Author: Eva_Reyes (Page 2 of 2)

The landmark Buildings in lower Manhattan has their own unique identity and some share common architectural features that makes each to relate one with the other. Some buildings are used as an inspiration for many others building for years because of its historical content and the aesthetic style.  In general landmark building highlight important events that contributed to conceptual development of it.

Throughout our class trip in the lower Manhattan I began to understand that one of tallest buildings developer strategies that characterize the landmark buildings during the 19^th century  was to have hierarchy that subdivide what was the top, medium and bottom on the buildings of 6 stories taller;each  one of the levels has different functions and programs. Furthermore, the exterior design distinguish the top, medium and bottom  levels

The bowling green is well known as the only place where the landmark in the New York city are due to the footprint of the old Dutch city of the first settlement. The us custom house was very influential for government buildings because of the architecture. Cass Gilbert built this building starting from 1905 to 1909 with the beaux arts style.it has a very impressive and enormous exterior facade that has tall Corinthians columns, pointed decorative windows and a huge arch that is used as this building (Piano Nobile) main entrance which is facing the city. This building captures people attention because of it incredible exterior design. The stock exchange and the federal hall are landmark buildings with extraordinary architecture. Both were Greek revival buildings inspired in the us custom building.

Walking through the New York City 19^th century, you could see that more than one architectural style were predominant in the city. I believe this represent how different countries architecture are used to be combined into one to give an unique identification to the city.

In this trip, I observed that most of the 19^th centuries houses   attraction is the doors entrances design known as portico. I was surprised to see how the main aesthetic of the houses was the “piano nobile” (the noble floor) main entrance, the facade was very simple and traditional. The developers of high statues buy four lots of properties together to build houses with similar pattern and same architecture style.  A vivid example are the few reddish houses facing the Washington square park has ionic columns and they are made of bricks and stucco; the portico is painted all black and the windows and doors are same height very monumental.  These houses are Greek revival. The material used on these houses exterior decorations design was iron.

Through this trip, I notice that most of the houses in Green villages are made of brick and stucco materials.  The exterior design and the capital are very simple. The Greenwich village feels like been in a different country. I felt very connected with the Italian age architecture been used in this village such as, I feel like if I was walking in Italy because of the exterior design.

When I walked to the Sheridan square street, I see how particular this street is because of the diagonal street open spaces. It intrigued me the strategies used by developers from the 19^th to put these streets together into one functional place for the people regardless the fact that this street wasn’t built with a specific structural grid.

I determined that several places in New York are completely different; the places we visited in this trip truly perform how downtown Manhattan used to look during the 19^th centuries. There was mostly houses and few skyscrapers. The buildings were built  with the most common material used during that time which was  brick, stucco, stone etc. The existing buildings and houses show what architectural styles movements were in fashion back in the 19^th century.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7U_9-I-edujNEpvRnF6eFZ1MUtnNURSTm9OWThkV2F5VXE0/view?usp=sharing

The Central Park in New York City is one of the most famous parks in the history because of its beauty and authentically connections with the city.

In 1857, the Greensward plan by Frederick Law Olmsted won the competition given to find the specific candidates to build the first central park. The landowners and merchants were inspired by the England styles of their soft and natural landscapes looks. It was designed with the purpose of creating a pastoral landscape inspired in the romanticism era. This park was meant to have picturesque features. The mainly goal of the designers were to build the ideal park for the citizens and immigrants families inhabiting the New York City.

It impacted me that the park layouts orientation is very precise to emphasize the visitor’s access to their spaces of interest. It has multi functions for the people with different classes of status to be public for them. When the designers built the central park in NYC, they assure that there will be areas for the kids and adults.  By the 19^th century they started to build playground in Central park for the kids. There is the Victorian Gardens amusement park in central park which was established in 2003. The adults and families have the accessibility to landscapes to gather and enjoy the park and to have fun in it. For instance, Central park has different paths like for pedestrians to walk, to ride bicycles, to ride horses’ coaches. People can paddle in boats in those   non-natural rivers that were created to give a more tropical look to this park.

By walking through central park, you can have good views and observe some beautiful skyscrapers and ended up being amazed by the beauty and the natural look that the designers accomplishes for this park. Being in central park feels like walking through a different world.

After the Manhattan urban development, the immigration impacted the population and economic in New York City. These changes brought consequences that led to the housing crisis problems like sanitation, plumbing, fire and diseases. The main priority of housing owner back in the 1800s was to figure out how could they fit more and more immigrants into their housing buildings in order to gain more monetary benefits. However, the tenants didn’t benefit from this because they were living uncomfortable and getting sick.

The bad use of the housing lots created issues for the tenants living in it. In 1899 the outlets maps show how inadequate were buildings organized in several places in New York City. At Halmiton street the housing buildings were badly arranged and put very close together because the landlords wanted to use all the land spaces. This brought too many problems and poorly decisions were taking which kept affecting the housing projects for many years.

The tenants were going through a tough situation since there were sanitation problems that lead to diseases issues within the housing buildings. There was a myriad of people with the contagious diseases called tuberculosis because of the lack of space and air flowing in these housing apartments since, some rooms were inappropriately design without windows. Indeed, the city wasn’t regulating air and sun during the urban development.

In conclusion the lack of organization and considerations during the housing project development started  many consistent issues which within the time were trying to be solved because of the tenement laws that were passed.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1O1Ml5ethivp-CsA5GFudNsyolhztpDH1?usp=sharing

Compare Early New York/Brooklyn Architecture and Streetscape

Even though Manhattan and Brooklyn have similar features both where developed in a different pace and has different topography and spaces organization. Both boroughs look like two different towns with similar functions. The lifestyle in the early centuries impacted the economic, societies, population and government over the years.

Manhattan and Brooklyn were best known as rural areas abounded of farms, agriculture, flora and fauna before the British bought land from the Dutch. If we talk about Borough Hall Brooklyn which was mostly surrounded by farms that were sold to use the territory to be renovated to be used for more accessible and productive spaces.  The Lenape land called the New Amsterdam during the 1800s environment was mostly houses and small business places.

The architecture in Brooklyn is full of historical background with diverse architectural styles from Greek and Rome like neoclassic and Romanesque. In willow street, there’s many different brownstones buildings with aesthetical front door design and window fancy lintel. In addition, we observed three brownstones houses one of them was the 157 willow street in Brooklyn, these buildings seems to be own by the same owner, the doors have ionic columns. In Manhattan the building 170 john street trading post exterior design was very simple, the front door columns capital was more modernistic not as the traditional columns.

The materials used in Brooklyn brownstone houses during the 18^th and 19th centuries was mostly predominant in this borough was wood within the years brick been used to replace wood since there was a big amount of fires happening because of the village was made out of the wood material.  Nowadays stucco its used  to imitate brick and to be used in façade. Some old buildings in Wall Street Manhattan Façade were made out of granite  not stucco or brick but other expensive materials to show the transition between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Eva Reyes

Arch 3522

Date: 9/8/2019

Assignment#1

Short Writing Assignment

Compare New York and Brooklyn Urban Growth and Planning

The Manhattan and Brooklyn boroughs of the New York state has changed over the years, from a rural transition to urban. The transformation of these boroughs environment and the geography took several years.  During the 1630s, The Dutch were the first to settle in these regions and others agricultural towns then the British took over them. The lands surroundings were mostly vegetation, animals and the other typical rural features. Indeed, the lands were turned to a more industrialized and civilized environment. Manhattan was growth in a quicker pace than Brooklyn. Based on people needs like for transportation, trade and exchange in the beginning of the project there were canals constructed. In there was a landscape ecology project in Manhattan. The city was built in Lenape Indian Land, in 1664 the building project starts with a small potion then throughout the time, it gets to expand. During 1811, maps were created with a grid plan to show how buildings and green spaces were arrange in Manhattan then Brooklyn adopted the same grid for its development. In comparison to Brooklyn there wasn’t no landscape project, so it was built above the existing property lines. Still in 1840 there was no build concentration and Brooklyn weren’t so developed as Manhattan at this time. In 1842, the downtown and midtown Manhattan railroad was built to be used as another transportation option. Although both were developed under a different pace and times nowadays, the two boroughs have connected through railroad lines, bridges and cars roads.