Anthony W. Robins

Tour: Architecture of the Theater
2014-07-18 10:00 (America/New_York)
Reservations required. $20 ($15 MAS members)
Walk the streets of “The Great White Way” as we trace the history of New York’s Broadway theater district from Oscar Hammerstein in the 1890s to Walt Disney in the 1990s to its latest configuration. See the great Broadway theaters built between the turn of the century and the onset of the Great Depression – stunning works of art that are monuments to the lively history of American theater. For information: 212-935-3960, or click here for a direct link to sign up for the tour.

Tour: The Woolworth Building and its Lobby
2014-06-29 14:00 - 15:30, 2014-05-11 14:00 - 15:30, 2014-04-27 16:00 - 17:30, 2014-04-27 14:00 - 15:30, 2014-04-13 16:00 - 17:30, 2014-04-13 14:00 - 15:30, 2014-03-09 16:00 - 17:30, 2014-03-09 14:00 - 15:30 and 1 more date | Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway, New York
Reservations required – click here.
Tour of the Woolworth Building lobby, closed to the public for more than a decade and now open again. The tour includes a detailed look at the building’s unmatched polychromatic terra-cotta exterior, and an in-depth exploration of the lobby and its wealth of ornament, including hidden corners and staircases — plus a special visit to the mezzanine level for an up-close view of its extraordinary mosaic ceiling. For more, see the blog post.

SOLD OUT Tour: Art Deco 42nd Street
2014-06-29 10:00
Reservations required. $20 ($15 MAS members)
A walk along midtown Manhattan’s major boulevard of Art Deco skyscrapers. Star architect of the walk is crusty modernist Raymond Hood; we will visit three of his four skyscrapers: the Daily News, American Radiator, and McGraw-Hill. Star building, once the world’s tallest, is the one and only Chrysler, whose architect, William Van Alen, was once called the Ziegfeld of his profession. We will also visit the Chanin and Paramount Buildings, and a few others. For information: 212-935-3960, or click here for a direct link to sign up for the tour.

Tour: Downtown/Wall Street
2014-05-25 14:00 - 16:00
Reservations required. $20 ($15 MAS members)
This tour, which includes the former Custom House, Steamship Row, Castle Clinton, Federal Hall, and the House of Morgan, will discover well-known highlights as well as some unexpected delights. From the spectacular skyline up in the air to archaeological relics down underground, Downtown remains one of the world’s great urban treasures, even as it rebuilds. For information: 212-935-3960, or click here for a direct link to sign up for the tour.

Tour: Art Deco on the Upper East Side
2014-05-11 10:00 - 12:00
Reservations required.
The Upper East Side – Manhattan’s gold coast – maintains an aura of conservative respectability, and perhaps as a result never attracted as much Art Deco flash as its counterpart on the west side of Central Park. Nevertheless, tucked among the Beaux-Arts town houses and sedate neo-Georgian apartment buildings, the neighborhood has some remarkable examples by some of the city’s best architects of the period, including an apartment house by Raymond Hood (built for the owner of the Daily News); one of Manhattan’s very few Art Deco town houses, by Harry Allen Jacobs; the elegant Carlyle Hotel; and apartment houses by Sloan & Robertson (of the Chanin Building), Horace Ginsbern (of the Park Plaza and other West Bronx wonders), Henry S. Churchill, and George and Edward Blum – the latter being among the very first Art Deco apartment buildings anywhere in the city. Sponsored by the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts – reservations required. $20 ($15 members of the FUES).

NYU - Five-session course: The Art Deco Metropolis - session No. 5
2014-05-08 14:00 - 16:30
Sponsored by New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Education. Thursday afternoons, April 10, 17 and 24 and May 1 and 8. To register, click here.
Five walks in Manhattan take us to New York’s major monuments of art deco architecture, buildings that transformed the city into the world’s modern metropolis. Downtown, we examine the work of Ralph Walker, “the architect of the century” and designer of the Gothic-modern fantasy of No. 1 Wall Street. Two walks cover East and West 42nd Street including the miraculously urban wonderland of Rockefeller Center and the Garment District, which illustrates the work of Ely Jacques Kahn. We finish with Central Park West, the great twin-towered apartment buildings, and other Jazz Age fantasies of high living overlooking the park.

NYU - Five-session course: The Art Deco Metropolis - session No. 4
2014-05-01 14:00 - 16:30

NYU - Five-session course: The Art Deco Metropolis - session No. 3
2014-04-24 14:00 - 16:30

Tour: Landmarks battles in Midtown
2014-04-20 14:00 - 16:00
Reservations required. $20 ($15 MAS members).
April is national historic preservation month!
Midtown Manhattan has seen more than its fair share of landmark battles. On this walk, we consider the landmark rationale and battle history of the Villard Houses/Palace Hotel (one of the earliest battles), St. Bartholomew’s Church (with issues of church/state conflict), Lever House (one of the new breed of modern landmarks), and Grand Central Terminal (whose landmark status was finally upheld by the Supreme Court).
For information: 212-935-3960, or click here to sign up for the walk.

NYU - Five-session course: The Art Deco Metropolis - session No. 2
2014-04-17 14:00 - 16:30

NYU - Five-session course: The Art Deco Metropolis - session No. 1
2014-04-10 14:00 - 16:30
Sponsored by New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Education. Thursday afternoons, April 10, 17 and 24 and May 1 and 8. To register, click here.
Five walks in Manhattan take us to New York’s major monuments of Art Deco architecture, buildings that transformed the city into the world’s modern metropolis. Downtown, we examine the work of Ralph Walker, “the architect of the century” and designer of the Gothic-modern fantasy of No. 1 Wall Street. Two walks cover East and West 42nd Street including the Garment District, which illustrates the work of Ely Jacques Kahn. A fourth walk covers the East 50s and the miraculously urban wonderland of Rockefeller Center. We finish with Central Park West, the great twin-towered apartment buildings, and other Jazz Age fantasies of high living overlooking the park.

Lecture: Behind the Bright Lights - the Great Broadway Theaters
2014-04-04 12:15 - 14:00 | Port Washington Library, One Library Drive, Port Washington, NY, 11050
With three-quarters of a century of history behind them, the 40 surviving Broadway theaters stand as stunning works of art in themselves, as well as monuments to the lively history of American theater. Many were built as lavish headquarters for Broadway’s great impresarios, who spared no expense in their decor. The Belasco Theater, designed for self-styled “Bishop of Broadway” David Belasco, boasts Tiffany glass, paneled wooden ceilings, and murals by the New York Ashcan School artist Everett Shinn. The Georgian facade of the Little Theater, built for aristocratic New England producer Winthrop Ames, suggests a Colonial New England manor house, into the intimate drawing room of which Ames cordially invited his audience. Other great Broadway houses include the recreation of the Petit Trianon in Versailles built for producer John Cort, the pseudo-Florentine palace built for the Theater Guild, and the delicately sculpted Music Box built by Irving Berlin for his Music Box Revues.

Tour: Art Deco Central Park West
2014-03-30 14:00 - 16:30
Reservations required.
A pleasant stroll along Central Park West, for a closer look at the buildings that form Manhattan’s major residential skyline. We visit the great twin-towered skyscraper-apartment buildings — the Century, the Majestic, and the Eldorado — and other multi-colored jazz-age fantasies of high living overlooking the Park.
Click here (and scroll down) for further information and to register for the tour. $20 ($15 for ADSNY members, $12 for students)

SOLD OUT Tour: Art Deco from Murray Hill to Madison Square
2014-03-16 14:00 - 16:00
Reservations required. $20 ($15 MAS members)
This walk through the east side of Midtown South includes an unusual collection of buildings, each different from the next. We have a surprising modernist apartment building among the genteel town houses of Murray Hill; Ely Jacques Kahn’s most impressive office building at Two Park Avenue (and another Kahn building that’s no slouch); a modernist hotel by Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray; a work by Edgar Brandt, the great French iron master; the iconic Empire State Building; and an incomplete attempt by Metropolitan Life to capture the Empire State Building’s “world’s tallest” title. Information: 212-935-3960, or click here to sign up for the tour.

Lecture: Art Deco New York - From the Chrysler Building to the Grand Concourse
2014-03-13 10:30 - 12:00 | JCC on the Palisades, 411 East Clinton Avenue, Tenafly NJ, 07670
Art Deco today can refer to anything from saltcellars to skyscrapers, produced anywhere in the world during the early decades of the last century, using abstract, stylized floral, geometric, or streamlined design. In New York, Art Deco evolved through a series of Manhattan skyscrapers into the city’s chief architectural language. Following a massive reawakening of interest during the 1970s, New York’s Deco buildings today survive as prized remnants of a distant-yet-modern past that still helps to define the city’s visual identity.
This lecture covers the great skyscrapers of architects Raymond Hood, William Van Alen, Ely Jacques Kahn, and Ralph Walker, including the Daily News, Empire State, Irving Trust, General Electric, American Radiator, Barclay-Vesey and RCA Buildings. It then traces the adaptation of this “skyscraper style” through apartment buildings on the Bronx’s Grand Concourse, airport terminals at LaGuardia, the Central Park West residential skyline, automated midtown parking garages, diners, hotels, department stores, banks and theaters like Radio City Music Hall.
The lecture is part of a program called “JCC University.” Call Kathy Graff at 201-408-1454 for cost and registration information.

Lecture: Behind the Bright Lights - the Great Broadway Theaters
2014-02-27 19:00 - 20:30 | Emma S. Clark Memorial Library, 120 Main Street, Setauket, NY, 11733

Course: Urban Genealogy - Learn how to research New York buildings - Session No. 4
2014-02-25 18:00 - 19:45 | Municipal Art Society, 488 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10022
Learn how to unearth detailed information about New York City buildings in four Tuesday evening lectures in February (4, 11, 18, 25) 6:00 to 7:45 p.m., plus one weekday morning field trip. The four evening sessions include: The Building: an introduction to the records of the Department of Buildings. The Client: weaving your way through deeds, directories, obituaries, Who’s Who, and local histories. The Architect: using standard texts, guidebooks, periodicals, the Avery Index, and Committee for the Preservation of Architectural Records publications. Miscellaneous Sources: using photograph collections, maps, New York City archives, libraries and historical societies, and early 19th century tax assessment records. Field Trip: Manhattan Department of Buildings, New York City Conveyance Records, the Municipal Archives and the Municipal Reference Library.
This annual seminar has been running for more than 25 years. Participants have included architects, engineers, building owners, preservation advocates, lawyers and landmarks commissioners and even a New York City detective.
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. $300 ($250 for MAS members). MAS offers 8.0 LU CES credits for this course.

Lecture: From Thomas Wolfe to the Mamas and the Papas - The venerable Hotel Albert in Greenwich Village
2014-02-20 18:30 - 20:00 | Third Street Music School Settlement, 235 E 11th Street, New York, NYY, 10003
Free lecture, but reservations required – please e-mail rsvp@gvshp.org
Accounts of New York’s literary and artistic life invariably mention the Algonquin Hotel and the Chelsea Hotel, but rarely do they credit the Hotel Albert – perhaps because today the Albert, on University Place and East 10th Street, is a quiet co-op complex. Yet the Albert – designed by Henry Hardenbergh, architect of the Plaza Hotel and the Dakota Apartments – has hosted a riotously rich group of creative New Yorkers. Famous writers and painters from its early years include Robert Louis Stevenson, who posed in his room here for sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens; Hart Crane, who worked on his epic poem celebrating the Brooklyn Bridge; and Thomas Wolfe, who used the Albert as his model for the Hotel Leopold in Of Time and the River. Mark Twain lectured at the Albert in 1901, and Walt Whitman is said to have been sighted there. African-American literary figures who stayed at the Albert in the 1950s included Chester Himes, Richard Wright, Charles Wright, and later Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka. Among visual artists, Albert Pinkham Ryder, the hotel manager’s brother, based his painting, “The Race Track,” on an event at the Albert, while in later years Jackson Pollock attended dinners at the Albert. Political radicals found refuge in the Albert – and John Scopes stayed here while rounding up supporters for his famous “monkey trial” in Tennessee.
After World War II, when the Albert fell on hard times, its low prices attracted dozens of rock musicians. It was at the Albert that The Mamas & The Papas’ wrote “California Dreamin’,” Lovin’ Spoonful wrote “Do You Believe in Magic,” and Tim Buckley wrote “Bussin’ Fly.” Other musicians who spent time at the Albert included the Mothers of Invention, Jim Morrison, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. Many of them used the Albert’s basement for rehearsals and impromptu jam sessions – as Lillian Roxon, author of The Rock Encyclopedia, wrote, “The basement became a shrine; and no musician feels he’s a musician unless he’s stayed at the Albert and rehearsed among the pools of water and the cockroaches.”
This illustrated lecture examines the Albert’s history and its illustrious roster of residents from the 1880s to the 1970s. It’s based on the history of the Albert I wrote for the current co-op: click here. For more on the Albert, visit the building’s web site.

Course: Urban Genealogy - Learn how to research New York buildings - Session No. 3
2014-02-18 18:00 - 19:45 | Municipal Art Society, 488 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10022

Course: Urban Genealogy - Learn how to research New York buildings - Session No. 2
2014-02-11 18:00 - 19:45 | Municipal Art Society, 488 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10022

Lecture: Grand Central Terminal - 100 Years of a New York Landmark
2014-02-09 15:00 - 16:00 | Carole Huxley Theater, New York State Museum, Cultural Education Center, Albany, NY
On February 1st, 1913, the brand-new Grand Central Terminal opened its doors to an admiring public. On February 1st, 2013, the beautifully restored Terminal – rescued from destruction by a seminal 1978 Supreme Court decision – celebrates its Centennial, accompanied by exhibitions, events, and a new book: Grand Central Terminal: 100 Years of a New York Landmark. The Terminal’s creation combined engineering bravado (sinking two train yards below ground), technological wizardry (electrifying the trains to eliminate steam and enable their underground functioning), and real-estate savvy (replacing the original street-level train yard with 16 blocks of newly prime Midtown Manhattan real-estate, whose development paid for it all) with innovative planning (interior ramps and looping tracks) and Paris-inspired Beaux-Arts design. This illustrated lecture brings the Terminal to life – its remarkable history, stunning architecture, and central role in creating midtown Manhattan.
The lecture is sponsored by the New York State Museum and the New York State Archives, and funded by the New York Council for the Humanities.

Course: Urban Genealogy - Learn how to research New York buildings - Session No. 1
2014-02-04 18:00 - 19:45 | Municipal Art Society, 488 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10022
Learn how to unearth detailed information about New York City buildings in four Tuesday evening lectures in February (4, 11, 18, 25) 6:00 to 7:45 p.m., plus one weekday morning field trip. The four evening sessions include: The Building: an introduction to the records of the Department of Buildings. The Client: weaving your way through deeds, directories, obituaries, Who’s Who, and local histories. The Architect: using standard texts, guidebooks, periodicals, the Avery Index, and Committee for the Preservation of Architectural Records publications. Miscellaneous Sources: using photograph collections, maps, New York City archives, libraries and historical societies, and early 19th century tax assessment records. Field Trip: Manhattan Department of Buildings, New York City Conveyance Records, the Municipal Archives and the Municipal Reference Library.
This annual seminar has been running for more than 25 years. Participants have included architects, engineers, building owners, preservation advocates, lawyers and landmarks commissioners and even a New York City detective.

Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. $300 ($250 for MAS members). MAS offers 8.0 LU CES credits for this course. For more information and to register, click here.
