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 [...]
Entries Tagged as 'architecture'
Redeemer Lutheran’s Staying Power
October 5th, 2011 · 6 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Tags: architecture·art·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·spiritual places·stone
Meditation: Looking Mindfully At Details
August 5th, 2011 · 6 Comments · Columns and Features, Explore New York
In the middle of a number of us playing soccer on a delightful summer evening, one of my partner’s grandchildren said, “Look at that sky!” The sky just before sunset was full of large pink, gray, white, and lavender swirling patterns above. How wonderful that she was aware of the beauty around us and shared [...]
A Bit of the 19th Century on Lispenard
June 10th, 2011 · 8 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 · Columns and Features, 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 Riveting Blue in the Lower East Side
January 21st, 2011 · No 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
Going Dutch at Kingston’s Wiltwyck Inn
October 22nd, 2010 · 6 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Call it Old Europe and the Dutch colonies meet the early 20th century. The Wiltwyck Inn is a petite building, by no means grand. This two-and-a-half story structure, tucked among plenty of historic buildings in the Uptown Stockade neighborhood of Kingston, conjures up faraway places and times long ago, thanks to its personality and out-of-the-ordinary, [...]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·landmarks·women
Savoring Leroy Street’s Details
August 2nd, 2010 · 5 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
Transported Back at 20 Exchange Place
May 14th, 2010 · 9 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 [...]
Discovering Architecture All Around Us
May 1st, 2010 · 2 Comments · Beyond Gotham
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 [...]
Tags: architecture·nature
Duane Park’s Compact Patch of History
April 7th, 2010 · 4 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 · 7 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
Talking: Architecture and Spirituality
February 17th, 2010 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
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 [...]
Tags: architecture·green energy·international·spiritual places
Walking With the Haitian People
January 15th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
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 [...]
Tags: architecture·cities·international
The Terrazzo Map: En Route to Recovery?
December 7th, 2009 · 12 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
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 [...]
Terra Cotta Tales: Apostolic Church
November 20th, 2009 · 3 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
Lamartine Place: Saved for Posterity
October 16th, 2009 · 7 Comments · Explore New York
One hundred years from now, most of those who walk on West 29th 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-19th century row houses [...]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·new york·women
