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“New York City is world class and intensely local, grand yet intimate. I moved here from the Midwest in the nineties and have practiced architecture here for more than thirty years. What I have come to understand is that New York is not a single place. It is a collection of vibrant neighborhoods that add up to much more. Scale shifts as you turn a corner. Cross an avenue and you are somewhere else entirely. It is a city that rewards attention and punishes the lack of it. A drawing tells you what a building is supposed to be, but standing on the street in front of it tells you what it actually does. That distinction is what New York has been teaching me, sometimes patiently, sometimes not. It is why I have loved it all these years.”
– Trent Tesch, KPF Principal
The pastry annex inside the old AT&T Long Lines Building lobby. You’re eating croissants under a Guastavino-adjacent vault.
A second-floor room above Houston Street with one of the best wine programs in the city. Go for the way the light works late afternoon.
Tiny, fish-forward, in a Federal-era rowhouse. Ten tables.
Reopened by the Frenchette team. NYC’s oldest French restaurant (1937), restored rather than reinvented. Banquettes, etched glass, the whole thing.
The 1983 Lynn Wagenknecht / Keith McNally room, still doing what it’s always done. Zinc bar, tile floor, banquettes, soft light. One of the few unfussed-with rooms of its era left in the city.
Ayesha Nurdjaja’s Levantine room. Open hearth, copper everything.
Daniel Boulud’s steakhouse within the KPF-renovated One Madison Avenue. Rich, tactile interiors by Rockwell Group.
Missy Robbins’ converted auto-body shop. The long pasta bar and Roman & Williams interior is one of the great restaurant rooms of the last decade. Misi (her second) is also worth knowing.
Eastern Mediterranean, gorgeous tiled hearth, neighborhood crowd.
French brasserie in a beautifully proportioned room with original timber columns.
Obvious, but the Ludwig Bemelmans murals are an actual landmark. Go on a weeknight at 5pm.
Toby Cecchini’s restoration of a 1950s diner. The original neon sign and Formica are still there.
Tiki bar inside an 1879 landmarked dining room. Gage & Tollner downstairs is a near-perfect interior restoration in its own right.
Unmarked door at 134 Eldridge. The original Milk & Honey space.
Reopened 2022. The original 1989 interior preserved; one of the great moody rooms.
Tiny standing-room Italian aperitivo bar. Marble counter, brass detailing, perfect.
French dive done right. The signage alone is worth a walk-by.
Christian Liaigre interiors inside a Romanesque Revival loft building by Henry Hardenbergh (yes, the Dakota and Plaza guy). Still the quietest luxury in the city; the lobby reads like a private club.
A 1909 Beaux-Arts ferry terminal converted into a hotel. Worth it just to walk through the restored Great Hall.
Morris Adjmi’s adaptive reuse of a 1901 cooperage. The exposed timber, cast iron columns, and steel-framed industrial windows are exactly the right vocabulary.
Sean MacPherson’s quietest project. Reclaimed everything, leaded glass, real patina. The lobby fireplace room is a study in restraint.
The porthole-windowed former National Maritime Union HQ (Albert Ledner, 1966). A genuinely strange piece of mid-century in a city that doesn’t have many.
Three connected storefronts on East 2nd. The Astier de Villatte ceramics room is a small masterpiece of merchandising-as-installation.
The best photography bookstore in the city, in a basement under one of the great cast-iron blocks.
The Seaport location is in a restored Schermerhorn Row building.
Postmodern-leaning design objects. They have a great eye.
Now in a townhouse. Browsing is more like walking through a curated home.
Vintage and contemporary furniture, very edited.
Vintage workwear and Japanese goods inside a beautiful old storefront under the Manhattan Bridge.
Tacklebox Architecture did several NYC stores; each is site-specific and worth seeing as small projects in their own right.
McKim Mead & White original (1906), Renzo Piano addition (2006). One of the few cases where a contemporary intervention truly improves the original.
Worth the trip. The garden is the building.
Just reopened after Selldorf renovation. Go now while the conversation about the renovation is still live.
Louis Kahn’s last work, completed posthumously. The granite room at the tip is one of the great spaces in the city.
Saarinen, obviously. Worth flying through JFK just to walk it.
The drive up the West Side is half the experience.
Richard Upjohn gates, Battle Hill, the catacombs tour when it runs. Genuinely strange and beautiful.
Rooftop farms with skyline views few tourists find.
The ferry ride is part of the experience. On the island: Adjaye’s Hills, the historic district, Liggett Hall.
Working-harbor character that’s mostly disappeared elsewhere.
Aymar Embury II bathhouse (1932), now beautifully decayed. Best beach trip in the city.
Bring a coffee. Sit on the granite ledge. Watch how the plaza actually works.
All of Manhattan falling away under your feet. Best at sunrise or sunset but good always. Not to mention, designed by KPF.
Zion & Breen’s pocket park with the waterfall. Still the best small public space in the city.
Sasaki / Goldberg, less famous than Paley, arguably better.
Outdoor in summer. A small civic gesture that works.
James Corner Field Operations. Watch the East River and the way the sugar-refinery armature was kept.
Cliché but unbeatable; the cantilevered structure is itself an interesting piece of mid-century engineering.
Best for sunset and watching the West Side work.
Whatever you think of Calatrava, the empty hall at 7am is something.
