Join Us December 7th at 3pm for a Free Lecture

"New York in the Greek Revival Era 1830 - 1850"

With Architectural Historian Barry Lewis

The Greek Revival decades were the beginning of the modern era in New York. Industrialization hit the city by the 1830s completely changing the landscape. Wall Street was re-built for corporate headquarters including a magnificent U.S. Custom House, suburbia was born (around Washington Square), the immigrants and tenement slums arrived (the Five Points) and the modern notion of high-end shopping began when A.T. Stewart opened America's first department store (today, it houses the NYC Department of Buildings) at Broadway and Chambers Street in 1845. Come back with us to a New York that had that was being transformed from pre-modern town to a great industrial metropolis---the New York of the Greek Revival age.

Barry Lewis is an architectural historian who focuses on the evolution of modernism in European and American architecture of the 18th to 20th centuries. Educated at the University of California at Berkeley, the Sorbonne, Paris, and the New School for Social Research in NYC, he teaches at Cooper Union Continuing Education and has recently retired from 23 years at the New York School of Interior Design. He's known in New York City for the decade long series of video walks he co-hosted with David Hartman and produced by WNET Channel Thirteen, including the Emmy award nominated 42nd Street, Broadway and Harlem as well Brooklyn, Greenwich Village and Central Park. He also was the on-camera commentator for Thirteen's Dutch New York, produced in 2009 to honor New York's Dutch origins. His tips on Paris sites are included in the just released-September 2014--City Secrets: Paris as his observations were included in the original volume of that series, City Secrets: Rome, published in 2000 and updated in 2011.

Lecture is FREE but pre-registration is required! Program will take place in the Van Norden Carriage House. Free Parking. Handicapped accessible.