With that, here’s a look at some of the stories, places, and ideas that shaped this week:

I hope your Thanksgiving brought moments of joy, connection, and rest. In New York City, the Macy’s Parade wound its way down the West Side, a tradition that never loses its magic. One of its most memorable appearances was Keith Haring’s “Figure with Heart” balloon, inspired by his 1987 ink drawing.

In 2008, the giant figure floated down the parade route, transforming Haring’s art into a soaring, joyful presence above the crowds. It was one of those rare moments when art stepped out of the museum and into the streets, uplifting spectators along the way. One of my all-time favorites — perhaps second only to Snoopy.

From the joyful exuberance of New York’s Thanksgiving parade, the week also brought a more reflective moment for the city: the loss of Robert A. M. Stern at 86, an architectural giant whose work helped shape New York's skyline, its institutions, and its architectural conversation for more than half a century.

As the founding partner of RAMSA, Stern helped build one of the most recognizable architectural practices of the modern era. His work spanned major urban developments, academic institutions, civic buildings, and some of the most celebrated residential towers in the world.

In New York city, his residential designs became landmarks in their own right: from the limestone classicism of 15 CPW to the soaring presence of 220 CPS and the quiet refinement of 70 Vestry. Together, these buildings helped redefine luxury living in the city, pairing historical sensibility with contemporary craftsmanship. At the heart of his architecture was a belief that buildings exist within a long, evolving continuum — one rooted in history yet oriented toward the future.

In remembering Stern, RAMSA shared the following:

Stern was a deeply influential educator and historian. During nearly two decades as Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, he broadened the school’s reach and intellectual scope. His work consistently reaffirmed the value of context, craftsmanship, and the long arc of architectural history.

A passage from the closing of his memoir, Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture is a reflection that encapsulates his lifelong view of architecture:

“In my belief that architecture is a never-ending obsession, I regret that the buildings could not have been a little better, that the books could not have been a little clearer. But I pride myself in sticking to principles — I have no regrets over staying true to my conviction that architecture cannot flourish so long as architects believe they stand before a tabula rasa, so long as they believe that architecture is just the product of an individual program, individual talent, and individual personality. It is much more — architecture is part of a continuum. […] The dialogue between old and new, between what was and what is and what will be, is the conversation across time that I have continuously sought to advance. Continually mindful of Jay Gatsby’s quest, ‘we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’”

As tributes continue to emerge, one thing is clear: Stern’s ideas and his buildings will continue to shape how we think about cities and design for generations to come.

From architecture’s long arc to the realities of today’s housing landscape, the conversation shifts to a question I’m asked often: what’s really driving the shortage?

Every few months, a new explanation for the housing crisis takes hold. Last week, it was a claim that millions of undocumented immigrants are somehow responsible for America’s lack of homes. It’s the kind of statement that spreads quickly because it offers a simple culprit for a problem that is anything but simple.

Let’s look at what the data actually shows.

Credible estimates place the undocumented population around 11–14 million — Pew Research Center. More importantly, these households skew heavily toward renting, often in shared or high-density arrangements. They are not, as a group, the primary buyers of starter homes, especially in hot single-family markets.

The deeper issue is far more structural. According to recent analysis, the U.S. is short by roughly 4.7 million homes despite a surge in new construction — Zillow. Underbuilding, driven by restrictive zoning, high construction costs, labor constraints, and regulatory bottlenecks, is the foundation of the affordability crisis.

Compounding the shortage: investor activity has surged. In the first half of 2025, investors accounted for a record high 30% of all single-family home purchases — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In many markets, these buyers (often all-cash or institutional) have converted starter homes into rentals, reducing the supply available to first-time buyers.

The story of today’s market is about the mismatch between how many homes exist, how many households need them, and who ends up buying the homes that do exist.

The sooner we shift the conversation to those structural realities, the sooner we can begin to make space for the people who need it.

One bright spot in the broader housing conversation is New York’s growing wave of office-to-residential conversions — a shift that is beginning to turn unused spaces into much-needed homes.

Office-to-residential conversions are accelerating across the city. Buildings once defined by commuter crowds are being reimagined as places to live.

New York is in the middle of one of its largest adaptive-reuse eras. Manhattan holds more than 600 million square feet of office space and a residential vacancy rate near only 1%, a historical low. As hybrid work reshapes demand, more buildings are slipping out of traditional office use. By August, over 4 million square feet had already begun conversion, surpassing last year’s total in just eight months.

I was recently interviewed for a story on 6sqft about this trend — “Turning cubicles to condos” — and quoted while discussing One Wall Street. It remains one of the most successful conversion stories in the city. The residences have beautiful scale and light, and the building’s amenities are exceptional, including a 75-foot swimming pool and a spacious terrace overlooking the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor. The addition of Galeries Lafayette at the base brings energy and vibrancy to the entire block.

And when a building has the right bones, the results can be extraordinary. One Wall Street, Walker Tower, and the Bowen Building show how older structures can deliver scale, light, and craftsmanship that new construction rarely achieves.

Economics ultimately decide which projects move forward. Construction costs, rents, and zoning constraints all play a role. Incentives like the new 467m program — which offers tax benefits to office buildings converted to affordable or mixed-income housing — and the Midtown South rezoning have helped make certain projects viable, especially around Bryant Park and Tower 57, a Midtown East office tower often cited as representative of the aging office stock planners evaluate for potential conversion.

But the framework still favors Manhattan below 96th Street and leaves many outer boroughs without realistic paths to conversion.

What happens next will shape the future of the city. Done well, these projects can turn single-use office districts into real neighborhoods with 24-hour life and much-needed housing supply. They require imagination from developers and support from the city to ensure the final product is not only feasible but livable.

New York has always evolved through its buildings. Office conversions are simply the latest chapter.

Staple Street is one of those corners of New York that feels almost unreal. It's a 2-block cobblestone alleyway, cast-iron skybridge overhead, and a level of quiet you rarely find in Manhattan. It’s photographed constantly.

The current owners are filmmaker Neil Burger and architect Diana Kellogg. After almost 25 years on the block, they are listing their 2-story brick townhouse along with the studio they own across the street. The combined price is $30M (COMPASS exclusive).

The townhouse was built in the 1860s and still carries the industrial soul of old Tribeca. The main living room is forty feet wide with steel-beam ceilings, exposed brick, a wood-burning fireplace, and large factory-style windows that swing open to the street. It is the kind of space you almost never see come to market because people hold onto homes like this for decades. The owners paid $1.7M for it in 2000, long before Tribeca was what it is today.

This home is a self-contained world in one of the most recognizable alleyways in the city: private, historic, and quietly dramatic.

Listings like this serve as a reminder that some of New York’s most interesting properties are not the headline penthouses or the glass towers, but the tucked-away spaces that almost never surface.

Built in 1907, the Staple Street skybridge originally connected the old New York Hospital to its laundry and service annex across the alley. The bridge allowed staff to move discreetly between buildings and gave the narrow lane its distinctive silhouette.

When the hospital moved uptown, the buildings shifted into private hands, and the skybridge became one of the most photographed architectural curiosities in the city. Today, it is one of the few remaining elevated private walkways in Manhattan, a relic of Tribeca’s industrial past and a reminder of how layered New York’s history remains.

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