Amazing Things Are Happening Here

More from the archives.

This enormous translucent banner hangs across three glass and steel pedestrians bridges at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Fort Washington Avenue. The bridges allow people (and materials) to move from one building to another without going outside.

Click on the photo for a larger view and you’ll see visitors, students and employees using the glassed-in walkways at this massive teaching hospital in Upper Manhattan.

Amazing Things Are Happening Here

New York-Presbyterian Hospital

Project Looking Through

I enjoyed being part of Anna Carson’s Project Yellow and have decided to try another blogger project, Mark’s Project Looking Through. The object is to post a photo that gives the viewer the sensation of looking through something.

This photo was taken in Brooklyn Bridge Park, 12 acres located between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. This narrow stretch of land is separated from the East River by a paved promenade and a short iron fence.

Click on the image to see the details. Shot through the rails of the fence, it shows the Manhattan skyline, the Brooklyn Bridge and the 32-story Verizon Building, one of the world’s first art deco skyscrapers. All you way to the left, on the far side of the river, you can glimpse the domed roof of the World Financial Center.

Look closely at the surface of the river, between the iron bars, and you’ll see two boats heading beneath the bridge — a long, dark barge and a small, bright vessel with an American flag flying from the stern.

Brooklyn Bridge Park
Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation
Wikipedia: Verizon Building
Wikipedia: Brooklyn Bridge

Project Yellow

I’ve never participated in this sort of project before, but today I visited Anna Carson’s blog and decided to to join her Project Yellow.

This is the doorway at the end of the World Trade Center subway station in Lower Manhattan. These doors, temporarily covered with yellow tape marked Caution, Do Not Enter, used to open into 5 World Trade Center.

On September 11, 2001, I came out of the subway and was heading through these doors when I heard that there was some kind of a fire in the building. I should have just turned around and gone back home, but I didn’t.

These doors, no matter how many times I pass through them, still lead me back to that morning.

Doorway on Bleecker Street

This doorway is located at 194 Bleecker Street in the heart of old Greenwich Village.

NY Songlines: Bleecker Street

Grand Central Kaleidoscope Light Show

Today, Grand Central Terminal will be packed with those travelling home for the holidays. Although the train station will be crowded, the travellers’ waiting time will be made less painful by a spectacular, free holiday sound and light show called Kaleidoscope.

Every half hour, from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., tourists and commuters watch as the marble walls and painted ceiling of the main concourse are washed with choreographed audiovisual effects. If you want to see the show in person, you’ll have to hurry; it ends on New Year’s day.

Here are a few images from the show, along with happy holiday wishes from Blather in Brooklyn.

The main entrance to the station

Suddenly, the music starts and the walls begin to change color

A traveller stops in his tracks to watch the show

Patterns cover the pale marble walls

The music swells and images of fireworks appear

The lights cover every surface

Twinkling stars are projected onto the ceiling

Grand Central Terminal

Brooklyn doorbell

This startled-looking doorbell is mounted on a Van Dyke Street house in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.

Open House New York: Richmond Hill

I spent this, the final day of OpenHouseNewYork, in Richmond Hill, Queens.

Located more or less in the center of the borough, in many ways Richmond Hill seems more like a suburban community than a part of the city of New York. The streets are filled with single homes, many with driveways and garages. The residents spend sunny days washing cars, mowing lawns and puttering in vegetable gardens.

There is a small business district cluttered with store-front lawyers and tax preparers, family-run candy shops and discount stores, fast food joints and Latin American restaurants. Richmond Hills also contains a handful of notable churches, a few neighborhood institutions and more than its share of boarded up buildings, including a train station abandoned by the Long Island Railroad.

The most remarkable aspect of the area, however, is the way it has been divided into two camps: the long-time residents who want to preserve its past and, far outnumbering them, the newcomers who have come here to build.

Not long ago, Richmond Hill was best known for its stock of century-old wooden Victorian  houses, many with large yards. But, unlike many areas where such buildings are protected, the residents here have never been able to rouse the city into giving the structures here protected landmark status.

As a result, the newcomers tend to treat the houses either as tear-downs (the house is demolished and a new structure built in its place) or remodels (original features are destroyed and replaced by incongruous, often gaudy elements).

Trees are ripped out and buildings extended to the very edges of their lots. Fishscale shingles are covered with vinyl siding, cedar shakes are hidden behind asbestos tiles and brick veneer. Wrought-iron gates are replaced by chrome, wooden millwork is stripped off, gilded plaster hidden behind suspended tile ceilings. Satellite dishes replace privet hedges and lawns are turned into parking lots.

A walking tour through the district is accompanied by a sad litany of vanished treasures. But the long-time residents are fighting back. They’ve organized the Richmond Hill Historical Society and are working to preserve and protect their neighborhood’s heritage.

Richmond Hill still contains architectural treasures including the remaining Victorians, the public library (an original Carnegie library), the Catholic and Episcopal churches and Jahn’s, an ice cream parlor founded in 1897 which still contains its original fountain, player piano, hanging lamps and furnishings.

While the majority of the newer residents have no interest in historic preservation, other newcomers are busily painting, plastering, re-pointing and restoring their historic homes to their former glory. Clearly, the final chapter in the battle for the character of Richmond Hill has yet to be written.

Victorian home with stained glass windows and wooden trim

Syrup dispenser in Jahn’s

Jahn’s soda fountain and amber light fixtures

Restored Victorian features several types of shingles

Sleeping balconies were used on hot summer nights

Another type of sleeping balcony

A homeowner lovingly paints his Victorian

A “Painted Lady”-style paint job

Experimenting with contrasting shades and colors

The roof lines were inspired by pagodas

Painted terra-cotta on old apartment building

Crumbling remains of a community center

Entryway to former RKO Keith’s movie theater, now a flea market

The theater’s grandeur hidden behind florescent lights

Wooden Victorian “improved” with plaster columns and circular marble staircase

When these remodelers ran out of vinyl siding, they continued in a different color

Victorian house “improved” with columns and bricked-over windows

Wooden Victorian “improved” with asbestos shingles

openhousenewyork weekend
Richmond Hill Historical Society Archive Museum
Historic Richmond Hill Walking Tour
The Richmond Hill Historical Society
Forgotten NY: Richmond Hill
richmondhillny.com
The Food Section: Jahn’s, the Best Way to Travel Back in Time
Wikipedia: Carnegie Libraries

Open House Harlem Pt 2: Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill

The OpenHouseNewYork Weekend continued with a trip to another section of Harlem, the areas known as Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill.

Like Manhattanville, the western boundary of Hamilton Heights is the Hudson River, the eastern end at St. Nicholas. The neighborhood’s name derives from its most notable early resident, the first Secretary of the US Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who spent the last years of his life here at his country home.

As with Manhattanville, development here started in earnest when the railway lines were extended. A jewels of the area is the Church of the Intercession, built on one of the highest points of Manhattan. Its origins date to 1843, when sanitation problems downtown led Wall Street’s Trinity Church to stop performing burials in their yard.

To create a solution, Trinity reached beyond the city limits and purchased a large parcel of land in the tiny country hamlet of Carmansville for use as a graveyard. The land, which they dubbed Trinity Church Cemetery, became the last resting place of many notable and affluent citizens.

Within a few years, demand began for a convenient chapel, eventually leading to construction of the Gothic style cathedral that adjoins the Cemetery. Now celebrating its 160th anniversary, the Church features an altar designed by Tiffany, notable terracotta floor tiles, and an Aeolian Skinner organ.

Nearby is Audubon Terrace, which fills a block that was once part of a farm owned by naturalist John James Audubon. Created by railroad heir Archer Huntington, Audubon Terrace was intended as a modern-day acropolis, a sophisticated center of art and culture. At the dawn of the 20th century, Huntington hired the leading architects of the day, including Stanford White and Cass Gilbert. They designed the Beaux-Arts plaza and buildings that today house the Hispanic Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Boricua College.

Sugar Hill, a residential section of Hamilton Heights, was once the country’s most fashionable address for African Americans, the place where life was sweet. In these palatial brownstones and apartment buildings lived the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance, including Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn (who immortalized the neighborhood in his song Take the ‘A’ Train), Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Robeson.

The neighborhood was also home to prominent professionals and civil rights activists like W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter White, Roy Wilkins, Adam Clayton Powell and Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice.

When the city’s fortunes declined in the late 1960s and 1970s, this area was severely affected; as most of the well-heeled moved away, drugs and violence became widespread. Elegant brownstones were divided into cheap, poorly-maintained apartments, then vandalized. A significant number of neglected buildings were demolished or burned.

But today, Sugar Hill is on the upswing. Professionals, artists and community activists again walk these streets. Newly-created private schools and arts institutions (including the Dance Theatre of Harlem) have made this area their home.

Everywhere are signs of renewal and revitalization. Houses that were filled with squatters only a few years ago are now being restored and selling for millions of dollars. Buildings that had become rooming houses are being converted back to spacious homes and Sugar Hill is again becoming one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city.

Audubon Terrace at 155th Street and Broadway

Sculpture on the Plaza at Audubon Terrace

Bas-relief of Don Quixote on horseback

Above the entrance to the former home of the Museum of the American Indian

Entrance to American Society of Arts & Letters

The Church of the Intercession

Detail of wall at the Church of the Intercession

Gatehouse at Trinity Church Cemetery

The Gould mausoleum in the Cemetery

Garret Storm’s mausoleum in Trinity Church Cemetery

Gravestones

Building with Mansard roof in Sugar Hill

On W. 152nd St., three houses designed to look like one

Restored buildings on St. Nicholas Avenue

Classic Sugar Hill brownstones on St. Nicholas

Row of houses on St. Nicholas Avenue

Doorway with stained glass panel

Wrought iron railings in Sugar Hill

Painted stonework highlights the construction date

openhousenewyork weekend
Hamilton Heights Homeowners Association
The Hispanic Society of America
Church of the Intercession
NY Times: Living in Sugar Hill
Harlem One Stop Tour: Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill
Historic Districts Council: Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill
Hamilton Heights-West Harlem Community Preservation Organization
Harlem One Stop Tour: A Walk Through Sugar Hill
Harlem One Stop Tour: Trinity Cemetery
Dance Theatre of Harlem

Open House Harlem Pt 1: Manhattanville/W. Harlem

NOTE: Thanks to a particularly robust strain of influenza, Blather from Brooklyn was knocked out of the blogosphere for more than a week and a half. Publication is resuming where it left off when the flu bug raised its ugly head.

OpenHouseNewYork Weekend is here, a time when New York celebrates architecture and design. Sites around the city throw open doors that are usually closed to the public while designers, historians and enthusiasts eagerly lead packs of the curious on walking tours and explorations.

This afternoon, as part of the celebration, participants were treated to a tour that included elements of West Harlem’s past and future: highlights of the now mostly-vanished industrial neighborhood known as Manhattanville and a preview of a waterfront park scheduled to open next year.

Situated between St. Nicholas Terrace and the Hudson River, Manhattanville was once a quiet waterfront village eight miles north of New York City. The 1800s brought paved streets, Robert Fulton’s ferryboat and a flock of city residents who ventured north for the green fields, fresh country air and new opportunities.

In the closing years of the 19th century, when construction of an elevated railway made it possible to travel from Wall Street to Manhattanville in less than an hour, the population tripled. The area was rapidly transformed from a community of tenant farmers and factory workers to a bustling commercial and transportation hub.

Over the years, changing fortunes plunged Manhattanville into a decline. But today, those who know where to look can glimpse the area’s past glory. Some of the luxurious buildings that rose here in the early 1900s are relatively unchanged, their facades still clad in marble and terra-cotta. In certain spots beneath the elevated tracks, the asphalt has worn away, exposing the granite Belgian blocks and bronze insignias of the long-defunct 3rd Avenue line.

As for the future, you’ll view it by crossing the West Side Highway to the spot where 125th Street ends at Marginal Street. There, along the river, is a construction project that will reclaim a long-inaccessible section of waterfront. Known as West Harlem Waterfront Park, the project is transforming a grubby, weed-filled parking lot into a lively spot for recreation.

When it opens next year, the small but carefully-designed park will contain sculptures, fountains and benches. It will feature designated spaces for fishing, kayaking, playing, performing and relaxing in the sun. Most importantly, it will fill a missing link in the greenway and bike path that will eventually stretch along the entire length of Manhattan island.

Under the elevated tracks

Plaque and unused tracks of the 3rd Avenue line

The view from Marginal Street

The fence is opened for OHNY visitors

This area will be filled with grass

Trees and grass will grow here soon

Design of the long, narrow park is based on intersecting triangles

Benches and walkway under construction

The future Water Taxi pier

The proposed fishing pier

The kayak launching area

The park will end here but the bike path will continue

openhousenewyork weekend
West Harlem Waterfront Park
Eric K. Washington
Archipelago Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Community Board 9: West Side Harlem
DMJM Harris: West Harlem Waterfront Redevelopment Program
NYLCV: Work Finally Begins on West Harlem Waterfront Park

Downtown Doorbells

These doorbells are wired onto the exterior of a building in Tribeca.

Doorbells at 65 West Broadway

NY Magazine: Tribeca

Mysteries of Brooklyn: The Russo Storefronts

On a busy corner in Brooklyn, across from the Smith & 9th Street subway station, stands a row of ramshackle houses. Two of the buildings are covered with signs and artifacts promoting Vincent Russo Realty and Vincent Russo Notary.

The question is: why? Why the crucifixes, wreaths, wooden soldiers and eagles? Why the sagging roofs, the peeling paint, the crooked signs and faded flags?

Is it an advertising tactic, an artistic statement or a convoluted combination of laziness and craziness? Just another mystery of Brooklyn.

Brownstoner: Russo Realty
423 Smith: Brooklyn’s Notary District
Forgotten New York: The Gowanus Canal

The Pink Post Office

In downtown Manhattan, at the corner of Church and Canal Streets, sits the pale pink Post Office known as the Canal Street Station.

Designed by Alan Balch Mills, completed in 1939 and restored in the early 1990s, most of the exterior is covered in glazed terracotta tiles in a shade called “rosy buff.” At the entrance, the tiles of the facade are colored oxblood, green and black with silver metallic lusters. If you pass through the small, shabby vestibule, you’ll see an enormous gilded terra-cotta bas-relief credited to Wheeler William.

While this certainly isn’t the only pink post office in the world (Sarajevo has long boasted a beautiful, ornate pink and white wedding cake of a post office), it is — without question — the finest pink post office in New York City.

On The Corner of Church & Canal Streets
Originally uploaded by annulla.

Doorway to Post Office
Originally uploaded by annulla.

Close Up of Pink Vestibule
Originally uploaded by annulla.

Bas-Relief by Wheeler William (193
Originally uploaded by annulla.

NYCJPG: Canal Street Station
Canal Street Station Post Office Under Restoration
About the Sarajevo Post Office
BBC: Photo of Saravjevo Post Office during restoration

Big Knocker

This large, ornate brass knocker is engraved with the words NYPD Intell. It is mounted on a door in the basement of New York City Hall.

Knocker
Originally uploaded by annulla.

A Reader Lives Here

In the center of Greenwich Village, this window-cum-bookshelf at the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker Streets caught my eye. Sure, he’s lost half his view, but who needs to look outside, anyway, when you can see the whole world in a book?

A reader lives here
Originally uploaded by annulla.

Behind the Gates of New York Marble Cemetery

Every day thousands of people pass the thick stone walls and tall iron gates but few step behind them. New York Marble Cemetery is open to the public only a handful of days each year; from March through November, the gates generally open (for a few hours) the last Sunday of each month. However, since the Cemetery lacks both staff and shelter, if the weather is inclement or no volunteer is available, the entrance to this secret garden will remain locked.

Today was the cemetery’s last scheduled opening for 2006. A stream of curious visitors came, encouraged by the open gate and the unusually mild weather. A volunteer provided literature and information about the cemetery, its founders, the current state of repair (a section of the 12-foot high walls recently collapsed) and the trustee’s efforts to protect and restore it.

New York Marble Cemetery (also known as the Second Avenue Cemetery) is the oldest public non-sectarian cemetery in New York City. Established in 1831 to serve the city’s gentry, more than 2,000 interments have taken place here. Unlike most American cemeteries, this half acre patch of green has no gravestones, ground markers, mausoleums, lamps, flower arrangements or monuments. Although the setting is stark, this isn’t a place where the original decorations have been lost or stripped away; by design, the cemetery is simple, unadorned and restrained. The original landscape consisted of a level stretch of lawn marked only by shrubbery and white sand paths.

Founded during an epidemic when in-ground burials were forbidden, interments are 10 feet underground in solid white marble vaults, each the size of a small room. The 156 vaults are arranged in a grid and access provided by removal of stone slabs set below the lawn’s surface. The numbers of the vaults and names of the original owners are on marble plaques set into the surrounding walls.

Although the most recent burial was in 1937, New York Marble Cemetery is not simply a place of historic interest; despite appearances, it is a working burial facility. Each vault belongs to the heirs of the original owners and descendants retain the right to be interred here. In fact, some have made plans to ensure that this cemetery, the last place in Manhattan where a person can still be legally buried, will be their final resting place.

Visitors at outer gate

Alley leads from the outer gate to the inner gate

Visitors enter cemetery through inner gate

Vault of publisher Uriah R. Scribner

Vault of Elisha Peck

Visitors on the lawn

Volunteer answers vistors’ questions

Visitors and plaques along the south wall

View to west wall

Shrubbery and east wall

Broken stone awaits repair

New York Marble Cemetery

Cemetery Schedule and Map

Letter Regarding Construction Behind Cemetery

14th Annual CANstruction Competition

Fourteen years ago the Society of Design Administration created CANstruction, a philanthropic competition for architects, designers and engineers. The challenge is deceptively simple: these creative professionals must transform cans of food into sculptures and constructions.

The nutritious entries were assembled on site at the New York Design Center, a building devoted to interior designers and furniture showrooms. From November 9 through 22, the exhibit was open to the public during normal business hours; the entry fee was a single can of food.

At the end of the exhibition, the structures were disassembled; this year, one piece, a Mobius strip, collapsed during the competition. The packages of food (generally about 100,000 cans) are donated to the Food Bank for New York City, which distributes it to feed New York’s hungry.

Space Shuttle by National Reprographics

Subway Car Interior by Guy Nordenson

Trojan Horse by Arup

Tango Dancer by Thornton Tomasetti

Rabbit in Hat by Robert Silman Associates

Campfire by Leslie E. Robertson Associates

Lion by Perkins + Will

Candy Apple with Bite Taken by Pei Cobb Freed

Dragon by Robert A.M. Stern

Sushi with Chopsticks by DeSimone Consulting

Empty Can by Helpurn Architects

Frog by diDomenico + Partners

Can as Skyline by Fradkin & McAlpin Assoc.

Sea Serpent by HOK Architects

Piggy Bank by R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband

Typewriter by Coburn Architecture

Apple with Sliced Wedge by Handel Architects

Crocodile by Arquitectonica

Lady Bug by Ferguson & Samamian

Hand Cradling Can by Ted Moudis

Monopoly by Mancini Duffy

Lion & Lamb by Butler Rogers Baskett

Connect Four Game by Magnusson Architecture

Snail on Leaf by GACE PLLC

Whale Tail by Weidlinger Associates

Can with Electric Can Opener by Bovis Lend Lease

Sombrero by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Frog by STV

Cornucopia by Earth Tech

Ant at a Picnic by Severud Associates

Dripping Faucet by Gensler

Earth Viewed from the Moon by Beyer Blinder Belle

Lady Bug by Urbitran Group

Leaning Tower of Pisa & Italian Flag by Dattner Architects

Bobsled on Track by Gilsanz Murray Steficek

Can with Can Opener by Conant Architects

Sushi Platter by NELSON

Dragon & Castle by Perkins Eastman

Grand Piano by ads Engineers

Remains of Mobius Strip by Platt Byard Dovell White

Canstruction

Society for Design Administration New York Chapter

SDANYC Canstruction 2006

NYC Canstruction Rules

Images From Past Canstruction Competitions

Food Bank For New York City

The Grand Tour

“Most real New Yorkers wouldn’t be caught dead on a tour bus or walking around with a group of tourists.”
– Margot Adler

Once upon a time I wanted to visit an historic spot located far outside the city. Although it was possible to make the trip using public transportation, doing so appeared to be extremely complicated and time consuming. With all the transfers and waiting involved, just getting there and back would have taken up most of the day, leaving little time to actually see the place.

However, while researching transportation alternatives, I learned that a few private companies offered one-day guided excursions. The price was about twice that of public transportation, but the tour sounded great — instead of spending most of the day in train stations, I’d have hours to explore my destination, plus a knowledgeable guide. Although I’d never been on a guided tour (and didn’t know anyone under retirement age who had), it appeared to be my best option, so I went ahead and bought a ticket.

The distance involved required us to board the bus early in the day for what was advertised as a four-hour drive. Two hours later the bus pulled into a particularly charmless roadside restaurant and souvenir shop while the guide explained that, for our convenience, we were now going to stop for an hour.

We finally arrived more than five hours after leaving the city. As soon as we stepped into the parking lot, our guide announced that we must stay together; she didn’t want anyone wandering off during the tour. As she hustled us from spot to spot, reeling off names, dates and numbers, along with frequent shrill admonitions that we “stay together!,” we soon realized that quite a bit of the information she spouted differed from the accounts most of us had learned in school. When a few members of the group questioned her version of the facts, she grew querulous and strident, insisting that she knew what she was talking about, “Or I wouldn’t have this job, would I?”

An hour after we arrived, the guide announced that we were going to have lunch and led us to a small caféteria where the food was inedible and the prices shockingly high. We stayed there for more than an hour, returned to the site for a brief visit, and were then herded back onto the bus. The return trip to the city included another extended stay at the souvenir stand we’d visited in the morning. A more experienced traveler attributed the forced stops for our convenience to the tour company having a financial interest in the place.

As it turned out, we who participated in the outing would have been better served had we traveled on our own and carried good guidebooks. After that waste of time and money, I vowed to avoid all guided tours.

Then, today, I ran into Justin Ferate, who changed my mind about what a tour could be. Justin, a charming, erudite, hyperkinetic storyteller, leads walking tours around New York, including a free, weekly excursion in midtown Manhattan dubbed The Grand Tour.

Today I joined the crowd following Ferrate while he led a Grand Tour. Although it begins near Grand Central Terminal, this isn’t simply a walk through the famed train station; it is a jaunt around the storied neighborhood with a man who is clearly in love with his subject.

He regaled his audience with a narrative that effortlessly wove together stories and trivia about subjects as diverse as the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, how to buy a great cheesecake, the delicate sensibilities of Victorian traveling women, Barbra Streisand’s unsuccessful attempt to buy an apartment on Fifth Avenue, the history of Spanish tile-making, instructions on making an egg cream, fine points of Greek mythology, the architecture of modern airports and the best cleanser for removing tobacco stains from a painted ceiling.

Of course, the tour appeals to the out-of-towners who make up most of the crowd, but the depth and breadth of Ferate’s knowledge, combined with his rapid-fire professorial/comedic style, is guaranteed to impress even know-it-all real New Yorkers, including me.

If you ever find yourself in midtown on a Friday afternoon, do yourself a favor and join one of Ferate’s excursions. Um, did I mention that the Grand Tour is free?

Dapper tour guide Justin Ferate

Justin Ferate

Margot Adler interviews Justin Ferate

Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Partnership

Altria Group, Inc.

A Peek at One Hanson Place

When it opened at the corner of Hanson Place and Ashland Place in 1928, this was the tallest structure in Brooklyn. Designed to house the Williamsburgh Savings Bank by architects Halsey, McCormack & Helmer, the profile of its distinctive clock tower and dome led this description in the AIA Guide to New York City:

Inadvertently, this was New York’s most exuberant phallic symbol … its slender tower dominating the landscape of all Brooklyn. A crisp and clean tower, it is detailed in Romanesque-Byzantine arches, columns, and capitals. The 26th floor once included accessible outdoor viewing space, after a change of elevators … all in all, it is 512 feet of skyline. Inside, the great basilican banking hall is called by the Landmarks Preservation Commission a “cathedral of thrift.”

The cornerstone is engraved with the seal of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, the date of its charter and the words, “To our depositors past and present this building is dedicated. By their industry and thrift they have built homes and educated children, opened the door of opportunity to youth and made age comfortable, independant and dignified. By those sturdy virtues they have attained their ambitions, swept aside the petty distinctions of class and birth and so maintained the true spirit of American democracy.”

Now the building known as One Hanson Place is closed for renovation. When it reopens in about 15 months or so, this building will contain luxury condominiums.

Scaffolding and banners cover facade  

Hidden behind scaffolding

A peek behind the scaffolding

Gargoyle behind scaffolding  

Base of a column behind scaffolding

Owl on a column

Lions guard the lobby entrance

Arch over door from lobby to street

Mosaic ceiling  

A corner of the tiled, vaulted ceiling  

Detail of elevator door  

Sign at subway entrance

Turtle in subway entrance

Detail in subway entrance

One Hanson Place

Curbed New York: Borders Coming

Corcoran: Apartments at One Hanson Place

AIA Guide to New York City

Audio Tour of One Hanson Place (mp3)

Is That a Smile I See?

While walking past a house on Manhattan’s Upper East side, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I stopped, went back and photographed this architectural detail. I think it looks as though the stone is smiling. What do you think?

In front of 38 West 76th Street

The Hidden Garden in the Sky

Yesterday I participated in the 4th Annual OpenHouseNewYork Weekend by taking a tour of the Wallabout section of Brooklyn. Today I took advantage of the weekend-long event to visit a legendary space that has been closed to the public for more than 60 years: the Rockefeller Center Rooftop Garden.

Located atop the British Empire Building, this garden offers exceptional views of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Saks Fifth Avenue, its neighbors across the street. The compact, formal space, smaller than a city block, includes meticulously clipped hedges, a shallow pool with a small fountain, a few perfectly matched cypress trees, a border of pink geraniums and a raised platform of fastidiously manicured sod.

Peeking around the corners provides rare glimpses of the rest of the Rockefeller Center complex including Radio City Music Hall and the skating rink which just reopened for the season.

This is a hidden spot of greenery high above the city, a retreat usually reserved for private moments of the rich and powerful, but for four hours today, it was a beautiful space open to all who came.

Saks Fifth Avenue across the street

The frog fountain

The garden pool and lawn

The spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral

A glimpse of Radio City Music Hall

A glimpse of the skating rink

OHNY donation box

OHNY

Rockefeller Center

Newyorkology: Rockefeller Center Roof Gardens