Magnus Lansing Is an Expert on Downtown NYC Architectural History. He's 17.

Illustration of a building with detailed architectural features and a circular inset of a person.
The Teen Architecture Whiz @NolitaArchReview/Magnus Lansing/Olimpia Baez

Procrastination, for most high school students, involves scrolling TikTok and sampling products at Sephora. Not for Magnus Lansing. His idea of putting off homework is taking a notepad and walking around Nolita (the downtown NYC neighborhood where he lives) to discover unique 19th- and early-20th-century buildings to study and recreate in detailed drawings. Last fall he began posting them on Instagram (@nolitaarchreview), pairing each picture with long captions that delve into the building’s history, which he pulls from sources like the New York Times archive.

Architectural sketches of a building labeled '205 Mulberry' with notes and annotations.
@NolitaArchReview/Magnus Lansing

“I have always been interested in drawing buildings for fun. Then it recently clicked for me that I want to be an architect,” says Lansing, who just turned 17. “Then I had another epiphany: I live in such an amazing neighborhood, with so much history, and I could use that as a tool to form my ideas.” Through self-taught discipline, Lansing has already documented an impressive array of Nolita structures, from landmarks like the Puck Building to obscure gems like 205 Mulberry Street (above), which was built in 1871. (His creative flair may be partially genetic: Carolina Herrera is his grandmother.) But the magnum opus of his portfolio will be the Beaux-Arts Police Building on Centre Street. “I’m working up my skill for that one,” he says. “I don’t want to butcher it, because it’s such a beautiful building.”

This story appears in the February 2025 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW

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