Juan Monroy

The tenth annual Open House New York weekend begins tomorrow. Sarah and I have bought tickets to several tours for both Saturday and Sunday. There will undoubtedly be a ton of photos that I will post here, but I’m looking forward to hopping around this city to see as much cool architecture as we can.

Here’s our schedule for the weekend:

We begin on Saturday with a tour of the Roosevelt House, a recently renovated townhouse in the east 60s that was home to Franklin D. and his family. That’s not the only former Roosevelt home open this weekend. There’s also Theodore Roosevelt’s birthplace since it’s open from 10:30 – 4:00 on Saturday. I tried to go with my mom when she was here last summer, but it was closed for renovations

Later that afternoon, we shuffle to the west side for a walking tour of the public spaces around Lincoln Center. The tour will highlight works by many luminaries of modern architecture, ranging from Eero Saarinen to the very active firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

We have tickets for a tour of the Phillip Johnson–designed Four Season restaurant. We saw the inside of the Four Seasons back in February when we went on a [scavenger hunt of modern architecture][scavenger] sites in New York. The tour is on Saturday afternoon, which is challenging for me because that’s the same time as the Robots are playing in the third and deciding game of the McCarren Cup finals.

On Sunday, we have start with a demonstration of sound acoustics. at the Arup SoundLab in lower Manhattan.

At noon, we’re taking a tour of the last remaining segment of the old High Line that has not yet been developed as a park. The High Line at the Rail Yards is a last opportunity to see the abandoned rail line in its undeveloped state. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re due for rain on Sunday so I hope we can still see this before it becomes one of the city’s most popular parks.

After that, we’re heading to Queens for couple of tours that don’t require reservations. The first is a tour of the old TWA Flight Center at Kennedy Airport, a Eero Saarinen project that is inside of Terminal 5, currently the home of JetBlue’s hub at JFK. The terminal is exciting because it was constructed at the dawn of the jet age and shows the futuristic optimism of that era. While connecting to the AirTrain in Jamaica, we’ll make our way to the King Manor Museum in Jamaica. I first saw this when I was marking the route for the Ride to Montauk, and I’m glad that they are participating so I can finally see this place.

Chances are slim that I’ll be too busy to post updates throughout the weekend, but I’ll be posting photos to Flickr as soon as I can and then later on this website.