- The Chrysler Building. The Seagram Building. The Apple Store Soho? The Center for Architecture's executive director Rick Bell made a list of 10 great buildings to see in New York City (presumably for tourists) and spoke to the AP about it. The list spans two boroughs, a classic skyscraper, a beloved transportation hub, and retail stores, and some landmarks are deliberately left off (like the Empire State Building which everyone knows about):
- Conde Nast Building, for its "environmentally correct" design by Fox & Fowle.
- Brooklyn Museum, for the modern entry pavilion and plaza, designed by James Polshek, against its Beaux Arts facade; the AP writes the addition makes makes the museum "inviting and accessible, a suitable centerpiece for Brooklyn's burgeoning hipster art scene."
- Prada New York in Soho, designed by Rem Koolhaas, for the way it "displays the merchandise, it doesn't sell it."
Results tagged “seagrambuilding”
Some folks were mighty disappointed when a Daisy May's BBQ cart on Park Avenue and 52nd Street turned out to be a tease. According to Midtown Lunch, the cart was set up outside the Seagram Building for the filming of the next Adam Sandler movie, You Don't Mess With Zohan.
Jean Nouvel mania reaches a fevered pitch with today’s glowing NY Times review of the French architect’s rising Soho and Chelsea buildings.
Yesterday, there was a sprawling editorial (literally sprawling too - it covered two pages) in the NY Times Week in Review by Tom Wolfe. And in it, he ripped the Landmarks Preservation Commission, most of its commissioners, and Mayors Koch, Giuliani and Bloomberg a couple new ones.

Kate Wood, executive director, LANDMARK WEST!
The Skyscraper Museum asked one hundred architects, brokers, builders, critics, developers, engineers, historians, lawyers, officials, owners, planners and scholars what their ten favorite NYC skyscrapers were from a list of buildings (which did not include the World Trade Center). The NY Times looks at the results, which are a great shorthand of the must-sees in the city. The top ten are Chrysler Building (with the most votes), Seagram, Flatiron, Woolworth, Empire State, Lever House, RCA, McGraw-Hill, U.N. Secretariat, and CBS. Reporter David Dunlap notes the Chrysler Building's "ebullient eccentricity" as being the best at "expressing New York's cloud-piercing ambitions" and calls the runner-up, the Seagram Building, the Chrysler's "anthithesis" as the Seagram is "cool, tranquil, rectangular and restrained."
Here's the NY Times obituary. Johnson was the subject of an American Masters profile. Here is Johnson's firm site, Philip Johnson Alan Ritchie Architects, and you can buy The Architecture of Philip Johnson online. Curbed has some more links.
cityrag has pictures of NASCAR's "Victory Lap" in New York, proving that there are NASCAR fans in a blue city. And with news last May that NASCAR was looking to create a roadway in the five boroughs, the presence of logo-emblazoned cars might be less surprising to our eyes. It looks this crowd is outside the Seagram Building on Park Avenue; Gothamist hopes that some Nascar dads were rubbing shoulders with the lunch crowd at the Four Seasons.


