The Tall (Not) Office Building: Other Uses, Other Issues

Week 4 pointedly enlarges our focus on urban commercial architecture to examine two lesser-studied types of tall buildings by use: hotels and lofts. Urban historians, A.K, Sandoval-Strausz and Andrew Dolkart, will draw on their detailed studies and analysis of these distinctive development types – Sandoval-Strausz in his book Hotel: An American History, and Dolkart especially for his study of skyscraper lofts in New York’s Garment District. For each, the analysis of the design and function of the architecture is connected to the social and economic construction of the industries they accommodate, as well as their urban context.

The format for this program, like Week 2 with Friedman and Leslie, is a pair of talks and a dialogue. A follow-up evening will offer the other participating speakers and the audience an opportunity to raise additional issues in a webinar Q&A discussion.

This discussion builds on several past lectures at The Skyscraper Museum by each speaker; the videos of these previous talks are highly recommended as background.