Spring 2009 Green Buildings Open House

The 2009 Spring Green Buildings Open House tours took place on May 9, by bus and bike in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Even if you missed the tours, from here you can read a recap from each one and find out more about each building in our Green Buildings directory. Thanks to all the hosts and participants for helping make the tours informative and fun.
Participants in the Brooklyn Bike tour (pic: Sophie Cardona)
Participants in the Brooklyn Bike tour (pic: Sophie Cardona)
The Brooklyn Bicycle Tour visited Eco Brooklyn Show House, Poly Prep Lower School, Green on Dean and 3rd and Bond. Read a full run-down of the tour. The other Brooklyn tour got around by bus and also took a foray into Queens for lunch – read a full tour recap here. Buildings visited included Atlantic Terrace, 439 Metropolitan Ave, Queen’s Botanical Gardens Visitor Center and Sterling Green. The Bronx tour recap describes visits to green buildings and green businesses too. The buildings were El Jardin, Green Decatur and the Bronx Library Center, with suppliers Rebuilder’s Source and Globus Cork also hosting us. See more photos from the tours on our Flickr page. If you joined us for one of the tours and put your pics on Flickr, please tag them with “GreenHomeNYC” and “2009 Green Open House“! A special thanks to the volunteers who made the tours possible: Jordan Bonomo, Dwan Daniels, Gita Nandan, Erik Nevala-Lee, Dan Rushton, Dolly Soto, Stephanie Sugawara and Mohini Tadikonda. About the NYC Green Buildings Open House As a leading resource for the exchange of information on green building in New York City, GreenHomeNYC continues pursuing its mission of facilitating the adoption of sustainable building methods and materials with three tours of Green buildings on May 9, 2009. In its seventh annual tour, GreenHomeNYC offers the public a unique glimpse at the inner workings and design details comprising exemplar Green buildings in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Guests on the tours will be hosted by the dedicated sustainability practitioners of these buildings, such as their expert architects, LEED APs, developers, engineers and owners. Learn about the challenges and accomplishments that were faced by the professionals involved with these commercial and residential buildings.
Tour visitors learn valuable ways to go green by observing examples of:
  • energy-saving solutions
  • photovoltaic and solar hot water technology and integration
  • water-saving fixtures and appliances
  • green roofs
  • solar heating (“passive solar”) techniques
  • allergy/asthma-sensitive building materials
  • various of green materials including paints, insulation, carpeting, renewably- harvested wood products, reclaimed and recycled materials
Since 2003, GreenHomeNYC has organized the NYC Green Buildings Open House as a part of Northeast Sustainable Energy Associaion’s (NESEA) Green Buildings Open House and the American Solar Energy Society’s (ASES) National Solar Tour.