It was just the kind of peek into a dark brick hallway that Joseph Mitchell would have appreciated, a glance at a crooked passageway on an upper floor of 6 Fulton Street, at South Street Seaport.

But now we were doing it virtually, through a screen. In fact, with a trace of excitement in her voice, a tour guide hinted the glimpse into the hallway would even be beyond what a group touring the upper reaches of the former Fulton Ferry Hotel in person would be able to do. This is the area where Mitchell ventured in 1952 with Louis Morino, the owner of Sloppy Louie’s seafood restaurant on the ground floor of the premises, via a shaky, boarded-up manual elevator to the abandoned upper floors. It wasn’t surprising that Mitchell would uncover something long-neglected as he so often did composing the essays for The New Yorker for some 26 years and continuing to write, though not publish, for years afterward and walk the streets of New York City. The man looked like he was born standing in the doorway of one of these old buildings, ever-attuned to all around him, in fedora, tie, and suit.

That day 68 years ago, Mitchell and Morino came across a long-abandoned room inside the building, which had been a 19th century hotel when the seaport was teeming with boat and ship traffic. When they came upon it, the room was like a place stopped in time, explained Martina Caruso, who was conducting the virtual tour. It was the old reading room of the Fulton Ferry Hotel.

Under layers of dust, Mitchell later wrote, the two men found a rolled-top desk, a marble-top table stacked with three seltzer bottles with corroded spouts, four sugar bowls “whose metal flap had been eaten away from their hinges by dust,” two brass spittoons, six bureaus with mirrors lined up, and a wire basket “filled to the brim with whiskey bottles of the flask type,” and other oddities left there over who knows how many years. Mitchell described this encounter with the forgotten remains of hotel rooms in his essay, “Up in the Old Hotel.”

Caruso, the guide, who is the director of collections at South Street Seaport, said that she tries to reread “Up in the Old Hotel” at least once a year. She relayed how Mitchell, who immortalized the fishmongers, street preachers, a bearded lady, and other characters of the streets and harbor in his New Yorker stories, became involved in the early years of South Street Seaport’s preservation. Mitchell served on the Museum’s Restoration Committee from 1972-1980, and prior to that was already a notable historian of the Fulton Fish Market.

The upper floors have other implements and features that reflect its past. Caruso pointed out large original sinks that the Morton Brothers steam laundry operated in the upper floors at another time. One could almost feel the heat and steam that must have permeated the close quarters. At various points during this virtual experience, Caruso encouraged the audience to picture what had existed in the buildings’ earlier lives and how, outside the small windows, the harbor must have looked crowded with steamships, ferries, and other ship traffic.

The tour, “Inside Schermerhorn Row: A Virtual Tour of the Seaport Museum’s Landmark Buildings,” was part of Archtober, the 10th annual New York-based Architecture and Design Month. The Center for Architecture hosts this festival each October. This year, Archtober still had its amazing array of events, exhibitions, panel discussions, and tours, from entities such as the Historic House Trust, the Urban Green Council, Wave Hill, Bard Graduate Center, Untapped New York, and the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only some tours and activities were in person. Most were virtual, and many tours are archived and still available, like a video of the tour inside Schermerhorn Row’s landmark buildings.

South Street Seaport with the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance, an image from the Detroit Photographic Company around the turn of the 20th century

Based on the troubling surge of COVID-19 cases that is occurring, which public health experts project to keep intensifying into the late autumn and winter, we’ll need to keep doing more virtually. To the extent that we can experience places virtually more and travel far less, we’re being mindful not only of one’s health but of seeking to not tax the health care systems and the doctors, nurses, and health care workers who are enduring the strain and difficulty of this pandemic so heavily.

In that spirit, here are some explorations for architecture, design, and history lovers from Archtober that remain available plus future opportunities that promise to enliven and inspire.

All Agog Over Guastavino: Untold numbers of people know and, undoubtedly, appreciate the Guastavino tile arches that curve around and above them in the Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant, the Whispering Gallery passageway, and the entrances of Grand Central Terminal. Many may not know that Rafael Guastavino, an architect and builder, and son Rafael (officially Rafael II and III) created more than 200 of their stunning structural tile vaults in New York City’s five boroughs. During Archtober, Untapped New York did a virtual tour of “Guastavino’s New York” that showcased these layered masterpieces in travels up Manhattan’s East Side, including the Alexander Hamilton Custom House, the old, abandoned City Hall Subway Station, the former Della Robbia Bar in the Vanderbilt Hotel, and the Queensboro Bridge.

The tour brings to life the Guastavinos’ art and genius. The Guastavinos developed a construction method that used interlocking thin terra cotta tiles to form arches and vaults. Their product combined magnificent beauty and ingenious engineering in the load-bearing capabilities. As Justin Rivers, who led the tour, observed, the process of laying the tiles was similar to layering lasagna. If one stands beneath these Guastavino arches and looks up, they inspire awe.

A Guastavino vault ceiling underneath the Queensboro Bridge

While a virtual visit isn’t the same, Rivers came about as close as one could to providing a sense of walking underneath the Guastavino vaults. He provided exceptionally large, vivid photos, some close-up and others panoramic, that allowed amazing views of the Guastavino works, each so different. Luckily, during the presentation, the audience’s mics were muted, so I could exclaim out loud in wonder multiple times. The City Hall arches and ceiling, with alternate braids of tan-brown terra cotta with Kelly green and tan, and leaded glass panels at the top, are dazzling and jewel-like. Rivers also treated the audience to Guastavino finds in out-of-the-way places, like the underground tunnel that was once part of the Biltmore Hotel and that was connected to Grand Central. These discoveries reflect the ways that Rivers has become intimate with the nooks and lesser-known glories of a city he has obviously walked and walked.

Untapped New York has again begun to offer in-person walking tours and also has a great members-only Insiders subscription to enjoy its virtual tours and find out about upcoming in-person events.

Untapped New York

Eileen Gray, Modernist Trailblazer: In February, Bard Graduate Center Gallery, on the Upper West Side, opened a pathbreaking exhibition devoted to Eileen Gray. She was one of the small number of women who practiced professionally in architecture and design in the years before World War II and who, despite her accomplishments, ultimately became forgotten for decades. Comprised of approximately 200 works, this is the first in-depth exhibition focused on Gray in the United States. Bard slated the show to run until July 12, but the pandemic kept the gallery closed during the summer. This was truly a loss of opportunity to see the works and explore the life of a woman who succeeded in the male-dominated world of design.

Thankfully, the online companion exhibition presents a well-done deep dive into the life and practice of Gray, examining an array of her works including architecture, interior design, painting, photography, furniture, rugs, and lighting. Archtober featured six virtual tours of the exhibition and a program on her architectural drawings. At one museum virtual tour, lead gallery educator Olivia Kalin did anything but a linear tour. Instead, she was able to get the participants thinking about and responding to the designs, with question prompts on the order of “What would it feel like to sit in that chair?” and this elicited thoughtful responses. This educator guide provides a toolkit for teachers to delve into the exhibition’s themes in a the classroom. The chair was Gray’s Transat, which she designed in the late 1920s. It is inspired by deck chairs that were on the ocean liners yet made of sleek tubular steel with industrial-looking exposed nickel plate embellishments.

Eileen Gray

It seemed almost impossible to capture the expanse and diversity of Gray’s work and legacy in one virtual session. However, Kalin sparked enough of a sense of it by exploring Gray’s seminal house design, E 1027, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea; her earlier, figurative lacquer work, her interior designs of some rooms; and her ingenious lacquer block or “brick’ screens. We looked at Gray’s precisely detailed, brightly colored lacquer work, Oriental Mountebanks, which has the appearance of a Chinese narrative scroll painting with active characters.

An entire gallery of the Bard exhibition is devoted to E 1027, the vacation home, completed in 1929, which Gray designed for and with her lover Jean Badovici, for an isolated spot in the south of France overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. (The name of the house is a cypher for the initials of Gray and Badovici – E-J-B-G.) Looking at this minimalist house nearly a century later, one might not get how truly innovative it was, even in countering the avant-garde modernism of Gray’s time. Gray conceived the house’s spaces as an organic whole, an interaction of the self, the house, and the outside environment. Thus, the living room integrates this whole living environment by combining a divan for entertaining guests as well as spaces for dining, sleeping, and listening to music, the exhibit notes. The Bard online exhibit allows one to see many of the furnishings that Gray designed in the 1920s for E 1027.

Those who appreciate a designer who brought daring thinking and style to early modernism, the life story of a woman who forged a path in a male-dominated world, and sheer creative genius and versatility in countless artworks and furnishings will enjoy this comprehensive online exhibition.

Eileen Gray: Explore, See, Learn, Read, Watch

Virtual Tours and Events: An Upcoming Sampling

Here are upcoming explorations. (All times are Eastern Standard.)

Dec. 1, 3 p.m.: “Treasures from the Library, New-York Historical Society – The Origins of Central Park” Virtual Presentation ($10 Fee, Free for New-York Historical Society and Central Park Conservancy members)
Experience the origins and beginnings of Central Park from pre-history and conception to construction and early history, through various documents, maps, photographs, and unrealized plans. Maps and surveys document Seneca Village, the African-American community that existed on part of the land before Central Park was constructed.
Treasures From the Library, New-York Historical Society – The Origins of Central Park”

Dec. 6, 10 a.m.: “A Virtual Taste of New York – New York Holiday Market” Virtual Market with Video Presentations, New York State Museum (Free)
This online event is a combination of holiday shopping for New York State products with Empire State and national history. In video presentations, you can discover how suffragists used cookbooks to raise money for the cause; find out about what New Yorkers were eating during World War I and how they got by on less; learn about homebrewing in 18th century New York from foodways historians; see how those living in colonial times made a variety of hot cholate beverages; and follow the steps of making delicious home baked goods in the reconstructed ovens of Fort Klock Historic Restoration.
A Virtual Taste – New York Holiday Market

Dec. 8, 6 p.m.: Book Talk – The North Atlantic Cities and the Row House as Fulcrum, Village Preservation (Free)
Author Charles Duff’s book, The North Atlantic Cities, is available in the U.S. for the first time. Duff’s book probes architecture, urban planning, and development through the story of how people built row houses through the North Atlantic cities, from Amsterdam, Liverpool, and London to Washington, Baltimore, and New York City. This virtual book excursion covers the 1600s to today.
Book Talk: The North Atlantic Cities and the Row House as Fulcrum

Dec. 8, 6 p.m.: “How to Map Your Subway” Online Presentation, Landmark West! (Free for members, donation encouraged for non-members)
New York City’s subway system has 470 subway stations and 25 separate lines. Mapping the system is a mammoth undertaking. Upper West Sider, historian, author, and map designer John Tauranac illuminates how the subway has been mapped over the years, shares a look at historic subway maps and the new digitized approach, and discusses the highs and lows of the mapping, including some epic failures.
How to Map Your Subway

Dec. 11, 5 p.m.: “African American Culture in the 19th Century” New-York Historical Society Virtual Presentation (Free)
Two New-York Historical Society Fellows focus on the question: How were enslaved people represented visually after emancipation? Amanda Bellows and Aston Gonzalez each draw on works they have done for new books.
African American Culture in the 19th Century

Dec. 15, 6:30 p.m.: “Art Deco New York – 42nd Street East to West Virtual Tour,” Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Libraries (Free)
Do a virtual tour of a boulevard with some of the finest Art Deco skyscrapers, creations, and interiors. Anthony Robins, architectural historian and the author of New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture, highlights gems including Raymond Hood’s Daily News Building, the Chanin Building, and an interior by Ely Jacques Kahn.
Art Deco New York – 42nd Street East to West

Dec. 22, 5 p.m.: “Underground Tour of the Subway Virtual Talk,” Untapped New York (Free for Insiders subscribers)
Untapped’s Justin Rivers will lead a virtual exploration of the world’s largest subway system. The tour takes in the subway system’s beginnings and (through photographs) some spaces that may even elude veteran straphangers, and, according to Untapped, tells the story of the very first subway that “was built illegally under the cover of night….”
https://untappedcities.com/events/virtual-talk-underground-tour-of-the-nyc-subway/