In Our Midst: The Prison Ship Martyrs

September 30th, 2010 · Explore New York

To walk thoughtfully around the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park is to be asked to delve into a story of unspeakable horror that took place right in New York City’s waters during the Revolutionary War. It’s a story that many of us in the 21st century do not know or one that we neglect. But look into books, journals and diaries, online summaries, and historic newspapers and the story is there.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sitting on high ground atop Fort Greene Park, honors the patriotic soldiers, sailors, indentured servants, and others who perished in the inhumane conditions aboard floating prisons. It’s far more than a fancy granite memorial. It’s one of New York’s few places where you can come into contact, in a real physical way, with the reality and sacrifice of the Revolutionary War, with tangible evidence that everyday people suffered terribly and lost their lives.

The British government consigned thousands of prisoners to ships around New York during the years of the Revolutionary War that the British occupied the city, from 1776 to 1783. The captives’ suffering was immense and horrible beyond comprehension. Writing of his imprisonment aboard the British ship Jersey, Capt. Thomas Dring observed “that among the emaciated crowd of living skeletons who had remained on board for any length of time, the cook was the only person who appeared to have much flesh upon his bones.”

Those who somehow survived recalled receiving very little food. For a meal, they might have gotten only a hard biscuit full of worms and oil, a tiny bit of oatmeal, or a scant ounce of rotted meat. One prisoner, Ebenezer Fox, told of prisoners learning to pound the biscuits sharply on the ship’s deck to dislodge the worms, according to Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War. Another remembered when he and other prisoners received the severed heads of sheep, which they crushed and mixed with water and a small bit of oatmeal to make a broth.

Edwin G. Burrows’ Forgotten Patriots captures the appalling conditions and death on the prison ships: The British confined prisoners to the lower decks that were often so crowded they had no room to lie down to sleep or anywhere to sit. Guards often beat or terrorized prisoners. Aboard the Jersey, the captives fought “like wild beasts” to get near the ship’s small openings so that they could breathe. The stench was intolerable. The water they drank was putrid. In such unsanitary, befouled, and close conditions and without proper food or water, thousands came down with typhus, dysentery, small pox, yellow fever, and other illnesses and died. [Read more →]

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The Trotters at Goshen’s Post Office

September 10th, 2010 · Beyond Gotham

In today’s world, Georgina Klitgaard’s painting might have sparked carping and a slew of talk-radio rant that it was wasteful government spending. In the late 1930s in the town of Goshen, N.Y., however, it absolutely delighted many of the town’s citizens.

All over the United States we have public art remaining today that is courtesy of the “stimulus” money of that time period, the New Deal. The Running of the Hambletonian Stake, an oil painting, is one of those artworks. It graces the small lobby of the U.S. Post Office in the Orange County town of Goshen, recalling a time when this village, then a place of about 3,000 people, each year hosted one of harness racing’s elite events.

Goshen’s post office building, located at 20 Grand St., and designed by E.P. Valkenburgh, opened in 1936. It’s in the Colonial Revival style popular for many public buildings and post offices of the era. Its stately look, red brick, and symmetry hearken back to America’s colonial roots and traditions.

Goshen’s somewhat-dark post office lobby looks like it hasn’t changed in decades, with heavy wood and bronze lockboxes. To the right and above as a customer approaches the teller’s window, hangs the oil-on-canvas mural of the Hambletonian, just one inch shy of 12 feet wide and 5-feet-5-inches tall, dominating one wall. It shows seven trotters racing around the track, the back four shadowy in the dust. You can almost feel the speed, rhythm, and lightness of the two trotters leading the pack. Beyond in the left rear is a packed wooden grandstand. The course is set against a peaceful scene of lush green grass, verdant trees, and clouds on the horizon, evoking the era and yet somehow timeless.

Kicking Up a Controversy

In post offices across the land, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal funded murals that would accomplish two objectives – provide work and income to artists who struggled like many others through the Great Depression and promote American values through various scenes. People often generically call such murals “WPA art” for the Works Progress Administration’s relief program for artists. However, the Treasury Department’s Fine Arts Section was responsible for the post office murals, holding competitions and awarding commissions, according to EnRoute, a National Postal Museum publication.

The Running Of The Hambletonian Stake

The Running of the Hambletonian Stake

In this milieu, the Goshen mural actually generated controversy at the time. When the Fine Arts Section selected Klitgaard, a Woodstock painter and muralist, to design and execute a mural for the Goshen post office, the official letter urged her to visit the town to determine what aspect of Goshen’s history or activities might be most suitable for a mural. She complied. According to a book on post office murals entitled Wall-to-Wall America, Klitgaard interviewed people in Goshen and came away convinced that the town’s “consuming passion” was horse racing, especially preparing for and hosting each summer’s Hambletonian, a historic competition among trotters. [Read more →]

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Encountering the “Three-Legged Buddha”

August 19th, 2010 · Beyond Gotham

Like the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that it evokes, Zhang Huan’s “Three-Legged Buddha” is an artwork of mystery and complexity. It captures life, death, and rebirth. The enormous sculpture is strong and muscular, yet fragile; seemingly dominated yet defiant. Is the key figure within it collapsing, or is it arising?

These are the qualities and questions the sculpture embodies as it sits within the lush South Fields of Storm King Art Center. In July, the Mountainville, N.Y. art center, which brings together nature and sculpture in a magnificent pastoral setting of hills, fields, and woodlands in the Hudson Highlands, installed the sculpture. Standing about 28 feet tall and weighing 12 tons, it is in a clearing amid a grove of maple trees. The sculpture is the gift of the Chinese artist and The Pace Gallery of New York.

This is not a piece that one casually glances at. The sculpture has three gigantic, thick legs, two of them balanced on thin stilts, in a contorted, back-bending image of the Buddha. The third leg and foot are resting atop the upper half of an eight-foot-high head, which has eyes closed. The top edge of the sculpture is rough like mountain peaks.

Three-Legged Buddha

Three-Legged Buddha, Storm King Art Center

Zhang, born in 1965 in the Henan province of China, created this sculpture in 2007. Initially a performance artist known internationally through his edgy, provocative, and haunting works, Zhang has immersed himself during recent years in traditional art practice, specifically sculpting a series of monumental artworks depicting the fragmented extremities of Buddhist statues, according to The Pace Gallery, the artist’s dealer in New York and Beijing. [Read more →]

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Savoring Leroy Street’s Details

August 2nd, 2010 · Explore New York

Often a street in New York just beckons you to walk down. Leroy Street in Greenwich Village is one of those places. On a walk down Leroy Street between Bleecker and Bedford streets and then around the corner, noise peeled away and the buildings drew my eyes to their features. It’s another era, no longer 2010. On the building fronts, one sees a New York of details, colors, facial expressions, and bits of evidence of past lives.

Here’s a look:

Terra Cotta Panel, 23 Leroy Street

This intricate terra cotta panel is on the front of a five-story building at 23 Leroy St.

Detail - Terra Cotta Panel, 23 Leroy Street

Is this Adam with the snake, on the front of 23 Leroy St.? The image certainly conveys a powerful scene — human fear and fierceness as the snake threatens so closely. [Read more →]

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The Place Where the Draft Riots Erupted

July 16th, 2010 · Explore New York

Only 10 days after the Union won a decisive victory in the Battle of Gettysburg in July, 1863, the city of New York suffered through its own brutal and bloody violence, amid the streets and buildings. Class, racial, and ethnic tensions had been brewing in New York for decades, finally brought to a head by the issue of the military draft during the Civil War and bursting into open and widespread unrest. During this week of July 147 years ago, the New York Draft Riots exploded for four days, a time of arsons, lynchings, shootings, skirmishes in the street, and attacks on many citizens.

One could scarcely guess that this began at what is now one of Manhattan’s fairly unremarkable busy corners. Today, where Third Avenue and East 46th Street meet is just another bustling Midtown East intersection of banks, stores, and offices. In 1863, at a place called the Provost Marshall’s office where these two streets came together, a disturbance began that set in motion four days of unrest and violence from July 13-16. It became one of the worst episodes of civil disorder ever in the United States.

Many forces collided to create a situation ripe for the unrest that broke out. When the Civil War began, many thousands first united behind the Union and volunteered for the military. Yet as the war dragged into 1863, the United States faced a manpower shortage. In March, 1863, Congress passed the Conscription Act, establishing for the first time ever a federally mandated draft. However, the measure released men who could find a substitute or pay $300 for a waiver, a move that meant the wealthy could afford to avoid the draft. Couple this situation with the already-existing tensions between Irish and African-American workers and the economic hardship that ensued during the early time of the war.

“An Irruption”

Yet no one could have surmised what was coming judging by the first day of the draft, on Saturday, July 11, 1863. It went off peacefully. But then the tenuous peace unraveled on Monday, July 13, a hot, humid day in the city. Officials were set to choose names on the second day of the draft lottery, as they had done on Saturday, at the U.S. Provost Marshall’s Office, at the corner of Third Avenue and 46th Street.

But a large crowd gathering had other intentions. Early that morning, groups of laborers organized together and marched toward the office where the draft would occur. They stopped in various factories and workshops, and compelled others to stop work and join them, various sources reported. German-speaking artisans, native-born Protestants, and Irish laborers walked together, according to Virtual New York, a CUNY Graduate Center project. The crowd included workers from the shipyards, iron foundries, machine shops, and railroad companies. It drew women as well as men.

The groups massed in front of the draft office, and there the rioting began. In the first minutes of the lottery, the sizable crowd inside included hecklers. “Scarcely had two dozen names been called, when a crowd, numbering perhaps 500, suddenly made an irruption in front of the building, (corner of Third-avenue and Forty-sixth-street,) attacking it with clubs, stones, brickbats and other missiles,” the New York Times reported in its July 14, 1863 edition. Many of the rioters rushed into the building, sacking the office and demolishing the lottery wheel and other equipment.

Accounts of the events give a sense of the rage and wildness suddenly unleashed on that hot July morning. As the military officers and a small police detail escaped with their lives, the rioters set the building on fire. One military officer sought to quell and assure the crowd that the draft equipment had all been destroyed, asking people to leave, but the mob beat him with clubs, according to the Times report. The building became engulfed in flames, which spread to adjoining structures on the block. As the unrest exploded, the government suspended the draft late that morning.

An Onslaught of Violence

Consider the emotion that day, hordes of people suddenly gone out of control and the scene at Third Avenue and 46th Street one of chaos and destruction. From this intersection, the mobs, drawing others, branched out and vented their fury on other targets in New York City that day and over the next three days. They especially went after draft personnel, Republican Party supporters, and abolitionists. They cut telegraph wires and pulled up railroad tracks. A mob set fire to Horace Greeley’s pro-Republican New York City Tribune on Park Row.

Illustration: New York Draft Riots

An illustration of a building on fire on New York’s Lexington Avenue during the Draft Riots of 1863. The drawing appeared in William J. Bradley’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Appomattox.

African Americans were especially vulnerable. Crowds attacked and beat African-American citizens, in some cases fatally, and ransacked their homes. There were lynchings in the city. A mob ravaged and then set fire to the Orphan Asylum for Colored Children, on Fifth Avenue between 43rd to 44th streets, destroying it.

From that first day of “Infamy and Disgrace,” as the Times called it in a headline, the disturbances went on unchecked. Over the four days, attacks and battles took place in various city neighborhoods. Thousands of federal troops, including some who had fought in Gettysburg, finally restored order on July 16. In the ending confrontations between the troops and rioters, many rioters died.

The riot’s ultimate impact was horrific. The official death toll was 119 people (though others have estimated higher), and hundreds were wounded. Dozens of buildings burned to the ground. Thousands of African Americans fled or were forced out of the city, and some residents formed aid societies to help others stay. Ultimately, the federal government succeeded in holding the draft in New York, in August, 1863. Thus came to a close one of the most violent chapters of civil unrest in American history.

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The Free View Near Riverview Terrace

July 1st, 2010 · Explore New York

In New York City, even two words can set off an intriguing exploration. An old guidebook I was perusing cited a “private street” on the far eastern side of Manhattan, where Midtown meets the Upper East Side, at Sutton Place. A private street in this city filled with hundreds of public streets?

Yes, it’s a place called Riverview Terrace, a cobblestoned street of just six townhouses behind a locked iron gate that is located between the east ends of Sutton Square (East 58th Street) and East 59th street. It’s one of New York’s relatively rare private streets. It fronts on a lush, tree-filled rectangular garden, also behind a gate, that slopes down toward the East River. The homes are elegant beauties (and expensive ones at that), a mix of modern and later 19th century styles. There’s no walking on Riverview Terrace for your average New York citizen or tourist.

Yet a small segment of a New York City park, Sutton Place Park, sits next to Riverview Terrace and helps make the trek in 90-degree-plus heat worthwhile. Located beside Riverview Terrace, this tiny two-tiered, red-brick courtyard, trimmed in wrought iron, has an open view of the East River, Queensboro Bridge, Roosevelt Island, Queens, and downriver, Brooklyn. It’s a pleasing nook and an interesting juxtaposition: a little private street next to one of the tiniest sections of a New York public park, in a neighborhood once known for its industrial character and notorious gangs. The intersection of the park and street also holds a place in film history: Here Woody Allen shot an iconic view of the Queensboro Bridge for the film Manhattan. [Read more →]

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Meditation: An Egret and the Gulf Oil Spill

June 9th, 2010 · 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 in one spot. An osprey arises from a nest, its wing span leaving me awed. A red-winged blackbird alights gently near us on a tall stalk of grass. These scenes occur amid total quiet during an exploration along the Wildlife Drive, an unpaved 8.5-mile road through the refuge.

For miles all we can see are birds, around the fields, ravines, marshes, and water on a green expanse that fills the horizon in every direction. We hear no other sounds except birds – chirping, singing, warbling, tweeting, flitting, and squawking. We become silent, so as to take in every bit of it, listening to the bird sounds filling the air entirely. It’s mesmerizing and miraculous. [Read more →]

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The Wilderness: An “Endangered Place”

May 21st, 2010 · 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 of citizens and preservationists are speaking up and fighting for this land to be preserved and for Wal-Mart’s plans to build a gigantic supercenter on it to be stopped. Regarding the plans as something that will harm the battlefield irrevocably, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has newly declared the Wilderness Battlefield one of America’s 11 “Most Endangered Historic Places” in 2010.

In naming the site as an “endangered place” in its May 19 announcement, the National Trust observed that the Wilderness battle “was one of the most significant engagements of the Civil War.” In doing so, the national preservation group signaled it has no intention to give up its campaign to preserve the battlefield from the giant retailer’s plans to construct a new 138,000-square-foot supercenter in Orange County, Va. Plans call for the new Wal-Mart plus nearly 100,000 square feet of additional “junior big-box” stores on a 52-acre parcel.

The new superstore, which would be built on the northern side of Route 3 near Route 20, would actually fall within the historic footprint of where the original battle occurred in Orange and Spotsylvania countries in Virginia. It’s in close proximity to the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, which commemorates four of the most important Civil War battles. [Read more →]

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Transported Back at 20 Exchange Place

May 14th, 2010 · Explore New York

Buildings are like stories, marked by scenery, time and place, and plot. They often have a rise and decline, and maybe a rise again. Buildings evoke an era, and characters conceive, design, build, and inhabit them. Like the times when we read only a few pages or a chapter of a story, we may see and appreciate much just by looking at a part of a building.

I’ve walked many times by a single entrance and a set of doors on Hanover Street in Downtown Manhattan, hurrying by, noticing the doors’ beauty, and making a mental note to dig into the story of the building. Hanover is a narrow, curving street from the days of Dutch settlement, with large skyscrapers hulking above that make it somewhat dark even on the sunniest days. When I stopped to look at the entrance, I noticed the fine details, fanciful images, and rich materials. On the door panels are trains, ships, hot air balloons, and other means of transport, while above them are many animal figures, carved abstract forms, and allegorical figures. What is it about this building entrance, and what do its images mean? Who designed them?

Ocean Liner

The building is 20 Exchange Place, named for its address on a narrow cross street to Hanover and now housing high-end rental apartments. Originally, this streamlined skyscraper, a New York City designated landmark, was the City Bank Farmers Trust Company Building, headquarters of the bank that today survives as Citibank. It has an odd, irregularly shaped base that conformed to the “this-way-and-that-way” diagonal streets of Exchange Place, and Hanover, Beaver, and William streets. From its odd shape the skyscraper dramatically rises, with setbacks, to a slender tower that is situated askew to the base so that it conforms to New York City’s north-south grid. It’s one of Lower Manhattan’s most distinctive skyscrapers, with quite a history. [Read more →]

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Discovering Architecture All Around Us

May 1st, 2010 · Beyond Gotham

To an Idaho student, a waterfalls in her region looks like a skyscraper that’s thin at the top and has cascades rippling downward toward the bottom, much like the tower at 1 Wall Street in New York City. To someone else, the sight of an egg shell evokes a dome, a delicate and yet strong design. After all, the egg shell doesn’t break despite a hen sitting on it. A row of grand oak trees conjures up the columns of a Greek temple.

We can see architecture all around us. At least this was the idea of a student from the Boise Architecture Project in Idaho who posed the question on the project’s Facebook page: “Have you ever been looking at some completely random thing and thought about architecture?” Carolyn Whited, a student at Timberline High School in Boise, gathered answers (including one I submitted) and then used them as the basis of an article, “Appreciating Architecture in Unexpected Places,” on the PreservationNation blog published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Playing a game of Jenga first spurred the question.

The answers as well as the article remind us how similar forms and shapes exist both in the natural and human-created world. They show how persistent principles such as symmetry and order are and how the best architecture leaves powerful images that stay within us day to day. [Read more →]

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A Date With the Blossoms In New Paltz

April 21st, 2010 · Beyond Gotham

Imagine that you were walking in a city park, on a campus, or along a street, and suddenly you see that someone has set up a dozen original paintings of Claude Monet. The masterpieces are before your eyes. Along your path, you see “Impression, Sunrise,” “Winter At Giverny,” and “The Water-Lily Pond,” among many others. Would you stop to look closely at these paintings or works by Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, or Paul Klee?

It is this glory before our eyes, and even more, with the bursting of buds and the arrival of spring blossoms and leaves, for these are nature’s masterpieces. Still, many of us take a look, think “how beautiful,” and walk on by.

Yet I find the whole phenomenon of tree blossoms quite startling, mysterious, and beautiful, and in particular an affirmation of the beauty we are meant to receive. The trees contain dormant, tightly closed buds that outlast winter’s forces. Then in a complex combination of spring’s warmer temperatures and other changes, suddenly – heaven knows when and which exact moment – the buds open and flowers and leaves burst out in a pattern of rebirth each spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

Blossoms, Leaning

Each spring the natural world reawakens and creates a performance that asks us simply to savor and enjoy it. The trees bring forth fragile blossoms and tiny tender leaves, and it’s a “catch me if you can” moment, fleeting. For those precious days, the blossoms are present with us, but are we present with them? It is the moment of contemplating – really looking – that makes us fully present. We can be reawakened like the new season. [Read more →]

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Duane Park’s Compact Patch of History

April 7th, 2010 · Explore New York

If you were creating a scavenger hunt that captured the history of New York City’s tiny Duane Park and its surroundings, you could use anything from eggs, butter, bog grass, and Dutch coins to 19th century shoes, coconut, banjos, and a dish of chocolate soufflé. That would begin to hint at the many layers of history, from pre-European settlement to today, of this less-than-an-acre patch of green in Tribeca and its nearby buildings and streets.

Duane Park is a small triangle lying where Duane Street splits into two just west of Hudson Street. Before the Dutch arrived in the early 1600s, this area was a boggy meadowland when the Native Americans inhabited what is now Manhattan. These days Duane Park is a place that tells New York history from the last couple of centuries in visual shorthand. The sole remaining remnant of a large farm established in the 17th century, it is New York’s second oldest public park and the first open space that the city acquired specifically for use as a park.

Around the park are streets and buildings that convey a neighborhood’s varied lives through time. It has had a couple of lives as a residential neighborhood – first primarily in the early 19th century and again today. These have been sandwiched around a commercial era when Tribeca and the streets around the park were teeming with food warehouses for eggs, butter, cheese, meat, and pickles. This business took hold in the late 19th century and peaked from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Change occurred again in the 1960s and 1970s. Once the warehouse commerce diminished, the area became dilapidated until artists began to move in to the large buildings and rejuvenated the neighborhood. Today, it’s again residential with well-kept, gorgeous old buildings, and spaces fetching lofty prices. It’s also a center of haute cuisine in restaurants such as Bouley, with chocolate soufflé, porcini flan, and the like on its menu.

Stroll Downtown

Fancy addresses notwithstanding, it almost feels like a little Main-Street-in-town when walking up Hudson from Morgan’s Market to Duane Park. Simply looking around Duane Park’s corners allows one to peel back many layers of history and interpret them in the architecture, envisioning what it was like at those times. Those differing lives say much about just how durable and flexible buildings can be. Or you can sit on one of its graceful benches and enjoy how tranquil and lovely Duane Park is just off the bustle of Tribeca’s other streets. During one recent weekday lunchtime, fewer than a dozen people came in and out.

Duane Park

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New York Places of Women Trailblazers

March 22nd, 2010 · 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 and beyond, always taking her weighty cameras and equipment with her.

The cumbersomeness of her cargo didn’t stop Austen, nor did the conventions of the day that prescribed what women ought to be up to. She was enthralled with capturing images of people and daily life in and around New York. Like other women who have made history, Austen was accomplishing something that most people could picture only a man doing.

Consider the images of women making history on the streets of New York. You might picture them walking in suffrage marches, gathering in the thousands at women’s suffrage conventions, fighting for women’s liberation in the 1960s and 1970s, and confronting politicians to gain the right to vote and equal opportunities. Yet, for centuries they have chartered historic paths in many other ways, too – by establishing a settlement that would provide religious freedom to people who had been persecuted, by performing an occupation in a corporate office that no other woman had ever done, or by fighting for families to be safe in a crime-ridden neighborhood.

In honor of Women’s History Month, here are five off-the-beaten-track New York places where you can explore the stories of women blazing historic trails.

Alice Austen House, Staten Island: Based from her home in the Rosebank section of Staten Island, Alice Austen traveled extensively and took thousands of pictures that document life in New York City and beyond in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In some 40 years of photography, Austen produced more than 8,000 photographs on glass plates. She was one of the first women photographers to work outside of the studio, and her style was a precursor of documentary photography.

Austen’s life story is poignant, and that her home and thousands of her images even survive today is amazing. At the age of 10, Austen received a camera from an uncle who brought one home from a voyage, according to a biography posted by the Alice Austen House. He and a second uncle, a chemistry professor who showed Austen how to develop the images on the glass plates, then set up a darkroom for her in her Staten Island home. During her long lifetime, Austen photographed everything from immigrants on the streets of New York and the local beaches and Victorian bathhouses to a Quarantine Station where ships had to stop for inspection before entering New York Harbor. [Read more →]

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Terra Cotta Tales: Alwyn Court

March 4th, 2010 · Explore New York

If the Alwyn Court apartment building in New York was a wedding cake, you might look at it and say, “Somebody went nuts with the icing.” Is it beautiful or it is too much? The creators of this 12-story confection of a building, constructed from 1907-1909 at the corner of West 58th Street and Seventh Avenue, used terra cotta to decorate nearly every inch of the exterior. New York Times writer Christopher Gray called Alwyn Court “the most intricate apartment facade in New York.” Seen through our 21st century eyes, in an age where sleek glass in buildings is king, this place inspires awe, if not always a sense that it’s eye-pleasing.

If you’re walking in this part of Midtown Manhattan, it’s hard to not stop to look at 180 West 58th St.: The building is covered, from top to bottom, with varied Renaissance and Gothic shapes and figures such as urns, floral motifs, vines, mythical animal figures, grotesque human faces, archways, medallions, and much more rendered in terra cotta. Close up, it’s like those children’s puzzles where you suddenly find certain objects within a dense picture.

If you take time, you’ll also notice how flexible and delicate the terra cotta ornamentation is: Paired cherubs have soft fingers and little bellies as if you could touch baby skin, curved leaves are rounded like nature’s live forms. All of the terra cotta makes the Alwyn Court apartments very expressive, even animated.

Cherubs - Alwyn Court

Cherubs, in terra cotta, on the facade of Alwyn Court

Pitching Apartment Life

Alwyn Court opened up just over 100 years ago, and its flair and style speak of that time period – an Old New York of the early 20th century when apartment buildings were billed as the new lavish housing choice for the rich. The idea was simple: A wealthy person could get as much luxury in a spacious apartment co-op as a palatial single home. The area just south of Central Park contained a considerable number of these apartment houses. [Read more →]

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Talking: Architecture and Spirituality

February 17th, 2010 · 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 practices, and care for the Earth. She is the founder of Cherry Hill, N.J.-based EcoVision LLC, a research and consulting firm grounded in sustainable design practices, environmental stewardship, and building science. She is a LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP), which indicates an advanced knowledge of green building standards and practices. Sweeney also is on the advisory board of Build2Sustain, which seeks to bring sustainable design to every organization.

Mindfulwalker.com interviewed Sweeney about what the architect sees as the interconnection of architecture and spirituality, her view that architecture is a calling and carries much responsibility, and how she is teaching the next generation of architects about sustainability and care for our planet.

Mindful Walker: You have written that “there is a spiritual link between the realm of built and natural environment,” basically between what we build and nature. What do you see as the link?

Sweeney: This link is just something that’s intrinsic. We as humans inhabit Earth and we build structures because that’s our shelter, that’s our places of work, that’s our commerce. We need these structures to support our lives. We both live on Earth and we build these structures that inhabit Earth, and so in a way I feel that there’s this triangle of human, structure, and Earth.

There’s a link between all of that because what we build is an expression of us. It’s an expression of us socially, it’s an expression of us culturally, and it’s an expression of who we are, how we feel, and how we view ourselves. That’s what I’m talking about overall. It’s the link between humanity and the built and natural environment.

It’s spiritual because I truly believe that, regardless of your religious leanings if you have that – religion is really just the way you choose to express spirituality. There are so many ways we can all express our spiritual selves. We are spiritual beings – the Earth is a very spiritual thing itself. [Read more →]

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Wilderness Wal-Mart: A Day in Court

February 5th, 2010 · 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 another day.

A judge in Orange County, Va., will soon decide whether to allow or throw out a lawsuit opposing plans for a Wal-Mart supercenter and other major retail stores on the original lands of the Wilderness Battlefield and adjacent to the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield, and a number of local citizens are challenging the approval of Wal-Mart’s and the developer’s plans by the Orange County Board of Supervisors, a vote that took place last August.

Judge Daniel Bouton must determine whether the groups and citizens have legal standing to bring the lawsuit or to side with Orange County’s contention that they do not have such standing or any justifiable arguments. The judge heard about three-and-a-half hours of testimony from both sides in Circuit Court on Wednesday.

Basically, if Orange County has its way, bulldozers will be on the ground without further obstacle. If the preservation groups, historians, and the National Park Service get their way, Wal-Mart would consider another spot in Orange County to build.

Those behind the lawsuit claim that when it granted a zoning special-use permit for the development, the Orange County Board of Supervisors failed to gather and consider important information about how the Wal-Mart and adjacent retail businesses would harm the county’s citizens and its historic lands. Orange County, located about 75 miles south of Washington, D.C., is a largely rural county with a population of just above 33,000 people. It also has a significant tourism trade, with its Civil War sites, wineries, horse farms, and beautiful countryside.

“It’s our position that citizens have a right to challenge a decision like this which is incredibly poor,” says Robert Nieweg, director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Southern Field Office in Washington D.C. [Read more →]

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NYC’s Great Sunset Spots: Gantry Plaza

January 23rd, 2010 · Explore New York

Many associate the term “big sky” with America’s West, Montana especially, where you can stand in the middle of a vast, unspoiled land, breathe deeply, and take in the wide-open sky. Who would think of New York City in this context? Believe it or not, New Yorkers have their own places to search out “big sky” – a riverfront, ocean beach, park, or building roof where the skyscrapers or apartment buildings peel away and you get that feeling of open sky, clouds, and Earth. Gantry Plaza State Park in Queens is one such special space.

Some may scoff at the comparison. Still, there’s something monumental in both a Western landscape and a New York City view when a dramatic feature like mountains or a skyscraper canyon can be seen at a distance and the sky and water suddenly dominate. This is one of the feelings of standing at the edge of the East River, on the lawn or one of the four piers, at Gantry Plaza State Park. The lapping river unfolds before you, the skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan feel close enough to be at the end of one’s fingertips, and the open sky beckons above.

It’s an excellent place to watch the sun go down over Manhattan, as I discovered on a recent briskly cold winter day. Thus, Gantry Plaza is a Mindful Walker nominee for one of New York City’s “Great Sunset Spots.” (See “New York’s Great Sunset Spots: Pier 84” on MindfulWalker.com.)

Like the natural rhythms of seasons, beginning and ending and beginning again, Gantry Plaza State Park exemplifies rebirth. First opened in 1998, it’s a 12-acre park on the East River that the Queens West Development Corp., the state government, and others have created out of a formerly gritty industrial and docking area in the Hunter’s Point Section of Long Island City. A place once marked by cranes, railroad cars, horses and wagons, and barges, and then decaying waste and trash from this now-gone activity, is now parkland where people can be in touch with the river again. [Read more →]

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Walking With the Haitian People

January 15th, 2010 · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham

The images are almost beyond belief, the damage and the suffering beyond comprehension. An earthquake gauged at 7.0, the first rumble striking Tuesday evening and lasting at least 35 seconds, destroyed an entire swath of Haiti, particularly much of its capital and largest city – Port-au-Prince.

The scenes have been horrific. Bodies are lying strewn all over the city and outlying areas. Journalists and cable TV news outlets are using terms that go beyond even the usual reporting of natural disasters: “Haiti In Ruins” reads one headline. “Devastating Catastrophe” says the caption on CNN. Each hour the situation feels grimmer.

The death toll is sure to reach into the tens of thousands, and perhaps much higher. Nothing can prevent a natural disaster such as an earthquake. However, in the Haiti earthquake lays a devastating manmade component to the tragedy. The building collapses and magnitude of deaths are much worse due to substandard design and shoddy construction materials and practices in Haiti, as The New York Times reported in its Jan. 13 edition (“Flawed Building Likely a Big Element”).

What Type of Rebuilding?

As we watch in shock from miles away, so many of us seek to walk in the footsteps of the Haitian people, feeling with heavy hearts their suffering and empathizing with loved ones awaiting word in other places around the world. We long to do something immediately to help in the rescue and recovery, and that is critical.

However, we can also put our voices, actions, and resources toward making sure that Haiti be rebuilt in a far more safe and sustainable way. This isn’t pie-in-the-sky or frivolous thinking on the fourth day after an earthquake – this is necessary to save lives in the future. What if these were the homes and buildings in our neighborhoods? [Read more →]

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New Year’s Meditation On Snow

January 5th, 2010 · Beyond Gotham

The snow is falling slowly, in its own time, on the evergreen. All is quiet. The New Year presents new possibilities and new questions. The possibilities are uncharted, the questions unanswered.

Still, the present moment is enough. What if we just reside in it, stop the running thoughts, and simply behold the surroundings? Take a moment to watch those snowflakes easing down, to look at the white on the green, the path of snowfall against a building’s beautiful stone or curving rooftop, or the swirling snow up in the sky. [Read more →]

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Seven Joys Amid NYC’s Holiday Mayhem

December 22nd, 2009 · Explore New York

“Children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile”…so go the lyrics of “Silver Bells,” the classic Christmas song from the 1950s that paints an idyllic scene of the holidays in the city. This picture of New York City at the holidays lives within many of us. Its images are of softly falling snow, carolers, bright festive lights and garland, the Rockefeller Center tree – and who knows, even a horse and sleigh.

Contrast this with the too-often reality of Christmas days in New York City in the early 21st century. Cellphone ringtones have replaced the silver bells. Huge crowds in Midtown Manhattan can be jostling as much as jolly. The consumerism and price tags feel oppressive. Where’s the magic, and which is the true image?

It depends on each of us. I’m a New Yorker who dives into the holiday crowd rather than avoid it. It’s all in how we choose to experience the frenetic environment of New York during the season. Is it a madhouse rush that makes us exhausted and feeling all bah-humbug, or do we stop and savor it? My advice: Try some curiosity, ingenuity, and humor; pick your spots well; and breathe deeply and stop to really look and take in what’s around you. You’ll find serenity and joy.

Here’s a walk comprised of seven of the best ways and places to discover the seasonal joy along Holiday Central, from Rockefeller Center, south along Fifth Avenue, culminating at Lord & Taylor. [Read more →]

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