So many dates feature prominently during a walk of the church and property of Trinity Episcopal Church in Saugerties, N.Y. A large Bible from 1857, with delicate pages, is behind the church pulpit. A lectern contains four intricately carved wooden images of the evangelists such as St. Mark as a wooden lion and John as […]
Entries Tagged as 'art'
Trinity Episcopal’s Storied History
August 31st, 2022 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Tags: architecture·art·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·spiritual places
Olmsted’s Gift of Magnificent Places
May 30th, 2022 · No Comments · Beyond Gotham
Consider what Frederick Law Olmsted created in his lifetime. Central Park is the most iconic, the beautiful jewel “Greensward” that Olmsted and his partner, the architect Calvert Vaux, designed and created over 18 years, 1858 to 1876. After the Civil War, Olmsted reunited with Vaux to plan and fashion the gem of Prospect Park as […]
On View: Lewis Hine’s Power and Vision
June 30th, 2021 · 2 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Lewis Hine sought to save innocent children who toiled for long, brutal hours in factories, mills, mines, canneries, and farms, and in the streets, using a singular device: his camera. Working her fifth season, Ann Parion, 13, carried 60 pounds of berries from the fields to the sheds at Newton’s farm in Delaware. At age […]
Tags: art·Hudson Valley
Tour and Learn in New York, Virtually
November 22nd, 2020 · No Comments · Explore New York
It was just the kind of peek into a dark brick hallway that Joseph Mitchell would have appreciated, a glance at a crooked passageway on an upper floor of 6 Fulton Street, at South Street Seaport. But now we were doing it virtually, through a screen. In fact, with a trace of excitement in her […]
Rondout Walks: Listen to the Stories
July 7th, 2018 · 2 Comments · Beyond Gotham
A look around Kingston’s Rondout neighborhood reveals many signs of the buildings’ lives. Walk past a storefront or home and you can see how well-tended and cared for many places are. The signs, shapes, materials, or features convey a structure’s past as well as its present life. What isn’t visible as often to the eye […]
Tags: architecture·art·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·stone
Join in Walks of Kingston’s Rondout
October 10th, 2017 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
If one personified Kingston’s Rondout neighborhood as a storyteller, you might well be inclined to pull up a chair and listen for many hours. In this compact Hudson Valley neighborhood of city blocks and winding streets, hills and paths, architectural gems and eye-catching details, and waterfront setting, you can see, sense, and discover a microcosm […]
Tags: architecture·art·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·stone
Spring Exhibits: Noguchi, Photography
April 22nd, 2017 · 7 Comments · Explore New York
In the middle of extreme inhumanity, some of us go more deeply and courageously into our humanity and act from this place. The Japanese-American artist and sculptor Isamu Noguchi brought the best of his humanity, dignity, and a sense of the capacity of beauty and art to elevate people during a horrendous time. He did […]
The Grief and Questions Over St. Agatha’s
February 27th, 2016 · 35 Comments · Beyond Gotham
As they dismantle the stones, roof, and interior of the former St. Agatha Roman Catholic Church, the demolition crew is taking apart memories, history, art, and part of a community’s fabric, to be replaced by a nondescript pharmacy in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. At the corner of Spring Avenue and Fifth Street in the downtown, the […]
Roped In at Madison Square Park
August 12th, 2013 · 5 Comments · Explore New York
You cannot miss Orly Genger’s Red, Yellow and Blue art installation this summer in Manhattan. If people say this statement, they may mean, “You have got to see this!” Or, they may mean, “You cannot escape seeing this!” when walking through Madison Square Park. During the late spring and summer, this 166-year-old gracious park has […]
An Iconic Carousel Is Now a Landmark
June 28th, 2013 · 8 Comments · Explore New York
To call the Forest Park Carousel a rare work of art is understatement. In an age when we’re so often attached to complex 21st century electronic devices, a simple ride on a carousel still enchants its young and young-at-heart riders, just as it did those who rode carousels a century ago. In the Golden Age […]
Redeemer Lutheran’s Staying Power
October 5th, 2011 · 16 Comments · Beyond Gotham
When we behold a beautiful historic house of worship, we may well find a sturdy and durable congregation that has also withstood the test of time. Both materials and people become a study in resilience. Redeemer Lutheran Church in Kingston is a sweet and brightly warm church set within the Rondout neighborhood of this Hudson […]
Tags: architecture·art·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·spiritual places·stone
Stained-Glass Glory in Chicago
July 11th, 2011 · 7 Comments · Beyond Gotham
The names Healy and Millet likely will never be as well-known as Tiffany. But to those who look up at two stained-glass ceilings in the building that housed Chicago’s grand first central public library, George Healy and Louis Millet created an artwork that is dazzling, like Louis Tiffany’s, in that “can’t take my eyes off […]
The Trotters at Goshen’s Post Office
September 10th, 2010 · 10 Comments · 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 […]
Tags: art·Hudson Valley·women
Encountering the “Three-Legged Buddha”
August 19th, 2010 · 11 Comments · 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 Glories of New York’s Stoopscapes
July 27th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Explore New York
Like other city dwellers, New Yorkers follow the progress of the days and seasons on the details of the buildings and structures around them, from the rosy-pink and golden light of dusk upon the brick and stone to the melting of snow on window sills or the glint and angle of sunrise caught between two […]
Tags: architecture·art·historic preservation·museums·new york
Prayers and Peace at St. Francis
January 6th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Explore New York
Outside, it was a post-Christmas, rush-hour frenzy, throngs crowding near the revolving doors and the holiday windows of Macy’s or walking speedily to Penn Station. Inside St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church in New York in the midst of all of this, you’d never know it. Two men were slowly and carefully placing flowers […]
Tags: architecture·art·cities·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·spiritual places·terra cotta
Bowery Savings: The World in a Building
November 11th, 2008 · 101 Comments · Explore New York
Tinos green marble is a vivid green-blue with wide white veins, mined from the quarries of a small mountainous Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Briar Hill sandstone is an earthy stone of warm red, rust, brown, and buff-colored tones taken from quarries in Glenmont, Ohio. Missouri is the source of Napoleon gray marble, while […]
Tags: architecture·art·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·new york·stone
