SOLD OUT All Day Bus Tour: Art Deco Landmarks – Unlikely Battles And Great Successes

New York City boasts the world’s greatest collection of Art Deco architecture. In honor of the 50th anniversary of New York’s Landmarks law, being celebrated in 2015, the Art Deco Society of New York (ADSNY) is sponsoring a marathon bus tour of Deco highlights in all five boroughs.

Many of New York’s best-known Deco buildings are official Landmarks, but others were disfigured or lost before they could be protected. This very special tour for ADSNY will take us on a whirlwind visit in which we celebrate restored landmarks, mourn lost treasures, and consider potential Landmark candidates still at risk of destruction.

The tour begins with a visit to some of the great Deco residential skyscrapers of the Upper West Side, including the dramatic story of the close call when one of them was threatened with disfigurement. Next, we will visit the first Deco apartment building in the Bronx, given landmark status 30 years ago, followed by a surprising Deco building that isn’t a landmark but perhaps should be.

In Queens, we will stop for a buffet lunch at the beautiful Marine Air Terminal, while admiring its restored Landmark interior, including the once-lost murals of Flight. We’ll also visit a site that should have been made a Landmark but wasn’t, and recently was completely refaced – a sad example of what can happen in the absence of Landmarks protection.

Then it’s on to Brooklyn, a borough ADSNY has not yet toured, where we will see a once abandoned public building whose restoration resulted from a contested landmark designation; another building once proposed for landmark status but vandalized before it could be protected; and some wonderful Deco apartment buildings in Brighton Beach that lack protection and might disappear at any moment.

Lastly, we will head to Staten Island, a borough too often overlooked, to see residential, public and medical buildings that showcase Deco design. At the end of the tour, you can choose to return to Manhattan on the bus or on the magical Staten Island Ferry 0 one of the great New York experiences.