ARCHITECTURE

A Smorgasbord of Architectural Styles

New York City is a colorful pastiche and a living textbook of the history of 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st Century architectural styles.  Designs vary from the sculptured ornaments of Beaux Arts, the geometrical ornamentation of Art Deco, the more modern International Style, the organic architecture of Frank Llyod Wright, and the less popular concrete and angular facades of the Brutalist buildings.

Modern apartment buildings evolved from tenement buildings.  Row houses (three to five story narrow buildings of various styles) were constructed from 1800 – 1930.  Brownstone row houses became very popular in parts of the City in 1840s to the 1890s.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s the "City Beautiful Movement," a progressive reform and urban planning architecture movement, was inspired by architect Daniel Burnham (the Flatiron Building) and his design of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  In New York City the movement led to the use of the Beau Arts architectural style in many buildings including several now famous landmark ones:  the U.S. Custom House (1907), the New York Public Library (1911) and Grand Central Terminal (1913).

Important architects who helped build New York are:

• Cass Gilbert (1859 - 1934), the Woolworth Building (and the Washington's U.S. Supreme Court);

• Raymond Hood (1881 - 1934), the Daily News Building, McGraw-Hill Building and Rockefeller Center;

• Richard Morris Hunt (1827 - 1895):  Carnegie Hall, the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the base of the Statue of Liberty, William K. Vanderbilt's mansion on 52nd Street & Fifth Avenue and (many other mansions including the Vanderbilt House in Asheville, North Carolina);

• James Renswick, Jr. (1818 - 1895):  Grace Church, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Our Lady of the Scapular and St. Stephen (E. 28th Street) and (Washington's Corcoran Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution);

• Emery Roth (1871 - 1948):  Hotel Belleclaire (Broadway & 76th Street), the Ritz Tower, the Oliver Cromwell Hotel, the Beresford Apartments, The Eldorado, the Ritz-Carlton, Villard Houses, and the First Warsaw Congregation Synagogue in the East Village;

• Charles McKim, William Mead and Stanford White of the firm of McKim, Mead and White were responsible for the design of numerous city buildings:  the original Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, the New York Life Insurance Building, the Cable Building, the Players Club, the Municipal Building and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This firm was instrumental in bringing a favor of Old World European architectural designs into new modern forms for the New World and New York City.

• Frank Gehry, IAC Building, 8 Spruce Street, Issey Miyake flagship store in Tribeca,  and Pershing Square Signature Center;

• Bjarko Ingles, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

From 1890 to 1920, the Beaux Art style of architecture was very popular.  It was defined by sculptured ornaments and columns.  Art Deco, best known for the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, was the style of the 1920s and 1930s.  It was inspired by the machine age and featured symmetrical and geometrical ornamentation.  Author Anthony W. Robins, defines Art Deco as "the fashionable name for all the various modernistic architectural styles current between the two World Wars, that helped redefine New York City as the world's modern metropolis," in New York Art Deco A Guide to Gotham's Jazz Age Architecture.  

The modern period of architecture has brought international, modernism, post modernism, and brutalist styles (1950 - 1970).  The New York Times called this current period of architecture the "narcissistic age."   Others say it's "innovative architecture" or  "flashy expressions of architectural vanity."   

More recent buildings with varying reviews are:

• Beekman apartment building, 8 Spruce Street, designed by Frank Gehry;

• a 75-story Museum of Modern Art tower designed by Jean Nouvel, a tall, thin, needle-like glass skyscraper inspired by the drawings of Hugh Ferriss;  

• the Bank of America Tower near Bryant Park and 42nd Street and the main branch of the New York Public Library

• 56 Leonard, a strangely stacked apartment building; 

• Via 57 West (2016), a pyramid building designed by Bjarke Ingels;

• One 57, known as  the Billionaire Building due to the cost of its expensive luxury apartments;  

• the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art;

• 30 Hudson Yards;

• One Vanderbilt Avenue (as of 2021 the tallest apartment building in New York City).

After 9/11, architecture in America changed.  Architects today have found new ways to construct buildings to prevent their collapse and to build larger and wider staircases to make emergency evacuations faster and easier.

New York City's record of protecting its architecture and most significant buildings has been less than outstanding.  The demolishing of the original Penn Station in 1965 resulted in the establishing of The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.  Today's New Yorkers frequently react to new skyscrapers much as residents in the past.  New buildings often get the same lukewarm or bad reactions that greeted the original Flatiron Building.   Some say the new very tall and very skinny skyscrapers are kooky and quirky looking.  Many of us strongly dislike them and believe they have had a negative impact on our much beloved New York City skyline.  Nevertheless, buildings are always going up and always being torn down in this large city.