New York City Center

Perhaps most famously, the New York City Center, a performing home for major dance companies including the Fall for Dance Festival, features a distinct Moorish Revival style. Located on 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenue, the Center was originally built in 1923 as the Mecca Temple: a meeting place for members of a specific Masonic order. (These “shriners”––members of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine–– originally met in Carnegie Hall one block to the north, but were booted out by the management for the copious amounts of cigar smoke that accompanied each shriner meeting.) The Center’s auditorium in particular makes use of muqarnas, or stalactite-like projecting decorative devices on ceilings, and ogee arches, or arches that curve in such a way that they resemble Hershey’s kisses.