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Justin Davidson

See all their articles from across New York Magazine

Justin Davidson has been New York Magazine’s architecture and classical-music critic since 2007 and was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2002. He is the author of Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York.

  1. street view
    Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World Was in QueensA museum to a cultural legend emphasizes his unpretentious life at home.
  2. street view
    Need Housing? Need a Rail Line? Stack Them Up.Studio V’s proposal for a Borough Park rail cut.
  3. street view
    Janette Sadik-Khan on Getting Congestion Pricing Right‘We don’t look ready.”
  4. architecture
    Inside the City’s Gleaming New Performance CubeThe Perelman Performing Arts Center is a standout at the reconstructed World Trade Center site. Will people come?
  5. street view
    The Two Newest Luxury Towers Are a MoodCharcoal and bronze dominate at Brooklyn’s tallest building and Adjaye’s latest.
  6. city people
    What Dan Doctoroff BuiltUnder Mayor Bloomberg, the power broker remade the city with astonishing speed. Now, as New York is again mired in crisis, he faces his own.
  7. street view
    Reconsidering the Grand Civic StaircaseAt Steven Holl’s Hunters Point Library and across the city, a familiar architectural gesture has become a trap.
  8. street view
    David Adjaye, Falling StarchitectCelebrity architects are propped up by a hive of workers. His may undo him.
  9. street view
    Two Penn Station Plans That Finally Look PromisingCould they converge to make the nation’s worst rail hub much better?
  10. street view
    Is the Spherical Listening Room at the Shed an Innovation or a Gimmick?Trying out the Sonic Sphere.
  11. street view
    Lever House Gets a Squeaky-Clean RestorationPrecisely reproducing its opening-day sheen. Next up: the Waldorf.
  12. street view
    Congestion Pricing’s Pitfalls and How to Avoid ThemLessons from London’s 20 years of experience.
  13. street view
    Developing Governors Island in Order to Save ItA plan that aims to preserve both its low-rise nature and the earth.
  14. architecture review
    The American Museum of Natural History Enters Its Modern Stone AgeThe new Gilder Center has folds of pink granite outside, rough shotcrete swoops within.
  15. street view
    The Mexican Architect Making Sublime Modern Buildings From Clay and Pine NeedlesUsing traditional Oaxacan techniques, Juan José Santibañez’s museums and schools have a tactile beauty.
  16. getting around
    This Penn Station Plan May Be the One Everyone Can Live WithAssuming the Garden doesn’t move, most of the stakeholders are gravitating toward a new scheme.
  17. street view
    The Bronx Children’s Museum Is Just Antic EnoughLike a peek into a happy kid’s brain.
  18. street view
    MoMA’s ‘Architecture Now’ Exists in Some Other New YorkOne that has fewer impediments and more money.
  19. street view
    The Upper West Side’s Zone of Pedestrian DeathThe area around 96th Street is dangerous. And it’s hardly the worst in town.
  20. street view
    One Way to a Better City: Ask Disabled People to Design ItWouldn’t everyone fare a little better if (to take just one example) airport luggage-screening counters were lower?
  21. street view
    Two Supportive-Housing Projects Make the Case for Building Many MoreThey’re cheaper than the alternatives, acceptable to the neighbors, and successful among people who were living on the street.
  22. street view
    An Office Is Wherever We Decide It IsA new book chronicles employers’, architects’, and employees’ relentless reinvention of the workplace.
  23. street view
    Walkable City’s Jeff Speck Knows There Are Worse Things Than Crawling TrafficTen years on, he reflects on pipe dreams turned real (like California’s ADU boom) and not (like truly safe streets).
  24. street view
    Can the Hochul-Adams New New York Actually Happen?The Hochul-Adams mission statement is big on sweeping ideas — and way short on explaining how any of this happens.
  25. street view
    The Upside-Down Building Is No Longer NovelAt Greenpoint’s new Eagle + West, cantilevers are just one more architectural gimmick.
  26. street view
    New St. Nick: The Glowed-up Greek Church at Ground ZeroThe tiny marble Greek Orthodox church next to the World Trade Center finally opens, 21 years after its predecessor was destroyed.
  27. street view
    When Caves Were Avant-Garde ArchitectureAt the Noguchi Museum, the joys (and damp) of living below grade.
  28. street view
    Out of Horror, Beauty: A Visit to the New Sandy Hook Memorial“It was worth the wait.”
  29. street view
    Norman Foster’s Skyscrapers Are Perfect for the City That Just DisappearedAn impeccable space for office work arrives with everything—except a guarantee of office work.
  30. street view
    Keeping It Weird at 550 MadisonThe former AT&T/Sony tower gets a few of its spikier details sanded off but retains a lot of its Johnsonian strangeness.
  31. street view
    On the Vision — and Limits — of a Century of Grand Urban PlansThe Regional Plan Association marks its birthday with a show in Grand Central Terminal.
  32. street view
    The Emigrant Becomes a Giant Projector ScreenRestored bank building now holds digitally reproduced gold.
  33. street view
    Morningside Heights Gets That Much HigherTwo seminary campuses monetize their air.
  34. hot garbage
    Voyage of the GrossEven though every other option is better, most of New York’s trash still goes into a hole in the ground.
  35. dystopias
    Westworld Has Become West Side WorldPresent-day New York, with a few digital additions, was perfectly suitable as a dystopian set.
  36. street view
    Waterline Square Is Better Than We Had a Right to ExpectThe last piece of Riverside South clicks into place.
  37. street view
    What to Do With a Crumbling ChurchWest Park Presbyterian wants to demolish its deteriorating landmark building. We asked an architecture firm for a plan to keep it standing.
  38. street view
    The Morgan Library’s Gilded Age Garden Gets a Glow-upA restoration that looks as rich as it should.
  39. street view
    Two Upscale Developments Offer Two Divergent Futures for the South BronxBrookfield’s Bankside looks to Manhattan; the all-affordable Peninsula aims to raise the standard for locals.
  40. street view
    What’s a Bicycle For?A new book digs into our ambivalent relationship with life on two wheels.
  41. street view
    Finding a Future for Ukraine’s Destroyed CitiesThe country’s planners want to reclaim its independent identity and plan for life after Russian oil.
  42. street view
    An Exhibit Imagines How Design Can Reconnect CommunitiesIf only it weren’t illegal.
  43. street view
    Lincoln Center Resets Itself as a Cultural Town Square for SpringQuinceañeras, dance parties, and underground jazz will animate the plaza, but will that energy extend past Labor Day?
  44. street view
    Is There Still an Architectural Avant-Garde?If there is, it won’t look like a Zaha Hadid swoop.
  45. street view
    The Museum of Natural History’s New Addition Is a Giant Concrete MarshmallowStudio Gang’s design aims to bring the museum into the urgent present.
  46. street view
    What Will It Take for Architects to Stop Working With Autocrats?Designers have long relied on a catalogue of excuses to work with questionable clients. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
  47. architecture
    Pritzker Winner Francis Keré’s Small Buildings Have Things to Teach Big CitiesA lesson from the Pritzker-winning architect: Don’t overlook local materials, no matter how low-tech.
  48. street view
    Can Better Design Redeem the Cruise Ship?Our architecture critic goes to sea.
  49. street view
    The Start-up Aesthetic Defines New York’s Two New Ivy CampusesThey say they want to engage the community, but that outreach is self-limiting.
  50. street view
    The Concrete Innovators of Delhi and DhakaA MoMA show devoted to the inventive post-partition architecture of South Asia.
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