A single residence can take several years and draw on more than a hundred vendors. Not because the number is impressive, but because that is what the work takes: a weaver in one country, a foundry in another, a cabinetmaker an hour outside the city, most of them small operations doing things that cannot be ordered from a page. Staged furniture arrives in a week and is in a landfill in five years. The other way takes longer and lasts, and the difference is not the price.

What almost nobody is given is the whole plan at the start. People are asked to commit to everything at once or to nothing, and both produce the same house, assembled out of order and paid for twice. This guide is the public half of that argument. Who built these buildings, which workshops and galleries are still operating, what is worth crossing town to see. New York holds more of these people per square mile than anywhere in the country and most of them are not findable.

What is here is drawn from published city sources: Department of Buildings filings, the tax lot record, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, alongside places visited and listed by hand.