Photograph of a section of the Texaco map by Sybil Young/NYC Parks & Recreation For the 1964-1965 World's Fair, architect Philip Johnson designed the New York State Pavillion in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Besides the well-known observation towers (think Men in Black) and the Theaterama, he commissioned a "130-foot-by-166-foot terrazzo replica of a Texaco New York State road map." However, after vandalism and weather, the past decades have damaged the map to the point......

La Maison Tropicale, the Jean Prouvé-designed modernist movable metal house, has sold for $4.97M. While this fell right in the middle of the projected bid ($4 to 6M), Bloomberg.com noted this is "more than twice the price per area of a Park Avenue apartment." Guess that's expected when you buy real estate at Christie's. Uma Thurman's ex and Cameron Diaz's latest maybe love interest, hotelier Andre Balazs, was the high bidder. Though he has......

+ Delays are plaguing Philip Johnson’s Urban Glass House. + The Central Park Conservancy is going global. + Paris’ Phare Tower recalls Grand Central Terminal’s machine-age fascination, reports New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. + A map that's “one of the most beautiful, important and accurate plans of New York,” according to IN Phelps Stokes, who designed the University Settlement House at Eldridge and Rivington and Columbia’s St. Paul's Chapel. + An architect who......

It was another unusually mild, late November morning when we visited 304 Spring at Renwick, just east of Greenwich Street. The first building designed by Zakrzewski & Hyde, 304 Spring is located in the western edges of SoHo sometimes referred to as Hudson Square, which has transformed since the area was rezoned for residential use in 2003. It's a bit frenetic over there, being steps from the Ear Inn and Philip Johnson's Urban Glass House,......

+ Architecture Research Office's climate change-influenced entry is a finalist for the History Channel's "City of the Future" design contest (right). Flooded pockets of Manhattan are called "Inundation Zones." + 250 Bowery, designed by FLAnk, has a "haunting, post-industrial vibe." The exterior's made of corten. + The battle over Washington Square Park's redesign continues. At issue: Was Department of Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe's verbal promise to make the fountain plaza no less than......

We got a peek at the newly named Philip Johnson Terrace, part of Museum Tower, the Cesar Pelli-designed residential building next to the Museum of Modern Art (Pelli designed the new federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn). Formerly the museum's roof, the eighth floor space, designed by Francois de Menil, features a stone floor and a steel pavilion with perforated sheets in the spirit of modernists Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe. Acquired by......

Oh, for the love of street vendor hot dogs: Gothamist LOVES the insanity that is the bidding process for the MTA's West Side railyards. Yesterday, the energy company, Trans Gas, bid $700 million for the railyards to build a power plant. This bid is not only $100 million more than the Cablevision bid (and $600 million more than the Jets' bid), but Trans Gas would want the MTA's help to build another plant in Williamsburg......

Iconic American architect Philip Johnson has died at 98. Many of Johnson's bulidings are familiar sights to New Yorkers, including the AT&T-now-Sony building at 550 Madison Avenue (known as the Chippendale building), the State Theater at Lincoln Center, and the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art, and he worked with Mies van der Rohe on the Seagram Building. Other famous designs include the Glass House in Connecticut and the Garden Grove Church in......

After last week's post about the Parks Commission trying to figure out what to do with the 1964 World's Expo Towers, a reader sent us some photographs of the towers and the old Tent of Tomorrow (above and below), taken by sneaking onto the grounds - anything for a photograph. Gothamist finds something really cool in how decrepit the towers and tent look, because they look like this strange thing from 40 years ago,......

The Parks Department is wondering what to do with the New York Pavilion from the 1964-65 World's Fair, including those 250-foot towers, you see when driving in Queens (okay, sitting in a car, bus, or airport shuttle). The Post reports that the Parks Department is asking developers for their ideas to revive that part of Flushing Corona Park. The towers themselves are crumbling and many of the inside features are rusted through and useless, though......