Upcoming Programs

Beyond Architecture: The NEW New York is a volume of essays that commemorate the 60th anniversary of the passage of the New York City Landmarks Law, which established the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) and initiated the era of historic preservation in New York City. Commissioned by the NYC Landmarks60 Alliance, the book’s contributors are architects and engineers, critics, and preservationists who have moved “beyond architecture” to explore varied aspects of the impact, legacy, and current and future status of historic preservation in New York City.

The Museum’s director, Carol Willis, will offer a gallery tour of The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, which examines the hidden history of concrete in tall buildings. This exhibition reveals why, today, almost all skyscrapers are built of concrete, not steel. Curator’s tours are FREE, but you must book a timed ticket at 3pm on Ticketstripe, through the RSVP button.

In the interwar decades, American architecture schools enrolled increasing numbers of women. But as architectural historians Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy recount in their book Women Architects at Work, professional success did not come easily. Focusing on the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Massachusetts and several coeducational architecture schools, Hunting and Murphy profile women designers who pursued careers in architecture, describing how these innovative practitioners leveraged social, educational, and professional ties to achieve success and address social concerns.

Thirty years ago a New Yorker article, “The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis,” recounted the little-known drama of the threatened collapse of a Manhattan skyscraper. In a new book, The Great Miscalculation: The Race to Save New York City’s Citicorp Tower, author Michael Greenburg further investigates the full story of how in 1978 structural engineer William LeMessurier became aware of a critical flaw in his innovative design and the chain of events and responses that followed. A team of engineers and building experts mobilized to analyze and correct a miscalculation that, a generation before 9/11, threatened Midtown Manhattan with a catastrophic collapse of a major tower.

The Business Core tour of the Museum’s three thematic walking tours of Battery Park City on Thursday, June 12 at 4pm will focus on the commercial core with its 1980s skyscrapers of the original World Financial Center (now Brookfield Place) by architect Cesar Pelli, as well as the expansive North Cove Marina and its public realm. This walk will investigate how the planning concept of public-private partnership was both the principle and economic engine of the Battery Park City project and how the goals of opening the waterfront to public access and recreation was realized over three decades.

This tour will meet in the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place.

The Business Core tour of the Museum’s three thematic walking tours of Battery Park City on Friday, June 20 at 4pm will focus on the commercial core with its 1980s skyscrapers of the original World Financial Center (now Brookfield Place) by architect Cesar Pelli, as well as the expansive North Cove Marina and its public realm. This walk will investigate how the planning concept of public-private partnership was both the principle and economic engine of the Battery Park City project and how the goals of opening the waterfront to public access and recreation was realized over three decades.

This tour will meet in the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place.

The North Neighborhood tour of the Museum’s three thematic walking tours of Battery Park City, on Thursday, July 17 at 4pm, will cover the north residential neighborhood, which was developed in several phases, beginning with Stuyvesant High School at the northeast edge and the esplanade and Rockefeller Park along the Hudson. A diagonal avenue lined with apartment buildings creates one face of the neighborhood, while the inner courts of the large blocks are connected by the delightful Teardrop Park. Located two blocks from ground zero, we will also explore the history and design of the Irish Hunger Memorial completed in 2001.

This tour will meet in the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place.

In his new book Designing the American Century, Thomas J. Campanella argues that Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano were the foremost spatial designers at work in the mid-20th century. Their vast portfolio of public landscapes propelled the legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux into the motor age, touching the lives of millions and changing the face of the nation. With the patronage of public-works titan Robert Moses, Clarke and Rapuano transformed New York over a span of fifty years.

The North Neighborhood tour of the Museum’s three thematic walking tours of Battery Park City, on Friday, July 25 at 4pm, will cover the north residential neighborhood, which was developed in several phases, beginning with Stuyvesant High School at the northeast edge and the esplanade and Rockefeller Park along the Hudson. A diagonal avenue lined with apartment buildings creates one face of the neighborhood, while the inner courts of the large blocks are connected by the delightful Teardrop Park. Located two blocks from ground zero, we will also explore the history and design of the Irish Hunger Memorial completed in 2001.

This tour will meet in the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place.

The South Neighborhood tour on Thursday, August 7 at 4pm explores Battery Park City’s southern district, which is home to the Skyscraper Museum and includes some of BPC’s earliest landscapes and infrastructure, as well as the residential enclaves built in the 1990s that followed the 1979 Cooper Eckstut Master Plan. Starting in the Museum’s gallery to see historic views of the waterfront, the tour will visit South Cove and the green spaces that connect to the Esplanade, the first waterfront park in New York since the Brooklyn Heights Esplanade in 1951.

This tour will meet at The Skyscraper Museum, 39 Battery Pl.

The South Neighborhood tour on Friday, August 15 at 4pm explores Battery Park City’s southern district, which is home to the Skyscraper Museum and includes some of BPC’s earliest landscapes and infrastructure, as well as the residential enclaves built in the 1990s that followed the 1979 Cooper Eckstut Master Plan. Starting in the Museum’s gallery to see historic views of the waterfront, the tour will visit South Cove and the green spaces that connect to the Esplanade, the first waterfront park in New York since the Brooklyn Heights Esplanade in 1951.

This tour will meet at The Skyscraper Museum, 39 Battery Pl.