From colonial influence to Federal style
Witnesses of the colonial period are rare... and therefore not to be missed! From the Dutch period, one can still see, in Brooklyn, the Wyckoff House, built in 1652 and in fact the oldest house in the city; and to the north, the Dyckman House, the only example of an 18th century farmhouse preserved. Their architecture is modest and very functional, and is distinguished by the famous gambrel roof or mansard roof covered with wooden shingles. The British settlers, on the other hand, left a more elaborate architecture, largely inspired by the Georgian Palladian style. The most beautiful example of this period is the Morris-Jumel Mansion, a country residence built around 1765 and recognizable by its portico supported by four Doric columns. St. Paul's Chapel, built in 1766, is the only example of a pre-Revolutionary building that has never been modified since its creation. Its Ionic portico and bell tower are particularly remarkable.
Freed from the colonial yoke, the young republic was to acquire very beautiful buildings inspired by English neoclassicism: this is the Federal style. Among the witnesses of this elegant and refined style, let us note the Gracie Mansion, built in 1799, with a beautiful porch covered by a terrace and the James Watson House, built in 1793, which is characterized by the importance given to the entrance with a door with columns, fan-shaped transoms and framed by side days; by the use of brick; and by the presence of pediments on the gable roofs pierced by dormers. But the most beautiful example remains the City Hall of 1812, which is astonishing because it carries a double identity of style: Joseph-François Mangin gave it a French Renaissance form, while John McComb gave it his American Federal style. The City Hall had to magnify the power of the city, which is why its architects provided it with a majestic Ionic portico, a double-flight staircase and above all an impressive rotunda.
It was at this time that the city adopted its first major urban plan, the grid, which allowed the city to expand northwards according to a very precise grid plan: 12 north/south avenues crossed 155 east/west streets, forming blocks 60 m wide and 140 m long. This plan to control the city's urban development was completed with the creation of Central Park.
From Revival to Fine Arts
After the Federal style, the young republic turned to the ancient canons to symbolize its power. Greek Revival structures multiplied in the city, both in public buildings and private homes. Among the great achievements are the Federal Hall, all in white marble and built on the model of the Parthenon; 13th Church Street and its antique temple facade or the row-houses of Washington Square whose colonnades and the volutes of the cast iron gates are to be admired. The Greek Revival is followed by the Romanesque Revival, powerful and massive, characterized by semicircular arches, rubble stonework, granite facings and decorations made of interlacing and plant sculptures. But it is undoubtedly the neo-Gothic style that has left its mark on the city with its profusion of gargoyles, elaborate gables, turrets with loopholes and crenellations. Modern fortresses flourish all over the city, such as St. Patrick's Cathedral, Trinity Church or the legendary Brooklyn Bridge, an engineering masterpiece whose two neo-Gothic piers anchor the bridge, which is nearly 2 km long and has a record span of 487 m. Many other Revival styles followed : Venetian Gothic (Montauk Club in Brooklyn), Byzantine neo-Romanesque(Eldridge Street Synagogue) and of course French neo-Renaissance(Jewish Museum) and Italian. The best representatives of this last style are obviously the mythical Brownstones Houses, bourgeois houses built in red-brown sandstone extracted from the quarries of Connecticut and New Jersey. Inspired by Venetian palaces, they are distinguished by their elevated entrance, preceded by a flight of steps.
From the second half of the 19th century, New York experienced its golden age. Aware of its economic and cultural power, the city wanted its architecture to reflect this wealth. This was the advent of the Beaux-Arts style. Theatrical, grandiloquent and deeply historicist, this style produced some of the city's most beautiful buildings, starting with the Villard Houses, whose symmetry and elegance are reminiscent of the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. The Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum are also a very fine example: the chapel and cloisters were reconstructed from pieces of Romanesque Europe and rebuilt stone by stone. The New York Stock Exchange with its colossal Corinthian temple facade, Grand Central Station, the central branch of the New York Public Library and the Washington Centennial Memorial Arch are also among the most beautiful Beaux-Arts buildings.
Modernity and verticality
At the end of the 19th century, a new type of building appeared on the city's streets: cast-iron buildings . While the walls were still made of brick, the facade was equipped with a light cast-iron frame on which decorative elements were stacked or juxtaposed (in Italianate or Second Empire styles) and could be reproduced endlessly. Since the loads are no longer carried by a continuous load-bearing wall, but by steel beams and posts, the buildings can gain in height and also in luminosity thanks to the multiplication of windows. On Greene Street in Soho, don't miss the amazing string of houses with Corinthian colonnades and large windows. The Haughwout Building, with its Italian-inspired facade and large glass surfaces, is often considered the ancestor of New York skyscrapers. It was in this building that Elisha Otis installed the very first elevator... an invention that, with the lightness and power of metal frames, would allow all kinds of vertical follies.
New York's population was growing... but space was becoming increasingly scarce... there was only one solution: build high. In 1898, Louis H. Sullivan, a great representative of the Chicago School who theorized this architecture of verticality, built the Bayard Building. To emphasize the height, Sullivan used terracotta pillars whose ascending movement ends in winged caryatid figures... a symbol of success and power. But it is the Flatiron Building that is truly considered the father of all New York skyscrapers. Its narrow and triangular shape is explained by the fact that it occupies the acute angle joining Broadway to5th Avenue. Its 91 m steel frame with decorations reminiscent of Italian palaces made it, until 1909, the highest building in the world. These new steel cathedrals respond to the monumentality of the "neo" styles in an amazing architectural dialogue. Like the Woolworth Building, a true cathedral of commerce, which impresses with its neo-Gothic look, gargoyles, and a hall covered with marble and mosaics of Byzantine inspiration. If skyscrapers are mainly concentrated in the south of Manhattan, it's because its rocky base offers these giants a solid foundation... as for the Equitable Building and its 160 m high without any recess. But the multiplication of these skyscrapers creates real urban canyons preventing air and light from circulating properly. In 1916, a zoning law was created to regulate their construction. All the buildings on the edge of a plot of land had to be set back at certain levels. This explains the pyramidal and zigzagging aspect of some skyscrapers of the time. On the other hand, the recesses are not mandatory for buildings occupying only 25% or less of the parcel... nothing prevents then the most insane heights! As symbols of success, skyscrapers became the first promotional media for the power of the great capitalist empires, and the race for height was the counterpart to the fierce commercial competition they engaged in. The Chrysler Building and theEmpire State Building, masterpieces of Art Deco, are the most beautiful representatives.
International style
From the 1940s onwards, a powerful modernist movement emerged, refusing to borrow anything from history and advocating an architecture characterized by smooth volumes, an absence of façade decoration and overall dissymmetry: this is the International Style. The main facade of the Museum of Modern Art is one of the first examples of this style. But it is especially in the 1950s that New York will have the most illustrious representatives of this style. In 1952, Gordon Bunshaft built the Lever House, an astonishing parallelepiped of glass and steel placed on a platform which, for the first time, freed up space on the ground. The same year, under the impetus of a committee of architects including the Swiss Le Corbusier and the Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer, the United Nations acquired a new building for its Secretariat. A true wall of glass, it represents the importance given by the representatives of the international style to the legibility of structures made possible by the transparency of the glass panels. But it was Mies van der Rohe who designed the most famous building of the period: the Seagram Building, a brilliant combination of concrete, glass and steel, with perfect proportions and a very sober facade whose bronze mullions emphasize the supporting structure. In 1963, Walter Gropius (the founder of the Bauhaus) participated in the design of the Pan Am Building (now the Met Life Building), erected above Grand Central Terminal. Totally at odds with its environment and representative of a certain uniformity of international style, this building provoked strong criticism. Some buildings then tried to distinguish themselves, such as the Ford Foundation, a large cubic greenhouse housing a public garden in the heart of the building, or Eero Saarinen's CBS Tower, whose concrete pillars and black granite cladding give a sculptural aspect to the façade.
In the 1950s, New York acquired a unique building that has become one of its symbols: the Guggenheim Museum, designed by the unclassifiable Frank Lloyd Wright, who for a long time refused to build in New York because he rejected its excessive urbanity. The visitor is drawn up by an elevator and then descends the spiral ramp where the reel of art history unfolds before him. This sculptural architecture is the very image of American society: always in motion.
Postmodernism and contemporary architecture
As early as the 1960s, critics began to question the rigor and simplicity of the International Style. Many architects claimed to have added decoration and historical references. This is the case with the Lincoln Center and its imposing colonnaded buildings covered with travertine or the AT&T Building (now Sony Building), with its base that imposes itself by the excessiveness of its neo-Roman arches, its triangular-shaped top reminiscent of ancient pediments and its pink granite cladding concealing the metal frame. Both are the work of Philip Johnson, a former follower of minimalism who became the pope of postmodernism. In the 1980s, Cesar Pelli surprised with the 4 towers of the World Financial Center in Battery Park. All topped with different patterns and animated by redents, they are reminiscent of the splendors of Art Deco. Their glass facades reflect the water and the light, thus changing their appearance perpetually.
Since the 2000s, New York has been home to the work of so-called starchitects, the great names in architecture who have become superstars. In 1999, Christian de Portzamparc created the LVMH tower, whose glass sections seem to wrap around themselves. In 2006, Norman Foster impressed with the Hearst Tower. A first tower had been started in 1928, but only an Art Deco base was built. It is on this base that Foster erected his superb steel tower, a jewel of contemporary architecture and a model of sustainable architecture (minimization of environmental impact, use of 90% recycled steel, etc.). Another sustainable building is the Bank of America Tower, which has its own electrical cogeneration plant producing 65% of the electricity necessary for its operation. Renzo Piano was responsible for the revival of the Whitney Museum in 2015. Its asymmetrical structure, blue-gray steel and elevated park make it a building apart. Jean Nouvel is in charge of 10011th Avenue, all angles and cut-out figures. Frank Gehry created the Beekman Tower, a silhouette draped in a cascade of aluminum-brushed steel, and the New York by Gehry, a complex of homes, school and hospital. Finally, note the 520 West28th St, a futuristic building with voluptuous curves imagined by the architect Zaha Hadid.
Among the contemporary achievements, one takes a very special place: the new World Trade Center whose key element is the One World Trade Center tower, a symbol of rebirth. Designed by David M. Childs and based on plans by Daniel Liebeskind, the tower rises to more than 540 meters, or 1,776 feet, in a nod to the year America celebrated its independence. The footprint of the tower is equal to that of the twin towers. Its base of more than 60 m is made to resist explosions. Not far away, Santiago Calatrava redesigned the World Trade Center's connecting platform. His Oculus represents a dove taking flight. Everything here is a symbol of peace and resilience. In 2021, the artificial island of Little Island, a $260 million stilted park, emerged along the Hudson River.
The race for verticality, meanwhile, is still in full swing. In September 2019, the 472-meter-high Central Park Tower, the world's tallest residential tower, was inaugurated. The new Steinway Tower, completed in 2021, is the latest of the ultra-thin skyscrapers that keep sprouting in Manhattan. In recent years, finally, the Hudson Yards project has also emerged with two already iconic structures, Vessel and Edge. New York's legendary skyline is still being transformed!
New York and its gardens
Central Park is the "green lung" of New York. Completed in 1873 by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, the most famous public garden in the world is a model of landscape architecture... and politics. Indeed, its creators saw the opportunity to apply the great democratic ideals and to make it a place of social mixing. But it is only one of the representatives of the green face of New York. Thanks to the donations of generous patrons and the passion of volunteers defenders of nature, many abandoned spaces have been redeveloped and transformed into green spaces designed for all: the famous Community Gardens , which number in the hundreds. But the great originality of New York is undoubtedly its roof terraces. For Ralph Hancock, a renowned landscape architect, "an architect can no more ignore roofs in an urban environment than he can ignore plantings around a house in the country. In such a dense city, light and land are a luxury. It's not easy to bring nature to life in a concrete jungle... yet landscape architects from all over the world will compete with each other in their ingenuity to create the most amazing gardens. A look at the green face of New York in three key gardens.
Rockefeller Rooftops
Built between 1930 and 1939, the Rockefeller Center is a pioneering building. Under the impetus of John D. Rockefeller and thanks to the inventiveness of architect Raymond Hood, a unique complex was created consisting of 14 buildings designed as a single architectural entity. All of them have a rectangular basic plan that stretches lengthwise and has only 7 floors in order to take maximum advantage of the light. Right from the start of the project, the presence of roof gardens was mentioned... and not just any gardens... real expanses of earth 60 cm thick... never before has such a thickness been reached on a roof terrace. In total, 4 Art Deco gardens were created by the English landscape architect Ralph Hancock. And these gardens are at the origin of a tradition now established in New York: the gardens for the view. Don't forget that Rockefeller Center is surrounded by skyscrapers... and there are more than 100,000 windows overlooking the gardens. So Hancock chose a rigorous geometric design built for the view from a distance. From above, the dark green of the grass, the bright pink of the plants and the blue of the ponds create a stunning harmony. As much an architectural project as an urban one, Rockefeller Center has a central plaza connected toFifth Avenue by the Channel Gardens whose floral design changes regularly.
MoMA Roof Garden
In the early 2000s, architect Yoshio Taniguchi designed an extension to the city's Museum of Modern Art: the New Gallery. Only 6 floors high, this new gallery must also accommodate a garden on its roof, which is entrusted to Ken Smith, a famous landscape architect. A task which turns out to be full of pitfalls... indeed, the roof cannot support heavy loads and it is impossible to use water, at the risk of damaging the works exposed on the lower floors... thus Ken Smith can use neither ground nor alive plants. And he must also face the remarks and objections of the neighbors who want to protect their view... Smith will therefore opt for "an orchestrated illusion with graphically determined surfaces". Crushed glass will glisten like water in a pond. Rubber will be as dark as earth. Fiberglass will look like a meadow and plastic boxwood will never fade. This garden, which was meant to be camouflaged, is in reality an interesting mise en abîme of the city and its denaturation.
High Line
Built in the 1930s, the railroad served the legendary and somewhat maligned Slaughterhouse District (now a popular area!). But as road transport became more and more important, especially under the impetus of Robert Moses who designed a vast and complex network of roads linking the various districts of the city, the railroad fell into disuse. Many people wanted to see it destroyed. But this was without counting on the commitment of the Friends of the High Line association, which since 1999 has been working on the reconversion of the site... of which it has kept the rusty rails to preserve the natural aspect. Today, the High Line is a very popular walkway for New Yorkers who can enjoy a long green space 10 m above busy roads..