New York isn’t the old­est city in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, and it cer­tain­ly isn’t the newest. But it is, quite pos­si­bly, the Amer­i­can city where more lay­ers of his­to­ry coex­ist than any oth­er, a qual­i­ty that man­i­fests most vivid­ly in its built envi­ron­ment. Even the most casu­al tourist can sense the sheer vari­ety of time peri­ods embod­ied in the build­ings around them on, say, a stroll down Broad­way — one of the streets fea­tured in the ten-part walk­ing tour com­piled in the new Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above. As a whole, it offers a two-hour jour­ney through the city begin­ning in Cen­tral Park and end­ing on Wall Street.

In between come on-foot exam­i­na­tions of every­thing from the fin-de-siè­cle “apart­ment hotels” of the Upper West Side to the recent­ly built “super-tall” res­i­den­tial tow­ers of West 57th Street to the devel­op­ments atop the buried Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion to the dis­used indus­tri­al rail­way now known — and imi­tat­ed around the world — as a lin­ear park called the High Line.

Tend though long­time New York­ers may to regard each part of the city as more or less a nation unto itself, a per­spec­tive with a bit more dis­tance reveals signs of the nev­er-end­ing social, eco­nom­ic, and aes­thet­ic exchange between them: an impor­tant fac­tor in how the use of and role played by even the city’s most august struc­tures has been sub­ject to change after unan­tic­i­pat­ed change.

Help­ing us to under­stand all this are archi­tects Michael Wyet­zn­er and Nick Potts, both pro­fes­sion­al­ly well placed to explain both the big pic­ture of New York’s evo­lu­tion and the sig­nif­i­cance of the var­i­ous odd­i­ties and eccen­tric­i­ties on its streets. Even an archi­tec­tur­al lay­man would take impressed notice while pass­ing, say, the man­sions once inhab­it­ed by Alexan­der Hamil­ton and Aaron Burr; the jagged bunker that has housed the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art, the Met Breuer, and Frick Madi­son; the impos­si­bly skin­ny-look­ing sky­scrap­ers of the so-called “Bil­lion­aire’s Row”; or the Dako­ta, John Lennon’s final res­i­dence. But to learn what such build­ings have to tell us about the his­to­ry and nature of New York, we must look at them, as anoth­er famous rock star once sang, thru’ these archi­tects’ eyes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lost Neigh­bor­hood Buried Under New York City’s Cen­tral Park

A Whirl­wind Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of the New York Pub­lic Library — “Hid­den Details” and All

Archi­tect Breaks Down the Design Of Four Icon­ic New York City Muse­ums: the Met, MoMA, Guggen­heim & Frick

Every Hid­den Detail of New York’s Clas­sic Sky­scrap­ers: The Chrysler, Empire State & Wool­worth Build­ings

A Walk­ing Tour of Los Ange­les Archi­tec­ture: From Art Deco to Cal­i­for­nia Bun­ga­low

A 5‑Hour Walk­ing Tour of Paris and Its Famous Streets, Mon­u­ments & Parks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Even today, the Paris of the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion is, for the most part, the Paris envi­sioned by Baron Georges-Eugène Hauss­mann and made a real­i­ty in the eigh­teen-fifties and six­ties. Not that he could order the city built whole: as explained by Manuel Bra­vo in the new video above, Paris had already exist­ed for about two mil­len­nia, grow­ing larg­er, denser, and more intri­cate all the while. But as the pre­fect under Emper­or Napoleon III, Hauss­mann was empow­ered to carve it up by force, open­ing “dozens of wide, long avenues that con­nect­ed impor­tant parts of the city,” a lay­out that “mir­rored the street sys­tem in Rome cre­at­ed 300 years ear­li­er by Pope Six­tus V, but on a much grander scale.”

How­ev­er con­sid­er­able the vio­lence it did to medieval Paris, this process of “Hauss­m­an­niza­tion” showed a cer­tain his­tor­i­cal con­scious­ness. After all, the French cap­i­tal was once a Roman city: Lute­tia Pariso­rum, named for the Parisii, the Gal­lic tribe that had inhab­it­ed the island in the mid­dle of the Seine that Parisians now call Île de la Cité.

As was their usu­al modus operan­di, the con­quer­ing Romans laid a car­do max­imus run­ning from north to south, today known as Rue Saint-Jacques. There­after, “the rest of the orig­i­nal lay­out was lost to organ­ic growth.” In the form Paris even­tu­al­ly took in the Mid­dle Ages, “there were no pub­lic urban spaces of major sig­nif­i­cance”: no Place Dauphine, no Place des Vos­ges, no Place Vendôme.

Those very same Parisian squares now enjoyed by locals and tourists alike did much to devel­op the expec­ta­tion of “aes­thet­ic uni­ty” in the city’s built envi­ron­ment, and a cou­ple of cen­turies before Hauss­mann at that. It may not be a com­plete exag­ger­a­tion to call Paris frozen in the Baron’s mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, but as Bra­vo explains, a close exam­i­na­tion of both the city’s cel­e­brat­ed spaces and over­all form reveals the ways in which a much deep­er past has done its part to shape or inspire them. An enthu­si­ast of urban his­to­ry can spend weeks, months, or even years appre­ci­at­ing the details that remind us that the palimpsest of Paris has nev­er quite been over­writ­ten, even in a place as unre­lent­ing­ly exam­ined — if sel­dom tru­ly seen — as the Lou­vre.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Reveals What Paris Looked Like When It Was a Roman Town

Take an Aer­i­al Tour of Medieval Paris

The Archi­tec­tur­al His­to­ry of the Lou­vre: 800 Years in Three Min­utes

A 5‑Hour Walk­ing Tour of Paris and Its Famous Streets, Mon­u­ments & Parks

A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Paris, As Seen Through the Lens of Leg­endary Film­mak­er Éric Rohmer: Watch Rohmer in Paris

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

As many as a mil­lion peo­ple crossed the Gold­en Gate Bridge on foot to cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of its con­struc­tion in 1987. More than a few of them would have remem­bered San Fran­cis­co as it was before it had its most icon­ic struc­ture — and indeed, some would even remem­ber walk­ing across it once before, on its inau­gur­al “Pedes­tri­an Day” in 1937. Bar­ring the pos­si­bil­i­ty of unusu­al­ly vig­or­ous super­cente­nar­i­ans, that won’t be the case 12 years from now, on the Gold­en Gate Bridge’s 100th anniver­sary. But we’ll still be able to appre­ci­ate the enor­mous ambi­tion of its builders, not least its chief design engi­neer Joseph Strauss, who, along with Charles Alton Ellis, made pos­si­ble a project long assumed impos­si­ble.

The video from Sabin Civ­il Engi­neer­ing at the top of the post explains every stage of the Gold­en Gate Bridge’s design and con­struc­tion. Build­ing a sus­pen­sion bridge over the Gold­en Gate, the deep strait between San Fran­cis­co Bay and the Pacif­ic Ocean, posed for­mi­da­ble chal­lenges. The dis­tinc­tive shape we know from so many pho­tographs emerged in part from the need to anchor the bridge in such a way as to bal­ance out the mas­sive forces that would oth­er­wise bend its tow­ers inward, and the steel-on-steel con­struc­tion of its sus­penders and deck was nec­es­sary to pre­vent cat­a­stroph­ic crack for­ma­tion.

The deck hangs from 250 pairs of cables, and each of the main cables that run the length of the bridge actu­al­ly con­sists of 27,000 steel wires wound togeth­er. A sys­tem of ther­mal expan­sion joints accom­mo­dates reg­u­lar elon­ga­tion and shrink­age of near­ly four feet.

And we haven’t even got into the under­wa­ter blast­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing-look­ing drilling work required to put up the tow­ers in the first place. In any case, the painstak­ing efforts of the engi­neers and labor­ers alike have sure­ly been vin­di­cat­ed by the Gold­en Gate Bridge’s func­tion­al­i­ty and pop­u­lar­i­ty over the past 88 years. Nat­u­ral­ly, it’s had to under­go con­sid­er­able main­te­nance and retro­fitting in that time, and it would take a true roman­tic to ignore its lim­i­ta­tions entire­ly. (Take its lack of rail capac­i­ty, which was nei­ther tech­ni­cal­ly nor eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble to incor­po­rate dur­ing the Great Depres­sion.) Still, when 300,000 peo­ple jammed them­selves onto its deck at once on its 50th anniver­sary, it may have bent in the mid­dle, but it did­n’t break. That was a tes­ta­ment to the civ­il engi­neer­ing acu­men of Strauss and com­pa­ny — but let’s hope the cen­te­nary fes­tiv­i­ties are bet­ter orga­nized.

Relat­ed con­tent:

“The Bay Lights,” the World’s Largest LED Light Sculp­ture, Debuts in San Fran­cis­co

The 5 Inno­v­a­tive Bridges That Make New York City, New York City

How the Brook­lyn Bridge Was Built: The Sto­ry of One of the Great­est Engi­neer­ing Feats in His­to­ry

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Trip Across the Brook­lyn Bridge: Watch Footage from 1899

Why There Isn’t a Bridge from Italy to Sici­ly – And Why the 2,000-Year-Old Dream of Build­ing the Bridge May Soon Be Real­ized

Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still With­stand the Weight of Mod­ern Cars & Trucks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Amer­i­can is a tricky word. It can refer to every­one and every­thing of or per­tain­ing to all the coun­tries of North Amer­i­ca — and poten­tial­ly South Amer­i­ca as well — but it’s com­mon­ly used with spe­cif­ic regard to the Unit­ed States. For Frank Lloyd Wright, lin­guis­tic as well as archi­tec­tur­al per­fec­tion­ist, this was an unten­able state of affairs. To his mind, the newest civ­i­liza­tion of the New World, a vast land that offered man the rare chance to remake him­self, need­ed an adjec­tive all its own. And so, repur­pos­ing a demonym pro­posed by geo­g­ra­ph­er James Duff Law in the nine­teen-hun­dreds, Wright began to refer to his not just archi­tec­tur­al but also broad­ly cul­tur­al project as Uson­ian.

Wright com­plet­ed the first of his so-called “Uson­ian hous­es,” the Her­bert and Kather­ine Jacobs House in Madi­son, Wis­con­sin, in the mid­dle of the Great Depres­sion. Chal­lenged to “cre­ate a decent home for $5,000,” says the Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion’s web site, the archi­tect seized the chance to real­ize “a new afford­able archi­tec­ture that freed itself from Euro­pean con­ven­tions and respond­ed to the Amer­i­can land­scape.”

This first Uson­ian house and its 60 or so suc­ces­sors “relat­ed direct­ly to the earth, unim­ped­ed by a foun­da­tion, front porch, pro­trud­ing chim­ney, or dis­tract­ing shrub­bery. Glass cur­tain walls and nat­ur­al mate­ri­als like wood, stone and brick fur­ther tied the house to its envi­ron­ment.” In Pleas­antville, New York, there even exists a Uso­nia His­toric Dis­trict, three of whose 47 homes were designed by Wright him­self.

The BBC Glob­al video at the top of the post offers a tour of one of the Uso­nia His­toric Dis­tric­t’s hous­es led by the sole sur­viv­ing orig­i­nal own­er, the 100-year-old Roland Reis­ley. The Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above fea­tures Reis­ley’s home as well as the Bertha and Sol Fried­man House, which Wright dubbed Toy­hill. Both have been kept as adher­ent as pos­si­ble to the vision that inspired them, and that was meant to inspire a renais­sance in Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion. The Uson­ian homes may have fall­en short of Wright’s Utopi­an hopes, but they did have a cer­tain influ­ence on post­war sub­urb-builders, and have much enriched the lives of their more appre­cia­tive inhab­i­tants. The cen­te­nar­i­an Reis­ley cred­its his star­tling youth­ful­ness to the man-made and nat­ur­al beau­ty of his domes­tic sur­round­ings — but then, this last of the Uso­ni­ans also hap­pens to be one of the rare clients who could get along with Frank Lloyd Wright.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unusu­al Win­dows Tell Us About His Archi­tec­tur­al Genius

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Archi­tec­ture Evolved Over 70 Years and Changed Amer­i­ca

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

How Frank Lloyd Wright Became Frank Lloyd Wright: A Video Intro­duc­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

If you’ve made the jour­ney to Athens, you prob­a­bly took the time to vis­it its most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tion, the Acrop­o­lis. On that mon­u­ment-rich hill, you more than like­ly paid spe­cial atten­tion to the Parthenon, the ancient tem­ple ded­i­cat­ed to the city’s name­sake, the god­dess Athena Parthenos. But no mat­ter how much time you spent amid the ruins of the Parthenon, if that vis­it hap­pens to have tak­en place in the past 200 years, you may now ques­tion whether you’ve tru­ly seen it at all. That’s because only recent­ly has scaf­fold­ing been removed that has par­tial­ly obscured its west­ern façade for the past two decades, result­ing in the pur­er visu­al state seen in the clips col­lect­ed above.

The press atten­tion drawn by this event prompt­ed Greece’s Min­is­ter of Cul­ture Lin­da Men­doni to declare this the first time the Parthenon’s exte­ri­or has been com­plete­ly free of scaf­fold­ing in about two cen­turies. Hav­ing been orig­i­nal­ly built in the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, and come through most of that span much the worse for wear, it requires inten­sive and near-con­stant main­te­nance.

Its inun­da­tion by vis­i­tors sure­ly does­n’t help: an esti­mat­ed 4.5 mil­lion peo­ple went to the Acrop­o­lis in 2024, the kind of fig­ure that makes you believe in the diag­noses of glob­al “over­tourism” thrown around these days. The Greek gov­ern­men­t’s coun­ter­mea­sures include a dai­ly vis­i­tor cap of 20,000, imple­ment­ed in 2023, and a require­ment to reserve a timed entry slot.

If you’d like to see the whol­ly un-scaf­fold­ed Parthenon in per­son, you’d best reserve your own slot as soon as pos­si­ble: more con­ser­va­tion work is sched­uled to begin in Novem­ber, albeit with tem­po­rary infra­struc­ture designed to be “lighter and aes­thet­i­cal­ly much clos­er to the log­ic of the mon­u­ment,” as Men­doni has explained. But if you miss that win­dow, don’t wor­ry, since that oper­a­tion should only last until ear­ly next sum­mer, and upon its com­ple­tion, “the Parthenon will be com­plete­ly freed of this scaf­fold­ing too, and peo­ple will be able to see it tru­ly free.” Not that they’ll be able to see it for free: even now, a gen­er­al-admis­sion Acrop­o­lis reser­va­tion costs €30 (about $35 USD) dur­ing the sum­mer­time peak sea­son. Athena was the god­dess of wis­dom, war­fare, and hand­i­craft, not wealth, but it clear­ly lies with­in her pow­ers to com­mand a decent price.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Mag­nif­i­cent Tem­ples: The Art of Ancient Engi­neer­ing

A 3D Mod­el Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Inte­ri­or Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Civ­i­liza­tion moved past the use of cas­tles long ago, but their imagery endures in pop­u­lar cul­ture. Even young chil­dren here in the twen­ty-twen­ties have an idea of what cas­tles look like. But why do they look like that? Admit­ted­ly, that’s a bit of a trick ques­tion: the pop­u­lar con­cept of cas­tles tends to be inspired by medieval exam­ples, but in his­tor­i­cal fact, the design of cas­tles changed sub­stan­tial­ly over time, albeit slow­ly at first. You can hear that process explained in the Get to the Point video above, which tells the sto­ry of “star forts,” the built response to the “tech­nol­o­gy that end­ed the Mid­dle Ages.”

You may be famil­iar with the con­cept of “motte and bai­ley,” now most wide­ly under­stood as a metaphor for a cer­tain debate tac­tic irri­tat­ing­ly preva­lent on the inter­net. But it actu­al­ly refers to a style of cas­tle con­struct­ed in Europe between the tenth and the thir­teenth cen­turies, con­sist­ing of a for­ti­fied hill­top keep, or “motte,” with a less defen­si­ble walled court­yard, or “bai­ley,” below. In case of an attack, the bat­tle could pri­mar­i­ly take place down in the bai­ley, with retreats to the motte occur­ring when strate­gi­cal­ly nec­es­sary. The motte-and-bai­ley cas­tle is a “great idea,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor, pro­vid­ed “you don’t have can­nons shoot­ing at you.”

Cas­tles, he explains, “were a reflec­tion of armies at the time: build a big wall, keep the bar­bar­ians out.” But once the can­non came on the scene, those once-prac­ti­cal­ly imper­vi­ous stone walls became a seri­ous lia­bil­i­ty. That was defin­i­tive­ly proven in 1453, when “the Ottomans famous­ly bat­tered down the great walls of Con­stan­tino­ple with their can­nons. That brought an end not only to the 1500-year-old Roman Empire, but also to the Mid­dle Ages as an era entire­ly.” In response, cas­tle archi­tects added dirt slopes, or glacis, at the edges, as well as cir­cu­lar bas­tions to deflect can­non fire at the cor­ners — which, incon­ve­nient­ly, cre­at­ed “dead zones” in which ene­my sol­diers could hide, pro­tect­ed from any defens­es launched from with­in the cas­tle.

The solu­tion was to make the bas­tions tri­an­gu­lar instead, and then to add fur­ther tri­an­gu­lar struc­tures between them. Seen from the side, cas­tles became much low­er and wider; from above, they grew ever pointier and more com­plex in shape. Sébastien Le Pre­stre, Mar­quis of Vauban, an army offi­cer under Louis XIV, became the acknowl­edged mas­ter of this form, the trace ital­i­enne. You may not know his name, but his designs made France “lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to invade.” For sheer beau­ty, how­ev­er, it would be hard to top the plans for star forts to defend Flo­rence in the fif­teen-twen­ties by a mul­ti-tal­ent­ed artist named Michelan­ge­lo. Per­haps you’ve heard of him?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sim­ple, Inge­nious Design of the Ancient Roman Javelin: How the Romans Engi­neered a Remark­ably Effec­tive Weapon

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

How to Build a 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cas­tle, Using Only Authen­tic Medieval Tools & Tech­niques

A For­got­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Reveals the First Designs for Mod­ern Rock­ets

Behold a 21st-Cen­tu­ry Medieval Cas­tle Being Built with Only Tools & Mate­ri­als from the Mid­dle Ages

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.