Tour: Art Deco In Washington Heights

Sponsored by the Art Deco Society of New York. Reservations required – click here.

High up on a hill, its streets lined with modest but attractive six-story Art Deco apartment houses, Washington Heights has more in common with West Bronx neighborhoods just across the Harlem River than with the rest of Manhattan. Many of the same architects who worked on the Grand Concourse also designed apartment buildings on or near Fort Washington Avenue – we will see work by Horace Ginsbern, Jacob Felson, Israel Crausman, Miller & Goldhammer, Charles Kreymborg, and H. Herbert Lillien.

Two taller apartment buildings, by Boak & Paris, offer a more idiosyncratic take on the modernism of the 1930s. Our walk will also include a one-story taxpayer, and one of the city’s few frankly Deco subway entrances. But the star attraction is the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist (now the Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights), one of perhaps a dozen or so Art Deco houses of worship anywhere in the city.

The tour includes visits to two interiors: the sanctuary of the Hebrew Tabernacle, and the lobby of 250 Cabrini Boulevard, one of the two Boak & Paris buildings. (Please note: space is limited.)