2008
Open House New York Weekend
No I know I won't forget you, but I'll forget myself if the city will forgive me
We’re starting my sixth consecutive Open House New York Weekend at a site I’ve been to before. This is PS 260, which is not a school but instead a media company, who opened their offices and their rooftop deck for people like me to visit.
The reason that I returned to PS 260 wasn’t for the view (although honestly, that’s one hell of a view of the Empire State Building), but rather that I convinced a few architect friends (most of my friends at this point in my life appear to be architecture or design adjacent), and I thought this was a great site to start with. Easy access, quick visit, centrally located and a great view, what’s not to like?
This was quickly followed by another quick stop. The Church of the Transfiguration is probably open just about anytime you want to go, but with Open House New York you not only know it’s open but you also now know it even exists. The Open House New York site list is almost like a treasure map, where you start finding and noticing buildings and sites you probably never heard of, as well as sites you heard of but were never really open to the public.
Still in the same area, we made another quick stop at the Prince George Ballroom, another treasure map site that I never heard of before. It was nice but not amazing, but that’s ok, everywhere can’t be the best site ever.
The Prince George Ballroom may have been just ok (sorry, Prince George Ballroom), but the cheese caves at Murray’s Cheese were far more fun. Architecturally and design speaking they weren’t anything special, but the guided tour that took you down to the space was just downright fascinating and came with some free cheese to sample. Maybe if the Prince George Ballroom gave out free things we would have liked it more.
This is a building that I have seen many times but only with Open House New York can you actually see inside. The Harry F. Sinclair House is a mansion in a really prominent location - East 79th Street and Central Park West. Today it houses the Ukrainian Institute and is impressive both outside and in. The guided tours explained the history and some of the issues of maintaining and restoring a landmarked 120 year old mansion, which is (as I’m sure you realize) not easy. Great building, great site, thanks Open House New York.
This year Open House New York offered night lighting tours, reminding me that digital photography still hasn’t mastered really good night photos yet. This night lighting tour was at the Elevated Acre at 55 Water Street, a public park that you need to take a stairs or escalator up to see. Once there, you have great views of Brooklyn, or, to be more accurate, pretty much the same view of Brooklyn as you do from South Street but from just a few floors higher.
Another Open House New York site that I was really looking forward to this year was the construction tour of Shigeru Ban’s Metal Shutter Houses, near the soon to open High Line (which I still can’t quite believe is actually getting built). The preview center was great and the tour guide was interesting but construction, well, that seemed to be lagging behind. Sure foundations can be interesting, but in this case, we were all just looking at a pit and wondering why we were there looking at it.
On Sunday I was now all by myself (that’s ok, I don’t mind), so I headed out to Queens to see the new Queens Theatre in the Park designed by Caples Jefferson. It is located to the adjacent (and possibly structurally dangerous) New York State Pavilion by Philip Johnson from the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and it feels well designed for its location.
Not an Open House New York site, but possibly one in the future. Here side by side are Shea Stadium and the terribly named CitiField. This is the end of the road for Shea, which honestly is probably ok. I never quite hated it but it was never that great of a building, and whenever I got cheap seats it felt like I spent all my time on ramps trying to get out of the building. I’m not sure how the new stadium will be, but I’ll be sure to check it out sometime next year.
Keep going back in time. Open House New York 2007 is next.
