WHAT: The Museum of Modern Art, West 53 Street

“Although today’s taste has returned to more texture and contrast, in a pioneering sense the museum building is still effective architecture.  It is best understood if we realize that the architecture of that date was undergoing a necessary cleansing process to rid it of the superfluous elements of traditional design that had ceased to have meaning in terms of modern machine production.  If the insistence on this bare simplicity was overstrict, it succeeded in its purpose of re-establishing sensitivity to the important basic elements of architecture – the wall, the frame, the nature of materials, and the proper relationship of the essential parts to the whole.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via nyny100.com.

WHO: Columbia University, owner, and John D. Rockefeller, developer, Rockefeller Center

“The style of the limestone-sheathed buildings in the taste of the ‘20s, which was overwhelmingly concerned with the creation of a romantic effect of aspiring verticality emphasizing extreme height, rather than with a logical aesthetic reflection of steel-cage construction.  To this end, the structural steel columns are masked by heavy masonry piers, with additional nonstructural piers repeated between the windows.  However, because the buildings are singularly free from the mannered ‘modernistic’ ornament of the times, which generally remains subordinate to the architectural masses, these structures continue to please – both as individual buildings, and as part of an impressively designed and harmonious whole.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via pixmule.com.

WEEKLY Ws: “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City” – Part 3

THANK YOU Curbed NY for featuring our entries about this small-but-mighty book of iconic architecture.  This week we’re pleased to present part 3, “Tour No. 2: Fifth Avenue (43^rd to 53^rd)”.

From “Modern Architecture in New York”

“Manhattan’s ruthless grid of streets has enforced a certain monotony. But the breathtaking depth-in-perspective and the sheer cliffs of Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue that seem to march to infinity have been judged by visitors one of the great visual experiences of the New World.  And if the careless combination of new and old, the mélange of styles and incredible congestion have led to architectural chaos, it is a chaos that possesses undeniable vigor and fascination.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

WHERE: 42nd Street Area, looking south from 45th Street and Third Avenue

“Within these few blocks are several of New York’s most striking skyscraper towers.  Spanning four decades of construction, they offer and unusual opportunity to trace a considerable part of the history of skyscraper design.  The Chrysler Building, completed in 1929, sought to emphasize the extreme height of its 77 stories through the invention of picturesque detail; its ‘modernistically’ styled spire, heroic, streamlined stainless-steel gargoyles high above the city, and intricate corner treatment represent a completely romantic approach to the design of an important new architectural form…  The Daily News Building, finished in 1930, a year after the Chrysler Building, is a more rational interpretation of the tall building, using the strongly repeated rising lines of white brick piers to create the impression of an insistent, almost brutal verticality…  The Chrysler Building Annex, constructed twenty-seven years after the original tower, demonstrates a kind of impasse in skyscraper design.  There is no searching for a dominant design theme, nor is there any attempt to advance the technology of the curtain-wall construction…  The Socony Mobil Building of 1956, while it recalls a Beaux-Arts formula in its massing, takes an important step forward in the employment of prefabricated stainless steel panels for its outer walls, and provides an interesting contrast to the Chrysler Building’s earlier use of the same material.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via Google.

WHEN: 1934: 211 East 48 Street by William Lescaze.

“This is probably the first modern townhouse built in the United States.  The architect, originally Swiss, brought his enthusiasm for the modern from Europe, where it was already a well-established style.  This house a startling addition ot the local scene at the time that it was completed in the ‘30s, introduced some of the more striking characteristics of modern architecture to New York – the elimination of familiar ornament and the classic façade divisions in favor of a carefully but unconventionally proportioned, smooth-surfaced exterior….  Although some of the entrance details now seem dated – such as the proportion and placement of the small, projecting marquee – and glass bock has gone out of favor after becoming an abused ‘modernistic’ cliché, the effect of the building is still extraordinarily contemporary…”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via gothamist.com.

WHAT: The Guest House, 242 East 52 Street, by Phillip Johnson, 1950

“This sophisticated town house, remodeled from an old stable, retains little of its original structure except for party walls.  Actually, it is a new and completely contemporary building – a handsome, unconventional house designed within the limitations of the conventional city lot.  The exterior façade is formal and closed, the symmetrical arrangement of its structural elements handled with a classic, geometric simplicity.  Unlike earlier modern houses… which were instantly radical, cubistic compositions in stark white stucco, the materials of this house – brick, glass and exposed steel – are familiar and urban.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via David Cobb Craig.

WHO: Oscar Niemeyer, Age 104, Member of the board of architects for the United Nations

“The remarkable interior space of the 75-ft.-high North Lobby is impaired by a conflict of many vacillating, unrelated ideas.  Among these disparate elements are the functional rationalism of an uncovered structural ceiling, the romanticism of curved, flying balconies reached by a geometric ramp supported on a self-consciously exposed arched steel beam, and a theatrically decorative facing wall with vertical panels of photo-sensitive patterned glass and gilded air-conditioning ducts.  The completed group of buildings, however, does succeed in suggesting one of the most important potentials of modern architecture: the effective juxtaposition of abstract, three-dimensional forms – here a horizontal, organic shape and a geometric, vertical slab – in a composition of unique dramatic contrast.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image courtesy un.org.

WEEKLY Ws: “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City” – Part 2

We recently came across a four-inch-by-six-inch paperback, just 76 pages long, hidden on a shelf of travel books.  It’s a collection of walking tours devoted to Modern Architecture compiled by the Municipal Art Society of New York and The Museum of Modern Art.  The book’s timeless suggestions are as interesting today as they were when the book was first published in 1961.  This week we’ll share some excerpts from “Tour No. 3: Third Avenue (East 50s, 40s and United Nations).”

WHY: From “Modern Architecture in New York”

“The visitor to New York, arriving with a preconceived picture of the best-publicized metropolis in the world, will find a city that is at once totally familiar and totally strange.  Photographs will have led him to expect the towering skyscrapers, the canyonlike streets, the cliffs of concrete and steel; widely published postwar building have added to this the image of shimmering towers of metal and glass.  No picture, however, has prepared him adequately for the city’s unparalleled concentration of building.  The sheer massing of monumental construction, consisting of the largest possible building on the individual site, has made New York a city in which architecture is an insistent and overwhelming factor.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

WHERE: Bonnier’s Inc.

“Still one of New York’s best-designed shops, Bonnier’s gains it particular effect from a two-story-high glass façade, through which can be seen the main selling floor and the setback balcony of the second floor, above.  This arrangement of façade and interior facilitates the use of attractive window displays of dramatic verticality.  Attention to architectural detail, as in the carefully studied divisions of the storefront and its well-designed lettering, the brick end wall carried through from exterior to interior, and the striking balcony and open stair, are pleasingly in character with the superior Scandinavian crafts and furnishings that the store promotes and sells.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via Google.

WHEN: Fifth Avenue Motors, demolished 1964

“The utilization of limited space for maximum effect is demonstrated with unusual clarity by this automobile showroom for small foreign cars.  The exterior is particularly noteworthy for the dramatic way in which the architects have divided the rather awkward high façade into a series of horizontal bands featuring the repeated name “Volkswagon”.  This well-designed lighted plastic lettering is not only singularly successful shop and product identification, but also makes a handsome esthetic pattern of the store front.  The interior, white and starkly simple, gives this small, economical car a kind of stripped down jeweler’s setting.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via Google.

WHAT: Asia House

“A small museum and headquarters for the Asia Society and Japan Society occupy the former site of two brownstones [at 112 East 64 Street, Philip C. Johnson, architect, 1959].  The façade is tinted grey glass outlined in white and is in its way as great a contrast with the existing brownstone fronts as Edward Durrell Stone’s grilled residence on the same street.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via Google. Note: The building is currently the home of the Russell Sage Foundation.

WHO: Edward Durrell Stone

“This remodeled brownstone [at 130 East 64 Street] – the architect’s own home – present a pierced terrazzo screen to the street, behind which the typical narrow, deep New York town house been converted for contemporary living.  The white exterior screen wall protecting the glass façade has become the signature of the designer, who has used it variously for a United States Embassy in New Delhi, India, the handsome American pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair, and a number of commercial and residential structures.’

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via Google.

WEEKLY Ws: Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City

In 1958 the Municipal Art Society of New York and The Museum of Modern Art jointly sponsored walking tours devoted entirely to modern architecture.  Ada Louise Huxtable prepared four tours covering midtown Manhattan.  A small pocket book titled “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City” based on her mimeographed handouts was published in 1961.  This week we’ll share excerpts from this amazing little book.