Every early September a day comes that is just beautiful – particularly sunny, bright, and gently warm. On such days, I’m sure many feel it again as clearly as if it was yesterday. That Tuesday 10 years ago, the morning was clear and warm, with radiant sunshine, the kind that makes you cup your eyes […]
Entries Tagged as 'manhattan'
9/11: Still-Searing Images
September 16th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Explore New York
Tags: landmarks·manhattan·meditations·new york·spiritual places
A Bit of the 19th Century on Lispenard
June 10th, 2011 · 20 Comments · Explore New York
Every once in a while I turn down a street in New York and suddenly think, “How have the bulldozers and the glass towers not obliterated this one?” Lispenard Street is one such place, a quiet street of a few blocks that is seemingly forgotten just one block south of the crazy, hustle-bustle free-for-all of […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·manhattan·new york·Tribeca
Details, Details: Greenwich Street
April 27th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Explore New York
“Manhattan” and “quiet” are two words that many people do not associate with each other and put together in the same sentence. Yet many pockets of Manhattan offer quiet, especially when we calm the mind enough to find the inner peace that allows it. As one of those Manhattan walkers whose mind often can be […]
A Tree Grows in Chain Link
April 15th, 2011 · 9 Comments · Explore New York
New York City has 5.2 million trees, and each one of them has a life story. For a very long time, a lovely European larch has marked the seasons for those walking in Central Park. It is a deciduous conifer whose needle-like leaves turn yellow in the autumn and fall off. A tulip tree in […]
Tags: manhattan·meditations·nature·new york
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 […]
A Riveting Blue in the Lower East Side
January 21st, 2011 · 2 Comments · Explore New York
Sometimes a building just says “look at me” before you know it and your eyes are captivated in curiosity and wonder. It was an icy cold January afternoon with a brisk breeze, on a walk south of Grand Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The brick storefronts of the 19th century tenement buildings beckoned warmly, […]
Tags: architecture·manhattan·new york
Lost and Found in the West 40s
January 7th, 2011 · 16 Comments · Explore New York
Walking and loving a New York street is akin to a long-term relationship. It’s an experience of both exhilaration and dejection, of losses and gains, times of discovery and times of pain. Sometimes you feel all is lost, and during others you can’t believe your good fortune. New Yorkers who love the streets know this […]
Tags: architecture·manhattan·midtown·new york
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
Savoring Leroy Street’s Details
August 2nd, 2010 · 7 Comments · 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 […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan
The Place Where the Draft Riots Erupted
July 16th, 2010 · 1 Comment · 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 […]
Transported Back at 20 Exchange Place
May 14th, 2010 · 11 Comments · 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 […]
Duane Park’s Compact Patch of History
April 7th, 2010 · 7 Comments · 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 […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·Tribeca
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
Terra Cotta Tales: Alwyn Court
March 4th, 2010 · 14 Comments · 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 […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·terra cotta
Seven Joys Amid NYC’s Holiday Mayhem
December 22nd, 2009 · 7 Comments · 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 […]
Terra Cotta Tales: Apostolic Church
November 20th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Explore New York
An angel, calm and serene, is playing an instrument, perhaps heralding an arrival. Indeed, those worshiping inside the church where the angel is on the front exterior wall were awaiting a coming – the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. They believed it was going to happen imminently. The years of the 19th century came and […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·spiritual places·terra cotta
Terra Cotta Tales: The Rodin Studios
November 6th, 2009 · No Comments · Explore New York
f the artists who developed the Rodin Studios building on New York City’s West 57th Street or the architect who designed it had favorites among the structure’s terra cotta characters, we may never know. Was it the frog, the man reading his book, or the ancient character holding a palette? We do know that nearly […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·terra cotta
Taking In the Subway’s Old Powerhouse
August 10th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
It was on the perimeter of a legendary slum that back then fit its name, Hell’s Kitchen. Yet it was conceived and designed by men in suits who believed that fine, grand civic buildings served to reflect the great accomplishments and ambitious aims of a city crossing a threshold. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) […]
Tags: architecture·cities·historic preservation·manhattan·midtown·new york·terra cotta
New York’s Great Sunset Spots: Pier 84
July 17th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Explore New York
Several children splash through the dancing waters of an interactive fountain, a guitarist plays at P.D. O’Hurley’s bar, a woman points out a gargoyle in the flower garden to her toddler daughter, and dogs and humans socialize at the dog run. A man lies on a landing, with his khaki-dressed legs draping over the steps, […]
