Category Archives: Offbeat

Offbeat

Fitzgerald’s use of American architectural styles in the Great Gatsby.

  Though many critics of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby have commented on the crucial importance of the buildings in the novel, none has given full and specific attention to those buildings’ particular architectural styles.1 This is surprising, since, … Continue reading

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Posted in McKim Mead & White, Offbeat | Leave a comment

OUR MEN IN HAVANA

EVEN in Cuba they know it’s a waiting game, waiting for the Castros to exit the stage, and for Cuba to open up. When Americans finally do arrive in quantity, New Yorkers will notice something familiar about Havana, for a string of New York architects found it fertile ground a century ago. Continue reading

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Posted in Elsewhere, Heritage, Restoration, Landmarks, Historic Victorian, Hotel, McKim Mead & White, Neo-classicism, Offbeat | Leave a comment

Merry Christmas from New York

There is no doubt in my mind that NYC is the most beautiful place in the world to spend Christmas. Continue reading

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Posted in Landscape Design, Offbeat | Leave a comment

Steve Jobs- A Genius of the Storefront, Too

WHEN the architect Peter Bohlin arrived for his first meeting with Steve Jobs, he wore a tie. “Steve laughed, and I never wore a tie again,” Mr. Bohlin recalled.

Thus began a collaboration that has extended from Pixar’s headquarters, completed in 2001, to more than 30 Apple Stores (and counting) around the globe, all with design work by Mr. Bohlin and his firm, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson — and Mr. Jobs himself. Continue reading

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Posted in Modern Minimalist, Offbeat, Retail | Leave a comment

The Standard- Friends in high places

The latest creation from André Balazs is a New York branch of his modish Standard hotels. Rising from one of the city’s most sought-after sites, in the heart of the Meatpacking District, two glass-curtain slabs literally jump the tracks of the High Line, the old freight railroad that’s been transformed into a park on stilts. The design spans—and expands on—a century of modern architecture. Continue reading

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Posted in High Line, Hotel, Meatpacking District, Midcentury Modern Revivial, Offbeat, Polshek Partnership, Public Space, Urban Planning | Leave a comment