Anthony W. Robins

Lecture: Why So High - The saga of building the world's tallest buildings
2014-11-06 10:45 - 23:45 (America/New_York) | JCC on the Palisades, 411 East Clinton Avenue, Tenafly NJ, 07670
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 “world’s tallest” title rise close to a quarter mile into the sky. In the 20th century, it was the American skyscrapers of New York and Chicago that regularly pushed the limit — the pre-World- War-I Singer Building, Metropolitan Life Tower, and Woolworth Building; the 1920s battles culminating in the Chrysler and the Empire State Building; and the post-World War II World Trade Center and Sears Tower, along with a dozen or more also-rans.
The destruction of the World Trade Center, the rise of its replacement, and the continuing phenomenon overseas, 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? The development of steel-cage construction and elevators, rising real-estate values, and the economics of proximity, all helped create the skyscraper — but none of these factors seem to have required the vast heights reached by the most famous. How could a strict, hard-nosed business proposition like constructing an office building produce skyscrapers too tall to make economic sense?
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. The lecture is part of a program called “JCC University.” Call Kathy Graff at 201-408-1454 for cost and registration information.

Tour: The Woolworth Building and its Lobby
2014-10-19 14:00 - 15:30, 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 | 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: Margot Gayle's Tribeca - A Victorian Society New York New-Member-Orientation Walking Tour (so join up!)
2014-10-19 10:00
This tour of Tribeca, focusing on its many cast-iron wonders, is offered to newly minted members of the Victorian Society New York (the local chapter of the Victorian Society in America) which was founded in 1966 in the West 9th Street kitchen of legendary preservation advocate Margot Gayle. Without Margot’s efforts, Tribeca might not be the protected historic neighborhood it is today. Though the tour is by invitation only, there’s a simple way to cadge an invitation: join Victorian Society New York!
I first led a tour of cast-iron architecture in Tribeca in the late 1970s, as one of the volunteer guides for Margot’s “Friends of Cast-Iron Architecture.” This walk retraces the steps of that tour, with special focus on the work of James Bogardus – one of Margot’s special interests – as well as facades cast by D.D. Badger’s Architectural Iron Works, the only major 19th-century iron foundry whose catalog still exists. For more, see the article in Panorama, the chapter’s newsletter, describing the tour as given in November 2011.
For more information, and to sign up, see the VSNY web site.

SOLD OUT Tour: Art Deco Central Park West
2014-10-05 14:00 - 16:30
Reservations required. $20 ($15 MAS members)
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. For information: 212-935-3960, or, to purchase ticket, click here.

SOLD OUT Tour: Art Deco in Queens
2014-09-28 13:00 - 17:00
Art Deco in the borough of Queens – a bus tour sponsored by the Art Deco Society of New York. Watch this space for further details!

SOLD OUT Tour: The Woolworth Building and its Lobby
2014-09-21 14:00 - 15:30, 2014-08-24 14:00 - 15:30 | Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway, New York

Lecture: Art Deco New York - From the Chrysler Building to the Grand Concourse
2014-09-14 15:00 - 16:00 | Quogue Library, 90 Quogue Street, Quogue (Long Island), 11959
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: Landmarks battles in Midtown
2014-09-07 14:00 - 16:30
Reservations required. $20 ($15 MAS members).
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 to purchase ticket, click here.

SOLD OUT Tour: Art Deco on the Upper Upper West Side (that's not a typo)
2014-08-17 10:00 - 12:30
Reservations required. $20 ($15 MAS members)
A meandering walk across the upper west tracts of the Upper West Side, from West 85th to 103rd streets, Broadway to Riverside Drive. 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 my 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! For information: 212-935-3960, or click here for a direct link to sign up for the tour.

SOLD OUT Tour: Art Deco Central Park West
2014-08-14 17:45 - 20:00
Sponsored by Landmark West! Reservations required.
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. Special added bonus: We will be invited to visit the fabulous and recently restored Art Deco lobby of the Eldorado Apartments! $25 ($15 for Landmark West! members) Reservations and information: 212-496-8110, or landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org, or click here to buy a ticket on EventBrite (but note that they charge a fee for the privilege).

Lecture: Grand Central Terminal – 100 Years of a New York Landmark
2014-07-23 19:00 - 20:00 | Marbletown Community Center, 3564 Main Street (Route 209), Stone Ridge, NY, 12484
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.
Free and open to the public, thanks to the New York Council on the Humanities.

Tour: Art Deco in the Financial District
2014-07-20 10:00
Reservations required. $20 ($15 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, and the Gothic-modern fantasy of the Irving Trust tower at No. 1 Wall Street, as well as such marvels as the Art Deco encrusted Cities Service headquarters. For information: 212-935-3960, or click here for a direct link to sign up for the tour.

Tour: Architecture of the Theater
2014-07-18 10:00
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.

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.
