By Aaron Ginsburg, Mon, March 13, 2023 Rendering courtesy of MdeAS Architects
The 35-story landmarked McGraw-Hill Building in Hell’s Kitchen will soon be home to 224 luxury rentals. As first reported by the New York Post, the project includes the redesign of the building’s office space, the construction of a second lobby and entrance, and the restoration of the McGraw-Hill name above the residential entrance. Floors 12 through 34 of the Art Deco skyscraper will be converted to residential use, which will cost an estimated $100 million. Work will begin this summer.
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By Aaron Ginsburg, Fri, October 21, 2022 All photos courtesy of Sylvester Zawadzki
The 90-year-old Art Deco bathhouse at Jacob Riis Park will be restored to its former glory as a beachfront hub under a $50 million rehabilitation project unveiled Thursday. CBSK Developers and the architect firm Beyer Blinder Belle will transform the iconic, but underutilized, 1932 building into a multi-purpose public space with restaurants, a bar, a pool, event spaces, and a 28-room boutique hotel.
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By Michelle Cohen, Thu, October 21, 2021 Image credit: Magnum Real Estate.
The landmarked 32-story building at 100 Barclay Street–formerly known as the Barclay-Vesey Building–is considered by some to be the world’s first Art Deco skyscraper. Designed by notable Jazz Age architect Ralph Walker, the building first opened in 1927; the tower’s upper floors were reimagined as luxurious loft residences in 2015. The grandest of these, unit 20B, is a four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath home that spans 3,665 square feet, currently on the market for $8.8 million.
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By Devin Gannon, Wed, February 24, 2021 Photo credit: Lynn Farrell on behalf of the Art Deco Society of New York
An effort to preserve one of New York City’s best examples of Art Deco design is underway. The owner of the McGraw-Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street has tapped MdeAS Architects to redesign and modernize the structure’s exterior, including new doors and signage. But after renderings from the architects surfaced on Twitter this month that showed what looked to be the 1931 lobby of the Hell’s Kitchen building devoid of its iconic alternation blue-green steel bands and other signature elements designed by Raymond Hood, preservationists and architectural groups sprung into action.
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By Lucie Levine, Mon, January 27, 2020 Recently, 6sqft brought you 20 fascinating photos of New York in the ’20s, and now, we invite you to celebrate the new decade by following in the footsteps of the fanciest flappers in the five boroughs. Ahead, check out 10 places in NYC today to relive the Roaring Twenties. On this list, you’ll find theaters, bars, and hotels; Art Deco masterpieces; addresses favored by the Follies and Fitzgerald; and at least one spot where New York offers up “its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”
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By Lucie Levine, Fri, January 5, 2018 Photo of the 1931 Beaux Arts Ball courtesy of the Van Alen Institute
The architects who built the Jazz Age really knew how to get down. In January 1931, they turned the city’s annual Beaux Arts Ball into the ultimate Gatsby-approved bash. Instead of the stuffy historicism of years past, the party’s theme was “Fête Moderne — a Fantasie in Flame and Silver.” Advance advertising for the Ball in the New York Times promised an event “modernistic, futuristic, cubistic, altruistic, mystic, architistic and feministic,” featuring the city’s most renowned architects dressed as their buildings, celebrating both themselves and the modern fantasy metropolis they had forged in flame and silver. Art Deco New York: the skyscraper city, glittering and strong, reaching ever higher – through technological advancement and American ingenuity – toward excitement, prosperity, enlightenment, and power.
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By Dana Schulz, Mon, July 10, 2017 When it comes to Art Deco architecture in NYC, Anthony W. Robins is your guy. A native New Yorker, 20-year veteran of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and author of books on Grand Central Terminal, the World Trade Center, and the art and architecture of the subway system, Robins is considered the foremost expert on the ornamental, geometric style, having organized the first regularly scheduled series of Art Deco tours through the Art Deco Society of New York in 1981.
Robins has now taken over 30 years of experience in New York’s Art Deco architecture and distilled it into his latest book, “New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture.” Starting with an introduction on the style and its history in NYC, the book includes 15 walking tour itineraries across the boroughs, each with a handy map designed by legendary cartographer John Tauranac. 6sqft has partnered up with the author to offer a signed copy of the book to one reader.
HERE’S HOW TO ENTER:
Snap a picture (using your best photography skills, of course) of your favorite piece of Art Deco architecture anywhere in the five boroughs. Share it with us on Instagram @6sqft with the hashtag #6sqftArtDeco and the location. On Tuesday, July 11th we’ll pick our favorite photo and give one lucky reader a signed copy of “New York Art Deco.”
By Devin Gannon, Fri, June 23, 2017 A vintage postcard of the Airlines Terminal Building, via drivingfordeco.com
For more than 30 years, the Art Deco-style Airlines Terminal Building served millions of travelers as a spot where flight tickets servicing New York could be purchased and where passengers could board shuttle buses to take them to the various airports. The building, located on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and 42nd Street, sat on the former site of the Hotel Belmont, which was built in 1906 and later demolished in 1930. Construction of the Airlines Terminal began in 1939 to create the chic, futuristic design, which included a steel frame and a crown flanked by two eagles.
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By Devin Gannon, Wed, May 17, 2017 Architecture firm Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) has just released a design research project that applies contemporary construction techniques and designs to famous NYC Art Deco landmarks. Part of their goal is to redesign landmarks so that aren’t just beautiful, but so they have unique personalities and remain relevant over time. Through their research project, called New(er) York, HWKN selected twelve timeless landmarks that represent New York. Some of these include iconic structures like the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, One Wall Street, the Woolworth Building and the Flatiron.
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By Hannah Frishberg, Mon, January 30, 2017 Under the New Yorker Hotel, a former guest convenience has been rendered an Art Deco artifact by the times. While not built to be a secret, a tunnel connecting the Midtown hotel’s lobby to Penn Station was sealed on the station’s side sometime in the 1960s and subsequently forgotten, according to Atlas Obscura.
See what the tunnel looks like today, almost a century later