Anthony W. Robins

TOUR: Art Deco architecture in Midtown Manhattan
2018-07-12 10:30 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by the Scarsdale Adult School. Information and registration, click here.
What would Manhattan be without its Roaring Twenties modernistic art deco skyscrapers? East 42nd Street, Midtown Manhattan’s major boulevard of art deco skyscrapers, is home to Raymond Hood’s red-and-white striped Daily News building (which starred as the Daily Planet in the Superman movies), and the one and only Chrysler Building, once the world’s tallest, whose architect, William Van Alen, was called the Ziegfeld of his profession. A few blocks to the north, the spectacularly geometric General Electric Building stands just a block away from the more sedate but still iconic Waldorf-Astoria. The walk concludes with a look at midtown’s miraculously urbane urban wonderland, Rockefeller Center.

TOUR: The Woolworth Building and its Lobby
2018-07-08 14:00 - 15:30, 2018-06-24 14:00 - 15:30, 2018-06-10 14:00 - 15:30, 2018-05-27 14:00 - 15:30, 2018-04-29 14:00 - 15:30, 2018-04-15 14:00 - 15:30, 2018-03-25 14:00 - 15:30, 2018-03-11 14:00 - 15:30 and 4 more dates | 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.

Tour: Art Deco on the Upper Upper West Side (that's not a typo)
2018-06-17 14:00 - 16:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society (M.A.S.) Reservations required – WATCH THIS SPACE FOR A RESERVATIONS LINK. $30 ($20 MAS members).
A meandering walk across the upper west tracts of the Upper West Side, from West 85th to 103rd streets. We see work by such stalwart Manhattan Deco icons as Sugarman & Berger, Boak & Paris, and Harvey Wiley Corbett, as well as architects less well known for their Deco productions, including Emery Roth and Rosario Candela. Highlights include Roth’s Normandy Apartments and Corbett’s Master Apartments; the Broadway Fashion Building – four-stories of commercial space in a Moderne glass box; Joan of Arc Junior High School; Boak & Paris’s Midtown (now Metro) Theater; and one of Manhattan’s last surviving Horn & Hardart automat buildings, with splendid Art Deco terra-cotta. If you’ve taken our tour of Art Deco on Central Park West, and wondered what else might be out there closer to the Hudson, this is your chance to find out

TOUR: Grand Central Terminal
2018-06-08 10:00 - 12:00
Sponsored by the New York Botanical Garden, Members Trips. (To take this tour, you must be a member of the Botanical Garden – click here for membership details.) Reservations required: call 1-718-817-8703, email membership@nybg.org, or click here (scroll down to find the tour) to register on-line.
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 – celebrated its Centennial, accompanied by exhibitions, events, and the 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 walking tour brings the Terminal to life – its remarkable history, stunning architecture, and central role in creating midtown Manhattan.

TOUR: The fabulous Broadway theaters - Times Square Reborn
2018-05-17 10:30 - 13:00
Sponsored by the Scarsdale Adult School. Information and registration, click here.
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. With 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 on 44th Street was designed to the specifications of the extravagant David Belasco, the self-styled “Bishop of Broadway”? who, among other eccentricities, wore a clerical collar. The Little Theater, built for aristocratic New England producer Winthrop Ames, originally sat a tiny audience of 300; its precious Georgian style facade looks less like a typical Broadway theater than a Colonial New England manor house. Producer John Cort’s theater was designed as a recreation of the Petit Trianon in Versailles. Today these jewels sparkle among all the brash new skyscrapers that have transformed the once dingy and dangerous Times Square. The tour includes it all: theaters, skyscrapers, and city planning at its most controversial.

TOUR: Downtown Art Deco
2018-05-13 14:00 - 16:00
Reservations required. Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. $30 ($20 for MAS members). Information and registration: 212-935-3960 – WATCH THIS SPACE FOR A RESERVATION LINK
Towering above the narrow streets of the old Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam are some of the country’s finest zigzag and streamlined delights, glittering pinnacles of Wall Street prosperity, monuments to the high-flying corporations of 1920s banking, oil, and telecommunications. Unrivaled skyscraper designs include Ralph Walker’s Gothic Modern fantasy of the Irving Trust tower and the Art Deco–encrusted Cities Service headquarters, plus some lesser-known jewels in the insurance district on John Street.

TOUR: Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights
2018-05-06 15:00 - 16:00 | Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights, 551 Fort Washington Avenue, New York, NY, 10033, United States
Free and open to the public.
As part of the “Sacred Sites Open House Weekend” (May 5-6, 2018) sponsored by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the remarkably intact Art Deco designed Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights (originally the Fourth Church of Christ Scientist) will be open to the public, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. For more about the building, see the National Register nomination which I researched and wrote a few years ago. More information about the event will be available closer to the date – watch this space.

TOUR: Central Park as a Work of Art
2018-05-03 10:00 - 12:00
Sponsored by the New York Botanical Garden, Members Trips. (To take this tour, you must be a member of the Botanical Garden – click here for membership details.) Reservations required: call 1-718-817-8703, email membership@nybg.org, or click here (scroll down to find the tour) to register on-line.
Perhaps best-known of New York’s official “Scenic Landmarks,” Central Park offers New Yorkers refuge, recreation and rejuvenation; a temporary haven from a city of brick and steel, concrete and glass. And yet this park which delights us with its lakes and streams, wildflowers and grand open spaces, is almost entirely artificial, carefully designed right down to the hidden pipes feeding a rustic waterfall.

BOOK TALK: "New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham's Jazz Age Architecture"
2018-05-02 19:15 - 20:30 | Scarsdale High School, 2 Brewster Road, Scarsdale, NY, 10583, United States
Sponsored by the Scarsdale Adult School. Information and registration, click here.
The Chrysler Building, the Waldorf-Astoria, Rockefeller Center– these are among the hundreds of Art Deco monuments that during the 1920s and ‘30s helped create the image of New York City as the world’s Modern Metropolis. 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 in them during the 1970s, New York’s Deco buildings today survive as prized remnants of a distant yet modern past that still help define the city’s visual identity.
The 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.
After the talk there will be a book signing for New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture (SUNY Press, Excelsior Editions, 2017).

SOLD OUT - TOUR: Art Deco from Murray Hill to Gramercy Park
2018-04-22 11:30 - 13:30
Sponsored by the Art Deco Society of New York. Reservations required. Click here for information and registration. $50 ($35 ADSNY members)
Based on Itinerary No. 3 in New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture.
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 (Two Park Avenue; and another Kahn building that’s no slouch); a work by Edgar Brandt, the great French iron master; the iconic Empire State Building; an incomplete attempt by Metropolitan Life to capture the Empire State Building’s “world’s tallest” title; and George and Edward Blum’s Gramercy House, with some of the most enjoyable Art Deco terra-cotta ornament in the city.

BOOK TALK: "New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham's Jazz Age Architecture"
2018-04-08 11:30 - 13:30
Sponsored by the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association. For information and registration, click here . $35 ($30 MHNA members)
The Chrysler Building, the Waldorf-Astoria, Rockefeller Center– these are among the hundreds of Art Deco monuments that during the 1920s and ‘30s helped create the image of New York City as the world’s Modern Metropolis. 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 in them during the 1970s, New York’s Deco buildings today survive as prized remnants of a distant yet modern past that still help define the city’s visual identity.
The 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.
After the talk there will be a book signing for New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture (SUNY Press, Excelsior Editions, 2017), followed by a short walk looking at Art Deco examples in Murray Hill.

BOOK TALK: "New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham's Jazz Age Architecture"
2018-03-27 14:00 - 16:00 | Bethpage Public Library, 47 Powell Avenue, Bethpage, NY, 11714, United States
Sponsored by the Bethpage Public Library
The Chrysler Building, the Waldorf-Astoria, Rockefeller Center– these are among the hundreds of Art Deco monuments that during the 1920s and ‘30s helped create the image of New York City as the world’s Modern Metropolis. 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 in them during the 1970s, New York’s Deco buildings today survive as prized remnants of a distant yet modern past that still help define the city’s visual identity.
The 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.
After the talk there will be a book signing for New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture (SUNY Press, Excelsior Editions, 2017).

TOUR: Grand Central Terminal
2018-03-25 10:30 - 12:30
Sponsored by the Scarsdale Adult School. $50. Click here for information and registration.
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 – celebrated its Centennial, accompanied by exhibitions, events, and the 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 walking tour brings the Terminal to life – its remarkable history, stunning architecture, and central role in creating midtown Manhattan.

TOUR: Art Deco Central Park West
2018-03-18 14:00 - 16:00
Reservations required. Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Click here for information and registration, or call 212-935-3960. $30 ($20 for MAS members)
Based on Itinerary No. 8 in New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture.
A pleasant stroll along Central Park West for a closer look at the buildings that form Manhattan’s major residential skyline. We’ll see the great twin-towered skyscraper apartment buildings – the Century, the Majestic and the El Dorado – and other multi-colored jazz-age fantasies of high living overlooking the park.

Course: MASter Class - Researching the History of Buildings in New York City - Session No. 4
2018-02-27 18:30 - 20:00 | Municipal Art Society, 488 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10022
Reservations required – click here. $375 ($300 MAS or New York Landmarks Conservancy members or students)
Learn how to unearth detailed information about New York City buildings in four Tuesday evening lectures in February (6, 13, 20, 27) at 6:30 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 30 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. Click here for more details, or call 1-212-935-3960.

Course: MASter Class - Researching the History of Buildings in New York City - Session No. 3
2018-02-20 18:30 - 20:00 | Municipal Art Society, 488 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10022

Course: MASter Class - Researching the History of Buildings in New York City - Session No. 2
2018-02-13 18:30 - 20:00 | Municipal Art Society, 488 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10022

Course: MASter Class - Researching the History of Buildings in New York City - Session No. 1
2018-02-06 18:30 - 20:00 | Municipal Art Society, 488 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10022

Tour: Manhattan's Art Deco Interiors
2018-01-07 14:00 - 16:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. $30 ($20 MAS members). Reservations required. To register, call 212-935-3960 or register on-line.
The phrase “Art Deco New York” generally conjures romantic images of Manhattan skyscrapers. But just as remarkable as the towers are their sumptuous interiors – which are also far more comfortable to visit on a cold winter’s day. On this tour, we’ll visit the publicly accessible interiors of not quite half a dozen Deco marvels: the Daily News Building, the Chrysler Building, the Chanin Building, the General Electric Building and the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center.
