Now known as 28 Liberty Street, this Financial District tower is one of many modernist masterworks from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect Gordon Bunshaft (his name will appear on this list again). Designed in the International Style—Docomomo says it was the first building of its kind in Lower Manhattan—the 60-story tower is clad in aluminum, and has a 2.5-acre plaza at its base. That open space is home to two iconic public art pieces: Isamu Noguchi’s Sunken Plaza, a serene space that incorporates Uji River basalt; and Jean Dubuffet’s Group of Four Trees, which was installed in 1972.

The late Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei designed this three-building “superblock” in Greenwich Village along with his partner James Ingo Freed. “Their elegantly proportioned and meticulously detailed cast-in-place concrete walls reveal the modular layouts of apartments inside,” according to Docomomo. The buildings each stand 30 stories and are “laid out in pinwheel fashion around a 100-foot-square plaza,” with a 36-foot concrete sculpture at its center. The three buildings were designated as New York City landmarks in 2008.

Docomomo calls this iconic West Village building “the rare New York example of architecture influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright,” as it was designed by one of that legendary architect’s students, Albert C. Ledner. The building, which opened in 1964, was originally constructed for the National Maritime Union; it later became part of St. Vincent’s Hospital, and was spared when the rest of that hospital was transformed into swanky condos (hello, Greenwich Lane). Now, after what Docomomo calls a “respectful renovation,” it’s back to being used as a medical facility.

The process of creating the United Nation’s Midtown East headquarters was not an easy one; as Docomomo puts it: “A committee of architects from 13 countries was led by New York architect Wallace K. Harrison. An overall concept variously attributed to Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer was adopted, the details worked out by Harrison's firm.” That led to the creation of the iconic Secretariat building, with its striking glass curtain wall, as well as the General Assembly building and the structure’s midcentury interiors.

Architect Louis Kahn designed this serene waterfront park in the 1970s, but it wasn’t completed until nearly 40 years after his death. Docomomo calls the design, which occupies the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, a “minimalist masterpiece,” with a large bust of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at its center. “The landscape, with its elegant and dramatic forced perspective, and the views along the East River toward the United Nations and city skyline, make this one of the most contemplative public spaces in the city,” says Docomomo.

“Seagram is both an icon of Modern architecture and a benchmark for office building elegance,” says Docomomo. The building was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and got around the stepped-back look of previous NYC skyscrapers by having the building itself occupy only 25 percent of its lot, eventually paving the way for changes to the city’s outdated 1916 zoning code. But, as Docomomo notes, it’s not merely a slender office tower; “it is much more complex, with rear extensions to accommodate more office area plus restaurants fronting both side streets.” Those restaurants are now part of the Major Food Group series of restaurants.

One of the city’s many privately-owned public spaces, Paley Park (named for the father of CBS executive William Paley, who financed the pocket park) “exemplifies the renewed interest in the standard of living in urban areas,” according to Docomomo. It opened in 1967, and is notable for its many crowd-pleasing design elements courtesy of landscape architects Zion & Breen Associates. Those include a noise-dampening waterfall, as well as green walls on either side of the park, which make it “the perfect escape from the city within the city,” per Docomomo.

As Docomomo notes, the Museum of Modern Art’s Midtown HQ “is an accretion of contributions by various architects over several decades.” Philip Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone were responsible for the original 1939 building, whose facade remains on 53rd Street; Philip Johnson contributed the sculpture garden, pictured above, which was added in 1964; and Yoshio Taniguchi worked on a 2004 renovation that added present-day lobby and some gallery spaces. The museum recently reopened after a years-long renovation project, spearheaded by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and Gensler, that added more galleries while restoring and more seamlessly integrating the older, disparate spaces.

This apartment complex dates back to 1937, when Nelson Rockefeller (hence the name) hired architect Wallace Harrison to construct the buildings. Per Docomomo, “its spare brick facades are enlivened by semi-circular vertical window bays and steel transom, casement, and hopper windows,” and it further ups its modernist bona fides by overlooking the Museum of Modern Art.

The Whitney Museum’s former Upper East Side headquarters was reborn in 2016 as the Met Breuer, named for its architect, Marcel Breuer. While the large, “fortress-like” concrete building seems out of place on otherwise staid Madison Avenue, Docomomo notes that its bulk “was countered by opening up the street floor and basement toward the street with expanses of uninterrupted glass and extending a welcoming canopied bridge across the resulting moat.” Beyer Blinder Belle led the restoration of the building before the Met moved in, which left the structure looking spiffier than ever.

Designed by architects Kahn & Jacobs and opened in 1944, the former Municipal Asphalt Plant is one of the city’s earliest examples of modern architecture, according to Docomomo. The design, inspired by French airship hangars, is “exceptionally visible, rising boldly along the FDR Drive,” and after a renovation, it was “ingeniously adapted by architects Pasanella+Klein as the centerpiece of the foundation-sponsored Asphalt Green Sports and Arts Center, opened in 1984,” per Docomomo.

Docomomo calls Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim building “arguably the most iconic work of Modern architecture in the city, if not in the entire country.” Completed in 1959, just a few months after Wright’s death, the building is one of the city’s most popular museums, though it was not beloved when it opened. As Docomomo notes, its rotunda “has long been criticized as a space whose architecture competes too much with art displayed there.”