AIA New York organizes several different walking tours throughout Manhattan and the boroughs, with a special focus on modern and contemporary architecture. Expert guides, all members of AIA New York, walk intimate groups of visitors through some of New York City’s most distinctive neighborhoods, exploring the city’s rich history and stunning new buildings, as well as creative examples of adaptive reuse, urban planning, and development.
Questions? Email [email protected].
Upcoming Walking Tours
Walking Tour: Contemporary Architecture and Historic Landmarks in NoHo
In-Person- AIANY Member: $25
Meet at the South Facade of the Cooper Union Foundation Building at 7 East 7th Street, between Cooper Square and The Bowery. Please arrive 15 minutes before the start of the tour.
The rich and diverse architectural context of NoHo’s Historic Districts continues to inspire innovative contemporary design. The highly crafted execution of many of the recent buildings in the neighborhood shows reverence for earlier masterworks. Tour highlights include Morphosis’ Cooper Union Engineering Building, Herzog & de Meuron’s 40 Bond Street, DDG Partners’ 41 Bond Street, and Selldorf Architects' 10 Bond Street. Also encountered is a fine group of 19th-century landmarks, including the Cooper Union Foundation Building, Astor Library (now the Public Theater), and the De Vinne Press, all of which grappled to find the appropriate architectural language for taller buildings so clearly illustrated by Louis Sullivan’s Bayard-Condict Building’s dominant vertical expression. Along the route, a discussion of technological and stylistic breakthroughs, including the transition from masonry load bearing to steel frame construction and the appearance of more varied cladding materials, will stitch the tour’s sites together.
AIANY Guide: Alex McLean, AIA
AIANY cannot be held liable and assumes no responsibility for any injury or loss incurred by participants in these programs. Tour is limited to 15 attendees. Walkups cannot be guaranteed a spot on the tour.
Cancellation Policy:
AIANY Walking Tours take place rain or shine, please dress for the weather. There are no refunds, cancellations, or exchanges, unless we cancel a tour.
Walking Tour: Medieval Lower Manhattan
In-Person- General Public: $30
Meet across the street from Trinity Church at 89 Broadway. Please arrive 15 minutes before the start of the tour.
New York City was originally known as New Amsterdam when it was founded in 1625 as a trading and resupply post for The Netherland’s West India Trading Company. In 1664, the British took control of New Amsterdam and changed its name to New York City. It became a key city in England’s expansionist colonization of North America, yet the Dutch culture of commerce and trade is embedded in the core of NYC’s purpose and history. The downtown district is rich in the city’s historic development of buildings, national political history, and the evolution of a capitalist economy centered on Wall Street. We will walk the circumference of New Amsterdam as it existed in 1664—sites include Wall Street, the NY Stock Exchange, Fraunces Tavern, India House, and Federal Hall National Memorial. This walking tour highlights the contrast in urban form actualized during the Netherlands' transition into its late Medieval and Renaissance eras and into the 1811 NYC Commissioners’ City Plan—the city’s famous street grid.
AIANY Guide: William M. Singer, AIA, LEED AP BD + D
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AIANY cannot be held liable and assumes no responsibility for any injury or loss incurred by participants in these programs. Tour is limited to 17 attendees. A personal audio system will be in use for this tour. The tour is limited to 17 attendees. To insure each guest will receive a device, please arrive promptly 15 minutes prior to the start time. Walkups cannot be guaranteed a spot on the tour.
Cancellation Policy:
AIANY Walking Tours take place rain or shine, please dress for the weather. There are no refunds, cancellations, or exchanges, unless we cancel a tour.
Walking Tour: The Architecture of Park Avenue South
In-Person- AIANY Member: $25
Meet at SW Corner of 42nd Street and Park Avenue inside the atrium of the Philip Morris Building; Please arrive 15 minutes prior to tour start time.
Park Avenue, below Grand Central Terminal, and Park Avenue South (formerly Fourth Avenue) pass through the historic neighborhoods of Murray Hill and Rose Hill and the more recently named Flatiron and NoMad districts. Once the insurance row of Manhattan, today these neighborhoods feature a lively mix of commercial, residential, and institutional uses, including transformed Class B office buildings and recent ground-up additions.
Within this corridor lies an encyclopedia of the architecture of New York City. Charles Follen McKim, Stanford White, and Horace Trumbauer prominently represent the 19th Century, while projects by Cass Gilbert, Ely Jacques Kahn, and Harvey Wiley Corbett usher in the first forty years of the 20th Century. Contemporary work by Ennead Architects, Michael Graves, Renzo Piano, Pelli Clarke Pelli, Christian de Portzamparc, and Gwathmey Siegel are also highlighted on the avenues and adjacent blocks.
This tour examines urban design and architectural issues in Park Avenue South, including NYC zoning, the Manhattan grid, POPS bonus plazas, Class A and Class B office buildings, and façade organizing principles.
AIANY Guide: Joseph Lengeling, AIA
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Health and Safety Guidelines:
AIANY cannot be held liable and assumes no responsibility for any injury or loss incurred by participants in these programs. The tour is limited to 17 attendees. Walkups cannot be guaranteed a spot on the tour.
Cancellation Policy:
AIANY Walking Tours take place rain or shine. Please dress for the weather. There are no refunds, cancellations, or exchanges, unless we cancel a tour.
Walking Tour: Upper East Side Architecture Through Affluence and Ailments
In-Person- General Public: $30
Meet at the SW corner of 78th Street at Madison Avenue
Two critical events irreparably changed Manhattan’s Upper East Side into the residential district it is today—the creation of Central Park (1857) and Park Avenue north of Grand Central Terminal (1888). While Central Park defined the Upper East Side; Park Avenue refined it. Wealth followed the open and recreational spaces of Central Park while Park Avenue effectively separated the served from the servants—and those in between. In addition to the professional class that settled on Park Avenue, or closely to its eastside, artisanal and working-class immigrant ethnic communities developed between Lexington Avenue and the East River. Hospitals and medical facilities evolved along the East River because of its salutary open space (and distance from the wealthy)—no “Magic Mountain” here for those with Tuberculosis. From railroads to housing laws, the development of the urban fabric in the UES as a significant residential district in Manhattan captures major shifts in the social, economic, political, and physical evolution of NYC.
AIANY Guide: William M. Singer, AIA, LEED AP BD + D
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AIANY cannot be held liable and assumes no responsibility for any injury or loss incurred by participants in these programs. Tour is limited to 17 attendees. A personal audio system will be in use for this tour. To insure each guest will receive a device, please arrive promptly 15 minutes prior to the start time. Walkups cannot be guaranteed a spot on the tour.
Cancellation Policy:
AIANY Walking Tours take place rain or shine, please dress for the weather. There are no refunds, cancellations, or exchanges, unless we cancel a tour.
Policies
AIANY Walking tours take place rain or shine, please dress for the weather. There are no refunds, cancellations, or exchanges, unless we cancel a tour.
Accessibility
Please note that AIANY walking tours are not ADA accessible. However, since accessibility requirements can vary from person to person, please email [email protected] prior to purchasing your tickets for more information.