The crowd outside of Van Alen's new bookstore on West 22nd Street. (Tom Stoelker/The Architect's Newspaper)

It was the perfect spring night for a book launch, or a bookstore launch, or both. Uptown, AN‘s Sam Lubell was signing Julius Shulman Los Angeles: Birth of a Modern Metropolis at the ever-elegant Rizzoli bookstore on 57th Street, while downtown Van Alen threw a vodka-fueled shindig to celebrate the opening of their taxi-yellow LOT-EK-designed bookstore-hangout space.

Checkout the photos after the jump.