Demolition is proceeding on Parkside Memorial Chapel, one of Queens Boulevard’s fine examples of midcentury Modern commercial architecture. Efforts have now turned to saving the large bronze water sculpture by Long Island artist Arnold Stone that was commissioned for the site.
The lobby of the landmarked McGraw-Hill Building on W. 42nd Street has been demolished, as first reported in The Architect’s Newspaper March 11. Designed by Raymond Hood and completed in 1931, the building’s exterior is protected by city landmark designation but not the publicly accessible spaces of its integral lobby.
Another lobby is making the news. At a February 9 virtual Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting to review exterior modifications to the landmarked McGraw-Hill Building, preservationists renewed their call for the Commission to protect the building’s wildly polychromatic Art Moderne lobby.
We launched our first site in 2010 and we are back at it again. The site’s reason for being is to share news and events announcements with anyone who has architecture and design of the Modern movement high on their interests list. While we didn’t fundamentally change the content presented on the site, we improved its delivery.
It’s time for the eighth edition of the Modernism in America Awards presented by Docomomo US—the only national program that celebrates the people and projects working to preserve, restore and rehabilitate our modern heritage sensitively and productively. Nominations are open!