An Old Staple of Black Culture Now Adds to a New Restaurant’s Décor

Tina Fineberg for The New York Times Jet magazine covers adorn the walls in the bathroom at Harlem Shake, a new restaurant in Harlem.

It started with Miss Susie. Miss Susie owns a brownstone a few doors from Dennis Decker on West 119th Street in Harlem, where over the years she rented out rooms and tenant after tenant left scraps of their lives behind. Last summer, Mr. Decker helped his 84-year-old neighbor, known to everyone simply as Miss Susie, by organizing a cleaning, and in the sifting came across a handful of vintage Jet magazines.

“They were so small, and so beautiful,” Mr. Decker said.

For decades Jet has been a staple in the black community, each compact issue a cultural chapter found at just about every barbershop, doctor’s office and grandmother’s coffee table. The copies in Miss Susie’s building. where she also lives, featured a black-and-white photograph on the cover, headlines like “How The Sit Down Strikes Hurt Southern Business” and articles about the boxer Joe Louis’s tax problems and the first black female dentists.

Around the same time Mr. Decker, a design and branding consultant, was helping Miss Susie, he was also working on a concept for Harlem Shake, a mom-and-pop-style burger joint on the corner of 124th Street and Lenox Avenue, which opened last month. Mr. Decker and the restaurant’s principal owner, Jelena Pasic, wanted something that suggested pride, but was yet humble and undeniably authentic.

Jet.

“What’s a better representation,” Mr. Decker said. “I really wanted to honor the more recent past that many of our older neighbors have been through and still can remember.” He thought that as more and more businesses sprouted up in Harlem, “it’s the recent past we’re kind of losing.”

Now, 240 Jet magazine covers, ranging from 1952 to 2013, adorn two of the restaurant’s restroom walls in a giant collage of black history and culture through their images and headlines:

“Broadway Welcomes Negro Play’’ (1959);

“Negro Judge Fights For Court Reforms” (1965);

“Should A Black Politician Run For President?” (1971);

“Eddie Murphy: Race And Wit Make Cop Movie A Box Office Hit” (1986);

“Oprah Tells Why Blacks Who Bash Blacks Tick Her Off’’ (1990);

“Venus Williams Wins Wimbledon 2000 Tennis Championship’’ (2000);

“Is Your Child Next? Jordan Russell Davis, 1995-2012’’ (2013).

The display also serves as a kaleidoscope of famous black faces, like those of Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, Cicely Tyson, Adam Clayton Powell, Richard Pryor, Michael Jordan and MC Hammer.

Another wall is dedicated to the Jet “Beauty Of The Week,” with rows and rows of black-and-white, pinup photos of women in swimsuits and short biographies, from the mid-20th century.

“It makes you stay in there longer,” said Yusef McDougal, 31, a customer, sitting at a table one afternoon with a burger, fries and red-velvet milkshake. “It’s history, and a lot of Harlem is in there, too.”

Articles also touched on everyday life, through the celebration and struggles of black firefighters, postal workers and nurses.

“Jet showed our shining stars,” said Camille Z. Charles, a sociology professor and the chairwoman of the Africana Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania, “but also blacks who are still struggling, for people to understand the importance of not forgetting those who are still struggling, and the responsibility that comes with black leadership.”

Critical benefit also came from the variety of positive images, Dr. Charles said. Growing up, “I used to read about Ben Carson in Jet magazine,” she said, referring to the neurosurgeon. “You learned about black people doing great things in science, doing great things in business.”

After Miss Susie told Mr. Decker that he could keep the eight magazines he pulled out of her place, he asked other neighbors and friends if they had any old Jet magazines lying around. Some did. However, the bulk of the Harlem Shake collection came from online purchases and auctions.

Vintage copies cost around $8. The most expensive issue featured Barack Obama winning the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. It cost about $27.

“I would sometimes set my alarm at 2 a.m. to be the last bidder,” said Ms. Pasic, the shop’s founder. Her thirst for the project reminded her of a Readers Digest-style magazine that her great-aunt collected in their native Croatia. Of her display of Jet magazines, she said, “everybody relates to it because their grandmothers, their mothers used to have it. Everybody feels it’s a part of their personal past.”

At its peak in the early 1990s, Jet sold an average of one million copies of each issue, said the editor in chief, Mitzi Miller. That does not include those who read it through passed around copies. Today, she said, Jet sells about 700,000 copies. It publishes every three weeks and has a newsstand price of $1.99.

“It helps to make sure we’re still a part of current conversation,” Ms Miller said. “It’s a new generation, some of whom haven’t seen those magazines.”

The oldest cover in the collage, from 1952, asks, “Are Negro Women Getting Sexier?”

Most of the images displayed from that time are of black women with fair skin and straight hair. Black men are almost nonexistent. A 1970 cover features a woman with an Afro and the headline: “Young, gifted and black lawyer …”

Entertainment and lifestyle covers started to dominate in the 1980s, yet news that both troubles and lifts black people remains constant. Placed in the collage next to the 1971 cover about a black politician running for president is a 2011 cover with an image of President Obama.

“It just gives me chills to see it,” Mr. Decker said of the two covers, “right there in the center.”

Activists’ Stunt Livens Up a Routine Senate Session

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Protesters showered state senators with fake hundred-dollar bills in Albany on Wednesday to call attention to the role of money in New York politics.

ALBANY - There wasn’t much to see in the State Senate on Wednesday: the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance, the honoring of a basketball player and a bunch of empty seats where elected representatives are paid to sit.

But there was something to grab the eye. Shortly after the beginning of proceedings, about 15 protesters who had posed as guests sitting in the upstairs gallery suddenly tossed hundreds of fake $100 bills onto the chamber’s floor below, a prank meant to call attention to the issue of campaign finance reform.

The protesters made it through a couple of rounds of chants -- “What do we want? Fair elections!” -- before being asked to leave by the chamber’s security guards.

Outside, one demonstrator, Josh Silver, said the protest was intended to show that the state’s people wanted “common-sense reform to clean up New York.”

“The point is to tell Albany that the world is watching,” Mr. Silver said.

And sure enough, on the Senate floor, several amused senators took photos of the activists and scooped up the funny money. Senator John A. DeFrancisco, a Republican from the Syracuse area, even thanked the protesters for spicing up another ho-hum day of lawmaking in front an otherwise sparse audience.

“We wanted to provide some entertainment for our guests,” Mr. DeFrancisco said, “and we asked those people to come out and throw some money on the floor and make absolute fools out of themselves.”

A. M. Homes Awarded Women’s Prize for Fiction

Hilary Mantel can’t win them all. A. M. Homes took home the Women’s Prize for Fiction on Wednesday night in London, for her novel “May We Be Forgiven.”

Ms. Mantel had been considered the favorite to win the award for “Bring Up the Bodies,” the second in her series of historical novels about Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII, which had won the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book of the Year award.

Ms. Homes’s novel, her sixth, centers on two brothers â€" one a historian and Richard Nixon scholar, the other a TV executive â€" and the violent act that upends their lives.

In beating out fellow finalists Ms. Mantel, Zadie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Maria Semple and Kate Atkinson, Ms. Homes became the fifth American in as many years to win the honor, formerly known as the Orange Prize. The four previous winners were Madeline Miller “The Song of Achilles,” Téa Obreht (“The Tiger’s Wife”), Ms. Kingsolver (“The Lacuna”) and Marilynne Robinson (“Home”).

A. M. Homes Awarded Women’s Prize for Fiction

Hilary Mantel can’t win them all. A. M. Homes took home the Women’s Prize for Fiction on Wednesday night in London, for her novel “May We Be Forgiven.”

Ms. Mantel had been considered the favorite to win the award for “Bring Up the Bodies,” the second in her series of historical novels about Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII, which had won the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book of the Year award.

Ms. Homes’s novel, her sixth, centers on two brothers â€" one a historian and Richard Nixon scholar, the other a TV executive â€" and the violent act that upends their lives.

In beating out fellow finalists Ms. Mantel, Zadie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Maria Semple and Kate Atkinson, Ms. Homes became the fifth American in as many years to win the honor, formerly known as the Orange Prize. The four previous winners were Madeline Miller “The Song of Achilles,” Téa Obreht (“The Tiger’s Wife”), Ms. Kingsolver (“The Lacuna”) and Marilynne Robinson (“Home”).

Humanities Endowment To Investigate Grants Made to Scholarly Society

The National Endowment for the Humanities will conduct an investigation of three grants awarded to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the scholarly society in Cambridge, Mass., whose president, Leslie C. Berlowitz, has been accused of falsely claiming on various documents to hold a doctorate.

Judy Havemann, the communications director of the endowment, confirmed that it had given three grants totaling $1.2 million to support the academy’s initiatives between 2003 and 2013, and that all three applications â€" including at least one signed personally by Ms. Berlowitz â€" included the false information.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the academy attributed the mistakes, which were first reported by The Boston Globe, to a faulty resume created at some point by an unidentified staff member, and said it “is working to correct the information with relevant funding agencies.” But on Wednesday, its spokesman, Ray Howell, declined to specify which other funding authorities were involved, or to release a correct version of Ms. Berlowitz’s resume he said it had on file.

Ms. Havemann of the humanities endowment said she was not aware that anyone at the academy had reached out regarding possible errors in the grant application. A spokesman for the National Science Foundation, which confirmed having given at least two grants to the academy in recent years, also said she was unaware of any communication from the academy regarding possible problems with those applications. A federal database also showed grants to the academy from the Department of Energy.

Daft Punk Holds On at No.1

This week on Billboard’s music charts, Daft Punk’s new album holds at No. 1 and the rap duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis extends its run with the top single.

Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” (Daft Life/Columbia), featuring the hit single “Get Lucky,” had 93,000 sales in its second week out, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That is a 73 percent drop from its opening week, but it was enough keep the album on top, beating out a handful of new releases.

Alice in Chains’ new release, “The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here” (Capitol) â€" the grunge-era group’s second album since reuniting with a new singer, William DuVall â€" opened at No. 2 with 61,000 sales. John Fogerty’s “Wrong a Song for Everyone” (Vanguard), featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival and other of his songs recorded with stars like Kid Rock, Keith Urban and Jennifer Hudson, sold 51,000 copies to open at No. 3. Also this week, the British group Little Mix bows at No. 4 with 50,000 sales of “DNA” (Syco/Columbia).

On the singles chart, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s “Can’t Hold Us” stays at No. 1 for a fifth week, with 184,000 downloads and 5 million streams in the United States on services like Spotify and YouTube. Earlier this year, the group’s “Thrift Shop” spent six weeks as the top single.

Hirshhorn Museum Scraps Idea to Cover Courtyard with Bubble

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on Wednesday finally abandoned its long-planned project to cover the museum’s interior courtyard in Washington D.C. with a distinctive, temporary inflatable bubble.

Citing financial uncertainties, Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian Institution’s under secretary for history, art and culture, made the announcement. He said outgoing director Richard Koshalek, who resigned last month after failing to receive full support for the bubble from the museum’s board of trustees, would step down as director on June 29.

In his place, Kerry Brougher, currently deputy director and chief curator, would serve as acting director while the museum seeks a successor to Mr. Koshalek, he said.

“Without the full support of the museum’s board and the funding in place for the fabrication and a viable plan for the operation of the Bubble, we believe it is irresponsible to go forward,” Mr. Kurin said in a statement.

“Architects, artists and Smithsonian staff have praised the bold vision of a temporary bubble-shaped structure on the Mall, but after four years of planning and fundraising, there was not enough funding to construct the Bubble and, more importantly, to sustain programming for years to come.”

The bubble was known officially as the Hirshhorn’s Seasonal Inflatable Structure. Designed by the New York firm Diller Scofidio & Reenforce, it was to be erected for two months each year, and had been regarded as Mr. Koshalek’s signature project.

It would have connected the inside and the outside of the museum, which sits on the National Mall midway between the White House and the Capitol, and create a space for installations and performances.
But it was to rely almost exclusively on private funds, and after four years of fundraising the museum had only raised or received commitments for about $7.8 million of the anticipated $15 million overall cost.

One of the problems was that the temporary bubble could not draw the interest of sponsors who preferred a more permanent year-round structure, officials said.

The bubble’s prospects had already looked dim after concerns about the financial underpinning of the project caused a split in the board of trustees on May 23, prompting Mr. Koshalek’s resignation. Some had wanted to go ahead, and said not enough effort had been put into fundraising, but others wanted to focus on other priorities for the museum at a time of overall financial constraint.

The board was acting in an advisory role, and the final decision on the future of the bubble lay with Mr. Kurin, and G. Wayne Clough, the secretary of the Smithsonian, who the museum said was an early supporter of the bubble idea.

“Without the prospect of needed funding, we cannot undertake this project at the same time we are facing significant financial challenges that affect the entire Smithsonian,” Mr. Clough said in the same statement

A Campaign Trail Lined With Words Friendly to Each Audience

The Democratic mayoral candidates gathered in Midwood, Brooklyn, Tuesday night for a debate sponsored by the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, in which most remarks hewed to a single informal commandment: Say nothing that might conceivably discomfort your audience.

An unsafe circumcision practice? The constitutionally questionable use of public money to buy textbooks for Orthodox yeshivas and to repair churches and synagogues in Hurricane Sandy-affected neighborhoods?

Defend a jailed spy? Reinstate a public child care voucher program that overwhelmingly benefited Orthodox Jewish parents?

All good!

Anthony D. Weiner, our reality show entrant in the mayoral sweepstakes, was asked about Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s efforts to regulate the practice of metzitzah b’peh, in which a mohel, after circumcising a baby, sucks the blood from the wound to clean it.

The city’s health department found that since 2000, 12 babies circumcised in this fashion contracted herpes and 2 died. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has deemed the practice “not safe.” And in 2005, the leader of leading rabbinical council for Conservative Jews endorsed regulation of the practice.

Whatever. Mr. Weiner represented this neighborhood in Congress and has an internal divining rod on questions of politics. Presumably, no one knows better what his audience wants to hear.

“I believe that there is a liberal elitist condescension when it comes to the religious community,” Mr. Weiner said. “This is thousands of years of tradition.”

Comptroller John Liu chimed in. “I say, let’s leave it to the rabbis. Let’s not have city government interfere with something that has worked for thousands of year.”

All of this is historically true. As is this: For thousands of years it was considered religious good form for widows to throw themselves on funeral pyres in India, and so-called female circumcision is still practiced in many parts of the world. And by no means do all Orthodox Jewish families opt for that circumcision practice.

History, we might agree, is a strange mistress.

Mayoral debates often devolve into pander fests. Debates sponsored by organized labor rarely feature candidates talking vigorously of the inconvenient fact that the city almost certainly cannot afford retroactive pay raises for city workers â€" an issue of great importance to labor as every contract in the city has long since expired. Challenge tenure at a debate sponsored by the union that represents teachers? Maybe tomorrow.

At a debate on public housing, every candidate present agreed that the city should assume the $100 million cost of police and sanitation for the projects. This is salutary, but begs the question of how to pay for it. On the Upper East Side, most of the candidates agree that a garbage transfer station there is not such a great idea.

It was nonetheless impressive to watch the yoga-like contortions on Tuesday night.

There were a few exceptions. Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, supported the policy imposed by the Bloomberg administration to require parental consent forms for the circumcision practice. She also said she would not promise to use public money to buy textbooks for yeshivas. Nor would she push to use federal money to help synagogues and churches rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. And she spoke out on gay rights.

Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, mumbled a can’t-we-all-get-along sentence or two on circumcision, urging the city to sit down with community leaders. Which again prompts the question: And then what?

Mr. de Blasio seemed to be in favor of spending public monies to buy textbooks for yeshivas.

Every candidate favored reinstating vouchers for after-school child care, which the mayor wiped out a few years back. That 12-year-old, $16 million program theoretically had been open to needy families of all creeds for use at schools and day care centers. But from the start, it was tailored for Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Borough Park and Williamsburg.

As my colleague Julie Bosman pointed out a few years ago, of the nearly 100 after-school programs, an overwhelming majority were run out of yeshivas in Brooklyn. (A handful were in secular day care centers in the Bronx and Manhattan.)

Orthodox leaders have argued that their families often get by on one income, since mothers typically stay home and care for the children. And most pay private-school tuition, since they send their children to yeshivas.

All of which is no doubt true, and also a religious and lifestyle decision. We might have expected a nuanced discussion on Tuesday night. Or not.

“Those vouchers were lost at a certain point,” said former City Comptroller William Thompson. “We need to fix it and bring them back.”
”
Yes, said Ms. Quinn. Me, too, said Mr. de Blasio. That’s true, said Mr. Weiner. Right-o, said another Democratic candidate, the Rev. Erik Salgado.

The evening ended as Mr. Weiner evoked his support for Jonathan Pollard, who worked in Naval Intelligence and was convicted of passing classified information to Israel, and for the owner of a kosher factory who was convicted of hiring underage workers, not to mention bank fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.

And then there was the question of Israel. “When I had the opportunity to stand up for Eretz Israel I did, at the top of my lungs,” Mr. Weiner said. This term is usually taken to mean that Israel extends to the borders with Jordan, meaning no Palestinian state.

Mr. Weiner ended by saying that he could not “promise you that milk and honey will flow through the streets of Flatbush.”

Given the spirit of this evening, that registered as a disappointment.

Tony Awards: In Performance With Rob McClure

For the third video in our special Tony Awards In Performance series, Rob McClure explores the strange aisles of Eclectic/Encore Props, a Chelsea warehouse filled with movie décor, as he sings “The Life That You Wished For” from the musical “Chaplin.”

Be sure to join us Sunday night for live coverage of the Tony Awards. More Tonys coverage, including a ballot and In Performance videos from 2012 and 2011, is at nytimes.com/tonys.

Tomorrow: Shalita Grant is a frazzled waitress who has visions in a scene from the comedy “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” Previous videos in this special series include Courtney B. Vance at Playwright Celtic Pub in a scene from “Lucky Guy” and Billy Porter and Stark Sands singing a number from “Kinky Boots” at T. O. Dey, the shoe manufacturer that made the show’s signature footwear.

La Scala Names New General Manager

Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Mr. Pereira.

The board of directors at the Teatro alla Scala, the celebrated opera house in Milan, has appointed Alexander Pereira, currently the artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, as the house’s new general manager. He will succeed Stéphane Lissner, who has held the post since 2005, when Mr. Lissner leaves to take over the Paris Opera in 2015.

Mr. Pereira’s appointment was announced on Tuesday by Giuliano Pisapia, the mayor of Milan, who said at a news conference that the new director was one of 25 candidates that the company considered, but that the choice had been unanimous.

Mr. Pereira, who was born in Vienna in 1947, comes to the position after a brief tenure in Salzburg, which he took over last year (his contract runs until 2016), and 21 years - from 1991 to 2012 - as the artistic director of the Zurich Opera. He is considered by many to be an intellectual heavyweight, but he also has his detractors: the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that some critics “accuse him of too much attention to the commercial aspect of the traditional Salzburg Festival, and of having no clear artistic line.”

In Milan, Mr. Pereira will have the option of appointing an artistic director, a title now held by Mr. Lissner. The conductor Daniel Barenboim is the music director. A crucial part of his job will be to bring in new financial supporters  and balancing the house’s budget. Toward that end, he has agreed to a salary about 25 percent lower than Mr. Lissner’s, which has been reported as around €350,000 (about $458,000).

Jack White Pays Back Taxes to Save Detroit’s Masonic Temple

Max Ortiz/Detroit News, via Associated Press The Masonic Temple.

Jack White has saved a historic Masonic Temple in Detroit that is a well-known performance space for rock bands, paying $142,000 in back taxes to keep the building from being auctioned. One of two theaters inside the 14-story building will be named after Mr. White, The Detroit Free Press reported on Tuesday.

“Jack’s donation could not have come at a better time and we are eternally grateful to him for it,” said Roger Sobran, the president of the Detroit Masonic Temple Association.

When Mr. White stepped in this week, the Masonic Temple, which takes up an entire block, was on the brink of being auctioned to pay back taxes. The temple’s main theater and a smaller space known as the Scottish Rite Cathedral have been the scenes of memorable shows over the years by bands like the Who, MC5 and the Rolling Stones.

Romain Blanquart/Detroit Free Press, via Associated Press Mr. White performing at the temple in 2005.

The Temple also has played an important role in Mr. White’s life. A Detroit native, Mr. White has said his mother was an usher at the theater. He himself played seven concerts there with his first group, the White Stripes, and, later, two solo performances. Among the White Stripe shows were two sold-out concerts at the temple in April 2003, which served as both a homecoming and a coronation of sorts for the duo. The White Stripes had played their first gig six years earlier at a small club down the street called the Gold Dollar.

“What really puts it all in context were those first two White Stripes performances in April 2003 â€" two consecutive nights, one in the small room, the other in the big room,” Ben Blackwell, the White Stripes archivist, told The Free Press. “From the loading docks you could see the Gold Dollar. It took years, four albums and how ever many of tour miles to go that very significant half a block.”

Remembering Ada Louise Huxtable

A steady procession of mourners in dark suits on a summery afternoon all but traced the history of modern American architecture as they arrived on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Richard Meier, followed by Kevin Roche, followed by David Childs, followed by Frank Gehry. And many more.

They came on Tuesday to honor Ada Louise Huxtable, who died Jan. 7 at 91. Ms. Huxtable was regarded as the first full-time architecture critic at an American newspaper when she was named to the post by The New York Times in 1963. Fifty years later she was still writing criticism for The Wall Street Journal and, as ever, mincing no words.

“Ada Louise did not want a memorial service,” Robert N. Shapiro, her lawyer and co-executor, told more than 200 listeners as he opened the gathering in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Met. “So we’re not having one.” Instead, he said, the event was simply a “memorial tribute,” composed of a “coalition of the disobedient” â€" friends, subjects, colleagues and readers â€" who couldn’t imagine not saying farewell.

“What she cared about was authenticity,” said Mr. Shapiro, the president of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. As a critic, Ms. Huxtable was unbothered by fashionable consensus. She did not hesitate to champion such authentically American architectural forms as the low-slung, single-story ranch house. In fact, she owned a ranch house in Marblehead, Mass., where she spent much of her time.

At the lectern, Mr. Gehry, perhaps the most widely recognized contemporary American architect, recalled his early days in Los Angeles, wondering when or if Ms. Huxtable would notice. “Even though I wished for her attention,” he said, “I was scared of it.”

On Aug. 24, 1980, Ms. Huxtable counseled her readers in The Times to keep watch for Mr. Gehry, “whose work veers from the outrageous to the extraordinary and promises to loom large in the confusions and contributions of the season and on into the ‘80s.”

Her praise was cherished, but her tart dismissals were relished. More than one speaker quoted Ms. Huxtable’s assessment of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on March 30, 1965. “Its empty aridity and degraded classical details are vulgarization without drama,” she wrote, “and to be both dull and vulgar is an achievement of sorts.”

Almost every speaker quoted from Ms. Huxtable’s columns, suggesting that she pulled off the rare feat of producing durable prose on a daily deadline and that her combination of passion, conscience and erudition was still the last word in architectural criticism.

Paul Goldberger, Ms. Huxtable’s immediate successor at The Times and now a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, said, “We’re all, in a sense, her progeny.” No one claimed to be her equal.

Remembering Ada Louise Huxtable

A steady procession of mourners in dark suits on a summery afternoon all but traced the history of modern American architecture as they arrived on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Richard Meier, followed by Kevin Roche, followed by David Childs, followed by Frank Gehry. And many more.

They came on Tuesday to honor Ada Louise Huxtable, who died Jan. 7 at 91. Ms. Huxtable was regarded as the first full-time architecture critic at an American newspaper when she was named to the post by The New York Times in 1963. Fifty years later she was still writing criticism for The Wall Street Journal and, as ever, mincing no words.

“Ada Louise did not want a memorial service,” Robert N. Shapiro, her lawyer and co-executor, told more than 200 listeners as he opened the gathering in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Met. “So we’re not having one.” Instead, he said, the event was simply a “memorial tribute,” composed of a “coalition of the disobedient” â€" friends, subjects, colleagues and readers â€" who couldn’t imagine not saying farewell.

“What she cared about was authenticity,” said Mr. Shapiro, the president of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. As a critic, Ms. Huxtable was unbothered by fashionable consensus. She did not hesitate to champion such authentically American architectural forms as the low-slung, single-story ranch house. In fact, she owned a ranch house in Marblehead, Mass., where she spent much of her time.

At the lectern, Mr. Gehry, perhaps the most widely recognized contemporary American architect, recalled his early days in Los Angeles, wondering when or if Ms. Huxtable would notice. “Even though I wished for her attention,” he said, “I was scared of it.”

On Aug. 24, 1980, Ms. Huxtable counseled her readers in The Times to keep watch for Mr. Gehry, “whose work veers from the outrageous to the extraordinary and promises to loom large in the confusions and contributions of the season and on into the ‘80s.”

Her praise was cherished, but her tart dismissals were relished. More than one speaker quoted Ms. Huxtable’s assessment of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on March 30, 1965. “Its empty aridity and degraded classical details are vulgarization without drama,” she wrote, “and to be both dull and vulgar is an achievement of sorts.”

Almost every speaker quoted from Ms. Huxtable’s columns, suggesting that she pulled off the rare feat of producing durable prose on a daily deadline and that her combination of passion, conscience and erudition was still the last word in architectural criticism.

Paul Goldberger, Ms. Huxtable’s immediate successor at The Times and now a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, said, “We’re all, in a sense, her progeny.” No one claimed to be her equal.

On the Subway, Dioramas of Manhattan Life

Richard Drew/Associated Press The South Ferry subway station reopened in April.

Dear Diary:

Hurricane Sandy left the new South Ferry subway station in ruins. With a timetable of years before it’s back in operation, the M.T.A. had the wherewithal to reopen the old South Ferry, where approaching No. 1 trains scream as they tentatively round the bend, so that those waiting instinctively reach for their ears. Indicative of its antiquated design, the platform accommodates only the train’s first five cars. Station by station, riders move up one car to the next, while the train heads downtown â€" a bygone ritual revisited.

On a recent Saturday night, on my way home from work, I hurried down into the Times Square station at 12:05 a.m., just as the No. 1 train arrived. Boarding at the rear, I jumped from car to car, dropping in on a series of dioramas of life in Manhattan.

The various scenes included: Two model types, discussing a gig that paid $700. A reveler sleeping it off, tilting toward the tourist a seat away, and snapping out of it just short of resting his head on his shoulder â€" again and again. A minstrel, acoustic guitar on lap, who spontaneously burst into song. College girls sitting opposite one another, one anonymous inside her hoodie, the other, feet up on the pole, exhibiting her knee-high boots, both furiously texting. Two people asking directions to the World Trade Center, while the sports fan they engaged mistakenly directed them to the Barclays Center, until a woman intervened.

And, finally, a group whose tense expressions bore the anxiety of arriving at South Ferry in time to make the 12:30 boat.

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