Anthony W. Robins

Tour: The Woolworth Building and its Lobby
2015-08-16 14:00 - 15:30, 2015-08-02 14:00 - 15:30, 2015-07-19 14:00 - 15:30, 2015-07-12 14:00 - 15:30, 2015-06-21 14:00 - 15:30, 2015-06-14 02:00 - 15:30, 2015-03-22 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | 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. And an article by David Dunlap in the New York Times that appeared New Years Day!

Tour: What's Up Downtown: From the Battery to Wall Street in Lower Manhattan
2015-08-02 10:30
Reservations required – click here. $20 ($15 for MAS members)
From the spectacular skyline up in the air to archaeological relics down underground, lower Manhattan remains one of the world’s great urban treasures. This tour will visit well-known highlights as well as some unexpected delights, including two sites associated with George Washington.

Tour: Art Deco in Manhattan's Financial District
2015-07-31 10:30
Reservations required – click here. $20 ($15 for MAS members)
Towering above the narrow streets of 17th-century Nieuw Amsterdam are some of the city’s finest 20th century skyscrapers. Included are the best of Ralph Walker, once voted the “architect of the century” by his peers: the delightfully decorative New York Telephone Company headquarters, the ponderously massive Western Union Building, the Gothic-modern fantasy of the Irving Trust tower at No. 1 Wall Street and the Art Deco encrusted Cities Service headquarters.

Lecture: Art Deco New York – From the Chrysler Building to the Grand Concourse
2015-07-28 14:00 - 15:15 | Oceanside Library, 30 Davison Avenue, Oceanside, NY, 11572
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.

Tour: Art Deco in the Fabulous Fifties
2015-06-26 10:00
Reservations required – click here. $20 ($15 for MAS members)
This walk begins with a cluster of modernistic residences ranging from River House to Southgate apartments to the former Panhellenic Tower. It then pushes westward into the commercial heart of Midtown with visits to the spectacular General Electric Building and the Waldorf-Astoria, New York’s preeminent and beautifully restored skyscraper hotel, before ending at Midtown’s miraculously urbane urban wonderland: Rockefeller Center.

Tour: Central Park as a Work of Art
2015-05-31 14:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required ($20; $15 MAS members). To register, call 212-935-3960, or click here 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. Protecting the historic design is just another responsibility of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Lecture: Art Deco New York – From the Chrysler Building to the Grand Concourse
2015-05-19 19:00 | East Islip Public Library, 381 E Main St, East Islip, NY
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.
This lecture is sponsored by the New York State Council on the Humanities; free and open to the public.

Tour: The Woolworth Building and its Lobby
2015-05-17 16:00 - 17:30, 2015-05-03 14:00 - 15:30, 2015-03-15 16:00 - 17:30 | 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 from Bloomingdale's to 20th Century Fox
2015-05-15 02:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required ($20; $15 MAS members). To register, call 212-935-3960, or click here to register on-line.
This new tour takes in Deco marvels clustered along 57th and 59th Streets at the northern edge of Midtown. Buildings include the stylish emporia of Bloomingdales and Tiffany; the corporate headquarters of Squibb, Fuller, Hearst and 20th Century Fox; and luxury digs on Central Park South – Barbizon Plaza, Essex House and Hampshire House.

Lecture: Why So High? The World's Tallest Buildings
2015-05-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Patterson Library, 1167 Rt 311, Patterson, NY, 12563
Since the ill-fated Tower of Babel, mankind has been powerfully attracted to the idea of buildings rising into the clouds. The Empire State Building and the Sears Tower still rank among the world’s tallest and most famous buildings, while the latest contenders for the title rise close to a quarter mile into the sky. In the 20th century, it was the American skyscraper that regularly pushed the limit – from the Singer, Met Life and Woolworth buildings to the Chrysler and the Empire State, and eventually the World Trade Center and Sears Tower. Plans for the World Trade Center site have focused worldwide attention on such monuments, raising the question: why so high? Was it strictly dollars and cents? Or was something more at play? This illustrated journey across a century and a half of the race to the top pays special attention to the design and construction of the Trade Center.
This lecture is sponsored by the Patterson Library, and funded by the New York State Council of the Humanities. It is free and open to the public.

SOLD OUT Tour: Art Deco from Bloomingdale's to 20th Century Fox
2015-05-08 14:00

Course: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks (session 4 of 4)
2015-05-06 14:00 - 17:00
This year, 2015, marks the 50th anniversary of New York City’s Landmarks Law. Explore major moments in the growth of the preservation movement in four walks. On these tours, visit Margot Gayle’s Tribeca—the work of the legendary preservation pioneer who promoted the protection of the City’s cast-iron architecture; major landmarks battles in midtown Manhattan, including the Villard Houses, St. Bart’s, Lever House, and Grand Central Terminal; the reimagined Times Square/Broadway theatre district with preserved historic theatres; and SoHo, featuring 19th-century cast-iron buildings and 20th- and 21st-century neighbors, in an attempt to balance the original character with a modern sensibility.
Four Wednesday afternoons in April. Cost for the course: $190. April 8, 15, 22 and 29. To register for the course, click here.

Course: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks (session 3 of 4)
2015-04-29 14:00 - 17:00

SOLD OUT All Day Bus Tour: Art Deco Landmarks - Unlikely Battles And Great Successes
2015-04-19 09:00 - 18:00
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.

Tour: Landmark Battles of Midtown Manhattan
2015-04-17 14:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required ($20; $15 MAS members). To register, call 212-935-3960, or click here to register on-line.
Midtown Manhattan has seen more than its fair share of landmark battles. On this walk, we’ll 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).

Course: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks (session 2 of 4)
2015-04-15 14:00 - 17:00

Course: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks (session 1 of 4)
2015-04-08 14:00 - 17:00

Grand Central Terminal: 100 Years of a New York Landmark
2015-03-24 12:30 - 13:30 | Pelham Manor Club, 1023 Esplanade , Pelham, NY, 10803
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 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.
This lecture is funded by the New York Council for the Humanities. Free and open to the public.

Lecture: Why So High? The World's Tallest Buildings
2015-03-23 18:30 | Temple Emanu-El, One East 65th Street, New York City, 10065
Since the ill-fated Tower of Babel, mankind has been powerfully attracted to the idea of buildings rising into the clouds. The Empire State Building and the Sears Tower still rank among the world’s tallest and most famous buildings, while the latest contenders for the title rise close to a quarter mile into the sky. In the 20th century, it was the American skyscraper that regularly pushed the limit – from the Singer, Met Life and Woolworth buildings to the Chrysler and the Empire State, and eventually the World Trade Center and Sears Tower. Plans for the World Trade Center site have focused worldwide attention on such monuments, raising the question: why so high? Was it strictly dollars and cents? Or was something more at play? This illustrated journey across a century and a half of the race to the top pays special attention to the design and construction of the Trade Center.
This lecture is sponsored by the Art Deco Society of New York, and funded by the New York State Council of the Humanities. It is free and open to the public (to register, please send an email with your name and the name of the lecture to Events@ArtDeco.org).

Lecture: Grand Central Terminal - 100 Years of a New York Landmark
2015-03-20 12:45 | Institute for Learning in Retirement, 2350 Broadhollow Road, Farmingdale, NY

SOLD OUT Tour: The Woolworth Building and its Lobby
2015-03-15 14:00 | Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway, New York

Tour: Landmark Battles of Broadway's Theater District
2015-03-13 14:00
Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Reservations required ($20; $15 MAS members). To register, call 212-935-3960, or click here to register on-line.
The great Broadway theaters, built between the turn of the century and the onset of the Great Depression, are stunning works of art in themselves as well as monuments to the lively history of American theater. During the 1980s, their fate hung in balance as the city sought redevelopment to clean up the area’s crime and pornography – construction of the Marriott Marquis hotel required demolition of five theaters. After several years of controversy, the Landmarks Commission designated most of the surviving theaters, many of which have since undergone major restorations. Your guide served as the Commission’s Deputy Director of Research in the 1980s, and led the staff effort to document the theaters’ architecture and history.
