2004
Open House New York Weekend
Let the summer go, let tomorrow take care of itself
This year's star at Open House New York Weekend (now an annual tradition), Jazz at Lincoln Center featured guided tours showed off Rafael Vinoly's about to open building within a building as well as lots and lots of people enjoying the view, which should be even better once they finish up the new parklet at Columbus Circle.
And it most certainly is nice to see this many people here. Now in it’s second year. Open House New York promises even more sites and will hopefully get bigger and better every year, which is good because it still honestly has a lot of room to get better when you compare it to the Open House Weekend Event in London.
We had to walk all the way to the creepy meatpacking district (I don’t care how trendy it is supposed to be, it’s still pretty creepy) to see LOT/EK’s shipping container bonanza at the Bohen Foundation. It was a pretty interesting use of an uninteresting material and definitely worth that walk.
Right on West 42nd Street only a half block from the old New York Times building is The New Victory Theatre, (the one with the staircase out front) a restored hundred old building that is now used as a children’s theatre (with a three year old niece now, it seems like a future place to see some hopefully not terrible show in a few years).
Our next stop is the Chelsea Terrapin Art Gallery, a small space with an awful lot of people in it (again, a nice thing to see). It was an odd (though not necessarily good) space with a scale model of the Yangtze River in the living room.
And the last site for this year’s Open House New York slideshow was the very, very busy Paul Rudolph townhouse, with almost as many people as there were levels in the building. This is a great, small space, just as complex as you could hope for although it would probably have been a little more enjoyable if they limited the amount of people inside even more than they did. Still, this was a great building to go inside and one that I never really knew even existed, and being able to visit it is exactly what I love about New York finally having its own Open House New York Weekend.
Keep going back in time. Open House New York 2003 is next.
