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 tours@aiany.org.
Upcoming Walking Tours
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 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: Madison Avenue, High Fashion, and Historic Preservation
In-Person- General Public: $30
Meet at the Madison Avenue BID offices: 29 East 61 Street, Third Floor, New York, NY 10065
Join AIANY and the Madison Avenue BID as we set out to discover the history behind Madison Avenue’s landmark buildings and explore how high-fashion retail has been incorporated into the district to create a world-famous shopping destination. The area has evolved from brownstones built in the 1870s and 1880s to lavish Beaux Arts townhouses by celebrated architects such as McKim, Mead & White, Carrère & Hastings, and Ernest Flagg, to luxury apartment buildings designed by Rosario Candela, Emery Roth, and others. Since the early 20th century, many of these historic residential buildings have been transformed to accommodate prestigious stores. The tour will examine architecture from 1870 to the present on and near Madison in the East 60s and 70s, an area entirely within the Upper East Side Historic District. We will consider how landmark designation has preserved the avenue’s distinctive character.
This monthly tour is offered in partnership with the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District (BID), a public-private partnership established in 1996 with the goal of enhancing the quality of life for the community and its visitors. The BID focuses on public safety, sanitation, promotion and advocacy for the district, striving to make Madison Avenue a more attractive and dynamic place in which to shop, live, work and visit.
AIANY Guide: John Arbuckle, Assoc. 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. 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: Two Squares (Union to Madison)
In-Person- General Public: $30
Meet at the SW Corner of Union Square in the immediate proximity of the subway entrance.
Powerful political and economic forces are captured in NYC’s urban texture from 14th to 26th Street; recorded in this micro walk of Manhattan are 65 years of macro-U.S. history (1865 to 1930). The impact of America’s first Industrial Revolution (steel, transportation, electricity, communications, insurance, mass-produced consumer products with the development of department stores and the leisure class to start our consumer society) can be easily imagined in the limited geography from Union to Madison Square. By walking Broadway from its Union Square hinge point—its urban shift from orthogonal to angled—by way of Madison Square we will follow a short section of this anomalous Indian trail, now embedded in NYC’s most famous street, as it blazes across the rigidity of the mighty Grid. From open space riot control to English Romantic Garden, the two squares of this walk bookend a compelling narrative of NYC history, with highlights including the Lincoln Building, Zeckendorf Towers, the Warren Building, the Flat Iron Building, One Madison Park, and the commemorative Madison Oak tree in Madison Square.
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. 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: Historic Buildings and New Interventions in SoHo
In-Person- General Public: $30
Meet at the Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Pl New York, NY 10012
The SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District, created in 1973, is dominated by remarkably intact mid-19th century architecture. Originally designed for both commercial and manufacturing uses, most of these buildings have been adapted for residential use. Meanwhile, over the last three decades, several entirely new buildings have been approved by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission as “appropriate" for inclusion within the district.
This tour looks at these recent buildings as well as significant historic sites to examine a range of design strategies—some highly contextual and others more interpretive—for historic districts. The following buildings are included, among many others: Scholastic Building by Aldo Rossi, 40 Mercer by Jean Nouvel, 529 Broadway by BKSK, 27 Wooster by KPF, XOCO 325 by DDG, the 1857 Haughwout Building, the meticulously restored 101 Spring Street (Judd Foundation), 478-482 Broadway by Richard Morris Hunt, and the 1904 Little Singer Building by Ernest Flagg.
AIANY Guide: Tim Hayduk
Health and Safety Guidelines:
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. 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: Mid-Century Modernism Along Manhattan’s 53rd Street
In-Person- General Public: $30
Meet on the SE Corner of 51st Street and Third Avenue
Manhattan’s 53rd Street corridor, especially from Third Avenue to Sixth Avenue, is a benchmark for the development of NYC’s 1961 Zoning Resolution, the nation’s first comprehensive city zoning regulation. In addition to several of NYC’s iconic post-WWII buildings, such as the Lever House and CBS Building, is the creation of “heroic” open public space—the wide-open Seagram Building plaza to the intimate enclosure of the Paley “Vest Pocket” Park. While 53rd Street is primarily a commercial corridor, one finds high-rise and low-rise residential, a house of worship, an iconic hotel, and a globally recognized cultural institution. The underlying theme of the walk will be the post-WWII development of modern urbanism in NYC as demonstrated in the transition from the 1916 Zoning Resolution to respond to a post-WWII economic boom, the development of modern, high-rise office buildings with open office plans, and the increased use of the automobile. The 1961 Zoning Resolution coordinated use and bulk regulations, incorporated parking requirements, and emphasized the creation of open space.
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 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.
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 tours@aiany.org prior to purchasing your tickets for more information.