The Lies Buildings Tell

Join us next week as New York Review of Architecture takes over Vitsœ’s New York showroom. For five days, NYRA will be transforming the Greenwich Village space into our office and pop-up shop.

Stop by to meet NYRA team members, pick up a copy of our latest issue, snag some sweet merch, or discover some amazing items from creative friends and comrades, perfect for holiday gift-giving. Throughout the week, NYRA contributors will be leading architectural walking tours of the Village that tackle the neighborhood legacy of Jane Jacobs, find historical records amongst its false facades, investigate bygone infrastructure, and retrace the steps of Gilded Age reformers.

Tour description:
In this housing-focused tour, we’ll read Greenwich Village’s façades as confessions. Rowhouses, mews, converted stables, and brownstones quietly reveal the logic of the spaces inside through window patterns, cornice misalignments, and hidden details behind false fronts. The Village becomes a case study in how New York projects its neuroses onto brick and brownstone, even as interiors are constantly renovated. Our route takes us from the intimate scale of West 8th Street’s irregular lots, through Minetta Street, Patchin Place, Grove Court, MacDougal–Sullivan Gardens, and 131–135 MacDougal Street, before moving to Westbeth Artists Housing and culminating at I. M. Pei’s Silver Towers. We’ll explore how interior constraints shape what we see from the street, turning façades into a record of adaptation, compromise, and sometimes, deliberate contrast.

About the guide:
Kavya Cherala is an architect and writer. She is a recipient of the AIA New York Women in Architecture Recognition Award, a Forefront Fellow with the Urban Design Forum, and has been recognized as an emerging leader by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. Her reflection on the spectacle of demolition, “Bowled Over,” appeared in NYRA #32.