The Covid pandemic is exacting a horrible toll, yet history shows us perseverance and purpose. The pandemic has been a brutally difficult time, provoking much suffering and death, and it continues to do so. We each know of precious ones lost; a doctor, nurse, or other health care worker enduring deaths and illnesses among their […]
Entries Tagged as 'new york'
Slavery in Ulster County: A Fuller Story
February 21st, 2022 · No Comments · Beyond Gotham
Tags: Hudson Valley·landmarks·new york·women
Jane’s Walk NYC 2021 Steps Up
May 4th, 2021 · No Comments · Explore New York
The house where Dennis Harris lived, at 857 Riverside Drive, is worse for the wear of many decades, shorn of its dignified shutters and cupola. Yet the rich history the house holds and the life story of Harris, the man who owned this Greek Revival-Italianate place in Washington Heights, are important to keep alive even […]
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 […]
Marking 55 Years of New York Landmarks
April 24th, 2020 · No Comments · Explore New York
This week is an anniversary worth honoring, yet one that is going by relatively quietly. Fifty-five years ago, on April 19, 1965, New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner signed the city’s Landmarks Law. Groundbreaking at a time of widespread demolition and clearing of buildings and blocks in New York and elsewhere, it established the […]
Tags: architecture·landmarks·new york
Sacred Sites, Priceless Opportunities
May 18th, 2019 · 14 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Amid the bustling Lower East Side, a place today with a millennial scene, gleaming glass buildings, and expensive cafes, the old remains, and in fact, finds ways to renew itself. The 132-year-old Eldridge Street Synagogue sits unpretentious in its presence. The structure is strong and commanding in a gentle way, inviting a long look and […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·new york·spiritual places
Sacred Sites: Spring’s Rite of Reverence
May 5th, 2018 · No Comments · Beyond Gotham
Tomorrow is the second day of the annual Sacred Sites Open House throughout New York State. From the 1842 Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church on eastern Long Island to the 1905 First Baptist Church of Niagara Falls at the northwest tip of New York, dozens of Sacred Sites are open to the public this weekend. More than […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·new york·spiritual places
Honoring the Landmark IRT Powerhouse
January 9th, 2018 · 10 Comments · Explore New York
It may be the most underappreciated major historic building in New York City. Finally, however, the magnificent powerhouse that generated electricity for New York City’s pioneering rapid transit subway system when it first opened in 1904 is a protected city landmark. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission’s (LPC’s) recent action to designate the IRT […]
Tags: architecture·cities·historic preservation·manhattan·midtown·new york·terra cotta
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
A Subway Powerhouse Speaks To Today
March 11th, 2017 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Sometimes a message of resilience can come in an instant, and often not predictably. The IRT Powerhouse on 11th Avenue isn’t giving a speech or waving a flag, and it’s not a talking head seeking to shout a point of view at passersby or boast of its strength. Yet, the sight of this 1904 building […]
Tags: architecture·cities·historic preservation·manhattan·midtown·new york·terra cotta
Speak Up on the Hudson River Barge Plan
December 5th, 2016 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
The Hudson River is a bucolic, beautiful, and mighty river. Yet at various times, human activities have threatened the natural balance, splendor, and sustainability of this vital treasure. This is one of those times to speak up for the river. The shipping industry is proposing that the Coast Guard construct sites on the Hudson River […]
Tags: Hudson Valley·nature·new york
Stonewall: The Power in History’s Places
June 26th, 2016 · 4 Comments · Explore New York
If you ever for a moment doubt the importance of declaring a site as a landmark, preserving at least some part of it, or placing a sign at a spot of historical significance, go to The Stonewall Inn this month, in New York’s Greenwich Village. There, hundreds have converged in vigils and left remembrances such […]
Tags: historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·new york
Sacred Sites Open for Exploration
May 20th, 2016 · 2 Comments · Explore New York
New York’s sacred places of worship possess countless life stories and historical chapters as well as inspiring and magnificent art, architecture, and design. Jacob Riis, the social reformer and photographer whose works brought to light the suffering of the poor living in New York City tenements, was one of the early parishioners of the Church […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·new york·spiritual places
Goodbye to the Greenwich Street Tree
May 3rd, 2016 · 6 Comments · Explore New York
The tree wasn’t a towering oak on the rolling landscape of a New York City park, a magnificent elm with big-shouldered limbs, or a bright, showy dogwood welcoming the spring on a village street. It was, in fact, the most unlikely of survivors, sort of scrawny, alone, between city buildings and flanking some very inhospitable […]
Tags: manhattan·meditations·nature·new york
Art Deco’s Wisdom of the Ages, Part II
January 29th, 2016 · 4 Comments · Explore New York
How many schoolchildren over the decades glanced above the doorway to see a woman reading to a boy while a girl nearby is working on an abacus? It is a simple, beautifully sculpted panel, attentive to detail, as the architectural historian William Rhoads writes, “down to the shoelaces.” The scene is one of two on […]
Tags: architecture·art deco·Hudson Valley·manhattan·new york
The Tree as Artist and Art Form
December 30th, 2015 · 8 Comments · Explore New York
To Paul Klee, a tree embodied the creative process. In a public lecture, the artist likened the artist to a tree. The artist is deeply rooted in the world, while the artist’s work is similar to the tree’s crown, as the book Art and Phenomenology explains. “Standing at his appointed place, at the trunk of […]
Symbol and Story in Art Deco Panels
November 18th, 2015 · 2 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Buildings possess energy that can at times elevate or depress the people who view and inhabit them. Like other art, architecture can both be in and rise above its times. Talking about the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, bandleader and jazz singer Cab Calloway once said that people really needed entertainment […]
The Lessons of LG Sparing the Palisades
July 3rd, 2015 · No Comments · Beyond Gotham
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings,” wrote the pioneering conservationist John Muir in his 1901 book, Our National Parks. On Tuesday, June 23, the mountains – that is to say, the cliffs of the Palisades – were the focus of good tidings for all of us and for future generations. LG Electronics, the […]
Tags: historic preservation·Hudson Valley·landmarks·New Jersey·new york
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
July Notes: Daylight, Towers, Prison Ships
July 17th, 2014 · 2 Comments · Beyond Gotham
For early summer, let’s skim the stones across the waters of several Mindful Walker topics. Honoring the First American Prisoners of War: The words “freedom” and “Independence Day” are inextricably linked, but how often on the Independence Day weekend did any of us think about those who gave their lives for the cause of American […]
Tags: Brooklyn·landmarks·manhattan·meditations·nature·new york
A Peek Inside Dazzling 29 Broadway
June 20th, 2014 · 6 Comments · Explore New York
It’s hard to quantify the exuberance of Art Deco. Its energy can make an immobile decorative element feel like it’s about to move. Its images jump off of flat surfaces. Its zigzags, lines, and circles seem to dance. Such is the quality of the lobby of 29 Broadway, a lesser-known beauty in New York’s Art […]
