The New York Immigration Coalition held its first annual awards dinner Wednesday night.

In addition to honoring five Builders of the New New York, the event celebrated the city budget agreed to the night before, which allotted $7 million to the Immigrant Opportunities Initiative – an increase of more than $4 million from the current level of support.

“The overall mood was of victory, because most of the people at the event worked really hard for the last five years getting funding for immigrant services,” the advocacy director of the coalition, Chung-Wha Hong, said.

“This victory did not come easy. Over the last several weeks, people were writing letters, going to City Hall every day,” Ms. Hong said.

That’s the kind of grassroots work for which the coalition is known. It is also an advocate for immigrants with city, state, and federal officials.

The event gathered legislators and other people who have devoted their careers to immigrant rights, including Council Member John Liu and state Senator Elizabeth Krueger. There also were corporate supporters, union representatives, and the coalition’s own member organizations.

“If you looked out at the audience, it was this incredible mix of Asian, Latino, African, you name it – all the groups were represented,” Ms. Hong said.

It was a mix that was indicative of the breadth of work the coalition does and its relevancy to different communities.

“Because we’re a coalition, whatever event we do highlights why coalition is so important. There’s a sense of solidarity: Look at what we can accomplish by coming together. We’re only strong because of each other,” Ms. Hong said.

The recipients of the Builders of the New New York award were the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus of the New York City Council, represented by Council Members Hiram Monserrate and Robert Jackson; the president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Clayola Brown; the Latin American Integration Center, represented by its executive director, Ana Maria Archila; the director of the Fund for New Citizens, Jane Stern, who is also a program officer at the New York Community Trust, and the director of the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic, Michael Wishnie.

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Builders of another kind gathered the same night to celebrate the Center for Architecture, the exhibition and event space in the Village that feeds New York’s fascination with structures short and tall, and serves as a nexus for professionals in the design industry to debate and collaborate.

The event, at one of the city’s hottest buildings, the Museum of Modern Art – pleasantly air-conditioned, of course – celebrated the completion of a $6 million capital campaign launched five years ago. The cocktail of choice was the Campaign Kicker, a mango margarita.

With 1,500 people gathered in one place – a Who’s Who of the architecture world, from firms large and small – the party was a physical embodiment of the center’s mission: to bring the design community together.

“As I moved from conversation to conversation, people were talking about the hot-button issues of our community,” the center’s executive director, Fredric Bell, said.

“That might be 2 Columbus Circle, the probability of the Olympics coming. I heard debates on the Whitney, some discussion of what’s happening at the World Trade Center site,” Mr. Bell said, noting that on Wednesday evening, most people still had not seen the plans for the new Freedom Tower that were presented earlier in the day.

The builders put down their social and business spades for a few moments for formal (but brief) remarks from the chief executive of Tishman Speyer, Jerry Speyer, who as a vice chairman of MoMA, and chairman of its building committee, served as host of the party; the president of the AIA New York chapter, Susan Chin, and the chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, Amanda Burden.

The co-chairman of the center’s capital campaign, Eugene Kohn (whose firm worked on the design and building of MoMA), served as master of ceremonies.

A slew of architects were on hand, including Daniel Libeskind, Rafael Vinoly, Peter Eisenman, and Robert Stern.

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The Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s annual Passport to Summer gathered young professionals to celebrate one of Brooklyn’s treasures.

“It was a perfect night, perfect weather, perfect music, perfect food,” one of the committee members for the event, Maria Krasnikow Harris, said.

What food, exactly? “I loved the roasted pig and the mojitos,” Ms. Harris said.

A lawyer who grew up in Brooklyn but married a Manhattanite and now lives in Manhattan, Ms. Harris hopes to move back to the borough one day. When she heard of the garden’s young professionals group a few years ago, she jumped at the chance to become involved.

“I used to beg my parents to take me to the garden,” she said.

Now she gets to plan her own visits.

“My favorite part of this event is that it closes and you’ve got it to yourself for the night. It’s your secret place that only you and your friends and theirs have access to,” she said.

The hosts of the party use the event to introduce people to the garden – recent arrivals to the city as well as longtime residents who have for no good reason missed out on the conservatory full of tropical plants, exotic Japanese garden, and roses.

Once they’ve seen it, they usually return on their own.

“It’s great to get off the subway and see birds and bunnies in the garden. It’s completely unexpected for the middle of Brooklyn,” Ms. Harris said.

Dinner at the event, in its fourth year, is served buffet-style. Guests find seats on the ground around large picnic tables that seat 10 or 12 – or as many as can squeeze in. That arrangement encourages small groups of friends to meet other small groups of friends. It also allows the hosts to invite large groups of people who sit together.

Ms. Harris’s group included her childhood best friend, Scott Porter, and his wife, Thayer Porter, and a friend from college, Violet Aldaia, a Brooklyn native who had never been to the garden. Ms. Harris also helped pick the DJ, Brooklyn native Dave Medina.

“I think most people want an excuse to get to the garden, and this party gives them that,” Ms. Harris said.

The event, attended by 300 guests, raised $70,000 for the garden’s children’s education programs.