Engineers Stories: Since 9/11 Skyscraper Museum 2021-10-06 | Najib Abboud, Managing Principal & Applied Science Practice Leader, Thornton TomasettiStephen E. Flynn, Founding Director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern UniversityThe second program of ENGINEERS’ STORIES takes a view that deals in decades rather than days and which looks back to assess what has changed as a consequence of 9/11.In the months after the removal of the steel and clearing of material from the “bathtub,” the additional engineering analysis of the causes of the collapse of the towers began. That investigation consumed the next decade.One of the leaders of the forensic analysis was structural engineer Najib Abboud, a Managing Principal at Thornton Tomasetti, who will explain the focus and stages of the study. He will be joined by Stephen E. Flynn, the Founding Director of the Global Resilience Institute and Professor of Political Science, Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs. Their paired presentations will discuss the extent to which the forensic analysis changed how tall buildings are designed, then expand into the broader topic of risk and resilience in the built environment – a concept that expands beyond a singular focus on security to all hazards that disrupt the functioning of our environment.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #Museumfromhome #Webinar #Remembering911
Marina City: A Virtual Lecture by Geoffrey Goldberg Skyscraper Museum 2023-06-15 | Skyscraper histories often focus on the development of the skeletal iron frame as a key development, but this was paralleled by the equally important evolution of reinforced concrete as a competing structural material. Concrete’s plasticity and its monolithic nature have allowed a wide variety of architectural forms and engineering approaches. It has sometimes worked with steel framing to achieve great heights, but concrete has also often taken on skyscrapers’ gravity and wind loads on its own.In preparation for the Fall 2023 exhibition In Situ: The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, the Museum is launching an evolving lecture series that will examine key experiments in concrete construction. The series begins on June 13th at 6pm ET with a talk by architect Geoffrey Goldberg on Marina City in Chicago, the remarkable pair of 61-story cylindrical towers completed in 1964. Goldberg will describe how that city’s famous twin apartment towers used concrete toward important social and political ends in the early 1960s.Intended to spark a renaissance in downtown living, Bertrand Goldberg’s design relied on concrete’s formal agility to achieve a pioneering example of mixed-use urbanism, combining commercial, residential, and retail functions within its cylindrical towers and expressive plaza buildings. Relying on techniques borrowed from the Midwest’s long tradition of slip-form grain elevator construction and on innovative formwork systems developed by the contractor, Marina City remains one of the city’s most notable and recognizable developments—and a foil to Chicago’s ubiquitous steel-framed boxes.The program will be introduced by Thomas Leslie, guest-curator for the exhibition In Situ, who will also engage in comment and conversation with Geoff Goldberg.GEOFFREY GOLDBERGGeoffrey Goldberg has practiced for more than 30 years in Chicago as an architect and urban designer. Along with his own practice, he has taught architectural design and theory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The son of architect Bertrand Goldberg, Geoff is a native Chicagoan. He received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago (‘77), and an M.Arch. from Harvard University.THOMAS LESLIEThomas Leslie is Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he researches the integration of building sciences and arts, both historically and in contemporary practice. He is the author of Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 and its sequel Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013 and 2023). He is also the author of Beauty's Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (University of Illinois Press, 2017).#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Chicago #Architecture #Construction #Urbanism #MarinaCity #BertrandGoldberg #Skyscraper #Lecture #Museumfromhome #GeoffreyGoldberg #ThomasLeslie #CarolWillis
The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight Skyscraper Museum 2023-05-20 | In The Great American Transit Disaster urban and planning historian Nicholas Dagen Bloom offers a potent re-examination of America’s history of public disinvestment in mass transit. Countering the standard histories that critique American auto-centric culture and government policies, Bloom asserts our transit networks are bad for a simple reason: we wanted it this way.Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco, Bloom provides overwhelming evidence that transit disinvestment was a choice rather than destiny. This wide array of case studies reveals three major factors that led to the decline of public transit across the United States: municipal austerity policies that denied most transit agencies the funding to sustain high-quality service; the encouragement of auto-centric planning; and white flight from dense city centers to far-flung suburbs. As Bloom makes clear, local public policy decisions were not the product of a nefarious auto industry or other grand conspiracy—all were widely supported by voters, who effectively shut out options for transit-friendly futures. With this book, Bloom seeks not only to dispel our accepted transit myths but to lay new tracks for today’s conversations about public transportation funding.NICHOLAS DAGEN BLOOMNicholas Dagen Bloom is a Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College. He is the author of many books, including Public Housing That Worked (Penn, 2008), The Metropolitan Airport (Penn, 2015), and How States Shaped Postwar America (Chicago, 2019). He is co-editor of the prize-winning Public Housing Myths (Cornell, 2015) and Affordable Housing in New York (Princeton, 2015). Bloom is frequently interviewed and quoted extensively on housing and other topics in media outlets, including WNYC, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post. ROBERT FISHMANRobert Fishman is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of urban history and urban policy and planning. He has authored several books that are regarded as seminal texts on the history of cities and urbanism, including Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century (MIT Press, 1982) and Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (Basic Books, 1987). He recently discussed the role of transportation in New York's development for the Museum's program "Why Planning Matters." #TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Construction #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #TheGreatAmericanTransitDisaster #Transit #Skyscraper #NYC #BookTalk #Museumfromhome #NicholasBloom #RobertFishman #CarolWillis
Building The Empire State Skyscraper Museum 2023-05-19 | Constructed in eleven months, the 1250-foot Empire State Building, the world's tallest skyscraper from 1931 to 1971, was a marvel of modern engineering. The frame rose more than a story a day; no comparable building since has matched that rate of ascent. The construction was orchestrated by general contractors Starrett Brothers & Eken, premier "skyline builders" of the 1920s. From their records, the company compiled an in-house notebook.Twenty-five years ago, in 1998, the hardcover edition of Building the Empire State was the first publication from the archives of the newly-founded Skyscraper Museum. The book is still in print with WW Norton, now in paperback. Join the authors of the historical essays that frame the original manuscript notebook of the buildings Starrett Brothers & Eken, Carol Willis and Don Friedman, for a look back at the book and the building. Appropriately, our online program will take place on the 92nd anniversary of the Empire State's opening day!Donald FriedmanDONALD FRIEDMAN, president of Old Structures Engineering, has thirty years of experience as a structural engineer, working on both the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures. He is the author of several books, including Historical Building Construction (1995, rev. 2010). His book, The Structures of Skyscrapers in America, 1871-1900: Their History and Preservation (APT, 2020) surveys the development of high-rise buildings across the country in the last decades of the nineteenth century.Carol WillisCAROL WILLIS is an architectural historian and the founder of The Skyscraper Museum.#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Construction #Urbanism #EmpireState #Skyscraper #NYC #BookTalk #Museumfromhome #DonaldFriedman #CarolWillis
South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City Skyscraper Museum 2023-04-07 | Thirty-five years after this landmark of urban history – originally titled We're Still Here in a 1986 first edition – Jill Jonnes continues to chronicle the rise, fall, rebirth, and ongoing revival of the South Bronx. The once-thriving New York City borough, ravaged in the 1970s and ’80s by disinvestment and fires, then heroically revived and rebuilt in the 1990s by community activists, has been Jonnes's subject in three editions, expanding the first South Bronx Rising (2000) in 2022. Though now globally renowned as the birthplace of hip-hop, the South Bronx remains America’s poorest urban congressional district. In this new edition, Jonnes describes the present generation of activists who are transforming their communities with the arts and greening, notably the restoration of the Bronx River. For better or worse, real estate investors have noticed, setting off new gentrification struggles.After her talk, Jonnes will be joined in conversation by Richard Eaddy, who from 1998-2001 served as the Deputy Borough President of the Bronx and until recently on the NYC Planning Commission.Jill JonnesJill Jonnes is the author of several books that explore the impact of new technologies, structures, and landscapes on modern cities and society, including Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World and Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels. In 2016 she published Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape. Jonnes holds an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School and a Ph.D. in American History from Johns Hopkins University.Richard EaddyRichard Eaddy is an Executive Managing Director at Savills, New York. He recently stepped down from his seat on the NYC Planning Commission, where he served since 2002. Eaddy has more than 25 years of experience in real estate development and consulting, including holding state and city-appointed government offices. From 1998-2001, he served as Deputy Borough President of the Bronx. He also served as Executive Director/CEO of Harlem CDC and has held numerous positions in the private and nonprofit sectors, managing commercial projects and initiatives throughout New York City.#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Construction #Urbanism #SouthBronxRising #Bronx #BookTalk #Museumfromhome #JillJonnes #RichardEaddy #CarolWillis
The Roots of Urban Renaissance Skyscraper Museum 2023-03-25 | With its gleaming shopping centers and refurbished row houses, today’s Harlem bears little resemblance to the neighborhood of the midcentury urban crisis. In The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle over Harlem, first published in 2017 by Harvard University Press, Brian D. Goldstein traces Harlem’s Second Renaissance to a surprising source: the radical social movements of the 1960s that resisted city officials and fought to give Harlemites control of their own destiny. Inspired by the civil rights movement, young activists envisioned a Harlem built by and for its low-income, predominantly African American population. In the succeeding decades, however, the community-based organizations they founded came to pursue a very different goal: a neighborhood with national retailers and increasingly affluent residents.Now re-released in an expanded edition by Princeton University Press (2023), The Roots of Urban Renaissance resonates with a new context of social and political issues. Goldstein will discuss his thesis that gentrification was not imposed on an unwitting community by unscrupulous developers or opportunistic outsiders, but rather grew from the neighborhood’s grassroots, producing a legacy that benefited some longtime residents and threatened others. His illustrated talk will focus on a single block on 125th Street that now contains the State Office Building, but which was imagined and reimagined many times over the course of the book's history.Goldstein will be joined in discussion by Richard Eaddy, a long-time Commissioner on the NYC Planning Commission and a former executive director/CEO of Harlem CDC.Brian D. GoldsteinBrian D. Goldstein is an architectural and urban historian and an associate professor at Swarthmore College. His research focuses on the intersection of the built environment, race and class, and social movements, especially in the United States. He is currently working on a new book, If Architecture Were for People: The Life and Work of J. Max Bond, Jr., under contract with Princeton University Press.Richard EaddyRichard Eaddy is an Executive Managing Director at Savills, New York. He recently stepped down from his seat on the NYC Planning Commission, where he served since 2002. Eaddy has more than 25 years of experience in real estate development and consulting, including holding state and city-appointed government offices and serving as executive director/CEO of Harlem CDC and deputy borough president of the Bronx. He has held numerous positions in the private and nonprofit sectors, managing commercial projects and initiatives throughout New York City.#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Construction #Urbanism #UrbanRenaissance #BookTalk #museumfromhome #BrianDGoldstein #RichardEaddy #CarolWillis
An American Renaissance: Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York City Skyscraper Museum 2023-03-18 | An American Renaissance: Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York City, written by Phillip James Dodd with photography by Jonathan Wallen, is a sumptuous book on an era – roughly from the 1870s to the 1930s – when New York acquired and displayed its wealth and sophistication with complete confidence. The titans of American finance and industry were patrons of the arts in their private mansions, public institutions, and business establishments. An American Renaissance focuses on twenty of the finest examples of Beaux-Arts architecture in the city and recalls the lives of those who commissioned, designed, and built them. Some of the buildings and monuments are world-renowned landmarks, while others are more obscure and seldom visited. The opulence of the Gilded Age is stunningly captured in this oversized and extravagantly illustrated volume.The book is introduced with an essay by Julian Fellowes, the acclaimed creator, writer, and executive producer of the beloved British series Downton Abbey. Photographer Jonathan Wallen has been the principal contributor on more than twenty books on architecture, including titles on McKim, Mead & White, Warren and Wetmore, and John Russell Pope. Phillip James DoddPhillip James Dodd is an international authority of classical architecture and interiors and the author of The Art of Classical Details: Theory Design & Craftsmanship (2013) and An Ideal Collaboration (2015). Born and raised in the U.K., he graduated from the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture in London. He moved to the U.S. more than two decades ago and began to work with well-known American classical architecture firms. In 2015, he established his eponymous firm, Phillip James Dodd: Bespoke Residential Design LLC, based in Greenwich, Connecticut.#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Urbanism #Beauxarts #AnAmericanRenaissance #BookTalk #Construction #museumfromhome #PhillipJamesDodd #CarolWillis
Why Planning Matters Skyscraper Museum 2023-02-03 | The centennial of the RPA – the Regional Plan Association – was celebrated last October with a stunning exhibition in Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall and recognized in a session at the national conference of the Society of City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH). On January 31st at 6pm, The Skyscraper Museum will continue the discussion with a live panel – but online audience – that brings together the President of the RPA, Tom Wright, the designer and producer of the centennial exhibition "The Constant Future: A Century of the Regional Plan," James Sanders, FAIA, and urban and planning historian Robert Fishman, whose SACRPH conference paper, "How Planners Saved New York: The RPA's Second Regional Plan (1950-1970) and the Survival of Transit," has inspired our program. A video of Bob's illustrated talk will be shown at 5:30pm, 30 minutes before the live program. The video can be viewed anytime on the Museum's YouTube channel here. Also joining in the panel will be Lynne Sagalyn, Professor Emerita at the Columbia Business School, and Carol Willis, Director of The Skyscraper Museum.As Bob Fishman observes in his talk, the reputation and credibility of planners have suffered badly in the past decades, both in professional circles and in popular culture, where Robert Moses is a chief villain of stage and screen. The question he asks – "What role, if any, did regional planning play in maintaining New York's global ascendancy over the last century (1922-2022)?" – has a more positive outlook in both the exhibition "The Constant Future," and in Bob's lecture. Our live-panel program will explore some answers and open the floor for audience Q & A.Robert FishmanROBERT FISHMAN recently retired from full-time teaching as a professor of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. An internationally recognized expert in the areas of urban history and urban policy and planning, he has authored several books that are regarded as seminal texts on the history of cities and urbanism.Lynne SagalynLYNNE SAGALYN is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Shore Professor Emerita of Real Estate at Columbia University’s School of Business, where she taught for more than twenty years and built its MBA Real Estate Program. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Regional Plan Association and The Skyscraper Museum.James SandersJAMES SANDERS, FAIA, is an architect, author, and filmmaker who was designer and producer of the RPA centennial exhibition. In 2021, with Ric Burns, he published the new, expanded edition of New York: An Illustrated History, which updated the classic 1999 edition of the book that was the companion volume to the acclaimed 17 ½-hour PBS series "New York: A Documentary Film," directed by Ric Burns and co-written by Burns and Sanders.Tom WrightTOM WRIGHT is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Regional Plan Association (RPA), the nation’s oldest independent metropolitan research, planning and advocacy organization.Carol WillisCAROL WILLIS is the founder and director of The Skyscraper Museum.#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #PanelDiscussion #museumfromhome #RobertFishman #LynneSagalyn #JamesSanders #TomWright #CarolWillis
The Fulton Fish Market: A History Skyscraper Museum 2023-01-14 | Today, the once bustling, fragrant fish market in lower Manhattan's South Street Seaport is a rebuilt retail destination with a new kind of marketing – but from its founding in 1822, through its move to the Bronx in 2005, the Fulton Fish Market was an iconic New York institution. At first a neighborhood market for many different kinds of food, by the late nineteenth century, it became the nation’s largest fish and seafood wholesaling center. Thousands of immigrants worked at the Fulton Fish Market and introduced the rest of the city to their seafood traditions. In popular culture, the market evoked images of the animated East River waterfront, late-night fishmongering, organized crime, and a vanished working-class New York. In his new book The Fulton Fish Market: A History (Columbia University Press, 2022), historian JONATHAN H. REES examines the market’s workings and significance, tracing the transportation, retailing, and consumption of fish. Rees tells the stories of the people and institutions – including fishermen, retail stores, restaurants, and chefs – bringing together technological, culinary, and environmental history to explain how changes in the urban landscape and economy affected the history of the market and the surrounding neighborhood. Jonathan H. ReesJONATHAN H. REES is a professor of history at Colorado State University–Pueblo. His books include Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America (2013) and Before the Refrigerator: How We Used to Get Ice (2018).#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Urbanism #FultonFishMarket #BookTalk #Construction #museumfromhome #JonathanRees #CarolWillis
How Planners Saved New York Skyscraper Museum 2023-01-13 | The RPA's Second Regional Plan (1950-1970) and the Survival of TransitRobert FishmanProfessor Emeritus, Taubman College of Architecture and PlanningUniversity of Michigan#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #Architecture #Construction #museumfromhome #RobertFishman
Millennium: Lower Manhattan in the 1990’s: When Wall Street was Unoccupied Skyscraper Museum 2023-01-05 | In conjunction with its exhibition MILLENNIUM: Lower Manhattan in the 1990s, The Skyscraper Museum presented 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 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 came 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 business improvement district (BID) established to help address the decline of the Financial District and its 30 million square feet of vacant space. The moderator for the panel was Lynne Sagalyn, Professor Emerita of Real Estate at Columbia Business School and author of Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan (Oxford, 2016).
Unequal Cities:Overcoming Anti-Urban Bias to Reduce Inequality in the United States Skyscraper Museum 2022-12-16 | Cities are central to prosperity: they are hubs of innovation and growth. Yet the economic vitality of wealthy cities is marred by persistent and pervasive inequality. In his new book Unequal Cities, economist Richard McGahey argues that deeply entrenched anti-urban policies and politics limit cities' options to address inequality. Many factors – structural racism, suburban subsidies, regional government fragmentation, the hostility of state legislatures, and federal policy – contribute to an unequal status quo that underfunds cities while preventing them from pursuing fairer outcomes.Drawing on economic and historical analysis as well as his extensive experience in government and philanthropy, McGahey examines the failures of public policy and conventional economic wisdom that have led to the neglect of American cities. Case studies of New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles trace how attempts to achieve greater equity foundered because of the fiscal and political constraints. Shedding light on the forces that produced today’s dysfunction and disparities, Unequal Cities provides timely policy prescriptions to promote both growth and equity. RICHARD MCGAHEYRichard McGahey is an economist and senior fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, both within The New School. He served as executive director of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, and in senior governmental positions in New York State and New York City. McGahey was director of impact assessment and a program officer for economic development at the Ford Foundation.#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Urbanism #Construction #museumfromhome #RichardMcGahey #JohnMollenkopf #CarolWillis
Buried Beneath the City: An Archaeological History of New York Skyscraper Museum 2022-11-04 | Bits and pieces of the lives led long before the age of skyscrapers are scattered throughout New York City, found in backyards, construction sites, street beds, and parks. Indigenous tools used thousands of years ago; wine jugs from a seventeenth-century tavern; a teapot from Seneca Village, the nineteenth-century Black settlement displaced by Central Park; raspberry seeds sown in backyard Brooklyn gardens—these everyday objects are windows into the city’s forgotten history.Buried Beneath the City uses urban archaeology to retell the history of New York, from the deeper layers of the past to the topsoil of recent events. The book demonstrates how the archaeological record often goes beyond written history by preserving mundane things—details of everyday life that are beneath the notice of the documentary record. These artifacts reveal the density, diversity, and creativity of a city perpetually tearing up its foundations to rebuild itself. Buried Beneath the City is at once an archaeological history of New York City and an introduction to urban archaeology.NAN A. ROTHSCHILDNan A. Rothschild is an urban social archaeologist who was Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and is adjunct professor at Columbia University.AMANDA SUTPHINAmanda Sutphin is the director of archaeology at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and manages the NYC Archaeological Repository: The Nan A. Rothschild Research Center.#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #archaeology #Construction #museumfromhome #NanARothschild #AmandaSutphin #CarolWillis
New York Art Deco: Birds, Beasts & Blooms Skyscraper Museum 2022-10-21 | Photography by Andrew Garn, Introduction by Eric P. NashNew York City, arguably the world’s Art Deco capital, is well known for its iconic towers. In a new book, New York Art Deco: Birds, Beasts & Blooms, photographer ANDREW GARN and writer ERIC P. NASH illustrate the myriad ways that Art Deco is drawn in steel, stone, terra cotta, brass, and bronze upon the city's great buildings. Featuring both the legendary landmarks and little known treasures, this new collection of Garn's photographs richly illustrates the metropolitan menagerie. Join us for a visual feast of Birds, Beasts & Blooms.ANDREW GARNAndrew Garn is a Fulbright-winning photographer and author of and collaborator on many books, including New York by Neighborhood (2022), Wildflowers of New York City (2022), The New York Pigeon: Behind the Feathers (2018), and Subway Style: 100 Years of Architecture & Design in the New York City Subway.ERIC P. NASHEric P. Nash is the author of and collaborator on numerous books, including MiMo: Miami Modern Revealed (2006) and Manhattan Skyscrapers (2006). Nash was a researcher for the New York Times for twenty-five years, where he wrote more than 100 articles.#TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #artdeco #Construction #museumfromhome #newyorkcity #AndrewGarn #EricPNash #CarolWillis
Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York Skyscraper Museum 2022-09-15 | In Freedomland, Annemarie Sammartino tells Co-op City's story from the perspectives of those who built it and of the ordinary people who made their homes in this monument to imperfect liberal ideals of economic and social justice. Located on the grounds of the former Freedomland amusement park on the northeastern edge of the Bronx, Co-op City's 35 towers and 236 townhouses have been home to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.In 1965, Co-op City was planned as the largest middle-class housing development in the United States. Intended as a solution to the problem of affordable housing, Co-op City first appeared to be a huge success story for integrated, middle-class housing. However, tensions arose and led residents to organize the largest rent strike in American history. In 1975, a coalition of shareholders secured resident control, but even this achievement did not halt rising costs or white flight. Still, the cooperative achieved a hard-won stability in the late 20th century. Freedomland chronicles the tumultuous first quarter century of Co-op City's existence. Sammartino's narrative connects planning, economic, and political history and the history of race in America.ANNEMARIE H. SAMMARTINOAnnemarie H. Sammartino is Professor of History at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she teaches courses in modern European history and urban and migration history and intellectual history. She is also the author of The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914–1922. #TheSkyscraperMuseum #NewYorkCity #Architecture #Construction #museumfromhome #CoopCity #AnnemarieHSammartino #CarolWillis
Judith Gura & Kate Wood Book Talk: Interior Landmarks: Treasures of New York Skyscraper Museum 2022-09-13 | Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at The Skyscraper MuseumJudith Gura & Kate Wood Book TalkInterior 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.Check out more programs and lectures at The Skyscraper Museum: http://skyscraper.org/PROGRAMS/upcoming_programs.htm
Senses of Place: Reflections on Preservation in Times Square Skyscraper Museum 2022-09-13 | The Skyscraper Museum and the Historic Preservation Program, GSAPP, Columbia University, present:Senses of Place: Reflections on Preservation in Times SquareTuesday, November 18, 2014 6:00-7:30PMWood Auditorium, Avery Hall, Columbia University Speakers include Laurie Beckelman, Cora Cahan, Jack Goldstein, Lee Harris Pomeroy, Judith Saltzman, and Kent Barwick. Introduction by Carol Willis.In conjunction with its exhibition TIMES SQUARE, 1984, The Skyscraper Museum presents a series of programs that reunite key actors in the transformation of Times Square over the past three decades. Each evening focuses on a set of issues and questions that ask the original authors, including government officials, planners, urban designers, developers, architects, preservationists, and activists, what really happened in the Eighties, and how do they assess their actions today?In the early 1980s, preservationists battled to save historic theaters in two areas called "Times Square." On 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, the urban renewal plans of the NYS Urban Development Corporation (UDC) sought to rescue derelict theaters and return the blighted block, plagued with high crime rates and pornography, to more populist entertainments.In the northern section of Times Square along the spine of Broadway, allied forces of actors and producers, including Joseph Papp, preservationists, architects, and civic groups fought on several fronts against the demolition of historic theaters still in active use. Although the beloved Helen Hayes and Morosco were ultimately razed in 1982 to make way for the Portman Marriott Marquis Hotel, the political action of these groups united to give impetus to the eventual landmark designation of 28 Broadway theaters.Further, the issue of a broad, but subjective preservation value of a "sense of place" became a special focus for many architects and activists dedicated to saving Times Square. Many argued that new high-rise development encouraged by zoning would obliterate the "bowl of light"- the open sky above the bright electric advertising signs in the "bow-tie" area of Times Square from 42nd to 46th Street. Their protests created a constituency that moved the Department of City Planning to adopt revised zoning amendments that required setbacks from the street and mandated large areas of illuminated signs to be incorporated on new skyscrapers.Thirty years ago, preservationists acted effectively to protect the physical fabric and the essential character of at least two Times Squares. Were they successful? A panel of key players in the drama of the preservation of Times Square reflected on the legacy and evolution of today's Times Square. http://skyscraper.org/EXHIBITIONS/TIMES_SQUARE/program2.php
Making New York History Award, 2016 Skyscraper Museum 2022-09-13 | On the evening of June 22nd, 2016, The Skyscraper Museum honored A. Eugene Kohn and William Pedersen, founding partners of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, with the Museum's Making New York History Award which celebrates the outstanding individuals and companies who have shaped our city’s buildings, streets, and skyline. The occasion marked the 40th anniversary of the firm that Gene Kohn, Bill Pedersen, and Shelly Fox founded, auspiciously, on July 4, 1976.More than 200 guests, including many architects, engineers, and developers who worked with Bill and Gene over the years gathered to toast their friends and colleagues.
Arnold Fisher: 2019 Making New York History Skyscraper Museum 2022-09-13 | On May 29, 2019, The Skyscraper Museum presented the 2019 Making New York History Award to Arnold Fisher for his achievements, over fifty years, at Fisher Brothers, leaders in New York commercial and residential real estate, and for devoted support for philanthropy in our city and nation.
BPC North Neighborhood Walking Tour 3 Skyscraper Museum 2022-09-07 | The third of the Museum's three thematic walking tours of Battery Park City covers the north residential neighborhood, which was developed in several phases, beginning with Stuyvesant High School at the northeast edge and the esplanade and Rockefeller Park along the Hudson. A diagonal avenue lined with apartment buildings creates one face of the neighborhood, while the inner courts of the large blocks are connected by the delightful Teardrop Park. Located two blocks from ground zero, we will also explore the history and design of the Irish Hunger Memorial completed in 2001.
BPC Business Core Walking Tour 2 Skyscraper Museum 2022-08-24 | Tour 2 of the Museum's three thematic walking tours of Battery Park City. The tour focuses on the commercial core with its 1980s skyscrapers of the original World Financial Center (now Brookfield Place) by architect Cesar Pelli, as well as the expansive North Cove Marina and its public realm. This walk investigates how the planning concept of public-private partnership was both the principle and economic engine of the Battery Park City project and how the goals of opening the waterfront to public access and recreation was realized over three decades.Programs are supported by a Community Partnership with the Battery Park City Authority.Music by Bensound.com
BPC South Neighborhood Walking Tour 1 Skyscraper Museum 2022-08-13 | Tour 1 explores Battery Park City's southern district, which is home to the Skyscraper Museum and includes some of BPC's earliest landscapes and infrastructure, including the residential enclaves built in the 1990s that followed the 1979 Cooper Eckstut Master Plan. We will visit historic Pier A, Wagner Park, and South Cove, as well as the green spaces that connect to the Esplanade, the first waterfront park in New York since the Brooklyn Heights Esplanade in 1951, and learn about the developing Resilience Action Plan of the BPC Authority.Programs are supported by a Community Partnership with the Battery Park City Authority.Music by Bensound.com
A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty Third Street Skyscraper Museum 2022-08-06 | A Block in Time is the story of New York City, told through the prism of a single block, highlighting the lives of the people who lived and worked there. "Introducing readers to a remarkable cast of characters," explains fellow writer David S. Brown, "CHRISTIANE BIRD traces the extraordinary story of a single New York City neighborhood from the Age of Discovery to our own era of hypergentrification. More than a microhistory, A Block in Time is a splendid portrait of the personalities and architecture, the fevered dreams and erratic energy that shaped a nation."The biography of the block that is Bird's focus is the gridded rectangle bounded by 23rd and 24th streets and by Sixth Avenue on the west and Fifth Avenue and Broadway on the east, where they cross near Madison Square. From the story of Solomon Pieters, a former slave who was the first owner of the block, to Alexander "Clubber" Williams, a notorious police office of the 1870s, to Marietta Stevens, whose Sunday-night socials and scheming became the stuff of legend, Christiane Bird recounts how this block was home to "greed and generosity, guilt and innocence, extravaganza and degradation." This one Manhattan block may have intensified the changing forces in the city, but is also emblematic of New York as a whole. CHRISTIANE BIRDChristiane Bird is a writer and the author of The Sultan's Shadow; A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts; and Neither East Nor West, among other titles. She has worked on staff for the New York Daily News and has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Miami Herald, among other publications.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #museumfromhome #brooklynbridge #ChristianeBird #KennethJackson #CarolWillis
Building the Brooklyn Bridge, 1869-1883:An Illustrated History with Images in 3D Skyscraper Museum 2022-07-15 | In Building the Brooklyn Bridge, 1869-1883: An Illustrated History with Images in 3D, JEFFREY RICHMAN, Green-Wood Cemetery's historian and collector of 19th-century New Yorkiana has created a fresh book on a very familiar New York icon. Richman has assembled stereoview and lantern slide photographs of the bridge under construction, as well as woodcuts and other memorabilia, collaborated with other historians and collectors, and mined public archives for unpublished material and one-of-a-kind drawings and specifications to tell the story of how the Brooklyn Bridge came into being. The writer Kurt Andersen calls the book "a perfect feast, a would-be time-traveler’s delight, overflowing with rare and evocative and fascinating images.”Jeffrey RichmanAfter 33 years practicing law, JEFFREY RICHMAN became the full-time historian at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery in 2007. He has led Green-Wood’s Civil War, World War I, and World War II projects which, with the help of hundreds of volunteers, have identified, written, and posted online biographies for thousands of veterans interred there. He also blogs about his latest discoveries at Green-Wood and is the author of three books, including Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s Buried Treasure (1998).#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #museumfromhome #brooklynbridge #JeffreyRichman #CarolWillis
CONSTRUCTION HISTORY ROUNDTABLE: Work in Progress Skyscraper Museum 2022-06-25 | The sixth session of the 2022 Construction History lecture series Work in Progress brings together the key presenters and the additional speakers for a virtual roundtable review and discussion of what we learned from the talks and what framing questions should be applied in future research and scholarship.Our principal speakers for the first four sessions, DONALD FRIEDMAN and THOMAS LESLIE, described the separate building cultures in New York and Chicago with respect to Foundations, Frames, Facades, and Fire as contingent on their particular sites and responsive to local conditions of soil, building codes, and easily available and economical building materials. ALEXANDER WOOD added the social and urban dimensions of the developer, architect, and builder, as well as the geography of the production of building materials, to his case study of the 1882 Mills Building. They, along with the session commentators JOANNA MERWOOD-SALISBURY, BRIAN BOWEN, JARED M. GREEN, and CAROL WILLIS will discuss whether there are, in fact, any commonalities in early skyscraper construction in the two cities of its invention.This session will also revisit one of the premises of the semester, which was to challenge both the persistent narratives of “the first skyscraper” in popular culture and the modernist mindset that has focused on the steel skeleton as the definition of the building type. We will discuss how “the history of history” has shaped our understanding of the processes of change and how broader perspectives might succeed in capturing the spotlight of the public imagination and discourse.THOMAS LESLIE is the Morrill 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 Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013), and is currently writing its sequel Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986. A winner of the 2013 Booth Family Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome, he is also the author of Beauty's Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (University of Illinois Press, 2017).DONALD FRIEDMAN, president of Old Structures Engineering, has thirty years of experience as a structural engineer, working on both the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures. He is the author of several books, including Historical Building Construction (1995, rev. 2010). His book, The Structure of Skyscrapers in America, 1871-1900: Their History and Preservation (APT, 2020) surveys the development of high-rise buildings across the country in the last decades of the nineteenth century.ALEXANDER WOOD is the Helen and Robert Appel Fellow in History and Technology at the New-York Historical Society. An architectural and urban historian, he is writing a social and economic history of the New York building industry from the 1880s to the 1930s. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and his B.Arch. from the Cooper Union.JOANNA MERWOOD-SALISBURY will be a respondent to the talks. She is a Professor of Architecture at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research on 19th-century American architecture and urbanism has a particular emphasis on issues of race and labor. Her publications include Design for the Crowd: Patriotism and Protest in Union Square (University of Chicago Press, 2019) and Chicago 1890: The Skyscraper and the Modern City (University of Chicago Press, 2009).BRIAN BOWEN will be the respondent. He is the author of The American Construction Industry: Its Historical Evolution and Potential Future (Routledge, 2021). In 2000, Bowen retired as president of Hanscomb Inc., after a long career in the construction industries of England, Canada, and the United States and in 2008 he helped establish the Construction History Society of America, a branch of the CHS based in the United Kingdom and serves as its chairman emeritus.JARED M. GREEN will be the respondent to the talks. Green is a licensed professional geotechnical engineer in the Philadelphia office of LANGAN. He has nearly 20 years of experience working throughout the New York Metropolitan Area, Upstate New York, New Jersey, and Eastern Pennsylvania, leading multidisciplinary projects that include developing creative design solutions for performing excavation alongside historic structures and sensitive below-grade transit tunnels.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.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #museumfromhome #ThomasLeslie #DonaldFriedman #AlexanderWood #JoannaMerwoodSalisbury #BrianBowen #JaredMGreen #CarolWillis
Stefan Al Talk on Supertall and dialogue with Paul Goldberger and Carol Willis Skyscraper Museum 2022-05-21 | Focusing on four global cities – London, New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore – architect, urban designer, and TED Resident STEFAN AL examines rise of global supertalls and the factors that have led to this worldwide boom. He uncovers the latest innovations in sustainable building, from skyscrapers made of wood to tree-covered buildings that promise a better urban future, but also examines the issues of wealth inequality, carbon emissions, and contagion that can accompany dense high-rise development. Featuring original architectural sketches, Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives is both an exploration of our greatest accomplishments and a powerful argument for a more equitable way forward.Stefan Al applies his diverse background in architecture and urban planning to the analysis of the supertall phenomenon. Having begun his career as a designer at Information Based Architecture in Amsterdam, he worked on the winning competition and commission for the 2000-feet tall Canton Tower, a multipurpose observation tower in Guangzhou, China. Working as a Senior Associate Principal at KPF, he contributed to the design of mixed-use master plans and high-rise towers across Asia and the US. He has taught and lectured widely at universities and conferences.After his illustrated talk, Stefan Al will engage in conversation with architectural critic and author PAUL GOLDBERGER, who reviewed Supertall for The New York Times and Carol Willis, curator of the Museum’s exhibition SUPERTALL.Stefan AlSTEFAN AL holds a PhD in urban planning from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, including The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream, and Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise: Green and Gray Strategies. Originally from the Netherlands, he is a licensed architect in New York.Paul GoldbergerPAUL GOLDBERGER is an architecture critic and author who began his career at The New York Times, where in 1984 his writing was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism. From 1997 through 2011, he served as the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where he wrote the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He is now a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair. Goldberger is also the author of numerous books.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #bookTalk #museumfromhome #AmericanUrbanist #StefanAl #PaulGoldberger
American Urbanist: How William H. Whyte’s Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life Skyscraper Museum 2022-05-05 | In what the New York Times review calls a "marvelous new biography," journalist RICHARD K. REIN chronicles the life of William H. Whyte, one of the most influential writers and analysts of American cities and society in the second half of the twentieth century. From his bestselling, seminal book The Organization Man of 1956, to the revelatory The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces of 1980, “Holly” Whyte’s work changed how people thought about careers and companies, cities and suburbs, urban planning and open space preservation. Whyte’s keen eye for urban observation and clear, insightful writing on human behavior in public space, both preceded and enabled the voice of Jane Jacobs to burst forth in print in the 1960s, first as her editor at Fortune, then as an instrumental figure in the publication of Death and Life of Great American Cities. Somewhat eclipsed by the subsequent fame of Jacobs – especially today – the influence of Holly Whyte on now several generations of urban designers does earn him the description of Rein’s title, “American Urbanist: How William H. Whyte's Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life.” Richard K. ReinAfter a reporting career that included stops at Time Magazine and People, Richard K. Rein launched a nationally acclaimed weekly newspaper, U.S. 1, that played a role as a “place-maker” in the fast growing Princeton-Route 1 corridor in central New Jersey. Rein now serves on Princeton Future, a nonprofit that encourages sustainable urbanism in his hometown, and edits a hyperlocal digital news site, TAPinto Princeton Community News.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #bookTalk #museumfromhome #AmericanUrbanist #RichardKRein
THE MILLS BUILDING Construction History by Alexander Wood Skyscraper Museum 2022-04-29 | In a coda to the four-part Construction History series led by Thomas Leslie and Donald Friedman, the Museum adds a special lecture by ALEXANDER WOOD that will focus on George. B. Post's Mills Building, completed in 1882. One of the earliest and largest office blocks in the Wall Street financial district, the 10-story Mills Building, at the corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place, offers a perfect case study of the issues raised in the series. The lecture draws on Wood's research for his recent dissertation at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, "Building the Metropolis: Architecture, Building, and Labor in New York City, 1880-1935."The construction of tall buildings in New York in the late 19th century transformed the business of building. Wood will explore how architects, general contractors, and subcontractors organized construction to meet the needs of speculative real estate development and worked together to build more efficiently within a congested urban environment. Using new construction methods, techniques, and equipment, a new generation of professionals, manufacturers, and contractors became major players in the city's building industry for decades to come.ALEXANDER WOOD is the Helen and Robert Appel Fellow in History and Technology at the New-York Historical Society. An architectural and urban historian, he is writing a social and economic history of the New York building industry from the 1880s to the 1930s. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and his B.Arch. from the Cooper Union.For background on the full series, see: skyscraper.org/work-in-progress-construction-history-in-new-york-and-chicago#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #bookTalk #museumfromhome #AlexanderWood #TheMillsBuilding
FIRE: Construction History in New York and Chicago Skyscraper Museum 2022-04-21 | The fourth session of the Construction History series will examine the various dimensions in which the threat of fire affected skyscraper development. Claims of "fireproof building" were regularly disproved, often in cataclysmic fashion. Iron promised improvements over timber, but Chicago's Great Fire in 1871 revealed its vulnerability to collapse. Brick remained the only truly fireproof material, but owners and designers remained frustrated by its weight and inefficiency. The advent of lightweight terra cotta allowed architects to combine ceramic's resistance to fire with iron's efficient strength, leading to hybrid structures that allowed the safe exploitation of the skeletal frame.Fire also reshaped building codes, but new regulations reflected the competing desires of owners, tenants, architects, and skilled tradespersons that, in turn, influenced skyscraper massing and composition. Differing approaches in New York and Chicago forged subtly different solutions.THOMAS LESLIE is the Morrill 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 Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013), and is currently writing its sequel Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986. A winner of the 2013 Booth Family Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome, he is also the author of Beauty's Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (University of Illinois Press, 2017).-DONALD FRIEDMAN, president of Old Structures Engineering, has thirty years of experience as a structural engineer, working on both the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures. He is the author of several books, including Historical Building Construction (1995, rev. 2010). His book, The Structure of Skyscrapers in America, 1871-1900: Their History and Preservation (APT, 2020) surveys the development of high-rise buildings across the country in the last decades of the nineteenth century.ALEXANDER WOOD will be a respondent to the talks. Wood is a historian of American architecture and urbanism, with a particular interest in the history of capitalism, construction, and labor. He received his Ph.D. in Architecture from Columbia University's GSAPP in 2020, and he is currently the Helen and Robert Appel Fellow in History and Technology at the New-York Historical Society.FIRE is the fourth installment of The Skyscraper Museum's spring 2022 Construction History webinar series with Chicago and New York experts and authors THOMAS LESLIE and DONALD FRIEDMAN. They are joined in conversation in this session with ALEXANDER WOOD. For background on the full series, see: skyscraper.org/work-in-progress-construction-history-in-new-york-and-chicago#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #bookTalk #museumfromhome #ThomasLeslie #DonaldFriedman #AlexanderWood
FAÇADES: Construction History in New York and Chicago Skyscraper Museum 2022-04-14 | The third session of the Construction History series focuses on Facades. Steel frames freed exterior walls from structural duties, allowing architects new freedom to develop facades that could respond to changing functional and aesthetic criteria. Developers' desire for efficiency and natural daylight led to thinner, lighter walls – "veneers" in the dismissive language of early critics and "curtain walls" in the parlance of more enthusiastic designers. Electric lighting, building materials, and environmental controls all played roles in changing skyscraper skins in both New York and Chicago. However, each city’s proximity to varying sources of stone, glass, and terra cotta – coupled with differing approaches to fire codes and the politics of local labor unions – created subtly different approaches to skyscraper facades.Talks by Tom Leslie and Don Friedman will discuss the aesthetic and technical treatment of the curtain wall as it develops differently in New York and Chicago. Joanna Merwood-Salisbury will unpack the theory and history of the First Chicago School.THOMAS LESLIE is the Morrill 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 Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013), and is currently writing its sequel Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986. A winner of the 2013 Booth Family Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome, he is also the author of Beauty's Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (University of Illinois Press, 2017).DONALD FRIEDMAN, president of Old Structures Engineering, has thirty years of experience as a structural engineer, working on both the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures. He is the author of several books, including Historical Building Construction (1995, rev. 2010). His book, The Structure of Skyscrapers in America, 1871-1900: Their History and Preservation (APT, 2020) surveys the development of high-rise buildings across the country in the last decades of the nineteenth century.JOANNA MERWOOD-SALISBURY will be a respondent to the talks. She is a Professor of Architecture at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research on 19th-century American architecture and urbanism has a particular emphasis on issues of race and labor. Her publications include Design for the Crowd: Patriotism and Protest in Union Square (University of Chicago Press, 2019) and Chicago 1890: The Skyscraper and the Modern City (University of Chicago Press, 2009).FAÇADES is the third installment of The Skyscraper Museum's spring 2022 Construction History webinar series with Chicago and New York experts and authors THOMAS LESLIE and DONALD FRIEDMAN. They are joined in conversation in this session with Joanna JOANNA MERWOOD-SALISBURY. For background on the full series, see: skyscraper.org/work-in-progress-construction-history-in-new-york-and-chicago#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #bookTalk #museumfromhome #ThomasLeslie #DonaldFriedman #JoannaMerwoodSalisbury
FRAMES: Construction History in New York and Chicago Skyscraper Museum 2022-03-31 | The second session of the Construction History series concentrates on Frames and the evolution of metal-cage construction in each city. Chicago has claimed the “invention” of steel-skeleton construction, which historians often call “the Chicago frame.” In New York, building codes and concerns about fire discouraged the use of skeleton frames until after 1892, so alternative, hybrid systems developed. Tom Leslie and Don Friedman will examine these and other issues.Chicago and New York offered a handful of very different preconditions that influenced the way skyscrapers were designed and built in the two cities. Chicago’s murky soil forced engineers to carefully parse their structures into point supports and broad, snowshoe-like pads, which suggested structures above could be thought of as more skeletal frames than continuous walls. The city’s large, regular lot sizes also allowed a regularity in structural grids, and its laissez-faire politics permitted thinner walls than other, eastern cities—at least through 1893, after which unions and builders began a pitched battle over the city’s building code.THOMAS LESLIE is the Morrill 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 Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013), and is currently writing its sequel Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986. A winner of the 2013 Booth Family Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome, he is also the author of Beauty's Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (University of Illinois Press, 2017).DONALD FRIEDMAN, president of Old Structures Engineering, has thirty years of experience as a structural engineer, working on both the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures. He is the author of several books, including Historical Building Construction (1995, rev. 2010). His book, The Structure of Skyscrapers in America, 1871-1900: Their History and Preservation (APT, 2020) surveys the development of high-rise buildings across the country in the last decades of the nineteenth century.BRIAN BOWEN will be the respondent. He is the author of The American Construction Industry: Its Historical Evolution and Potential Future (Routledge, 2021). In 2000, Bowen retired as president of Hanscomb Inc., after a long career in the construction industries of England, Canada, and the United States and in 2008 he helped establish the Construction History Society of America, a branch of the CHS based in the United Kingdom and serves as its chairman emeritus.FRAMES is the second installment of The Skyscraper Museum's spring 2022 Construction History webinar series with Chicago and New York experts and authors THOMAS LESLIE and DONALD FRIEDMAN. They are joined in conversation in this session with Brian Bowen. For background on the full series, see: skyscraper.org/work-in-progress-construction-history-in-new-york-and-chicago#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #bookTalk #museumfromhome #ThomasLeslie #DonaldFriedman #BrianBowen
FOUNDATIONS: Construction History in New York and Chicago Skyscraper Museum 2022-03-26 | Chicago and New York offered a handful of very different preconditions that influenced the way skyscrapers were designed and built in the two cities. Chicago’s murky soil forced engineers to carefully parse their structures into point supports and broad, snowshoe-like pads, which suggested structures above could be thought of as more skeletal frames than continuous walls. The city’s large, regular lot sizes also allowed a regularity in structural grids, and its laissez-faire politics permitted thinner walls than other, eastern cities—at least through 1893, after which unions and builders began a pitched battle over the city’s building code.The first session of the Construction History series focuses on Foundations to consider a “ground up” understanding about how buildings were constructed in each city, given the local conditions. Although Manhattan had abundant bedrock, even some of the tallest 19th-century skyscrapers did not rely on it. Small lots and slender towers were common conditions in the dense financial district, whereas Chicago’s big blocks and soft soil posed different problems. Friedman and Leslie will examine these issues through a series of case studies.THOMAS LESLIE is the Morrill 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 Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013), and is currently writing its sequel Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986. A winner of the 2013 Booth Family Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome, he is also the author of Beauty's Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (University of Illinois Press, 2017).DONALD FRIEDMAN, president of Old Structures Engineering, has thirty years of experience as a structural engineer, working on both the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures. He is the author of several books, including Historical Building Construction (1995, rev. 2010). His book, The Structure of Skyscrapers in America, 1871-1900: Their History and Preservation (APT, 2020) surveys the development of high-rise buildings across the country in the last decades of the nineteenth century.JARED M. GREEN will be the respondent to the talks. Green is a licensed professional geotechnical engineer in the Philadelphia office of LANGAN. He has nearly 20 years of experience working throughout the New York Metropolitan Area, Upstate New York, New Jersey, and Eastern Pennsylvania, leading multidisciplinary projects that include developing creative design solutions for performing excavation alongside historic structures and sensitive below-grade transit tunnels.FOUNDATIONS is the first installment of The Skyscraper Museum's spring 2022 Construction History webinar series with Chicago and New York experts and authors THOMAS LESLIE and DONALD FRIEDMAN. They are joined in conversation in this session with Jared Green. For background on the full series, see skyscraper.org/work-in-progress-construction-history-in-new-york-and-chicago #theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #Architecture #Construction #bookTalk #museumfromhome #ThomasLeslie #DonaldFriedman #JaredMGreen
Ric Burns and James Sanders Book Talk- New York: An Illustrated History (Revised and Expanded) Skyscraper Museum 2022-03-15 | Twenty-two years after the original New York: An Illustrated History – first published in 1999 as a companion volume to the acclaimed 17 ½-hour PBS series "New York: A Documentary Film," directed by Ric Burns and co-written with James Sanders – the dynamic duo is back with an even bigger book and soon-to-be aired coda on New York since the millennium. In this program JAMES SANDERS and RIC BURNS will describe the project to revise and update their epic compendium and answer questions in dialogue with Museum Director Carol Willis.The new 2021 edition of New York: An Illustrated History, written by Burns and Sanders, moves on from the aftermath of 9/11 to the financial crisis of 2008, the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, the continual struggle with racial injustice, and the still unfolding cataclysm of the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents a lively portrait of the city’s vibrant street life and culture: the physical transformation of the city's streets, skyline, and waterfront, the birth of hip-hop in the South Bronx, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates in Central Park, the musicals of Broadway, the explosion in location filmmaking in every borough, the pivotal rise of the tech industry, in an epic story of urban rebirth and growth.RIC BURNS is a documentary filmmaker. In addition to directing the award-winning PBS series New York, written with James Sanders, Ric is known for his work on The Civil War, which he produced with his brother, Ken. Since 1990, he has directed nearly fifty hours of prime-time programming for PBS in films that have received seven Emmy Awards, three Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Awards, and two Peabody Awards, among others.JAMES SANDERS, FAIA is an architect, author, and filmmaker. His landmark study of the city and film, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, won a Theatre Library Association Award. He has written for the New Yorker, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Vanity Fair, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Emmy Award, and in 2021 was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, the AIA"s highest membership honor.#newyorkanillustratedhistory #theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #architecture #booktalk #museumfromhome
Patrice Derringtons Book Talk: BUILT UP Skyscraper Museum 2022-02-25 | BUILT UP: An Historical Perspective on the Contemporary Principles and Practices of Real Estate DevelopmentThe history of speculative real estate development is an essential aspect of the histories of most cities, yet is a subject often ignored by academia. In her long awaited book Built Up, Patrice Derrington uncovers the roots of the global real estate industry in early modern London and seminal projects of private urban development such as Covent Garden. Derrington synthesizes economic history and the latest planning and finance literature in a work that codifies the principles and activities of real estate development as a foundation for future academic research and practical innovation.Uniting insights from the author’s career as a developer with meticulous archival research, this resource for scholars and professionals synthesizes economic history and the latest literature on planning and finance. Derrington's book opens new avenues to codify the principles and activities of real estate development in a foundation for future academic research and practical innovation.Patrice Derrington is the Holliday Associate Professor and Director of the Real Estate Development program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. A registered architect, her academic credentials include a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, Harvard MBA, and B. Arch, University of Queensland, She has worked as an investment banker, advisor, and fund manager and has led numerous urban development projects in the USA and Australia. Based on her doctoral research, Built Up is also informed by her more than fifteen years of real estate experience.The video begins with brief introductions by Museum Director Carol Willis and James von Klemperer. Patrice Derrington's illustrated lecture is followed by a dialogue with architect James von Klemperer.
Joseph Giovanini - Architecture Unbound: A Century of the Disruptive Avant-Garde Skyscraper Museum 2022-01-26 | In Architecture Unbound noted architecture critic JOSEPH GIOVANNINI traces our current architecture landscape to the disruptive scientific advances and transgressive and progressive art movements that roiled Europe before and after World War I, and then to the social unrest and cultural disruptions of the 1960s. Cumulative shifts across disciplines and social systems established fertile new ground for the rise of an inventive, antiauthoritarian architecture that, in the 1970s, challenged the status quo. Built manifestoes in the 1980s led to digital inventions of the 1990s, and after the turn of the millennium to climax structures that now populate world capitals competing for cultural stature on the international stage. GiovanninI profiles the most influential practitioners and their most notable projects, including Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall, Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House, Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV Tower, and Herzog and de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. With an irregular format designed by celebrated graphic designer Abbott Miller of Pentagram, Architecture Unbound presents a uniquely comprehensive history that chronicles an avant-garde that moves from the margins into the mainstream.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #Museumfromhome #booktalk #JosephGiovanini #ArchitectureUnbound
Ahmad Abdelrazaq- Constructing Merdeka 118:World’s Second-Tallest Building Skyscraper Museum 2022-01-21 | The Skyscraper Museum returns to its WORLD VIEW lecture series with a coda on the construction of the Merdeka 118 Tower in Kuala Lumpur. In December 2021, Merdeka 118 lifted its symbolic spire into place and topped out at its full height of 2,227 ft. or 679 meters to surpass the 632-meter Shanghai Tower and become the second-tallest building in the world.AHMAD ABDELRAZAQ, who led the Samsung C & T team as the tower's contractor, will present an overview of the structural engineering, planning, and construction innovations of the supertall and the key challenges in its design and construction. He will describe the structural system optimization; the construction planning and sequencing; the application and delivery of high-performance concrete; and the application of real-time structural health monitoring, among other issues#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #construction #WordlView #LectureSeries #AhmadAbdelrazaq #Merdeka118
Alex Garvin Book Talk: What Makes a Great City Skyscraper Museum 2021-12-28 | http://www.skyscraper.org/PROGRAMS/NYMODERN/nym_rock75_05.phpSkyscraper Museum Director Carol Willis's first love and special focus of her academic research has been American architecture of the 1920s. To expand the themes of the 2007-2008 exhibition and give definition to the concept of New York Modern, she presented a series of five illustrated lectures that examine in detail the development of a new aesthetic in skyscraper design and ideas of urban planning. Countering narratives that explain American modernism as style - Art Deco or International - that evolved from influences by European artists and designers, Willis identifies an American modernism that develops directly from the architects' preoccupations, from the early 1920s, with the conditions and challenges of rationalizing the modern city. The lectures highlighted careers and contributions of three key figures in the contemporary debates over the future of New York and the shape of the modern metropolis.
Ground Zero: Master Plan- The Commercial Imperative Skyscraper Museum 2021-12-09 | Two design competitions determined the direction of the master plan at Ground Zero and the concept and position of the 9/11 memorial and museum. Ultimately the memorial, museum, and landscaped plaza encompassed eight of the sixteen acres of the World Trade Center site. The very public and political process of creating the cultural institutions on that half of the site was the subject of an enlightening discussion on September 21, 2021, with Craig Dykers, Gary Hack, Lynne Sagalyn, and Frank Sciame, Jr. that can be viewed on video.Meanwhile, on the other eight acres, five skyscrapers that would replace the 10 million sq. ft. of office space in the destroyed World Trade Center moved forward, with the key player being the private investor-developer, Silverstein Properties. While the replacement for the collapsed 7 WTC rose quickly, the other towers stalled. Today, after many revisions in design and repositions of ownership, three of the masterplan buildings are completed, while Tower 2 has stump foundations and an indeterminate future. The problematic site on the southern edge of the memorial plaza for a mixed-use Tower 5 has recently been announced.Part 2 of our pair of programs on the rebuilding, Ground Zero Master Plans: The Commercial Imperative, will assess the tensions between the private office development and the economic context, the pace of rebuilding, and the constraints of politics on the city, state, and federal levels. Leading the discussion as a speaker and moderator is LYNNE B. SAGALYN, author of Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan (Oxford, 2016).Our informed panel brings together key players in the development, design, and construction of the commercial component of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site:KENNETH LEWIS, a Partner at SOM, managed the architectural teams for both 7 World Trade Center and One World Trade Center.ROBERT LIEBER, served as Deputy Mayor of Economic Development from 2008 to 2010 and represented the City on the board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.ROBIN PANOVKA, a partner at the law firm Wachtell Lipton and co-chairman of their Real Estate practice, represented Silverstein Properties in the redevelopment of the World Trade Center for more than a decade.CHRISTOPHER O. WARD, served as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from 2008 until 2011, overseeing the rebuilding at World Trade Center and other projects.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #Museumfromhome #Webinar #Remembering911
Teresa Fankhänel Book Talk- The Architectural Models of Theodore Conrad Skyscraper Museum 2021-12-08 | ...
Brian Bowen - The American Construction Industry:Its Historical Evolution and Potential Future Skyscraper Museum 2021-11-24 | Brian Bowen retired as president of Hanscomb Inc. in 2000, after a long career in the construction industries of England, Canada, and the United States. In a second career as a Professor of Practice in the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Bowen developed a course that became the basis of his important new book, The American Construction Industry: Its Historical Evolution and Potential Future (Routledge, 2021). As Thomas Leslie notes in the back-cover testimonial, the volume adds an important perspective to standard architectural histories: “Relying on his background in the industry and using illuminating examples of contracts, correspondence, and other key documents across eras, Bowen explains the combined effects of economics, the law, labor, and professional organization, among others, in realizing both grand monuments and everyday dwellings.” The American Construction Industry, he opines, “is essential as a reference and enlightening as a narrative."#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #booktalk
Paulina Bren Book Talk- The Barbizon:The Hotel that Set Women Free Skyscraper Museum 2021-11-13 | Completed in 1928, at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the Barbizon Hotel was designed as a luxurious safe haven for the “Modern Woman” hoping for a career in the arts. Over time, it became the place to stay for any ambitious young woman hoping for fame and fortune. In her new book The Barbizon: The Hotel that Set Women Free, professor of international, gender, and media studies at Vassar College, Paulina Bren “unpacks” the luggage of several generations of women, mostly young and new to the city, who found a home in the hotel that became a legend.After Paulina's presentation, she will be joined in conversation with Andrea Barnet, writer and author of Visionary Women: How Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters Changed Our World, whose 2019 talk at the Museum can be viewed here.Paulina Bren is an award-winning historian and a professor at Vassar College. She received a BA from Wesleyan University, an MA in international studies from the University of Washington, and a PhD in history from New York University. She currently lives in the Bronx with her husband and daughter.
David Freeland Book Talk- American Hotel: The Waldorf-Astoria and the Making of a Century Skyscraper Museum 2021-11-06 | In American Hotel: The Waldorf-Astoria and the Making of a Century, historian David Freeland recounts the history of not just an American hotel, but, arguably, the American hotel. From the opening as the Waldorf at its first location at Fifth Avenue at 33rd Street in 1893, then more than doubling in size in 1897 into the Waldorf-Astoria, the hostelry rose to prominence on the local, national, and international stage. Opening for business on October 1, 1931, the new uptown Waldorf-Astoria struggled through the Depression, but rose to unparalleled prominence in the postwar years. Functioning like an American palace, the Waldorf served as a favored venue for United Nations diplomats and the hotel of choice for American Presidents until its shuttering in 2017. The Waldorf-Astoria’s story, Freeland writes, “is that of America in the twentieth century, and it would be difficult to imagine any hotel bearing the same degree of influence again.David Freeland is also the author of Automats, Taxi Dances and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure and Ladies of Soul. As a historian and journalist, he has written for numerous publications. Freeland lives in New York, where he leads walking tours and gives lectures on the city’s culture and history.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #booktalk
GROUND ZERO: MASTER PLANS- The Cultural Component Skyscraper Museum 2021-09-23 | Two design competitions determined the direction of the master plan at Ground Zero and the concept and position of the 9/11 memorial and museum. Less clear in their functions, locations, and funding were other cultural institutions awarded a potential place on the site. Yet, as this program will discuss, the cultural component was a key idea to both the rebuilding at Ground Zero and the recovery of lower Manhattan.Moderator for the panel is GARY HACK, an architect, planner, author, and former dean of the School of Design at University of Pennsylvania who consulted for Studio Libeskind from the winning urban design competition through the preparation of the master plan and urban design guidelines.PANELISTS:CRAIG DYKERS, Founding Partner of Snøhetta, the internationally acclaimed architects who in 2004 was commissioned to design the museum component of the Ground Zero master plan, the only above-ground building on the memorial plaza, a structure that creates an entry to the underground museum and 9/11 memorial.LYNNE B. SAGALYN, Professor Emerita of Real Estate at Columbia Business School and author of Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan (Oxford, 2016) and Times Square Roulette (MIT, 2001).FRANK SCIAME, Jr., CEO and Chairman of F. J. Sciame Construction. In 2006, he was appointed by Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg to address the spiraling budget of the Memorial and to work with the 9/11 families and other stakeholders. His company F. J. Sciame Construction has been the construction manager for countless cultural institutions and landmark buildings and is currently completing The Ronald O. Perelman Center Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #Museumfromhome #Webinar #Remembering911
ENGINEERS’ STORIES: 9/11and After Skyscraper Museum 2021-09-17 | Part 1 9/11 and After The opening program of our series will focus on “Engineers’ Stories,” which is an aspect of the history of 9/11 and its aftermath that has not been well documented. Engineers played a critical part in the efforts of first responders in the hours and days after the collapse of the Twin Towers into the apocalyptic scene of Ground Zero. Assessing the danger or relative safety of debris on the Pile and the stability of damaged structures surrounding the site was the job of engineers on whose judgments the lives of rescue workers depended.This program brings together engineers who devoted months or years to the recovery and rebuilding work to remember and reflect on their experiences. The panel will be moderated by Najib Abboud, a Managing Principal of Thornton Tomasetti, who led the team in the forensic analysis of the collapse of the towers.PANELISTS:Frank Lombardi, former Chief Engineer, PANYNJ, 1995-2010George Tamaro, civil engineer and specialist in foundation constructionRichard Tomasetti, a founding partner and chairman of Thornton Tomasetti until 2007Rick Zottola, Partner of LERA Consulting Structural Engineers#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #Museumfromhome #Webinar #Remembering911
Kiel Moe Book Talk- Unless: The Seagram Building Construction Ecology Skyscraper Museum 2021-07-23 | In his new book Unless, Kiel Moe, professor of Architecture at McGill University and author of Empire State & Building, dissects the construction ecology, material geographies, and world-systems of the most modern of modern architectures: the Seagram Building. In his critical analysis of the environmental impact of architecture and urban real estate, Moe focuses on how humans and nature interact with the thin crust of the planet through architecture and how the immense material, energy and labor involved in building require a fresh interpretation of the ecological and social potential of design. He argues that unless architects begin to describe buildings as terrestrial events and artifacts, they will―to our collective and professional peril―continue to operate outside the key environmental dynamics and key political processes of this century.Kiel Moe is a registered practicing architect and Gerald Sheff Chair of Architecture at McGill University. He was previously Associate Professor of Architecture & Energy in the Department of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design where also served as a Co-Director of the MDes degree program in the Advanced Studies Program and Director of the Energy, Environments, and Design research unit at the GSD.#theskyscrapermuseum #newyorkcity #skyscraper #architecture #booktalk
