00:00The New York subway system is very complicated,
00:03but I'm gonna make it simple for you.
00:05For the best architecture-focused tour of New York,
00:08you only need to remember one letter, the letter F.
00:15You can get the biggest range of architecture
00:18from one subway line.
00:19You can see great buildings from the 1850s,
00:21incredible contemporary architecture,
00:23and the history adds to your understanding
00:26of the poetry of architecture in New York.
00:32I had a very sheltered Upper East Side childhood,
00:35but one thing I always wanted to do,
00:38and my father promised he would do it,
00:40was take me on the subway when I was like four years old.
00:44My mom wanted no part of that.
00:45So we made a plan to take the subway out to Coney Island,
00:50and that was the first time I was ever on the subway,
00:53and it was a very memorable trip with my dad.
00:58So, on our architecture tour of New York via the F train,
01:02we're gonna take that train all the way to Coney Island.
01:05Are you ready?
01:15We just got off the 34th Street stop of the F train,
01:19and I'm in front of Macy's in Herald Square.
01:23But what I want to talk to you about is what's behind me,
01:26the Empire State Building.
01:27It's one of the great miracles of architecture of the world.
01:32The Waldorf Astoria used to stand on that site at 34th Street and 5th Avenue.
01:38The opportunity to move it was what inspired a developer called Jacob Raskob
01:43to build the tallest building in the world.
01:46It was a very close race for that title at that time.
01:50The Chrysler Building had been the tallest building in the world,
01:52and when the Empire State Building was finished in less than 500 days in 1931,
01:57it was the tallest building in the world,
02:00and it remained that way until the World Trade Center at the time.
02:05Its top, which is what we all love about it,
02:07was designed to be an airship mooring mast.
02:13This is not something that it was ever actually used for,
02:16but in 1930, airship travel was considered the coming thing
02:20before the Hindenburg put that notion to rest,
02:24and the Empire State Building needed a distinctive crown.
02:27The next big science fiction thing that the Empire State Building contributed to was King Kong,
02:32and where did they choose to set that in the climactic ending,
02:36but on the brand new skyscraper that had caught everyone's imaginations.
02:40The top of the Empire State Building is an example of how the whole building
02:44is sort of about the future, and how it inspired thoughts about the future.
02:48It still kind of does, even though it's 100 years old.
03:10So we just got off the F train at 23rd Street.
03:13Madison Square is one of the most fascinating intersections of important streets,
03:19Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and also great New York stories.
03:22What you can't see on that side of the square is the ghost of the original Madison Square Garden,
03:27where in 1906, the architect Stanford White was shot,
03:31and it was called the Murder of the Century.
03:33What you can't see over here to my left is the ghost of the Fifth Avenue Hotel,
03:38which is where New York society met before eating dinner at Delmonico's.
03:42This is all, you know, great New York folklore.
03:45Flatiron Building, which is what we're going to talk about, is itself a great story,
03:48the story of a great pioneering skyscraper.
03:511902, Chicago architect Daniel Burnham.
03:54Flatiron, so-called, because it's the shape of an iron.
03:57But more recently, someone with a lot of imagination said,
04:00it's the most New York building because it looks like a slice of pizza.
04:04I mean, it's in the eye of the beholder, these triangles, you know what I'm saying?
04:08We're getting an especially great view of the Flatiron Building today,
04:11because the scaffolding, which has enshrouded it for seven years, is coming down.
04:16It's almost all the way down.
04:17And the building hasn't looked this good since it was unveiled.
04:21All of these buildings that were built at the turn of the century as offices
04:24are now at their highest level of utility as luxury housing.
04:29People want to live in that facade.
04:41We are in Soho.
04:44We just got out of the F train at the Broadway Lafayette stop.
04:47This is one of the fashionable areas to come shopping now.
04:51We all know that about Soho.
04:52But what Soho was, was a community of about 400 cast iron manufacturing buildings.
04:58The story about this kind of architecture is it was invented along with other sort of industrial
05:04revolution era manufacturing techniques in order to create inexpensive prefab buildings.
05:12It really, in a way, changed working conditions.
05:15Even though nobody much cared about working conditions in 1857, manufacturing used to be
05:20in dingy candlelit oil lamp rooms and suddenly became sun flooded and quite pleasant by comparison.
05:28The windows becoming huge is because the cast iron was much lighter than masonry and the windows could be bigger.
05:34When this area was totally abandoned in the dark years of New York, all these buildings were deserted,
05:41and they were sort of squatted in by artists because they were incredibly cheap,
05:46and they were incredibly full of natural light.
05:48It was illegal to live in them because they were zoned as manufacturing buildings,
05:51but the area also had no trash removal.
05:54If you stuck around, you'd find yourself in the most desirable neighborhood in Manhattan.
06:00But that's the story of many of the things we're looking at today.
06:20We just got off the York Street station of the F train and we're in Dumbo.
06:26Dumbo, so called because it's an acronym for Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass.
06:34The Manhattan Bridge is behind me.
06:36So as you can see from the popularity of the view behind me, this has become one of the great
06:43Instagrammable places in New York, and tourists come from all over. They're where they used to
06:47stand in front of neon signs of Times Square, and they take this picture, as one or two people may
06:52be
06:52doing at this moment, and as we are, of the bridge. An interesting nerd ball historical detail
06:58about the Williamsburg and the Manhattan Bridge. They both carried train tracks. The Manhattan Bridge
07:03had them on the outside edges, and the Williamsburg Bridge had the subway in the middle.
07:10The Manhattan Bridge experienced much more intense flexing because engineering of these bridges and
07:16the weight loads of trains and stuff was still very experimental in those days, and so that caused
07:22certain issues with this bridge when it was in use, which had been resolved. But who are you going to
07:27hear
07:27that from? Nobody? Oh. Is it nobody? Me. My favorite view is looking up under that bridge at the guts
07:35of the engineering of this incredible piece of infrastructure.
07:38But what's under the arch? Our friend from earlier in the day, the Empire State Buildings.
08:10We've taken the F train from uptown
08:14from Midtown, and now we've ended up at the party, Coney Island. At the turn of the century,
08:21this was the largest concentration of amusement parks in the world ever built, and there were three
08:28clustered together. Dreamland, Luna Park, and the steeplechase. You got to remember that what we're
08:34looking at is the birthplace of the American amusement park. This is a very American idea, and a Luna Park
08:43or a boardwalk like this has become something in our consciousness that represents the American idea
08:49of a summer good time. It was born here, and this is still going. It's incredible how people fall in
08:57love
08:57with it in every era, and maybe you will too if you come here. Take the F train. Find out.
09:13I'll see you next time.
09:13I'll see you next time.
09:14I'll see you next time.
09:14I'll see you next time.
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