architectural history
The Andrew Freedman Home is No Longer Empty

The founder and the director of an organization that revitalizes neighborhoods by curating exhibitions in empty spaces discuss their process of transforming a Bronx landmark into a temporary venue for contemporary art.

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The Unfinished Grid: Panel Recap

In a deceptively modest-seeming exhibition hall on the first floor of the Museum of the City of New York is a show titled The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011, a history of the 1811 plan for …

Manhattan’s Master Plan: Why NYC Looks the Way it Does

New Yorkers take it for granted that we can say things like “meet me at 85th Street and Third Avenue” and know that regardless of whether someone has been to that intersection, they will easily be able to get there. It’s all thanks to Manhattan’s legendary street grid, which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year.

A little history of the grid
In 1807, frustrated by years of uncontrolled development and a decade of public health epidemics attributed to lower Manhattan’s cramped and irregular streets…

Cycle Tracks and the Evolving American Streetscape

David Vega-Barachowitz investigates the policies, stakeholders and theories that have historically shaped street design standards in the US, and calls on designers to rethink how we share and use our roads.

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Layers of History: The Orchard Beach Pavilion

Curator Deborah Wye explains how the Orchard Beach Pavilion inspired her to research and present the building’s history, to advocate for its preservation and to explore the city through some of its neglected civic architecture.

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Starrett City: A Home of One’s Own — With Party Walls

Rosalie Genevro offers a historical snapshot of Starrett City and challenges us to question conventional notions of “house” and “home” in American culture.

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Unseeing Modernism: Ezra Stoller at Yossi Milo Gallery

Walking into an exhibition of Ezra Stoller photographs induces a specific kind of vertigo. Tightly grouped zones of square, white frames regiment the wall planes of the white-cubic gallery space; within the frames, monuments of 20th century modernism continue to reflect their mysterious light, vanguards of the era now as embedded in the collective mindframe as the temples of antiquity. Stoller’s articulation of the various species of…

The Omnibus Roundup – ACS Maps, Redistricting, City Concealed, Swoon’s Walki, People and Buildings

CENSUS MAPS
This week, the Census Bureau released its first 5-year American Community Survey (ACS) estimates, based on data about economic and social trends collected from 2005-2009. The ACS is an annual survey that gathers information from a sampling of US citizens to evaluate of economic and social…

The Omnibus Roundup – Open Cities, Candela Found, Playgrounds, “Cities,” Huxtable and Erasure

#OPENCITIES
As our Twitter followers have no doubt noticed, members of the Omnibus team are currently in Washington, DC for Next American City’s conference Open Cities: New Media’s Role in Shaping Urban Policy. It has been two days of …

The Candela Structures: Architecture as Storytelling

Kirsten Hively visits the Candela Structures, relics of the 1964/5 World’s Fair, and encourages us to investigate the stories behind our city’s forgotten structures and spaces.

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