In 2005, Brush Park was a neighborhood just on the edge of downtown that was still in the midst of a reinvention. Many vacant buildings were partially or wholly boarded up. Some had restoration work already underway. The spur for a lot of this development was the construction of the Crosswinds condos along Woodward Ave … Read more
The Sibley Hotel is a three-story brick block with corner conical tower and turret. A biloggial porch wraps around two sides of the building. A streetscape project resulted in new backless benches, lighting, pavers, and trash cans. Angled front-in parking maximizes the availability of parking along the street while slowing through traffic. This obelisk in … Read more
The Northern Manhattan (NoMA) Art Deco apartment houses are the most prevalent Art Deco building type surviving in the United States today. In sheer numbers, more filling stations were built (approximately 20,000), though an overwhelming number of these have been demolished, leaving apartment houses as being the most prevalent surviving building type. Washington Heights and … Read more
The English surrendered the region that Detroit is in to the U.S. on July 11, 1796. Major General Anthony Wayne was general in command at the time. Later Wayne County was named in his honor on August 15, 1796. The county embraced nearly all of the present state of Michigan and portions of Ohio, Indiana, … Read more
John Haviland (1792-1852) was one of Philadelphia’s leading architects, responsible for a number of important monuments of American architecture, including the Deaf and Dumb Institute, 1824-1825, and the New York Hall of Justice (the Tombs), 1835-38. Painter John Neagle shows Haviland sitting in front of a drawing of his best known building, the neo-Gothic Eastern … Read more
The Park Plaza is one of the first Art Deco apartment houses to have been built in the Bronx. Its designer, Martin Fine, knew of and synthesized major elements of the new modernistic skyscraper design developed in Manhattan by Raymond Hood and William Van Alen. Terra cotta panels on the Grand Concourse from the Park … Read more
“MY OPTIMISM RESTS ON MY BELIEF IN THE INFINITE / POSSIBILITIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO DEVELOP NONVIOLENCE. / .. IN A GENTLE WAY YOU CAN SHAKE THE WORLD.” / — / MOHANDAS K. GANDHI / OCTOBER 2, 1869 – JANUARY 30, 1948 / STATUE PRESENTED TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK / AND CITIZENS OF … Read more
I met Edgar Tafel on July 27, 2005. This was just two short months following my graduation from the Historic Preservation Planning program at Cornell University. Work took me to Northern Manhattan to document Art Deco apartment houses . One day after my work was done I decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum of … Read more
Shortly after completing graduate school we were invited to Northern Manhattan to document a believed collection of Art Deco apartment houses. What we found surprised even us. The overwhelming majority of the buildings that we found were of buff colored or light colored bricks with contrasting orange accents. A less common variant are buff or … Read more
