Secrets of New York: a hidden forest in the big city-Beachhotel7.COM
One of New York's best kept secrets is this forest, a must-see for lovers of architecture and nature.
Henry Ford II commissioned a site to house the Ford Foundation in the 1960s. For this, a very tall and inspiring space was designed: a transparent building of glass, granite and steel. We know that New York's secrets are many and one of them is the 12-story enclosed atrium garden, designed by Dan Kiley to be the foundation's headquarters.
New York Secrets
The Big Apple hides small and large spaces that appear when the interested traveler pays close attention to its streets. Today we tell you about a place where architecture, mixing private offices with a public garden, sought to improve the daily life of workers.
Ford Foundation Social Justice Center
With over 50 years of existence, this building remains unknown to many New York fans.
Located at 320 East 43rd Street, the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice is a center for social good and the people who dedicate their lives to achieving it.
Home to the Ford Foundation and three aligned organizations, the iconic building features 7,525 square meters of convening space for the social sector, a beautiful garden and an art gallery open to the public.
Offices around a soaring and spectacular garden, with a variety of 40 species of subtropical trees, vines and shrubs covering every corner, clad in Dakota grey-pink granite, the refined and muscular building conveys a rare combination of heaviness and delicacy, solidity and transparency.
It also has a reflecting pool and a fountain, whose sound adds an additional element for visitors.
His garden, the work of Dan Kiley, was then something new, a piece of Eden in a city that seemed to many residents to be going to hell. Writing in Life magazine at the time, author William Zinsser called Ford "a leap of faith in the midst of ruin."
In 1997 the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated it an official landmark, stating that the building has stood the test of time as an innovative urban space that captured the aspirations of the foundation's social justice mission.
Houseplants across the city perished when offices closed in 2020 with the pandemic. But those in the conservatory of the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice managed to thrive.
