A gleaming Streamline Moderne lobby of New York City’s original McGraw-Hill Building is under threat of a renovation that could obliterate its historic character. Architect Raymond Hood, who designed some of the very finest, awe-inspiring Art Deco skyscrapers of the era, created the lobby as a perfect entrance statement that fit with the McGraw-Hill’s bold, […]
Entries Tagged as 'Be a Mindful Activist'
Suffrage at 100: The Battle Keeps On
August 24th, 2020 · No Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
At the 11th annual Women’s Rights Convention in 1866, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper exhorted the white suffragists gathered to welcome women of color. The poet, abolitionist, and suffragist declared: “We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity….Society cannot afford to neglect the enlightenment of any class of its members.” In 1893, […]
Tags: Washington·women
A Koala’s Cry on the Climate
December 21st, 2019 · 2 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
She named the koala Lewis – Ellenborough Lewis was his full name, after her grandchild. For a week in November we around the world saw only glimpses of him on video – his paws sticking out of a soft blanket, his slow and gingerly eating of green leaves a caregiver fed to him, or the […]
Tags: climate
Grief – and the Resolve to Save Our World
November 6th, 2018 · 18 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
This past two weeks in America have been an especially dark chapter of violence and hatred in a society already dealing with a foreboding sense that deep divisions are on some irreversible course in the United States. Today, on Election Day, we are, hopefully, taking positive, peaceful steps in our democracy. In a suburban area […]
Tags: Presidents
Lorraine Hansberry’s Courageous Path
March 3rd, 2018 · 2 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
“Our South side is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.” Lorraine Hansberry wrote these words about growing up in a segregated neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side in the 1930s. This sentence expresses pain – and it signals unyielding resistance. In the documentary devoted to Hansberry, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, a speaker […]
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Could Trump Start a War? Speak Up
August 10th, 2017 · 2 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
The last few days have felt to this baby boomer like the extremely tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962, when the United States and world clung on a precipice that could bring the start of a nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Yet, in this case, the situation of […]
Tags: Presidents
Victory in Saving an Underground RR Site
June 3rd, 2017 · No Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
In a win for those seeking to preserve the history of an abolitionist’s house where escaped slaves found safe passage, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) decided early last week that the owner must abandon plans for a fifth-floor addition and restore the building to its original height. In a city of 8 […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·new york·women
The Power of Facts in the Time of Trump
January 19th, 2017 · 12 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
Finding and stating facts is an act of resistance in the age of Donald Trump. The Trump campaign already had stirred a strong sense that facts were under threat, besieged by a candidate who told untruths in both significant and casual ways, as Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star and others documented and compiled. Since […]
Tags: cities·Presidents
What You Can Do to Save the Palisades
August 16th, 2014 · No Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
Fast forward several years and picture that you are on the east side of the Hudson River, looking across at the steep ledges of the Palisades north of the George Washington Bridge. But where once over many years the cliffs stood out boldly, etched against the skies, now a large office tower protrudes above the […]
Tags: historic preservation·Hudson Valley·landmarks·New Jersey·new york
What Is the Future of Midtown East?
May 31st, 2013 · 2 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
One person’s “beautiful” is another person’s “dowdy,” and someone’s pronouncement of “architectural significance” is another’s “obsolescence.” These are the terms people are using in a clash over zoning and related plans that will likely shape a historic part of New York City for the future. Consider the character and skyline of Manhattan’s Midtown East, where […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·New York architecture·smart growth
Our Connection to the Prison Ship Martyrs
September 5th, 2012 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
The thousands of Revolutionary War prisoners who died in horrible and inhumane conditions aboard ships moored in New York waters form one of the most neglected chapters of American history. Many New Yorkers and Americans do not know about or have forgotten these prisoners, even though a far larger number of those fighting for the […]
Honoring Triangle’s Victims in the Streets
March 24th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
A year after the tragic Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in 1911, sculptor Evelyn Beatrice Longman created a memorial, commissioned by the City of New York, to the seven female victims whose remains could not be identified. The city installed the sculpture with little public attention in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. This memorial […]
New York Recalls the Triangle Factory Fire
March 10th, 2011 · 8 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
“Rose Mehl – 15 years old.” The words jump out from the flip side of a business card on which they are imprinted. Rose was a Jewish girl who lived on East 7th Street in New York, and she had a job as a factory worker. Her name and age are printed on the back […]
Wal-Mart Will Not Build at Battlefield
January 26th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
Preservationists today hailed the decision by Wal-Mart to drop its plans to build a supercenter within the original boundaries of the Wilderness Battlefield in Virginia. In an unexpected move early Wednesday in Virginia’s Orange Circuit Court, Wal-Mart revealed it was abandoning its proposal to construct a store on the property. The retailer said it was […]
Order Unheeded at Underground RR Home
December 13th, 2010 · 6 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
One hundred and fifty years ago, escaping slaves found a safe shelter at the home of Quaker abolitionists who lived at 339 West 29th St. in New York City. The family risked their lives in harboring the slaves. During the Draft Riots that erupted in the city in 1863, the family came under attack for […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·new york·women
Meditation: An Egret and the Gulf Oil Spill
June 9th, 2010 · 8 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
To whom does the Earth belong? If you have any doubt about it, spend time at a wildlife refuge. Even 15 minutes, let alone a couple of hours, at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey tell the answer: The Earth belongs to all creatures, not just man. Hundreds of sandpipers gather […]
The Wilderness: An “Endangered Place”
May 21st, 2010 · No Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
The land on which thousands died in the cause to end slavery and keep the United States together cannot speak for itself. For generations, people have walked the land of the Wilderness Battlefield, remembering on this hallowed ground the harsh and brutal battle the Union and Confederacy fought in May, 1864. Now, a new generation […]
New York Places of Women Trailblazers
March 22nd, 2010 · 1 Comment · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
Traveling in a horse-drawn buggy in the 1880s, Alice Austen carried cameras, a tripod, huge glass plates to record images, and other camera equipment with her so that she could photograph scenes on Staten Island. Sometimes the equipment weighed as much as 50 pounds. During the following decade, Austen ventured farther into New York City […]
Tags: architecture·Brooklyn·manhattan·new york·staten island·women
Talking: Architecture and Spirituality
February 17th, 2010 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
To Sara Sweeney, bricks, concrete, and glass are expressions of our soul. Each building, in the architect’s view, is a statement of us, our relationship to each other, and our connection, or disconnection, with the Earth. A registered architect, Sweeney has had a 19-year career reflecting her passion and commitment to sustainable design, green building […]
Tags: architecture·green energy·international·spiritual places
Wilderness Wal-Mart: A Day in Court
February 5th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
The Battle of the Wilderness, one of the crucial turning points on the Union’s path to victory in the Civil War, encompassed three days of horrendous combat in May, 1864. Those fighting to keep part of the original battlefield safe from a Wal-Mart and big-box retail development hope their own campaign will live to see […]
