Shaping Our City: High-Rise Living, the First 50 Years

Apartment living became fashionable in the 1880s, transforming the skyline, particularly on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. This walking tour looks at the apartment building’s first half-century of development, including well-appointed “French” flats, studio buildings with double-height windows, and soaring apartment towers. We’ll discuss diverse stylistic trends, from Renaissance Revival and Neo-Gothic to Art Deco, with special attention given to West 66th Street, where many notable artists (and patrons) concentrated during the first decades of the 20th century.