Vernacular Architecture of the Upper West Side Walking Tour
Please join LANDMARK WEST! and friends for
Vernacular Architecture of the Upper Upper West Side
A Walking Tour with Andrew Scott Dolkart
Thursday, June 21, 2007 (rain or shine)
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Meet at Strangers’ Gate (east side of Central Park West at 106th Street). To make sure we start on time, tickets must be purchased in advance by calling on Landmark West’s NEW EVENT Hotline or emailing us (212-496-1714; [email protected]) and sending your check for $25 to LANDMARK WEST!, 45 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023. Space is limited.
The Upper West Side is literally filled with vernacular architecture, referring to buildings and streetscapes that, while they may not have been designed by New York’s most prestigious architects for elite clients, reflect our city’s social, cultural and historical evolution in compelling ways. Starting at the former New York Cancer Hospital (Charles C. Haight, 1884-86), a prime example of high-style architecture, Andrew Scott Dolkart will lead us on a tour of remarkable buildings by lesser-known but talented architects who worked primarily for speculative developers.
Together, these builders – often recent immigrants – adapted popular architectural forms to the demands of a dense city. Their deep influence on New York’s streetscapes is visible among the eclectic, Queen-Anne-style rowhouses of Manhattan Avenue (recently designated as a historic district by the Landmarks Preservation Commission), the tenements and “French Flats” along Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, the Broadway commercial corridor, the pre-war apartment buildings of West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, and brownstone side streets. Our park-to-park walk will reveal a cross-section of New York City housing types. We will wind up at Straus Park (106th Street) in time to enjoy one of the hundreds of free concerts taking place in public spaces throughout the city as part of the landmark music festival, “Make Music New York.”
Andrew Scott Dolkart is an architectural historian, writer, the James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University and a founding Board member of LW!. His book, Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development, won the American Association of Publishers Scholarly Book Award for best book in Architecture and Urban Design in 1998.
LANDMARK WEST! is a non-profit award-winning community group working since 1985 to preserve the best of the Upper West Side’s architectural heritage from 59th to 110th Street between Central Park West and Riverside Drive. Owing in large part to our advocacy, there are nearly 2,700 designated landmarks in this area (up from only 337 in 1985).