtown Creek: A Photographic Survey of New York's Industrial Waterfront is an extensive documentation of this forgotten landscape that shows the evolution of the built environment over five years in more than 230 images. An essay by Paul Parkhill puts Hamboussi's work into context. Read More.

April 10, 2011

CURATOR'S TOUR WITH INAKI ABALOS

Factory Conversation Series

Guest-curator Nina Rappaport and Inaki Abalos of the Spanish firm Abalos Herreros (now Abalos Sentkiewicz), designers of the Madrid recycling plant Valdeming�mez featured in the exhibition, led a gallery tour and discussion on industrial architecture.

April 6, 2011

CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTS & MANUFACTURERS

Factory Conversation Series

An evening with architects & manufacturers featured in VUF including Andrew Kimball, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Navy Yard; Kian Go from SUPER-INTERESTING! Architects, consultants to the Brooklyn-based recycled glass & concrete surfaces company Icestone; and Markus Jacobi, of the German firm Henn Architekten, designers of the Dresden VW Transparent Factory.

March 8, 2011

THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD

John Bartelstone

Click here to watch the slideshow from the lecture and to read more.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard, the first monograph by John Bartelstone, offers a quiet and striking look at the Yard as a time capsule of industrial New York, where the fusion of the sublime and the practical, the past and the present, results in a place without time. Read More.

February 23, 2011

New York's Industrial Heritage

Factory Conversation Series

Click here to watch the slideshow from the lecture and to read more.

Industrial historian MARY HABSTRITT discussed New York's rich industrial heritage and ongoing preservation efforts. Hasbritt was a consultant for VUF and is the director of the LILAC Preservation project, a decommissioned U.S. Coast Guard vessel that served as a lighthouse tender. She also contributed to the Save Brooklyn's Industrial Heritage website of the Municipal Art Society.

February 9, 2011

Factory in Film / Film in the Factory

Factory Conversation Series

Filmmaker ERIC BREITBART leads an overview discussion of the relationship between early motion pictures and industrial production, exploring how factories were depicted on film and the ways film was used to increase efficiency. For VUF, Breitbart created an impressionistic film juxtaposing archival & contemporary images to give a sense of the scope of vertical industrial production over the last hundred years.

February 7, 2011

Kenneth Jackson and Lisa Keller Book Talk

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK CITY: Second Edition

(Yale University Press 2010)

Click here to watch our video of the lecture.

Exhaustive in its range of information about the five boroughs, the first edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995) became an instant classic, earning worldwide acclaim, awards for reference excellence, and selling out its first printing before it was officially published. But in the ever-evolving New York City, change is the constant. The new edition covers both the unpredictable events of 9/11 and the unlikely three-term mayoralty of a billionaire businessman, and documents the slower shifts of urban regeneration of many city neighborhoods. The revised edition includes 800 new entries, with new material that includes broader coverage of subject areas and new maps and illustrations. Virtually all existing entries - spanning architecture, politics, business, sports, the arts, and more - have been updated to reflect the impact of the past two decades.

Kenneth T. Jackson is the Jacques Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University, where he has taught New York City history for four decades. Author of the prize-winning Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, he is also General Editor of the Columbia History of Urban Life and a former president of the Urban History Association, the Society of American Historians, the Organization of American Historians, and the New-York Historical Society.

Lisa Keller is Associate Professor of History at SUNY Purchase where she specializes in trans-Atlantic (England and the U.S.), womens, and urban history. Her book Triumph of Order: Democracy and Public Space in New York & London was published by Columbia University Press in 2008.

February 4, 2011

Vertical Urban Factory

Factory Conversation Series

Nina Rappaport, guest-curator and architectural historian, opened the series with a gallery tour and discussion of the impetus behind VUF and the state of manufacturing in cities. Rappaport is the Publications Director at the Yale School of Architecture, author of Support and Resist: Structural Engineers and Design Innovation (Monacelli Press 2007), and an adjunct professor in the Syracuse in NYC program.

January 24, 2011

Alexander Garvin Book Talk

PUBLIC PARKS: THE KEY TO LIVABLE COMMUNITIES

(W.W. Norton & Company 2010)

Click here to watch our video of the lecture.

What, exactly, is a park? What role have parks played in cities historically, and what will they need to be in 21st-century America? In his newest book, Alex Garvin offers a treatise on everything that citizen activists, public officials, landscape architects, architects, and planners need to know about the critical role that public parks play in creating livable communities. To develop an agenda that fits the contemporary American economics and expectations, Garvin has studied the details of successful parks and open space projects throughout the country, distilling a set of principles to guide the actions of public and private leaders in all aspects of park, recreation, and open space developments.

Alexander Garvin is the President and CEO of Alex Garvin & Associates, Inc., a planning and design firm in New York City. From 2002 to 2003, he served as Vice President for planning, design, and development of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency charged with the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. He is also an influential educator, having taught for more than 40 years at Yale University where he is Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning and Management. Alex is the author of numerous articles and books including, The American City: What Works, What Doesnt, winner of the 1996 American Institute of Architects book award in urbanism.

2010 PROGRAMS

December 13, 2010
Samuel Zipp Book Talk
MANHATTAN PROJECTS: THE RISE AND FALL OF URBAN RENEWAL IN COLD WAR NEW YORK
(Oxford University Press)

Click here to view our video archive of this talk

Moving beyond the usual good-versus-evil story that pits master-planner Robert Moses against the plucky neighborhood advocate Jane Jacobs, Samuel Zipp sheds new light on the rise and fall of New York's urban renewal in the decades after World War II. Focusing on four iconic "Manhattan projects"--the United Nations building, Stuyvesant Town, Lincoln Center, and the great swaths of public housing in East Harlem--Zipp unearths a host of forgotten stories and characters and shows how boosters hoped to make Manhattan the capital of modernity, while a chorus of critics attacked urban renewal for perpetuating deindustrialization, racial segregation, and class division. Cold War-era urban renewal was not merely a failed planning ideal, Zipp concludes, but also a crucial phase in the transformation of New York into both a world city and one mired in urban crisis.

Samuel Zipp is a cultural, intellectual, and urban historian with particular interest in 20th century cities, the built environment, United States history since World War II. He earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. He is an Assistant Professor of American Civilization and Urban Studies at Brown University, teaching courses in 20th century urban and suburban history, politics and culture in New York City since 1945, and popular music and the city.

Check out the MANHATTAN PROJECTS Facebook page!

November 30, 2010
Mosette Broderick Book Talk
TRIUMVIRATE: MCKIM, MEAD & WHITE: ART, ARCHITECTURE, SCANDAL, AND CLASS IN AMERICA'S GUILDED AGE
(Knopf 2010)

Click here to view our video archive of this talk

A fascinating saga of the most influential architectural firm of America's Gilded Age,Triumvirate details the dazzling rise of Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White - three powerful figures who created many of America's major monuments including New York's Pennsylvania Station, Boston Public Library, Columbia University campus and Low Memorial Library, and the Brooklyn Museum, among many others. Architectural and social historian Mosette Broderick weaves together the strands of biography and urban history, highlighting, the story of America in an era of transition from an unsophisticated young country, the role of architecture in social status, and the arrival of artists as an accepted class in American society.

Mosette Broderick is the director of the Urban Design and Architecture Studies Program and the Historical and Sustainable Architecture M.A. Program at New York University. An architectural historian, she is the author of an earlier monograph on a masterpiece of McKim, Mead & White, The Villard Houses: Life Story of a Landmark (New York: Viking Press. 1980).

October 25, 2010
Kathryn Holliday Lecture
RALPH WALKER AND THE MAKING OF 1 WALL STREET

Click here to watch our video of the lecture.

The great Art Deco tower of 1 Wall Street culminates architect Ralph Walker's 1920s skyscraper designs. More expensive and elaborate than his firm's many previous telephone and telegraph buildings, 1 Wall Street epitomized Walker's concept of "humanism," a modern approach to the integration of hand-craft and machine work, expressed inside and out in�the building's rippling curtain walls and dramatically draped interior spaces.

Kate Holliday is an architectural historian and Assistant Professor at the�School of Architecture at the�University of Texas at Arlington. Her�research focuses on American architecture and theory, particularly interactions with Europe. Her book Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age (W. W. Norton, 2008) won the 2008 Book of the Year Award from the southeast chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.

(Rendering by Chester B. Price, 1930, courtesy of HLW International LLP)

October 13, 2010
Whither Wall Street? Lecture

Click here to watch the video of the lecture.

A program organized by The Skyscraper Museum in partnership with the Museum of American Finance.

Addressing the changing fortunes of Wall Street--not the forecast of financial markets, but the architectural assets and liabilities of the physical place--our panel of experts discusses the recent history and possible futures of America's most famous street. Focusing on the widespread conversion of office buildings to residential, hotel, new retail uses, expanded tourism, and the demands on the design of the public realm that need to serve the conflicting needs of both access and security of a post-9/11 world.

Introduction and moderator:

Carol Willis, Director, The Skyscraper Museum

Panelists:

• Elizabeth H. Berger, President, Downtown Alliance
• Rob Rogers, Principal, Rogers Marvel Architects; streetscape designer of Wall Street for the NYC Department of City Planning
• Kent Swig, President of Swig Equities, LLC; owner of a portfolio of properties on Wall Street and in the Financial District
• Alexandros Washburn, Chief Urban Designer, NYC Department of City Planning

September 21, 2010
Eric Nash Book Talk
MANHATTAN SKYSCRAPERS: Third Edition
(Princeton Architectural Press 2010)

Click here to watch our video of the lecture.

First published in 1999, the revised third edition of Manhattan Skyscrapers presents more than a century's worth of New York's most fascinating skyscrapers, each presented with informative and entertaining texts by New York Times contributor Eric Nash, and accompanied by striking full-page photographs by renowned architectural photographer Norman McGrath, alongside archival images, interior views, and architectural drawings.

In addition to the eighty-five buildings documented in previous versions of the book, Manhattan Skyscrapers showcases eight of the most exciting new skyscrapers built in the past few years. These wonderfully diverse additions to the city  the New York Times Building by Renzo Piano, the Standard Hotel by Polshek Partnership Architects, 7 World Trade Center by SOM, the Blue Tower by Bernard Tschumi, Bank of America Tower by Cook + Fox, 11 Times Square by FXFOWLE, 200 West Street by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, and 425 Fifth Avenue by Michael Graves  give an indication of how the city continues to evolve in the twenty-first century. Manhattan Skyscrapers is an indispensable book for both the serious student of architecture and the casual collector of all things New York.

Eric P. Nash has been a researcher and writer for the New York Times since 1986. He is the author of several books about architecture and design.

Norman McGrath's long career includes a wide variety of work for many well-known architects and designers. Every major architectural publication has featured his images.

August 3, 2010
Alice Alexiou
THE FLATIRON: The New York Landmark and the Incomparable City That Arose with It
(Thomas Dunne Books 2010)

Click here to watch our video of the lecture.

Alice Alexiou's marvelously written new book chronicles the story of the famous building that signaled the start of a new era in New York - and the unusual characters who played a part in its creation. Critics hated it. The public feared it would topple over. Passersby were knocked down by the winds. But even before it was completed, the Flatiron Building had become an unforgettable part of New York City. Built by the Fuller Company to be their New York headquarters, their president, Harry Black, was never able to make the public call it the Fuller Building. Head of the country's largest real estate firm, Black made a fortune and lived out a high-profile, ostentatious life that led to divorce, collapse and at last, suicide.

The Flatiron chronicles not just the construction of the building, but the changing technology and culture that characterized New York at the dawn of the 20th century: Madison Square Park shifted from a promenade for rich women to gay prostitutes, photography became an art, motion pictures came into existence; jazz came to the forefront of popular music - all within steps of one of the city's best loved buildings.

Alice Sparberg Alexiou is the author of Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary. She has been an editor of Lilith magazine and has written for The New York Times and Newsday, among others. She is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has a Ph.D. in classics from Fordham University. She lives in North Bellmore, New York.

July 13, 2010
Peter Pennoyer and Anne Walker
THE ARCHITECTURE OF GROSVENOR ATTERBURY
(W. W. Norton & Company 2009)

Click here to watch the video of this event.

The first close look at an innovative architect and inventor who held that traditional styles could be successfully adapted for modern times. In the final decade of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the United States experienced exponential growth and a flourishing economy, and with it, a building boom. Grosvenor Atterbury (1869-1956) produced more than one hundred major projects, including an array of grand mansions, picturesque estates, informal summer cottages, and farm groups. However, it was his role as town planner and civic leader and his work to create model tenements, hospitals, workers' housing, and town plans for which he is most celebrated. His Forest Hills Gardens, designed in association with the Olmsted Brothers, is lauded as one of the most highly significant community planning projects of its time.

As an inventor, Atterbury was responsible for one of the country's first low-cost, prefabricated concrete construction systems, introducing beauty and inexpensive good design into the lives of the working classes. The Architecture of Grosvenor Atterbury is the first book to showcase the rich and varied repertoire of this prolific architect whose career spanned six decades and whose work affected the course of American architecture, planning, and construction. Illustrated with Jonathan Wallen's stunning color photographs and over 250 historic drawings, plans, and photographs, it also includes a catalogue raisonn� and an employee roster. It is the definitive source on an architect who made an indelible imprint on the American landscape.

Peter Pennoyer is the principal partner of the eponymous architecture firm that has a national practice in classical and traditional architecture. The Pennoyer firm has designed houses and institutional projects from New York to California. The firm's work is recognized for combining an inventive spirit with an erudite grasp of architectural history and has been widely published and exhibited. Pennoyer serves on the boards of the Institute for Classical Architecture and Classical America, the Morgan Library, and the Whiting Foundation. He is the coauthor of The Architecture of Delano & Aldrich and The Architecture of Warren & Wetmore.

Anne Walker holds a master's degree in historic preservation from Columbia University. She is the coauthor of The Ford Plantation Architectural Pattern Book, with Donald M. Rattner; The Architecture of Delano & Aldrich; and The Architecture of Warren & Wetmore.

June 22, 2010
David Freeland
AUTOMATS, TAXI DANCES, AND VAUDEVILLE: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure
(NYU Press 2009)

Click here to watch the video of this event.

New Yorkers who incessantly gripe about gentrification have become as grating as the near-constant noise of luxury condo constructionyes, even in this economy. But David Freelands affectionate, detail-packed tome about Manhattans forgotten pleasure centersfrom dance halls to gambling densadds a lyrical song to the cacophony. Organized geographically and for the most part chronologically, the book explores eight neighborhoodsChinatown, Chatham Square, the Bowery, the East Village, Union Square, the Tenderloin, Harlem and Times Squarevia their entertainment centers, with the added hook that physical remnants of these historical hot spots still exist. - Time Out NY

David Freeland is the author of the books Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure (2009), and Ladies of Soul (2001). His work has appeared in New York Press, No Depression, American Songwriter, Relix, Living Blues, South Dakota Review, Blues Revue, Goldmine, and Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians. He lives in New York.

June 8, 2010
JEFFREY COHEN: Views of a Lost Landscape of Business:
Wall Street in the Mid-19th Century

As seen in the rare 19th-century print genre, urban panoramas showed the transformation of Wall Street precisely and minutely recorded. Today they offer us the opportunity for time travel into the textures of the once-new city. Architectural historian Jeff Cohen of Bryn Mawr College led a virtual walk down these early corridors of commerce.

May 27, 2010
Donald Friedman
HISTORICAL BUILDING CONSTRUCTION: Design, Materials, and Technology
(W. W. Norton & Company 2010)

Click here to watch the video of this event

An updated edition of the classic text detailing the ins and outs of old building construction.

A comprehensive guide to the physical construction of buildings from the 1840s to the present, this study covers the history of concrete- , steel- , and skeleton-frame buildings, provides case histories that apply the information to a wide range of actual projects, and supplies technical data essential to professionals who work with historic structures.

Donald Friedman, a structural engineer, is the president of Old Structures Engineering and lives in New York City. He is also the author of The Investigation of Buildings; The Design of Renovations, with Nathaniel Oppenheimer; and Building the Empire State with Carol Willis

April 27, 2010
Re: Modern Icons in the 21st Century

The United Nations Capital Master Plan was presented by the project's leadership and key consulting architects and engineers. Click here to read more about the event.


APRIL 22, 2010
Re: Green Giants

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, GREEN GIANTS explores the urban aspect of environmental awareness. The twenty-first century retrofits of the GIANTS, Empire State Building and Sears/Willis Tower, were presented by their project leaders on APRIL 22 at 6:30 PM at The Museum of Jewish Heritage. Click here to read more about the event.

March 24, 2010
Donna Goodman
A HISTORY OF THE FUTURE
(The Monacelli Press 2008)

The political, social, and economic upheaval of the early twentieth century generated an extraordinary range of proposals for the future as successive generations grappled with issues of organizing vast urban systems and humanizing dense industrial environments. As conceptual design became the vehicle for exploring ideas and presenting new movements, a dialogue between technology and design began to emerge.

A History of the Future explores the impact of modern technology on design and planning, beginning with Renaissance concepts that laid the foundations for modern visionary work and concluding with emerging projects in sustainable design. It also includes relevant projects in related fields, such as film, photography, and industrial design. Profusely illustrated, A History of the Future is a visual survey of the heroic, utopian, and occasionally misguided visions of the twentieth century.


Donna Goodman has taught architecture and urban planning for more than twenty years at design schools including Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design at the New School, Rhode Island School of Design, and New York University. Her architectural practice focuses on sustainable design. The author lives in New York.

February 23, 2010
Andrew Dolkart
THE ROW HOUSE REBORN:
Architecture and Neighborhoods in New York City, 1908-1929
(The Johns Hopkins University Press 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR ANDREW DOLKART VIDEO

In the decades just before and after World War I, a group of architects, homeowners, and developers pioneered innovative and affordable housing alternatives. They converted the deteriorated and bleak row houses of old New York neighborhoods into modern and stylish dwellings. This movement -- an early example of what has become known as "gentrification" -- dramatically changed the physical character of these neighborhoods. It also profoundly altered their social makeup as change priced poor and largely immigrant households out of the area.

In The Row House Reborn, Dolkart traces this aesthetic movement from its inception in 1908 with architect Frederick Sterner's complete redesign of his home near Gramercy Park to a wave of projects for the wealthy on the East Side to the faux artist's studios for young professionals in Greenwich Village. This significant development in the history of housing and neighborhoods in New York has never before been investigated. The Row House Reborn will interest architectural and urban historians, as well as general readers curious about New York City architecture and neighborhood development.

Andrew S. Dolkart is the James Marston Fitch Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He has written extensively about the architecture and development of New York, including the award-winning Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development and the Guide to New York City Landmarks. He has curated numerous exhibitions and is well-known for his walking tours of New York City neighborhoods.

January 12, 2010
Judith Stonehill
NEW YORK'S UNIQUE & UNEXPECTED PLACES
(Universe Publishing 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR JUDITH STONEHILL VIDEO

New York's Unique & Unexpected Places is written for adventurers who want to explore the city's uncommon, yet fascinating, less familiar sites. This beguiling book will intrigue urban enthusiasts, New Yorkers, and the countless tourists determined to discover-and sometimes rediscover-these fifty memorable destinations. Visit an innovative center for architecture, a Dutch farmhouse surprisingly perched on Broadway, the sublime chapel designed by Louise Nevelson, idiosyncratic museums dedicated to finance and firefighting and subway cars, the historic home of Louis Armstrong, a spectacular garden overlooking the Hudson, and the one-and-only Skyscraper Museum!

Judith Stonehill is the author of Greenwich Village: A Guide to American's Legendary Left Bank (Universe 2002) and Brooklyn: A Journey Through the City of Dreams (Universe 2004). She was the co-owner of New York Bound Bookshop and vice president of the South Street Seaport Museum.

2009 PROGRAMS

October and November
SHANGHAI SKYLINE: A FIVE-PART LECTURE SERIES

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO ARCHIVE AND EXTENSIVE REPORTS!

In conjunction with its exhibition CHINA PROPHECY, The Skyscraper Museum presents a lecture series that explores in depth--and height--the sensational growth of Shanghai's skyline over the past three decades.

October 13, 2009
The Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place
"A thousand mile journey begins with a single step"
Starting an Asian Practice

Tomorrow Square in Puxi courtesy Staffan Holgersson

Moderator Robert Ivy, Editor in Chief, Architectural Record Speakers Bruce S. Fowle, Founder and Senior Partner, FXFOWLE Timur F. Galen, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. James von Klemperer, FAIA, Principal, Kohn Pedersen Fox John C. Portman III, Vice Chairman, Portman Holdings, and CEO, John Portman & Associates David Scott, Chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, and Principal, Arup

In the recession of the 1990s, and even before, savvy American and New York-based architects and engineers cultivated Asian commissions and established important client relationships that continue today. A panel of principals who pioneered their Asian practices recount the circumstances of their early commissions, illustrate recent projects, and reflect on the relevance for today.

October 20, 2009
The Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium, Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street)
Gensler's Shanghai Tower
Design Development of China's Tallest Tower

Click here for Asia Society's coverage on this program!

A Twenty-First Century Tower courtesy Gensler

Speakers Jun Xia, Regional Design Director, Gensler (Shanghai) Dennis Poon, P.E. Managing Principal, Thornton Tomasetti Douglas Mass, President and Principal-in-Charge, Cosentini Associates

With the municipal government as a client partner, the 632-meter Shanghai Tower clearly asserts the city's ambitions and commitment to high-rise urbanism. Gensler won a competition for this super-tall program with a spiraling form and double-skin facade that emphasizes sustainable values, which will overtop the adjacent SWFC by more than 400 feet and is planned for completion in 2014.

October 27, 2009
The William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus, Baruch College
55 Lexington Avenue (at 24th Street): 14th Floor, Room 220
KPF in Shanghai
Skyline and Streetscape

SWFC under construction courtesy Peter Lim

Moderator: Clifford Pearson, Senior Editor, Architectural Record Speakers William Pedersen, Design Partner, Kohn Pedersen Fox James von Klemperer, FAIA, Principal, Kohn Pedersen Fox

Opened in August 2008, the 101-story SWFC currently crowns the Pudong skyline and ranks as the world's third tallest skyscraper. Other major projects in KPF's significant Shanghai portfolio will be illustrated in a survey by the firm's leading principals.

November 10, 2009
The William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus, Baruch College
55 Lexington Avenue (at 24th Street): 14th Floor, Room 220
SOM in Shanghai
Jin Mao and Beyond

Diagram of Jin Mao showing section and plans courtesy SOM

Speakers William F. Baker, Structural and Civil Engineering Partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Ross Wimer, Design Partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

The pagoda-like profile of the 88-story Jin Mao tower, completed in 1999, was meant to assert the arrival of China and Shanghai on the world stage of global business and architectural culture. The innovative structural core created one of the most dramatic skyscraper interiors to date. SOM structural engineer Bill Baker describes the design and construction of Jin Mao, and architect Ross Wimer, designer of SOM's most recent Shanghai high-rises, places the firm's work in a fifteen-year context.

November 24, 2009
The William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus, Baruch College
55 Lexington Avenue (at 24th Street): 14th Floor, Room 220
Preserving Shanghai
Modernizing Urban Identity

Aerial of Xintiandi courtesy Studio Shanghai

Moderator: Clifford Pearson, Deputy Editor, Architectural Record Speakers Benjamin Wood, AIA, Principal, Studio Shanghai William G. Tung, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Rockefeller Group Development Corporation

The wholesale demolition of Shanghai's traditional low-rise lane housing has slowed, if not ceased, and a debate has emerged over preservation versus adaptive reuse. The catalyst for the latter was the phenomenally successful Xintiandi, the design of Ben Wood and the enlightened Hong Kong developer Vincent Lo, which reconfigured several blocks of shikumen housing into an urbane complex of shops, restaurants, entertainment, and modern offices.

 

From Left to Right: Lane Housing before; Xintiandi after; Taipingqiao Lake and Xintiandi
courtesy Studio Shanghai

Rockbund Rendering
courtesy Rockefeller Group International

Shanghai's major example of preservation and reuse is the Bund, the famous waterfront skyline of the imposing banks and financial institutions of the concessions period. Most have been restored to business use after decades of decline, but others have been transformed into multi-story retail, restaurants, and clubs, creating a unique up-scale mixed-use district. The key to this redevelopment planned by the city is Waitanyuan or 'Origin of the Bund', a historic area of handsome institutional structures dating from 1900-1933 centered around the former British Consulate grounds. Leading this effort, known as Rockbund, is William Tung of the New York-based Rockefeller Group International, who will report on the project.

February 19, 2009
SUPER SLENDER MIDTOWN TOWERS


CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO ARCHIVE!

"Hong Kong slender" describes a type of pencil-thin tower common in Asia's Manhattan and recently returned to New York real estate. In conjunction with its current exhibition, "Vertical Cities: Hong Kong | New York", The Skyscraper Museum examined the aesthetics, engineering, and economics of slenderness in a program highlighting three tall, super-slim residential towers recently reared in Midtown: Sky House, One Madison Park, and 785 Eighth Avenue. Team presentations by the architects, structural engineers, and developers explored the complex equation of twenty-first century slenderness.

Featured projects and building team presenters include:

SKY HOUSE
Frank Lupo, Associate Principal, FXFOWLE Architects
Silvian Marcus, CEO, WSP Cantor Seinuk
Veronica Hackett, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, The Clarett Group

ONE MADISON PARK
John Cetra, Principal Architect, CetraRuddy
Silvian Marcus, CEO, WSP Cantor Seinuk

785 EIGHTH AVENUE
Ismael Leyva, President, Ismael Leyva Architects
Ysrael A. Seinuk, CEO, Ysrael Seinuk, PC



2009 BOOK TALKS

December 8, 2009
David Owen
GREEN METROPOLIS:
Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability
(Riverhead Books 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR DAVID OWEN PODCAST AND VIDEO

In a persuasive and provocative challenge to established environmental thinking, David Owen's GREEN METROPOLIS challenges much of the conventional wisdom about being green and shows how the greenest place in the United States isn't Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York, New York. Owen states that while most Americans view congested cities as environmental calamities, with their pollution, garbage, and gridlock, residents of dense urban environments individually drive, pollute, consume, and throw away less than other Americans. Residents of New York City-the most densely populated community in the U.S.-consume less electricity than the average inhabitants of any other part of the country, generate greenhouse gases at a level far below the national average, and rank last in gasoline consumption and first in use of public transportation.

David Owen's GREEN METROPOLIS redefines what it means to be green, and offers vital insights into how to make our way to a more sustainable future: instead of depending on the acquisition of fancy new "green" gadgetry or the advent of new energy-related technologies, we should look to the lo-fi solutions already at work in dense cities around the globe.

David Owen has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1991. Before joining The New Yorker, he was a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly, and prior to that, a senior writer at Harper's and a frequent contributor to Esquire. He is also a contributing editor at Golf Digest and the author of several previous nonfiction books. He lives in northwest Connecticut with his wife, writer Ann Hodgman, and their two children.

December 1, 2009
Randall Mason
THE ONCE AND FUTURE NEW YORK:
Historic Preservation and the Modern City
(University of Minnesota Press 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR RANDALL MASON VIDEO

The controversial 1963 demolition of Pennsylvania Station is generally cited as the event that gave birth to New York City's historic preservation movement. But as historian Randall Mason reveals in The Once and Future New York, preservation has been a persistent force in the development of New York since the late nineteenth century, when the city's leading politicians, planners, and architects first recognized the need to protect some measure of the past in the rapidly evolving city. Between 1890 and 1920, preservationists saved and restored buildings, parks, and monuments throughout the city. Mason argues that these efforts created a "memory infrastructure" that established a framework for New York's collective memory and fused celebrations of the city's past with optimism about its future.

Rich with archival research, The Once and Future New York focuses on three major projectsthe restoration of City Hall Park, the ultimately failed attempt to save historic St. Johns Chapel, and the construction of the Bronx River Parkway. Challenging several myths about historic preservation, Mason asserts that preservationists were not simply antiquarians concerned only with architecturally significant buildings, but that many were social reformers interested in recovering the citys collective history. He demonstrates that, rather than being fundamentally opposed to growth, historic preservation in this period was integral to modern urban development.

Randall Mason is associate professor in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and coeditor of Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States.

November 23, 2009
Paul Goldberger
BUILDING UP AND TEARING DOWN: Reflections on the Age of Architecture (The Monacelli Press 2009) and
WHY ARCHITECTURE MATTERS
(Yale University Press 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR PAUL GOLDBERGER VIDEO AND PODCAST

Paul Goldberger Building Up and Tearing Down
(The Monacelli Press 2009)

The prolific architectural critic and journalist Paul Goldberger will discuss highlights from two collections of his essays released this fall by Monacelli and Yale University Press. Building Up and Tearing Down brings together more than�fifty essays, from Goldberger's writings for the New Yorker, Metropolis, The�New York Times, and other publications that range across architectural and urban issues from�Havana to Beijing to Bilbao, Chicago to Las Vegas, and beyond. Dissecting projects from skyscrapers by Norman Foster and museums by Tadao Ando to airports, monuments, suburban shopping malls, and white-brick apartment houses, these essays cover a comprehensive account of the best and the worst of the age of architecture.

Paul Goldberger
Why Architecture Matters
(Yale University Press 2009)

In Why Architecture Matters,�Paul Goldberger examines�"how things feel to us when we stand before them, with how architecture affects us emotionally as well as intellectually. In examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage, the Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Lincoln Memorial, to Borromini's Church of SantIvo in Rome, Goldberger raises the�awareness of fundamentalsproportion, scale, space, texture, materials, shapes, light, and memory engaging the reader to learn a new way of seeing and experiencing the built world.







Paul Goldberger is the architecture critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazines celebrated Sky Line column. He holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in Manhattan. He began his career at The New York Times, where in 1984, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism.

October 1, 2009
Anthony Flint
WRESTLING WITH MOSES:
How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City
(Random House 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR ANTHONY FLINT VIDEO

To a young Jane Jacobs, Greenwich Village, with its winding cobblestone streets and diverse makeup, was everything a city neighborhood should be. The activist, writer, and mother of three grew so fond of her bustling community that it became a touchstone for her landmark 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But consummate power broker Robert Moses saw things differently: neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village were in need of urban renewal. Notorious for exacting enormous human costs, Mosess plans had never before been haltednot by governors, mayors, or FDR himself, and certainly not by a housewife from Scranton.

Wrestling with Moses is the tale of a local battle with far-ranging significance. By confronting Moses and his vision, Jacobs forever changed the way Americans understood the city, and inspired citizens across the country to protest destructive projects in their own communities.

Anthony Flint is author of Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City, and director of public affairs for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge. He has been a journalist for over 20 years, primarily at The Boston Globe, where he covered development, urban design, housing, and transportation. His first book, This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press. He has been a visiting scholar and Loeb Fellow at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, and a policy adviser in Massachusetts state government, and is a Citistates Associate. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

September 22, 2009
Ann Buttenwieser
GOVERNORS ISLAND: The Jewel of New York Harbor
(Syracuse University Press 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR ANN BUTTENWIESER VIDEO

Governors Island today blends a sense of nostalgia with 21st-century amenities. The pristine setting showcases the islands rich history, including the vital role it played in the countrys armed forces. From its early days as the site of a British fort in the 1700s and its longstanding role as a station for the U.S. Army and the Coast Guard, to its function as a venue for political events, the island has hosted a dazzling parade of the brave and the dignified. Governors Island encompasses more than military historyit offers a vivid reflection of historic events in New York City and the world at large.

Records from Castle Williams reveal an evolving national penal system, while those from the hospital tell the story of worldwide contagion and local sanitation. Accounts of the lives of the islands female residents offer insight into ethnic assimilation and the changing roles of women in the military, and a compendium of military and civilian recreational life on the island illuminates the changing meanings of open space and recreation over time. Ann L. Buttenwieser brings this rich legacy to life, creating a striking portrait of the island through never-before-published photographs, blueprints, architectural plans, and interviews with former residents.

Ann L. Buttenwieser is an urban planner and waterfront historian and the author of Manhattan Water-Bound: Manhattans Waterfront from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. She serves on The Skyscraper Museum Board of Directors.

August 4, 2009
Jane King Hession and Debra Pickrel
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT IN NEW YORK: The Plaza Years, 1954-1959
(Gibbs Smith 2007)

CLICK HERE FOR JANE KING HESSION & DEBRA PICKREL PODCAST

A recipient of the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards' Gold Medal in Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years, 1954-1959, examines the momentous five-year period when one of the world's greatest architects and one of the world's greatest cities dynamically coexisted. Authors Jane Hession and Debra Pickrel explore the fascinating contradiction between Wright's often-voiced disdain of New York and his pride and pleasure in living in one of the city's great landmarks: the Plaza Hotel. From his suite, or "Taliesin the Third," as it became known, Wright supervised construction of the Guggenheim, sparred with the New York press, and received many famous visitors such as Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller.


Jane King Hession, a native of Nyack, New York, received her M.Arch. from the University of Minnesota. �An architectural writer and historian with interests in Frank Lloyd Wright and mid-century modernism, she is the coauthor of Ralph Rapson: Sixty Years of Modern Design. �Hession resides in Alexandria, Virginia.

Debra Pickrel is a New York journalist who has written on architecture and design for Architectural Record, House Beautiful, Metropolis, and Preservation. �She is also the author of A Day in Turtle Bay, a walking tour of her Manhattan neighborhood with a foreword by Walter Cronkite. �A former board member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, Pickrel is a journalism graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received her M.A. in Historic Preservation from Goucher College. �She is a native of Richmond, Virginia.

July 14, 2009
Loretta Lorance
BECOMING BUCKY FULLER
(The MIT press 2009)

Buckminster Fuller's fame reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, when his visionary experiments struck a chord with the counterculture and his charismatic personality provided the media with a good storythat of a genius who could play the role of artist, scientist, and entrepreneur all at once. In Becoming Bucky Fuller, Loretta Lorance shows that Fuller's career did not begin with the lofty goals hailed by his admirers and that, in fact, Fuller's image as guru and prophet was as carefully constructed as a geodesic dome.

Drawing on a close reading of Fuller's personal papers (in particular, the multivolume scrapbook, Chronofile), Lorance looks at Fuller's first independent project, the Dymaxion House, and finds that what really happened differs from the authorized version. According to Fuller himself and most secondary sources, after a series of personal crises in the 1920sincluding the death of his young daughter, thoughts of suicide, and a "year of silence" during which he pondered his purpose in lifeFuller resolved to devote himself to the betterment of society by offering the public economical, efficient, and modern manufactured housing. But the private papers tell a different story; one of his initial motivations for designing the Dymaxion House was simply to make money from its manufacture. When that didn't work, Fuller began to emphasize its possibilities rather than its practicalities. By the mid-1930s, Lorance shows, Fuller the public figure had gone from being an entrepreneur with a product to being a visionary with an idea. He had become Bucky Fuller.


Loretta Lorance was an architectural historian. She taught in the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She passed away in February 2011.

June 23, 2009
Scott Johnson
TALL BUILDING: Imagining the Skyscraper
(Balcony Press 2008)

CLICK HERE FOR SCOTT JOHNSON VIDEO

The skyscraper, whatever it may be as physical fact, looms large in our lives and as a figment of our imaginations carries with it ideas of wealth, ambition, and dominance. The image of the skyscraper has been made and remade in the news, in literature and film, and now in all forms of our now global media. Paradoxically, as the building type continues to become more complex and is designed to address fundamentally different cultural conditions, the image, that is to say, the idea, of the skyscraper in the public mind seems to become simpler, more omnipresent, and more consumable.


Scott Johnson is a partner of the distinguished Los Angeles architecture firm, Johnson/Fain, and is the newly appointed Director of the USC Graduate Architectural Program. A leader in the architectural discourse & issues of urban design in and outside of Los Angeles, he has worked on a wide range of projects including the MGM Tower, MET Lofts, and the Solano County Government Center. Johnson is also the author of Figure/Ground: A Design Conversation and The Big Idea: Criticality and Practice in Contemporary Architecture. In this book, he offers his approach to design development and neighborhood needs, his firm's decision to office in Downtown Los Angeles, and an educator's vision of architecture as culture.

May 19, 2009
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury

CHICAGO 1890: The Skyscraper and the Modern City
(University of Chicago Press 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR JOANNA MERWOOD-SALISBURY VIDEO

Chicago's first skyscrapers are famous for projecting the city's modernity around the world. But what did they mean at home, to the Chicagoans who designed and built them, worked inside their walls, and gazed up at their fa�ades? Answering this multifaceted question, Chicago 1890 reveals that early skyscrapers offered hotly debated solutions to the city's toughest problems and, in the process, fostered an urban culture that spread across the country.

An ambitious reinterpretation of the works of Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, and John Wellborn Root, this volume uses their towering achievements as a lens through which to view late nineteenth-century urban history. Joanna Merwood-Salisbury sheds new light on many of Chicago's defining events-- including violent building trade strikes, the Haymarket bombing, the World's Columbian Exposition, and Burnham's Plan of Chicago--by situating the Masonic Temple, the Monadnock Building, and the Reliance Building at the center of the city's cultural and political crosscurrents.

While architects and property owners saw these pioneering structures as manifestations of a robust American identity, immigrant laborers and social reformers viewed them as symbols of capitalism's inequity. Illuminated by rich material from the period's popular press and professional journals, Merwood-Salisbury's chronicle of this contentious history reveals that the skyscraper's vaunted status was never as inevitable as today's skylines suggest.


Joanna Merwood-Salisbury is Director of Academic Affairs and an Assistant Professor in the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons The New School for Design.

May 5, 2009
Andrew Dolkart

BIOGRAPHY OF A TENEMENT HOUSE IN NEW YORK CITY:
An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street
(University of Virginia Press 2006)

CLICK HERE FOR ANDREW DOLKART VIDEO

"I trace my ancestry back to the Mayflower," writes Andrew S. Dolkart. "Not to the legendary ship that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, but to the more prosaic tenement on the southeast corner of East Broadway and Clinton Street named the Mayflower, where my father was born in 1914 to Russian-Jewish immigrants." Architectural and urban historian Andrew S. Dolkart presents a precise and informative biography of a typical tenement house at 97 Orchard Street in New York City that in 1988 became the remarkable Lower East Side Tenement Museum. He documents and interprets the architectural and social history of the building beginning in the 1860s when it was erected, in to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the neighborhood started to change, and in the present as the building is reincarnated as the museum.


Andrew S. Dolkart is the James Marston Fitch Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He has written extensively about the architecture and development of New York, including the award-winning Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development and the Guide to New York City Landmarks. He has curated numerous exhibitions and is well-known for his walking tours of New York City neighborhoods.

April 29, 2009
Jean Parker Phifer
Photographs by Francis Dzikowski

PUBLIC ART NEW YORK
(W.W. Norton 2009)

CLICK HERE FOR JEAN PARKER PHIFER VIDEO

A guided tour of the best public art in all five boroughs of New York City, from outdoor sculpture in public plazas to murals and works of art in lobbies accessible to the public, to outstanding landscapes, and even a few examples of artistic sidewalks and creative lighting, this book focuses on how exemplary works of public art enrich urban public space. Organized by neighborhood, it covers Lower Manhattan, Soho to Lower Midtown, Midtown Manhattan, the Upper West Side, Central Park, the Upper East Side, Upper Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Illustrated with Francis Dzikowski's striking photos and colorful maps, it makes a perfect walking guide. in the words of Kent Barwick, this book is "an invitation to hit the streets." Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society, Public Art New York is organized by neighborhood, with maps suitable for walking tours.

Architect Jean Phifer specializes in planning, renovation and sustainable design projects for cultural institutions and has designed or restored over fifty distinguished buildings, public spaces, and landscapes, primarily in New York. She was president of the Art Commission of the City of New York, now the Public Design Commission, from 1998 to 2003. Ms. Phifer is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and teaches Environmental Design at New York University. She lives in Manhattan.

Francis Dzikowski is an architectural photographer based in New York City.

The evening's introduction will be given by Michele H. Bogart, author of Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930 (University of Chicago Press, 1989), which received the Smithsonian Institution/ Museum of American Art's Charles C. Eldredge Prize in 1991; and of The Politics of Urban Beauty: New York and Its Art Commission (University of Chicago Press, 2006). From 1998 through 2003 she served as a member of the Art Commission of the City of New York, the City's design review agency, and for four years was its Vice President. She is presently a member of the Art Commission's Conservation Advisory Group and of the Board of Directors of the Fine Arts Federation. Ms. Bogart is a Professor and the Graduate Program Director of the Art Department at Stony Brook University.

February 26, 2009
Michael Rockland

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE: Poetry in Steel
(Rutgers University Press 2008)

CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST

Intimate and engaging, Michael Rockland's rich narrative presents perspectives on the GWB that span history, architecture, engineering, transportation, design, the arts, politics, and the post-9/11 mentality. Stunning archival photos, from the bridge's construction in the late 1920s through the present, powerfully complement the account of competition between the GWB and the Brooklyn Bridge that parallels the rivalry between New Jersey and New York City. Rockland profiles the Swiss immigrant structural engineer Othmar Ammann and explains how the Depression dictated the iconic, uncovered steel beams of its towers so admired today. Tales of accidents, an airplane crash, and suicides off its span; the appearance of the bridge in media and the arts; and the author's own adventures scaling its massive towers on a cable animate the story of what Le Corbusier called "the most beautiful bridge in the world."

Michael Rockland founded the American Studies Department at Rutgers while serving as Assistant Dean of Douglass College (1969-1972). Earlier, he had another stint in academic administration when he served as Executive Assistant to the Chancellor of Higher Education, State of New Jersey (1968-1969). This followed his years in the United States diplomatic service as a cultural attache at our embassies in Argentina and Spain (1962-1967).

January 20, 2009
Max Page

THE CITY'S END: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction (Yale University Press 2008)

Max Page examines the destruction fantasies created by American writers and imagemakers at various stages of New York's development. Seen in every medium from newspapers and films to novels, paintings, and computer software, such images, though disturbing, have been continuously popular. Page demonstrates with vivid examples and illustrations how each era's destruction genre has reflected the city's economic, political, racial, or physical tensions, and he also shows how the images have become forces in their own right, shaping Americans' perceptions of New York and of cities in general.



2008 Book Talks

December 16, 2008
Gail Fenske

THE SKYSCRAPER AND THE CITY: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York (University of Chicago Press)

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO ARCHIVE!

Images: The Skyscraper Museum Collection

In the first history of this great urban landmark, The Skyscraper and the City:
The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York (University of Chicago Press), author Gail Fenske illuminates how the Woolworth Building is a compelling lens through which to view the distinctive city culture of Progressive Era New York.

2008 PROGRAMS

VERTICAL DENSITY | SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS October Symposium
Re:NY : Recycle | Retrofit | Reinvent the City
Rockefeller Center @ 75: Tribute to a Miraculous Mega-Project
New York Modern Lecture Series

2007 PROGRAMS

Burj Dubai Lectures
Mixed Greens
Kimball Symposium

2007 BOOKTALKS

December 12, 2007
Jim Rasenberger

America 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T and the Making of a Modern Nation. (Scribner)

Hearkening to the historical moment, Jim Rasenberger probes parallels between our time and America 1908. In this brand-new book, the author of High Steel: The Daring Men who Built the World’s Greatest Skyline explores a moment in American history filled with great optimism and hope for the future. “1908, by whatever quirk of history or cosmology, was one hell of a ride around the sun,” writes Rasenberger, shedding new light on familiar stories—from the Wright Brothers’ flight to Ford’s Model T, and of course, skyscrapers.

November 13, 2007
Suzanne Wasserman, Rebecca Lepkoff

Life on the Lower East Side: Photographs by Rebecca
Lepkoff, 1937-1950 (Princeton Architectural Press)

Rebecca Lepkoff’s photographs of the late 1930s and 1940s captured the dynamic and diverse life of the Lower East Side neighborhood bounded by the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and the Bowery to the East River. In this first collection of Lepkoff's work, historian and award-winning filmmaker Suzanne Wasserman will speak with Rebecca Lepkoff, discussing the rich texture and detail of both the photographs and the altered urban and social fabric of the continually changing Lower East Side.

October 23, 2007
Alice Sparberg Alexiou

Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary (Rutgers University Press)

Alice Sparberg Alexiou provides the first biography of the late, great urbanist and author, Jane Jacobs, best known for her classic 1961 book Death and Life in Great American Cities. Drawing on interviews and an analysis of Jacobs’ writings, Alexiou traces the urban advocate’s life from Scranton, Pennsylvania to New York City and her beloved Greenwich Village, and eventually to Toronto, illuminating Jacob’s keen observations of city life that have influenced students of the city for more than four decades.

September 18, 2007
David Friend
Watching the World Change (Picador)

Vanity Fair Editor David Friend's work is an examination of the iconic, appalling, and moving images from 9/11 and the week that followed. The terrorist attacks were the "most universally observed news event in human history." Friend will explore the nature of tragedy, image-making, and censorship in the age of digital media through a richly illustrated presentation.

2006 PROGRAMS

December 5, 2006

IN-GALLERY CURATOR'S TOUR
LOCATION: The Skyscraper Museum | 39 Battery Place | NY, NY
6:30 pm

To be both big and tall was a phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s, the climax in the evolution of skyscraper size. The World Trade Center epitomized the ambitions of an era when faith in technology and a fascination with monumentality spurred designs for megastructures and urban master plans. New York’s skyline was on the rise, and modernity seemed to matter more than history. Tour the Museum's current exhibition, GIANTS: The Twin Towers and the Twentieth Century, with Founder, Director, Curator, Carol Willis.

November 15, 2006

NICHOLAS ADAMS

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
The Great Experiment Since 1936
(Electa)

Nicholas Adams presents his impressive survey of one of America's most well-established architecture firms, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Established in 1936, SOM has designed some of the world's foremost skyscrapers, including Lever House, One Chase Manhattan Plaza, and the AOL/Time Warner center in New York, Chicago's Sears Tower and John Hancock building, and an array of international towers such as Shanghai's 88-story Jin Mao. SOM continues to lead as the designer of the world's tallest buildings, including the China World Trade Center in Beijing, Burj Dubai, and Freedom Tower.

 

October 5, 2006
TIMOTHY J. GILFOYLE

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York
(W.W. Norton)

Historian Timothy Gilfoyle recounts 19th century New York through the eyes of George Appo, a master pickpocket, sometime con artist, and opium addict. Appo's lifestyle of lifting was lucrative, as he often earned more in a night than the annual salary of many workers of the day. Join Gilfoyle as he rescues the hidden history of an emblematic character of the 19th century industrial city.

September 21, 2006
JEWEL STERN & JOHN A. STUART

Ely Jacques Kahn, Architect:
Beaux-Arts to Modernism in New York
(W.W. Norton)

Ely Jacques Kahn (1884-1972) was one of the most prolific architects in New York City, most known for his work within the 1920s New York building boom. An early exponent of modern polychrome building facades, Kahn evolved an abstract, geometric decorative style that alluded to his classic training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and was inspired by such diverse sources as the machine and exotic cultures. Jewel Stern and John A. Stuart are co-curators with Janet Parks of an exhibition on Kahn at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University (2006).

 

August 2, 2006
TONI SCHLESINGER

Five Flights Up and other New York Apartment Stories
(Princeton Architectural Press)

Toni Schlesinger, a columnist for The Village Voice and a New York–based fiction writer and theater artist, tells the extreme stories of New York's rental community in her recent book, Five Flights Up. Individuals of all professions and incomes come alive when they discuss where they came from and where they're going. Each interview is a vivid and insightful portrait, revealing the creative energy, camaraderie, desperation, and hope that fuel the daily lives of people in New York and everywhere.

July 19, 2006
KATE ASCHER

The Works: Anatomy of a City
(Penguin Press)

The Works: Anatomy of a City offers a cross section of the hidden infrastructure of New York City, using beautiful, innovative graphic images combined with short, clear text explanations to answer all the questions about the way things work in a modern city. Executive Vice President of NYC's Economic Development Corporation, Kate Ascher describes the technologies that keep the city functioning, as well as the people who support them—the pilots that bring the ships in over the Narrows sandbar, the sandhogs who are currently digging the third water tunnel under Manhattan, the television engineer who scales the Empire State Building's antenna for routine maintenance, and the electrical wizards who maintain the century-old system that delivers power to subways.

June 28, 2006
MARK CALDWELL

New York Night: The Mystique And Its History
(Scribner)

Critic, historian, and Fordham University professor Mark Caldwell chronicles the story of New York nightlife from 1643 to the present, featuring the famous, the notorious, and the unknown who have long walked the city's streets and lived its history. New York Night is a spellbinding social history of the day's dark hours, when work ends, secrets reveal themselves, and the unimaginable becomes real.

 

May 31, 2006
CAROL WILLIS

75 Years Later: The Empire State Building
(Illustrated Lecture)

Museum Director and Architectural Historian, Carol Willis, will commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Empire State Building with an illustrated lecture. In addition to articles in books and scholarly journals,Willis is the editor for "Building the Empire State," a book on the construction of New York's signature skyscraper, published by W.W. Norton in 1998. The Museum's latest web project, VIVA2 is an interactive interface providing access to the Museum's unique collection of more than 1,000 photographs of the construction of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center towers

-----

In conjunction with the Spring 2006 exhibition GREEN TOWERS FOR NEW YORK: From Visionary to Vernacular, The Skyscraper Museum sponsored an 8-part lecture series GREEN TEAMS, at the Donnell Library.

2005 PROGRAMS

December 5, 2005
Jayne Merkel

Eero Saarinen (Phaidon Press)

Author Jayne Merkel will outline Eero Saarinen's life and career, which includes 14 years of practice with his father and 10 years of practice as head of Eero Saarinen and Associates. Saarinen is best known for the St. Louis Arch, TWA Terminal at JFK and Dulles Airport, General Motors Technical Center, and American Embassy in London. Merkel will also concentrate on Saarinen's father, Eliel, and his entry to the Chicago Tribune Tower contest which won second place and fine critical reviews (and brought the family to America). Harold Roth, a New Haven architect, will join Merkel to discuss Saarinen's only skyscraper, CBS / Black Rock. As a young architect in the Saarinen office, Roth saw the building through construction after Eero died suddenly in 1961 (at age 51).

November 22, 2005
Jeff Byles

Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition (Harmony Books)

From the straight boulevards that "demolition artist" Haussmann smashed through rambling old Paris to the frenzied implosion of Las Vegas hotel towers, demolition has long played an ambiguous role in the architectural
imagination. Author Jeff Byles will survey the evolution of unbuilding techniques, as old-school wreckers evolved into highly adept practitioners of "structural jujitsu." Highlights will include pioneering figures such as Jacob Volk (the colorful New York City "destructionist" who crumbled skyscrapers in the Wall Street area) and epochal unbuilding feats such as the implosion of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis. As ever grander structures topple to make way for the new, Byles examines the profound impact the "disappearance" of tall buildings makes on the skyline and the urban psyche.

October 18, 2005
Roberta Moudry

The American Skyscraper: Cultural Histories (Cambridge University Press)

Historian of American Architecture and Urbanism, and editor of The American Skyscraper: Cultural Histories, Roberta Moudry will discuss the concepts behind the anthology, which looks at the multiple dimensions of the skyscraper in an urban American landscape. Focusing on New York and Chicago between 1870 and 1960, the studies in this volume address aspects of the skyscraper through an array of disciplines, including planning and public policy, art and architectural history, labor and business history, and American studies.

September 27, 2005
Eric P. Nash & Norman McGrath

Manhattan Skyscrapers (Princeton Architectural Press)

New York Times contributor and author of Manhattan Skyscrapers, Eric P. Nash will give a talk entitled, “Making Manhattan Modern: The Evolution of Skyscraper Style.” Together with photographer Norman McGrath, Nash will discuss the development of skyscrapers from early eclecticism and Art Deco setbacks to the emergence of the International Style and beyond. Demonstrative examples will include the Park Row Building, the American Radiator Building, the Seagram Building, and Norman Foster’s Hearst addition.

June 8, 2005
Stephen Fraser

Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. (Harper Collins.)

Historian Steve Fraser will discuss Every Man a Speculator, his new history of Wall Street. Fraser's book approaches the powerful and unpredictable nature of The Street with regard to politics, business, religion, and popular culture, as well as gender identity and the American concept of freedom. Fraser, who has appeared in the LA Times, The American Prospect, and the Nation, is the author of Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor.

 

May 3, 2005
Christopher Gray

New York Streetscapes: Tales of Manhattan's Significant Buidlings and Landmarks. (Harry N. Abrams, Inc.)

Architectural historian and New York Times columnist Christopher Gray will discuss his most recent book, a compilation of 190 of his "Streetscapes" columns for the Times. Gray illuminates the architectural and social history of Gotham in his study of local buildings and sites and the human intrigues which accompany them. Follow Gray as he takes us for a stroll down the streets of old New York.

 

March 29, 2005
Mary Beth Betts

The New York Waterfront: Evolution and Building Culture of the Port and Harbor. (Monacelli Press.)

Mary Beth Betts, Kevin Bone, and Stanley Greenberg have co-authored an unprecedented documentation of the rise and fall of the New York waterfront. The book traces the waterfront's architectural, technological and commercial existence over the last 150 years. Betts will discuss her essay, entitled MASTERPLANNING: Municipal Support of Transport and Commerce 1870-1930, which covers the development of planning, as well as the formation and eventual dissolution of The Department of Docks.

March 1, 2005
Philip Nobel

Sixteen Acres: Architecture and the Outrageous Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero. (Metropolitan Books.)

Philip Nobel presents a no-holds-barred look at the collision of interests behind the ambitious attempt to raise a new national icon at Ground Zero. Tracing redevelopment of the World Trade Center Site from graveyard to playground for high design, he strips away the hyperbole to reveal the secret life of the Century's most charged building project.

 

February 8, 2005
Fred W. Clarke

Sections Through a Practice: Cesar Pelli & Associates.(Hatje Cantz.)

Pelli & Associates partner Fred W. Clarke spoke about the revolutionary new book, SECTIONS THROUGH A PRACTICE. Though there have been many other volumes published on the architecture of Cesar Pelli, this book is a radical departure from a traditional monograph. This is the first book to present a completely original viewing of the buildings themselves. The book also recognizes and describes the working processes among CP&A's principals and collaborators.

 

January 18, 2005
Douglas Levere

New York Changing: Revisiting Berenice Abbott's New York. (Princeton Architectural Press.)

More than six decades after Berenice Abbott documented New York City monuments in Changing New York, photographer Douglas Levere has meticulously rephotographed many of the same scenes captured by Abbott in the 1930s. Contrasting black and white images by both photographers are displayed side by side throughout the book. Levere discussed his work and offered a visual presentation.

 

2004 BOOK TALKS

The Skyscraper Museum presents a series of book events exploring the skyline architecture of New York. These programs are free, and no reservations are necessary. All events held at the Center for Architecture at 536 LaGuardia Place, NYC (between Bleecker and West 3rd Street) 212-683-0023.

January 20, 2004, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Daniel Okrent on GREAT FORTUNE: THE EPIC OF ROCKEFELLER CENTER (Penguin, October 2003)

Noted journalist and public editor for The New York Times, Daniel Okrent recounts the story of ambition and daring and the tangle of big business, politics, high society, and deal-making on the grand scale that led to the construction of Rockefeller Center, one of the world's most famous urban complexes.

February 3, 2004, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Eric Howeler on SKYSCRAPER: VERTICAL NOW (Universe/Rizzoli, December 2003)

Architect Eric Howeler talks about his new book Skyscraper: Vertical Now and examines how the skyscraper shapes our urban existence and continues to serve as a symbol of our collective aspirations.

Exploring over 70 skyscraper designs of the recent past and near future, Howeler examines the cultural, technological, and social factors governing skyscrapers, the emergence of the "green skyscraper", the Asian skyscraper and the influence of the international landscape, and major works from the world's leading architects including KPF, Foster, SOM, Calatrava, Koolhaas, Nouvel, and many more.

March 9, 2004, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Richard Berenholtz, photographer of NEW YORK ARCHITECTURE: A HISTORY (Universe/Rizzoli, December 2003)

April 20, 2004, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Jim Rasenberger on HIGH STEEL: THE DARING MEN WHO BUILT THE WORLD’S GREATEST SKYLINE (Harper Collins, April 2004)

May 25, 2004, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
James Traub on THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND: A CENTURY OF PLEASURE AND PROFIT IN TIMES SQUARE (Random House, April 2004)

As Times Square turns 100, New York Times Magazine contributing writer James Traub tells the story of how this mercurial district became one of the most famous and exciting places in the world. The Devil’s Playground is classic and colorful American history, from the first years of the twentieth century through the Runyonesque heyday of nightclubs and theaters in the 1920s and ’30s, to the district’s decline in the 1960s and its glittering corporate revival in the 1990s.

June 15, 2004, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Owen D. Gutfreund on TWENTIETH CENTURY SPRAWL: HIGHWAYS AND THE RESHAPING OF THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE (Oxford University Press, March 2004)

Owen Gutfreund's 20th Century Sprawl is a groundbreaking study of how urban sprawl changed the face of America's cities and towns. Gutfruend takes a "follow the money" approach to show how government policies—largely unexamined—from as early as the 1920's subsidized the spread of cities and fueled a chronic nationwide dependence on cars and road building with little regard for expense, efficiency, social justice, or the environment."

July 20, 2004, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Russell Shorto on THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD: THE EPIC STORY OF DUTCH MANHATTAN, THE FORGOTTEN COLONY THAT SHAPED AMERICA (Doubleday, March 2004)

In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.

August 3, 2004, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
The Skyscraper Museum Team on the Web Project VIVA: VISUAL INDEX TO THE VIRTUAL ARCHIVE (www.skyscraper.org/viva)

VIVA is the Visual Index to the Virtual Archive of The Skyscraper Museum, an innovative Web interface that uses an interactive 3D map of Manhattan in 2000 as a gateway to the Museum’s archive of New York City images and views. Over 2,000 historic photographs, postcards, and other images are now available online through VIVA.

Sunday, May 16, 2004
HISTORY AND HERITAGE DOWNTOWN FAMILY FUN DAY
World Financial Center Winter Garden

On May 16th the Skyscraper Museum joined over 15 other Lower Manhattan cultural organizations to celebrate the History and Heritage of Downtown New York City. For its feature presentation The Skyscraper Museum's special guest Steve Havemann demonstrated the historical process of riveting using antique forge, tongs, and pneumatic gun. Jim Rasenberger, author of High Steel, was also present during the demonstration to further illustrate the technologies, techniques and dangers of skyscraper construction.

2003 BOOK TALKS

December 8, 2003, 6:30 - 7:30 PM
NEAL BASCOMB on HIGHER: A HISTORIC RACE TO THE SKY AND THE MAKING OF A CITY (Doubleday, October 2003)
CENTER FOR ARCHITECTURE, NYC

In 1929, as downtown and midtown skylines soared, two towers vied for the title of world’s tallest building. Author Neal Bascomb recounts the race between the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building, evoking the colorful characters of an architectural drama.

June 11, 2003, 10 AM
CONSTRUCTION KICK-OFF
At the site of the Museum's new home at 39 Battery Place, three blocks west of Bowling Green (4 / 5 Trains). A celebration to launch the construction of our permanent home in Battery Park City.

For more information about the event, click here.

May 5, 2003
HONG KONG ~ NEW YORK
SKYSCRAPERS IN THE GLOBAL CITY
Lighthouse International, Ames Auditorium, 111 E. 59th St., between Lexington and Park Avenues

Cesar Pelli and William Pedersen, Architects of the world's tallest buildings, discuss skyscrapers in the global city:

In Hong Kong, architects Cesar Pelli and William Pedersen of KPF have designed supertallskyscrapers and commercial centers—one completed, the otherin construction—that rise over train stations and mass transit hubs. These towers and others that are now, or will be, the world’s tallest buildings pose possible models for downtown New York.

On the evening of Monday, May 5, The Skyscraper Museum will sponsor a symposium featuring William Pedersen of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and Cesar Pelli of Cesar Pelli & Associates. The architects will present their supertall towers in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other global cities and reflect on their experiences with mega-developments in relation to rebuildingm in Lower Manhattan. A discussion with Alex Garvin, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Vice President for Planning, Design & Development, follows the architects’ talks.

As design principals of their internationally renowned firms, Pelli and Pedersen are responsible for buildings that are now, or are projected to be, the world¹s tallest towers. The current record holders, the twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, designed by Mr. Pelli, measure 450m (1483 ft.) to the top of their stainless steel spires. The World Financial Center in Shanghai, designed by Mr. Pedersen, scheduled for completion in 2007, will rise to 492m (1614 ft.).

2002 PROGRAMS

November 4, 2002
BOOK SIGNING AND RECEPTION
Talk at 6:30 pm, book signing and reception at 7:15 pm, Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street at Fifth Ave.

The Skyscraper Museum presents a talk by Donald Friedman on his new book After 9-11: An Engineer's Work at the World Trade Center (Xlibris, September 2002).

Co-sponsored by the New York Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.

November 13, 2002
BOOK SIGNING AND RECEPTION
Talk at 6:30 pm, book signing and reception at 7:15 pm, Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street at Fifth Ave.

The Skyscraper Museum presents an illustrated talk and book reception to celebrate the reissue of The Lower Manhattan Plan of 1966, published by Princeton Architectural Press in Association with The Skyscraper Museum.

Carol Willis, Director of The Skyscraper Museum and editor of the reprint will link past and future plans for Lower Manhattan and introduce two of the original team architects, Paul Willen and James Rossant to reflect on the bold proposals for reinventing downtown in the 1960s.

Co-sponsored by the New York Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.

October 22, 2002
LOWER MANHATTAN: FIVE DECADES OF THE FUTURE
What: A symposium with Eight Chairs of the NYC Planning Commission on Downtown, Past and Post 9/11
Where: 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, Auditorium, Lower Level

The Skyscraper Museum sponsored a symposium on the future of Lower Manhattan that brought together, for the first time, seven past Chairs of the New York City Planning Commission and the current Chair, Amanda M. Burden, to discuss how downtown was envisioned by the NYC Department of City Planning under five mayoral administrations, from Lindsay to Bloomberg.

In addition to Ms. Burden the panel included all the heads of the Commission since 1966: Donald H. Elliott (1966-1973); John Zuccotti (1973-1975); Victor Marerro (1976-1977); Herb Sturz (1980-1986); Sylvia Deutsch (1987-1989); Richard L. Schaffer (1990-1993); and Joseph B. Rose (1994-2002). (The missing years, 1978-1980, represent the term of Robert F. Wagner, Jr., deceased.]

Spanning five decades, the plans and policies of these administrations addressed the changing problems and fortunes of Lower Manhattan through several cycles of boom and recession, significant shifts in technology, and new social and sectoral trends that changed downtown's mix of businesses, workers, and residents. These issues arise today in new ways.

Carol Willis, Director of the Skyscraper Museum introduced the panel. Ms. Willis is the editor of the reprint of The Lower Manhattan Plan: The 1966 Vision for Downtown New York (Princeton Architectural Press). This month marks the reprint of this rare, and once again relevant planning document that is in part the inspiration for the evening's discussion.

"Linking the past and future of New York City is central to the mission of The Skyscraper Museum and is essential to the identity of Lower Manhattan in the post-9/11 world," notes Willis. Downtown is the birthplace of New York, and it has been reinvented continuously for more than three hundred years. Most of the change was driven by competitive capitalism, but equally significant from the mid-twentieth century, has been the role of planning and public policy. The panel reflected on those tensions and conflicts from their considerable experience.

February 5 - May 5, 2002
WTC: Monument
An exhibition by The Skyscraper Museum at The New-York Historical Society

This tribute to the Twin Towers examines the history of the complex in its conception, design, and construction from the 1960s through the mid-1970s -- and its destruction on the morning of 9/11.

Curated by Carol Willis, the director of The Skyscraper Museum, the exhibition WTC emphasized the monumental scale of the Twin Towers and explored their place in the postwar transformations of Lower Manhattan where an aggressive policy of urban renewal was directed at modernizing physical conditions and reinforcing the evolution of the economy from port to paperwork. New York in the 1960s was a city on the rise, and no project symbolized the confidence in "bigger is better" than did the World Trade Center. On their completion in 1971 and 1973, the Twin Towers were both the tallest and the largest highrise buildings in the world. Innovative engineering carried the structures to 110 stories, multiplying floors of nearly an acre into more than four million square feet of office space in each tower. Little loved by architecture critics of the day, the great silver pylons were more appreciated for their brilliant engineering than for their minimalist design or the austerity of their windswept stone plazas. Over three decades, though, their tremendous power and presence anchored the skyline in a way that makes it difficult to think of New York without them.

Highlights of the exhibition included: an eighteen-minute film titled "Building the World Trade Center" made by the Port Authority in 1983, and the only extant architectural model by Minoru Yamasaki, with twin towers that stand seven feet tall. The Historical Society's collections enrich the exhibition, which makes use of numerous photographs from the Thomas Airviews collection, and a rare scale model of lower Manhattan circa 1970. The exhibition was accompanied by four public programs on the Trade Center's history originally planned by The Skyscraper Museum for October 2001 to be held at Windows on the World.

WTC: Monument was supported by The Bodman Foundation and The Henry Luce Foundation. The exhibitions and programs of The Skyscraper Museum are supported by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

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February - April 2002
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER II HISTORY
A series of programs organized by The Skyscraper Museum at the New-York Historical Society

New York in the 1960s was a city on the rise, and no project symbolized the confidence in "bigger is better" than did the World Trade Center. In conjunction with the exhibition "WTC," this series of four programs examined the planning, design, construction, and operation of the complex with talks by many of the original team who created and managed the Twin Towers.

April 10, 6:30
PAST AND FUTURE: DOWNTOWN NEW YORK
A panel of historians, planners, architects, and developers discussed the relevance of past plans for reshaping and revitalizing Lower Manhattan and the challenges facing downtown in the future.

Hon. Amanda Burden, Chair, NYC Planning Commission
Hon. Sherida Paulsen, Chair, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
Carl Weisbrod, President, Alliance for Downtown New York
Philip E. Aarons, Principal & Founding Partner, Millennium Partners
Robert Selsam, Senior Vice President, Boston Properties, Inc.
Marilyn Jordan Taylor, Chair, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Philip R. Pitruzzello, V.P. for Real Estate Projects, AOL Time Warner, Inc.
Moderator: Carol Willis, The Skyscraper Museum

March 20, 6:30
MANAGING MILLIONS
Planned, designed, and operated by the bi-state agency The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the World Trade Center was a true "city within a city" with a population of some 50,000 tenants, and up to 80,000 visitors daily. The autonomy that characterized the creation of the complex and the engineers' culture of the PANYNJ is explored in this evening's panel which focuses on the operation of the complex over three decades.

Angus Gillespie, Professor of American Studies at Rutgers; author of Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center
Charles Maikish, former Director, World Trade Department, 1991-1996
Robert DiChiara, former Asst. Director, World Trade Department, 1991-1997
Alan Reiss, Director, World Trade Department through 2001

March 13, 6:30
THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BUILDINGS
Though they were only briefly the tallest buildings, the Twin Towers constituted the largest office complex in the world. Leslie E. Robertson, structural engineer of the towers, and builder John Tishman, who headed the construction management of the project, described the innovative design and unprecedented challenges of erecting the great skyscrapers.

Leslie E. Robertson, Principal, Leslie E. Robertson Associates, RLLP
John L. Tishman, Chairman, Tishman Realty & Construction Corporation Co., Inc.
Moderator: Carol Willis, The Skyscraper Museum

February 20, 6:30
NEW YORK IN THE 1960s
Lower Manhattan was transformed in the 1960s and 70s by an aggressive policy of urban renewal that sought to address the postwar realities of obsolete piers, aging buildings, and an exodus of corporations to midtown and beyond. The first program brought together the chief planner of the World Trade Center for the Port Authority, Guy Tozzoli, and Donald H. Elliott, Chairman of the New York City Planning Commission under Mayor Lindsay to look back at the last time government guided the reshaping of downtown New York.

Guy Tozzoli, former Director of the World Trade Department, PANYNJ; currently, President, World Trade Centers Association
Donald H. Elliott, former Chairman of the New York City Planning Commission, 1966-1973; currently, Hollyer, Brady, Smith & Hines, LLP
Moderator: Carol Willis, Director, The Skyscraper Museum

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2001 PROGRAMS

Wednesday, November 14, 2001
REMEMBERING THE TWIN TOWERS
Author Tony Hiss Moderates a Panel Discussion
The Municipal Art Society, 457 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022. Website: www.mas.org

Tony Hiss, the author of "Experience of Place", lead a panel featuring Carol Willis, director, The Skyscraper Museum; John Kriskiewicz, architectural historian; and Anthony Robins, historian and author of "The World Trade Center". The discussion centered on how the events of September 11, which took an unimaginable toll on human life, also erased what was perhaps the most powerful and defining element of Manhattan's urban landscape. The World Trade Center was a subject of debate within the architectural community, and captured the imagination of the public, from the moment its first steel girders rose into the sky. Why was it built and what were the design and engineering innovations that made it possible? What did the structures, and their use, mean to us as a society?

October 29, 2001 | 6-8:30 pm
THE "NEW" NEW YORK SKYLINE
CUNY Auditorium 365 Fifth Avenue, between 34th and 35th Streets. Website: www.gothamcenter.org

New York City museums and civic organizations presented a forum featuring prominent architects, developers, educators, journalists, and historians who reflected on the New York City skyline -- past, present, and future -- in light of the tragic events of September 11th. Moderator: Mike Wallace, Director, The Gotham Center. Speakers include: Ralph Appelbaum, President, Ralph Appelbaum Associates; Paul Goldberger, Architecture Critic, The New Yorker; Ric Burns, Director of "New York: A Documentary Film", Steeplechase Films; David Childs, FAIA, Partner, SOM; Jean Gardner, Senior Faculty, Department of Architecture, Parsons School of Design; Hugh Hardy, FAIA, Founding Partner, HHPA; Billie Tsien, AIA, Architect, TWBTA; Camilo José Vergara, Photographer and Author of "American Ruins"; Carl Weisbrod, President, Alliance for Downtown New York; Tod Williams, FAIA, Architect, TWBTA; Carol Willis, Director, The Skyscraper Museum.

Spring 2001
SPRING LECTURES

THE URBAN OFFICE: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
A discussion with Donald Albrecht and James S. Russell
Thursday, May 10 at the Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street
Co-sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians New York Chapter.

Two observers of office-design culture considered architectural evolution and cultural shifts in the white-collar workplace. Donald Albrecht, curator of "On the Job: Design and the American Office" (on view at the National Building Museum, Washington), and James S. Russell, editor-at-large of "Architectural Record", looked back over the century and asked, what's next?

WALL STREET: THE PREQUEL
Tuesday, April 10
The Skyscraper Museum, 110 Maiden Lane

Carol Willis, director and founder of the Museum, looked back on the high-rise history of Wall Street before the days of the "Skyscraper Rivals" (see below). Her talk previewed material to be published by the Museum and W.W. Norton in the book "At the Corner of Capital".

TERRIFIC TERRA-COTTA TOWERS
Wednesday, April 25
Co-sponsored with the New York Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians
Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street

Susan Tunick, president of "Friends of Terra Cotta" and author of "Terra-Cotta Skyline", lectured on architectural terra cotta, its use, history, and manufacture. The story behind this extraordinary material was presented within the context of the changing technology in architecture that led to the development of the skyscraper.

SKYSCRAPER RIVALS
LECTURE & BOOK PARTY
Tuesday, March 20
Co-sponsored with Princeton Architectural Press

Daniel Abramson narrated the stories of some of the great Art Deco towers of Lower Manhattan in a richly illustrated lecture on their architecture, interiors, the people who built them, and who kept them running. Copies of his recently published book, "Skyscraper Rivals", were available for purchase and signing at a book party following the lecture.

Spring 2000 - Fall 2001
DESIGN / DEVELOPMENT: TIMES SQUARE
This exhibition was the first in a series that will focus on the design process. The installation presents architectural models for six new Times Square towers by four renowned firms:

Fox & Fowle Architects PC: Conde Nast and Reuters Buildings
SOM Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP: Times Square Tower and 10 Times Square
KPF Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC: 5 Times Square
Arquitectonica: Tishman's Westin New York at Times Square

For more information about the exhibition, click here.

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Fall 2000
ASPIRING SKYLINES
Popular Images of New York City Skylines

Monday, October 16 | 6:30 PM
Icons in Black & White: NYC Skyscrapers on Film
At the Institute of Fine Arts | 1 East 78TH Street | NYC
Mary Woods, Cornell University

Monday, October 23 | 5:30 PM Tour
One Wall Street Tour
Chris McKay, Bank of New York Archivist, led a tour of Ralph Walker's 1930 Deco skyscraper.

Monday, October 23 | 7:00 PM Lecture
One Wall Street Lecture
Architectural historian Andrew Dolkart offered a slide presentation of the history of One Wall Street.

Monday, November 6 | 6:30 PM
Panoramic Views of New York, 1880-1930
At The Skyscraper Museum | 110 Maiden Lane | NYC
Mary Beth Betts, NYC Landmarks Preservation Committee

Co-sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians, New York Chapter. For further information, please call (212) 968-1961.

This project was part of State Humanities Month and was funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities.

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Summer 2000
MANHATTAN TIMEFORMATIONS
Manhattan Timeformations, a digital project by architect Brian McGrath maps Manhattan's skyscraper districts through time. The project uses computer models and interactive animations to depict the dynamic relationship between Manhattan's skyscrapers and the city's development.

The public was invited to view the model in progress and interact with the project's designers at 18 open house sessions scheduled throughout the summer of 2000. For more information about the project, click here.

This project was made possible with public funds from a Technology Initiative Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

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April 4 + 17, 2000
TIMES SQUARE NOW
Two evenings on the planning, development, design and construction that created the extraordinary explosion of activity in Times Square, the most intensely concentrated and complicated construction site in America.

April 17: Times Square Towers, three architects presented their firms' new high-rise projects, including: Bruce Fowle of Fox & Fowle Architects PC, architects of 3 Times Square and 4 Times Square; T. J. Gottesdiener of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, architects of Times Square Tower and 7XSquare; and Douglas Hocking of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC, architects of 5 Times Square.

April 4: Plans and Realities, a discussion on the revival of Times Square and 42nd Street by a panel of principal actors including: Rebecca Robertson, former president of The 42nd Street Development Project; William Rudin, President of Rudin Management Company, developer of 3 Times Square; Robert A. M. Stern, architect and consultant to The 42nd Street Development Project; and Daniel R. Tishman, President and CEO of Tishman Construction Corporation, construction manager of 3 Times Square and 4 Times Square.

This series was co-sponsored by The Times Square Business Improvement District.

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November 16 - December 7, 1999
TALLEST TOWERS
The Museum and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) presented three lectures by leading structural engineers on their designs for the world's tallest buildings.

December 7: William F. Baker, Partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill/Chicago discussed the challenges of designing and constructing Shanghai's 88-story Jin Mao Building and Chicago's 7 South Dearborn, the proposed new world's tallest building.

November 30: Dr. Charles Thornton, Chairman, Thornton-Thomasetti Engineers/The LZA Group, Inc. shared his experience as chief structural engineer of Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers, currently the tallest buildings in the world.

November 16, 1999: Leslie E. Robertson, Director of Design & Construction, LERA Consulting Structural Engineers, revisited the construction of the WTC's twin towers.

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October 25, 1999
DOWNTOWN DECO
Walking tour of Lower Manhattan's Art Deco buildings with architectural historian Andrew S. Dolkart.October 6 - November 13, 1999

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THE HISTORY OF SIZE
Three lectures on the evolution of exceptionally large structures by Carol Willis, Director of Museum and Curator of BIG BUILDINGS exhibition:

Big & Tall: Skyscrapers to 1960
The Mega-Movement: Sizing Up the Sixties and Seventies
Slender or Obese: Skyscrapers 1980s-2000

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July 28,1999
HIGH STANDARDS

The Skyscraper Museum surveyed the downtown designations of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, with special attention to the 1999 landmarks - American Tract Society, 15 Park Row, The New York Times Building, and 48 Wall Street.  Presented by Deborah Gardner, Commissioner, and Mary Beth Betts, Director of Research.

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May 22, 1999
LOWER BROADWAY WALKING TOUR
Architectural historian Andrew S. Dolkart led this tour, which began at the Custom House at Bowling Green and advanced up the canyon of Broadway to explore the tall towers of the Financial District.

May 15, 1999
FIFTH AVENUE WALKING TOUR
The engineering history of the high-rise building was the subject of this walk up Fifth Avenue, climaxing at the Empire State Building.

May 2, 1999
PARK ROW WALKING TOUR
Led by architectural historian Andrew S. Dolkart, this tour met in front of the Woolworth Building and took in the great extant blocks of early office buildings along Park Row and Broadway.

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May 1, 1999
EMPIRE STATE BUILDING BIRTHDAY PARTY
On Saturday, May 1st, The Skyscraper Museum celebrated the 68th Birthday of the Empire State Building with an afternoon of events dedicated to New York's signature skyscraper. Director Carol Willis recounted the story of opening day (1931) in her tour of the museum's current exhibition, Building the Empire State, and guests enjoyed birthday cake for the great building. The main event, however, was the screening of the 1933 classic film, King Kong, whose famous, furry star was on hand to greet museum visitors.

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March 27, 1999
RIVETING DISCUSSIONS
On Saturday, March 27th, using riveters' tools on exhibit in the museum, ironworker Steve Havemann of BQR Ironshop demonstrated the work of a riveter's team and shared workers' true stories of near-death experiences. 

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March 24, 1999
FACE LIFTS:
Exterior Restoration of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings

On Wednesday, March 24th, the museum sponsored a round-robin slide lecture on the facade restoration of New York's most famous skyscrapers presented by the engineers and architects of LZA Technology. Vice President and Principal Robert Nacheman, P. E. and Senior Project Director Jerry Smith, P.E. led guests through the phases of the Empire State Building project, followed by Senior Associate Jan Kalas, AIA and Project Director Eric Hammarberg, Associate AIA who discussed their work on the Chrysler Building.

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February 6 - 27, 1999
REAL ESTATE CAPITAL:
Architecture and History on Wall Street
Four lectures examining Wall Street's architectural riches and real-estate development:

The Corner: Carol Willis discussed the successive buildings that frame the famous intersection at Wall, Nassau, and Broad Streets.

The New York Stock Exchange: Sarah Bradford Landau, Professor of Art History at New York University and author of Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865-1913, traced the architectural history of the New York Stock Exchange, anchor of the financial district.

One Wall Street: Andrew S. Dolkart, architectural historian, addressed the building history of number 1 Wall Street.

40 Wall Street: Carol Willis considered the 70-story sckyscraper at 40 Wall Street and the contemporary Art Deco towers at 70 Pine Street and 20 Exchange Place.

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November 16 - December 7, 1999
TALLEST TOWERS
The Museum and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) presented three lectures by leading structural engineers on their designs for the world's tallest buildings.

December 7: William F. Baker, Partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill/Chicago discussed the challenges of designing and constructing Shanghai's 88-story Jin Mao Building and Chicago's 7 South Dearborn, the proposed new world's tallest building.

November 30: Dr. Charles Thornton, Chairman, Thornton-Thomasetti Engineers/The LZA Group, Inc. shared his experience as chief structural engineer of Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers, currently the tallest buildings in the world.

November 16, 1999: Leslie E. Robertson, Director of Design & Construction, LERA Consulting Structural Engineers, revisited the construction of the WTC's twin towers.

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October 25, 1999
DOWNTOWN DECO
Walking tour of Lower Manhattan's Art Deco buildings with architectural historian Andrew S. Dolkart.October 6 - November 13, 1999

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THE HISTORY OF SIZE
Three lectures on the evolution of exceptionally large structures by Carol Willis, Director of Museum and Curator of BIG BUILDINGS exhibition:

Big & Tall: Skyscrapers to 1960
The Mega-Movement: Sizing Up the Sixties and Seventies
Slender or Obese: Skyscrapers 1980s-2000

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July 28,1999
HIGH STANDARDS

The Skyscraper Museum surveyed the downtown designations of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, with special attention to the 1999 landmarks - American Tract Society, 15 Park Row, The New York Times Building, and 48 Wall Street.  Presented by Deborah Gardner, Commissioner, and Mary Beth Betts, Director of Research.

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May 22, 1999
LOWER BROADWAY WALKING TOUR
Architectural historian Andrew S. Dolkart led this tour, which began at the Custom House at Bowling Green and advanced up the canyon of Broadway to explore the tall towers of the Financial District.

May 15, 1999
FIFTH AVENUE WALKING TOUR
The engineering history of the high-rise building was the subject of this walk up Fifth Avenue, climaxing at the Empire State Building.

May 2, 1999
PARK ROW WALKING TOUR
Led by architectural historian Andrew S. Dolkart, this tour met in front of the Woolworth Building and took in the great extant blocks of early office buildings along Park Row and Broadway.

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May 1, 1999
EMPIRE STATE BUILDING BIRTHDAY PARTY
On Saturday, May 1st, The Skyscraper Museum celebrated the 68th Birthday of the Empire State Building with an afternoon of events dedicated to New York's signature skyscraper. Director Carol Willis recounted the story of opening day (1931) in her tour of the museum's current exhibition, Building the Empire State, and guests enjoyed birthday cake for the great building. The main event, however, was the screening of the 1933 classic film, King Kong, whose famous, furry star was on hand to greet museum visitors.

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March 27, 1999
RIVETING DISCUSSIONS
On Saturday, March 27th, using riveters' tools on exhibit in the museum, ironworker Steve Havemann of BQR Ironshop demonstrated the work of a riveter's team and shared workers' true stories of near-death experiences. 

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March 24, 1999
FACE LIFTS:
Exterior Restoration of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings

On Wednesday, March 24th, the museum sponsored a round-robin slide lecture on the facade restoration of New York's most famous skyscrapers presented by the engineers and architects of LZA Technology. Vice President and Principal Robert Nacheman, P. E. and Senior Project Director Jerry Smith, P.E. led guests through the phases of the Empire State Building project, followed by Senior Associate Jan Kalas, AIA and Project Director Eric Hammarberg, Associate AIA who discussed their work on the Chrysler Building.

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February 6 - 27, 1999
REAL ESTATE CAPITAL:
Architecture and History on Wall Street
Four lectures examining Wall Street's architectural riches and real-estate development:

The Corner: Carol Willis discussed the successive buildings that frame the famous intersection at Wall, Nassau, and Broad Streets.

The New York Stock Exchange: Sarah Bradford Landau, Professor of Art History at New York University and author of Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865-1913, traced the architectural history of the New York Stock Exchange, anchor of the financial district.

One Wall Street: Andrew S. Dolkart, architectural historian, addressed the building history of number 1 Wall Street.

40 Wall Street: Carol Willis considered the 70-story sckyscraper at 40 Wall Street and the contemporary Art Deco towers at 70 Pine Street and 20 Exchange Place.

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December 5, 1998
THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF LEWIS HINES
On December 5, 1998, noted historian of photography Naomi Rosenblum presented a slide talk on the work of the noted social documentary photographer Lewis W. Hines entitled "Plumbed the Depths and Scaled the Heights": Lewis Hine's Photographs of American Work.

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October 24, 1998
BUILDING THE EMPIRE STATE LECTURES
Carol Willis and Donald Friedman, authors of Building the Empire State, presented the design and construction of New York's signature skyscraper.