Above: The home page of www.archleague.org in the days following September 11.

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2011, the League hosts an open public forum for the architecture community “to gather, reflect and discuss ways architects might be of service to the city.”

Hugh Hardy leads a tour of the Harvey Theater, in conjunction with the President’s Medal dinner in his honor at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, April 19, 2010

“We are gathered together this evening to celebrate someone who is near and dear to our hearts and to the civic heart of this city. In fact, the story of Hugh Hardy’s career as an architect is so closely intertwined with the cultural landscape of New York over the past forty years that his presence is felt in virtually every significant arts institution around the city….It’s not hyperbole to say that much of what we love best about New York’s architectural survival and revival since the 1970s has benefited from Hugh’s touch.” League President Calvin Tsao, Opening Remarks

Exhibition installation, 250 Hudson Street

“The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010 is the sixth in an ongoing series of Architectural League exhibitions about contemporary architecture in New York City. This installment takes as its subject the planning, design, and building of New York in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Beginning in 2001, an array of powerful forces converged to dramatically transform large portions of the city. The events of September 11, the policies and priorities of the Bloomberg Administration, the volatile ups and downs of the global and local economies, advances in material and construction technologies, and a new interest among the public in leading edge architecture all combined to reshape New York in ways that we may not fully grasp for decades to come.

“The City We Imagined/The City We Made documents this recent chapter in the city’s history, providing an overview of the most notable projects and proposals, plans and initiatives, so that New Yorkers can begin to shape an overall understanding of the decade and consider what the cumulative impact of this era of planning and building might be for the future of the city.” Gregory Wessner, Curator, Exhibition Introduction

Exterior of 594 Broadway, the League’s home beginning in September 2009

“On September 1, the Architectural League moved its offices from the Urban Center at 51^st Street and Madison Avenue, our home for 29 years, to the sixth floor at 594 Broadway in Soho. We have moved to a new building and a new part of town—and an altogether different kind of New York experience. Midtown certainly has its attractions, and the beautiful Villard Houses themselves, home of the Urban Center, are one of the most significant. The League had three great decades there, and we are grateful to our friends and neighbors, the Municipal Art Society, for spearheading the creation of the Urban Center and sharing that beautiful building with us for all those years.

“Our new neighborhood, the north end of Soho, and its main street, Broadway, pulse to a very different rhythm than Madison Avenue: quiet in the morning, when midtown is going to work, and crowded and intense from around noon until well into the evening. Lots of other things are different too, which we knew from spending time down here but didn’t feel until we moved in. You don’t see much red brick in midtown; here we are surrounded by it. The scale and grain of the buildings is much smaller, and the street level businesses—at least off of Broadway—are so much more variegated. The crowd on the street is a lot younger. The lunch choices are so much more interesting! We love our new space, and we are incredibly grateful to Newmark Knight Frank, our new landlord, for making it possible for us to move here.” Rosalie Genevro, blog post

Screen shot of Urban Omnibus on its launch, January 7, 2009

“We have so much possibility ahead of us.  We have just inaugurated a president who wants to renew every area of our national life–including our cities. President Obama has lived in the three biggest cities in the United States, and it seems clear that he understands and cares about cities and what they mean economically, environmentally and culturally….In New York City in January 2009, we live in an extraordinarily vibrant place that faces huge challenges. We are more aware than ever of how fragile the economic health of the city is, and of how many New Yorkers are already suffering, or on the edge of, economic hardship….Beyond our economic vitality…are the many demands New York faces over the next few decades specifically related to the physical city: how to adapt to climate change and minimize our environmental footprint, rebuild our infrastructure, and provide enough housing and open space to make a comfortable, civilized, just city.

“But for all the challenges we face, this is also a time for optimism about the future. From the creative initiatives of forward-looking city agencies, to the self-generated experimentation and investigations of architects and engineers and designers, to the inventive entrepreneurialism of community activists, there is a lot going on in New York that can make the city better. Much of this activity remains just out of sight, and we think it needs to be better known. With Urban Omnibus, the Architectural League wants to cultivate and hybridize the thousand flowers of digital media to engage a large audience in learning and thinking about design and New York City’s physical environment. We want to provide a platform for the written word and for aural and visual information of all kinds; we want the immediacy of a blog and the carefully reasoned perspective of critical writing to stand side by side.  Most of all, we want to connect people with ideas they can use.” Rosalie Genevro, Why Urban Omnibus?

Ada Louise Huxtable accepts the League’s President’s Medal at a dinner on February 5, 2008

“We are honored to have among us this evening many of the world’s most celebrated architects—architects who have remade our skylines and enriched our lives with sublime testaments of human creativity. Yet, despite the impact of these substantial talents, there is one person here tonight who, more than anyone else, has helped shape the public’s awareness of architecture’s importance in our daily lives and its fundamental significance as part of our cultural heritage. Someone who has challenged, cajoled, instructed, humored, shamed, inspired and, yes, even, scared architects, clients, and civic leaders into accepting the awesome responsibility of our built environment. That person is, of course, Ada Louise Huxtable.” League President Calvin Tsao, Opening Remarks

The Design in 5 scaffolding charrette at the Old American Can Factory, Gowanus, September 2007

“Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, formed for designers of all disciplines 5 years or less out of school.  Design in 5 responds to this youngest group of designers, providing unique opportunities and activities for exchanging ideas across disciplines, fostering camaraderie, and above all, having fun.” Description

Installation, New New York: Fast Forward

“New York City is under construction. From the luxury residential towers surrounding the High Line in Chelsea, to the massive commercial and residential developments along the waterfront in Long Island City; from Atlantic Yards in downtown Brooklyn to the new Yankee Stadium; from the former landfill in Fresh Kills reimagined as one of the city’s largest parks to the extension of the #7 train, New York is in the midst of an explosion of building and planning activity that is transforming major portions of the city.

“New New York: Fast Forward, the fifth in an ongoing series of Architectural League exhibitions highlighting new architecture in New York, captures a snapshot of a city in change. Right now, many New Yorkers are contending daily with the reality of city-as-construction-site: the scaffolding, the cranes, the noise. Though each of us senses that New York is in the midst of a significant transformation, it is difficult to fully grasp what is going on in the city as a whole, notwithstanding the proliferating number of websites and blogs that document and comment on real estate development.” Exhibition introduction

Dinner celebrating the League’s 125th Anniversary, January 18, 2006

“We celebrate this very significant anniversary milestone not merely to honor the Architectural League’s endurance or to boast about our past achievements. In this 125th year, we renew our commitment to strengthening our mission and advancing it to ensure equal if not more significant contributions in years to come.  When the 22-year old Cass Gilbert and a small group of architects founded the League on January 18th, 1881, the design profession itself was still young. These designers already recognized, however, that to excel as architects, they needed more than just professional guidelines and recognition: they needed a forum in which to present new work and ideas, talk (sometimes argue), and engage in informal exchange. In those earliest years, they initiated what has happened continuously at the League for the past 125 years in forums, events, symposia and, of course, over food and drink—that delicate and elusive thing called ‘community.’” Wendy Evans Joseph, Introduction, The Architectural League of New York: 125 Years

Kenneth Frampton receives the President’s Medal from League President Wendy Evans Joseph

“The Architectural League awards the President’s Medal to Kenneth Frampton in recognition of his enormously influential contributions to the  history and theory of architecture. Through his deep and broad  intellectual culture, and by an instinctive and continuous  questioning of the relationship of architecture and building to the  polity and to the individual—to democracy, social justice, ecological sanity, human well-
being, and aesthetic pleasure—Kenneth Frampton has helped shape the critical consciousness of successive generations of architects from the early 1960s to the present.  His writing and teaching demonstrate the power of the constructive tension between profound knowledge of and respect for the internal history of architecture and passionate concern for architecture’s place in the larger world.” Citation