Events and Tours

Since 1982, the former aircraft carrier Intrepid has been a Manhattan landmark as the centerpiece of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. In 2006, the ship was towed away from the pier to embark upon the most expansive project undertaken in the Museum’s history. In two short years, the Intrepid’s exterior was restored, the main exhibit space was redesigned, new interactive exhibits were installed, historic compartments were opened to the public, and the pier was rebuilt. Through presentations and guided tours, as well as a behind-the-scenes glimpse at areas not open to the public, this Study Day offers an in-depth look at the Intrepid Museum’s ambitious restoration and redesign project.

The Study Day will begin with presentations in the Museum’s Michael Tyler Fisher Center for Education. Jessica Williams, the Intrepid Museum’s Curator of History, will welcome participants with an overview of the day’s itinerary, touching upon the history of the ship and the process behind the museum’s redesign. John Woelfling, Principal of Dattner Architects, will discuss his firm’s role in developing a master plan for the museum, as well as their plan for opening the ship’s historic fo’c’s’le (forward part of the ship) to visitors. Before breaking for lunch, Jessica Williams will lead participants on a tour of the museum’s redesigned exhibit space within the ship’s vast hangar deck and the newly-opened fo’c’s’le.

The afternoon will begin with a presentation by Robert Craig, a member of SAH’s Board of Directors and a former Intrepid crew member. As the Intrepid’s Food Service Officer, Craig oversaw the redesign of the mess deck in 1969. Following Craig’s presentation, participants will visit the ship’s mess deck, which has been restored to Craig’s designs. Christopher Malanson, the Intrepid Museum’s Director of Exhibition Design, will describe the museum’s efforts to restore these spaces. Participants will then take a behind-the-scenes tour of some of the ship’s unrenovated spaces with Chris Malanson and Jessica Williams, who will discuss the museum’s plans for the future. At the conclusion of the tour, participants will have an opportunity to explore the rest of the museum – including the flight deck and aircraft collection – on their own.

TOUR INFORMATION:
$200 per person (includes admission fees, administrative costs, and a $50 tax-deductible donation to SAH)
Hotel, airfare, and ground transportation costs are at the personal expense of each participant and/or Fellowship recipient.

Go to: the tour website for more information, including online registration.

SAH is preparing to host an exciting three-day summer Study Tour to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. An array of lectures, tours, and special evening events will highlight Burnham and the plan in a variety of different guises: imagined and realized, proposed and enacted, seen and unseen. Leading scholars and experts Kristen Schaffer, Dennis McClendon, Sally A. Kitt Chappell, Carl Smith, and Robert Bruegmann will provide lectures, tours, and commentary during the course of the three-day event. Their presence not only ensures thoughtful and analytical approaches, but promises some of the more recent and provocative interpretations of the 1909 plan and its significance. Daily lectures will be held at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, with guided tours to follow, either on foot or by motor coach.

The 1909 Plan of Chicago is the fulcrum around which the Study Tour will turn. Yet tour participants are expected to gain greater insight into Burnham’s architectural practice, philosophy, and influence through a close-up examination of buildings designed by his firm and those of his partners, collaborators, and successors including John Wellborn Root, Edward Bennett, Charles Atwood, Ernest Graham, Pierce Anderson, Edward Probst, Howard White, Hubert Burnham, and Daniel Burnham Jr. The tour will provide striking views of the plan, from original lantern slides shown to municipal authorities to promote its implementation to planned elevated persepctives over the city and the waterfront.

The Study Tour coincides with the anticipated mid-June completion of temporary Burnham Plan pavilions, designed by Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel of UN Studio, visits to which will be part of an evening stroll through Millennium Park. Tour participants also will have a special opportunity to briefly preview Judith Paine McBrien’s much-anticipated Burnham documentary “Make No Little Plans” – with discussion about the making of the film by McBrien herself – prior to its public premiere at the Pritzker Pavilion and its national television airing on PBS.

The SAH tour complements a series of year-long Burnham Plan Centennial activities hosted by a committee of civic and business leaders in Chicago. But the SAH tour promises a unique and critical perspective on this world-class city: a city that continues to build upon and interpret the plan through its sustainable design efforts and comprehensive approach to regional planning. There is no more appropriate city in America to examine the intersection of the built and natural environments on a vast metropolitan scale—perhaps the greatest legacy of the Burnham Plan.

The three-day tour is being coordinated by Phil Gruen of Washington State University. A detailed itinerary will be available early next year, but you are encouraged to visit the Society’s website and the SAH Newsletter for any updates in the interim. We look forward to seeing you in Chicago.

TOUR INFORMATION:
$895 per person. $450 per person deposit due at time of registration. Balance due July 7, 2009.
Includes the following: – three lunches – closing night boat tour cruise – $250 tax-deductible donation to SAH – deluxe motorcoach transportation – tour leaders – SAH representative – applicable administrative costs, taxes, gratuities, and service charges

For more information, including online registration, go to the tour website.

Share Washington D.C.’s architectural history resources with some of the Society’s local members. Cynthia R. Field, Founding Trustee of the National Building Museum, will lead this tour along with other members of the SAH. The tour features resources of Washington of interest to architectural: resources that are not on the usual tourist circuit.

The day begins at the National Building Museum, one of the great nineteenth century buildings of Washington, where we will have a special tour of the Green Communities exhibition with the curator Susan Piedmont-Palladino who will also discuss the museum’s role in sustainability studies. After a break for coffee or tea, we will go behind the scenes with curator Chrysanthe Broikos to view the intriguing toy collection and other special collections. A lunch will be provided by SAH. SAH member Linda Lyons will join us for a tour of the historic building that highlights its environmental, historic, and aesthetic depths.

Leaving the Building Museum, the group will walk to the nearby Archives of American Art, a little publicized department of the Smithsonian with surprising treasures for inquiring architectural and urban historians. SAH members Richard Longstreth and Emily Bills will join the staff of the Archives to demonstrate the importance of their holdings.

The tour will end at the Smithsonian’s Reynolds Center, the new name for the landmark Patent Office Building. The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, housed in the building, will be open until 7:30pm so that tour members can visit exhibitions. The area surrounding the museum, Penn Quarter, is a lively scene of restaurants and theaters from which tour members can chose for their personal post tour activity.

TOUR INFORMATION:
$150 per person (includes lunch, administrative costs, and a $50 tax-deductible donation to SAH)
Hotel, airfare, and ground transportation costs are at the personal expense of each participant and/or Fellowship recipient.

For more information, including online registration, go to the tour website.