Open House New York Weekend on October 16-17 features 200+ in-person and virtual experiences to renew the city and spur its recovery.

October 4, 2021 – On Saturday and Sunday, October 16 and 17, 2021, Open House New York presents Open House New York Weekend, a FREE citywide festival of design, culture, and infrastructure that offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the city functions and who it serves. The full lineup is now available.

Now in its nineteenth year, Open House New York Weekend invites the public, whether seasoned New Yorkers, newbies, tri-state neighbors, or out-of-towners, to embrace the power of place—from neighborhood anchors and bridges and tunnels to historic landmarks and modern skyscrapers. This year, the OHNY Weekend lineup offers in-person, virtual, and self-guided experiences including tours, talks, and self-guided walks across the five boroughs.

“Open House New York was founded in the wake of 9/11, when access to Lower Manhattan was suddenly highly restricted. Today, at a time when residents across the five boroughs are struggling to reconnect with each other and the city, OHNY Weekend provides a much-needed impetus for discovery and exploration,” said Rob Rogers, President of the Board of Directors for Open House New York. “OHNY is expanding our lens to the myriad of issues that define quality of place and quality of life, for better and worse, in New York. The through line of this evolution is the power of place—whether a single room in a building, the waste and water treatment systems of an entire borough, or the pylons beneath the shoreline surface of the Harbor,” explained Pamela Puchalski, Executive Director of Open House New York.

While the majority of OHNY Weekend sites are free and open to the public, select experiences require Advance Reservation tickets ($5) due to security, social distancing, and space limitations. Reservation Day is Thursday, October 7; tickets become available at 11:00am.
2021 Weekend highlights include the public’s only behind-the-scenes look at: 

• BookOps Sorting Facility: Discover how tens of thousands of books in the circulating collections of Brooklyn Public Library and New York Public Library find their way to eager readers across the city.
• EWR Airport Building One: OHNY goes to New Jersey this year and unlocks the story behind the airport’s original 1934 terminal, an art deco gem cut in three and stitched back together just 3,700 feet from its initial location.
• SUMMIT One Vanderbilt: Experience midtown from 1,200 feet, the highest vantage point in Midtown Manhattan. From transparent elevators to glass sky boxes, take in panoramic views of New York, sidewalk to sky.
• Brooklyn Navy Yard: Nanotronics: Industrial development takes off at Nanotronics, a new state-of-the-art center for the AI and robotics innovations driving advanced manufacturing in New York and beyond.
• Northeast Bronx YMCA: Decades in the making, this new community anchor is set in a three-acre urban forest and blends indoors and outdoors to promote the health and wellness of residents and surrounding neighborhoods.
• Little Island @ Night: Experience the blending of nature and art through luminance at the newly repaired and renovated Pier 54 on the shorelines of West Chelsea.

 2021 Weekend series highlights include: 

• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Centennial commemorating the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s transformational impact on the New York metropolitan region over the past 100 years.
• Radical Knowledge: Libraries as Community Catalysts exploring how libraries enrich civic life, expand economic opportunity, and improve the quality of place and quality of life for New Yorkers across the city.

Photos for the highlights are available here; additional photos available upon request. For additional information, email [email protected].

Covid-19 Note: OHNY Weekend is designed to engage wide audiences while protecting the public’s health and safety according to local and New York State guidelines. Proof of Covid-19 vaccination with ID and mask will be required for in-person experiences.

Open House New York promotes broad, unparalleled access to the city—to the places, people, projects, systems and ideas that define New York and its future—and fosters civic dialogue about how the city functions and who it serves. Through year-round programming and the annual OHNY Weekend, which ranks among the largest public design festivals in the nation, Open House New York offers a citywide platform for public education and engagement. For more information, visit www.ohny.org.

The 2021 Open House New York Weekend is made possible in part by generous support from PSEG and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New York Properties.

Public support is provided by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.