President’s Letter: September 2024

New York City has a legacy of extraordinary school buildings. More than half of the 1400 plus school buildings are over 50 years old. They include a great number of architectural masterpieces like the Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, which opened to students in 1921. It was designed in the Flemish Renaissance Revival style by CBJ Snyder. It is a show-stopper of a building on a full block surrounded by small scale residential and commercial properties. I saw it in the pouring rain on a memorable Jane’s Walk earlier this year. Snyder designed across many styles but if there is a school building that makes you look up, it is probably a Snyder design.

A member of my Board said that she always has the feeling that September is the beginning of something because of it being “back to school” month. I agree. I can almost smell the halls of PS 93 and JHS 123 I attended in the Bronx. Both schools buildings are still in use.

However, I can say that there have not been many great buildings amongst the recent vintages of new school buildings. However, twenty-four new schools opened this September. I expect to see many of those buildings submitted for the 2025 MASterworks Awards when nominations open next June. Time will tell whether they are of higher quality or not.

I do know that there have been great new library buildings in most recent years. All three systems have been working with great designers to produce award-winning buildings.

The 2024 MASterworks Awards winners includes the new Far Rockaway library in Queens, a golden building that I can’t wait to see in person. This is just the latest in a string of well-deserved recognition to the designers and the library systems themselves for excellent work conveyed by the MASterworks Awards in recent years.

Each year we share a great list of important projects that our independent jury picked out of many more that were finished and opened last year. And the MASterworks are unusual because they so often highlight great civic projects. This year is no exception.

Amongst the other winners are Pier 57 with its wonderful new outdoor and interior public spaces; Bronx Point, with a great new esplanade on a piece of the waterfront that was pretty much inaccessible before; to name but a few. This is a celebration of the City’s great design talent and the gifts they have lavished on the public. These individuals and firms deserve great recognition, as do the agencies and private companies that chose to design quality as well as function.

New York City is graced with not only stunning historic architecture and landscape, but also quite beautiful modern design, capturing the welcome of a well-designed place that has character the moment it is born.

I had the enormous pleasure of sitting on the roof deck of one of our Law Committee members, enjoying the warmth of a late summer, early fall afternoon. We were there to celebrate our Menapace Fellow Jahmel Martin as he moves from MAS to the practice of land use law with a private firm. We were at the top of one of those glorious printers’ row buildings, looking out at the Woolworth Building on one hand and the Frank Gehry tower on the other. This is a stunning juxtaposition. One building makes you appreciate the other. (The Frank Gehry still makes me wonder at how it works structurally.)

I hope you will join me and my colleagues for our MASterworks Explorations as we walk and talk with the designers who are committed to do their best right here in New York City.

Elizabeth Goldstein
President, Municipal Art Society of New York