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 46^th 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 46^th 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 46^th 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.

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 Appomatax.

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 43^rd to 44^th 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.

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 59^th 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 19^th 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 →]

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 →]

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 →]

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?

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 →]

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 →]

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.

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 →]

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 19^th 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 17^th 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 19^th 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 19^th 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.

[Read more →]

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 19^th and early 20^th 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 →]

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 58^th 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 21^st 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 58^th 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, 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 20^th 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 →]

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 →]

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 →]

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 →]

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 →]

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 →]

“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 21^st 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 →]

Call it the perfect work of art for the era of pony cars, muscle cars, family vacations on the road, and gas at about 30 cents a gallon. In the 1964 World’s Fair, when the Tent of Tomorrow opened at the New York State Pavilion, its floor became an instant, and fascinating, hit. It was a 130-foot by 166-foot road map of New York State – a half-acre large — made of terrazzo.

A colorful replica of a Texaco road map of the state, the map showed land features in green, tan, and white; roads in black and red; and rivers and lakes in blue. You could stroll from Syracuse to Binghamton to Yonkers, walk through the Adirondacks, and trace the Hudson River in your own steps. At the time, it was largest-known map of any area of the Earth’s surface.

Making the mammoth map showing New York State’s 54,000 square miles required an amazingly elaborate process. Each of the grid components of the Texaco road map of the time, three-quarters of an inch, was magnified 64 times and then projected onto large paper templates. A group of Yale University art students carefully traced the magnified road network, symbols, numbers and letters, and even the Texaco station symbols by hand. Rand McNally provided assistance. All in all, the terrazzo map floor cost about $1 million to produce.

Photo Credit: Bill Cotter © All Rights Reserved

Like many creations of such one-time grand festivals, however, the pavilion and its storied floor became forgotten and neglected. After the New York World’s Fair closed, various parties used the site in New York’s Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens for a time but ultimately New York City no longer kept it maintained. Freeze-and-thaw cycles and other elements of the weather took a terrible toll over the decades. The pavement became full of cracks and rubble, weeds grew in, and vandals made off with parts of it. The original terrazzo surface is missing from large parts of it, and letters and symbols are gone from other portions. [Read more →]

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 19^th century came and went, however, without this event occurring. The denomination declined and finally gave up this church. Somehow a beautiful church building, on New York’s West 57^th Street, survived.

Today, the red brick church at 417-419 West 57^th St. in Manhattan – a New York City landmark – is host to another church of a different denomination. But the structure, especially its rich terra cotta decoration, tells the story of a branch of Christianity that first blossomed in America in the days of religious revival in the mid-19^th century, looked for its inspiration to the early Christians, and ultimately waned in the 20^th century.

In its buildings, in the design, details, and other architectural expressions, humankind expresses its values and beliefs. So it is with the Catholic Apostolic Church, which was home to a New York congregation of a religious group first established in Europe in the early 19^th century. Looking at the church building today, we can be mindful of the denomination’s beliefs and even of the “booms and busts” that oftentimes afflict seemingly otherworldly entities. [Read more →]

f the artists who developed the Rodin Studios building on New York City’s West 57^th 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 a century after the building’s construction in 1916-1917 and long after the people who created the structure are gone, these figures remain. They silently gaze above the passersby today, witnesses to a time when this section of Manhattan was an artists’ mecca. Do many people stop to really look up at and appreciate these decorative terra cotta figures, I wonder?

Terra cotta is the material of a thousand different characters. The term terra cotta comes from the Italian words meaning “baked earth.” It’s made from a mixture of fine-grained clays, chosen for their particular qualities, that is fired in a kiln. It can be molded into something tiny and delicate or massive. Sometimes this material is formal, regal, and showy. Other times, it’s made into figures that are playful and inviting, or grotesque and scary. Buildings become quite personal and animated due to its flourishes, shadows, and expressions.

All of this is evident in the Rodin Studios, located at 200 West 57^th St., at the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue. The structure has a splendid mix of fanciful mythic figures and cathedral-style motifs. A number of buildings constructed in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in this part of Manhattan show why New York is a terra cotta lover’s paradise. These include the Alwyn Court apartments at 182 West 58^th St., and the Church for All Nations, the former Catholic Apostolic Church, at 417-419 West 57^th St. (See “Terra Cotta Tales: Alwyn Court” and “Terra Cotta Tales: Catholic Apostolic Church” on Mindfulwalker.com.)

The Rodin Studios, a designated New York City landmark, is a building that several artists – organized together into a company – created as a functional and elegant residence for other artists. Here, they could have living quarters and studios in one space. Their quest for living space resulted in a fine piece of art left for the ages.

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One hundred years from now, most of those who walk on West 29^th Street in Manhattan may not know what Fern Luskin, Julie Finch, and a small group of local citizens did to preserve the block between Eighth and Ninth avenues. But in all likelihood they will see, largely intact, the mid-19^th century row houses that possessed an important role in the struggles of African-Americans for freedom before and during the Civil War.

Thanks to the tenacious efforts of these preservationists, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on Tuesday unanimously voted to accord this block landmark protection, designating it as the Lamartine Place Historic District. The LPC designated 12 row houses, from 333-355 West 29^th St., as a historic district.

These row houses have a distinctive and remarkable history, both in the life of New York City and the United States. They are connected with important events in the 1850s and 1860s, and one house is linked to the Underground Railroad. The home, 339 West 29^th St., was a documented “safe house” on the Underground Railroad where noted Quaker abolitionists Abigail Hopper Gibbons, known as Abby, and her husband, James Sloan Gibbons, lived. Runaway slaves found sanctuary in the Gibbons’ home on their escape route to Canada.

The Gibbons’ house was also a meeting place for abolitionists, who were fervent in their desire to bring an end to slavery. The block became one of the settings of violence and seething tensions during New York City’s Draft Riots of 1863, in which mobs opposed to the Union Army’s conscription rioted for four days during July.

“This 19^th century enclave was an eyewitness to the dramatic events that shook New York City during the Draft Riots of 1863,” said Landmarks Preservation Commission Chairman Robert Tierney in the LPC’s announcement of the historic district. “One of the houses that was directly attacked was also a haven for fleeing slaves, and a home to the abolitionists who assisted them.”

A Contrast With Midtown

If you walk in the North Chelsea neighborhood now, it’s hard to believe that this quiet block of row houses has survived, a fairly intact 19^th century oasis amid development and much change occurring nearby. It’s located just two blocks south of the southern perimeter of Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. [Read more →]