Some musical riffs can suddenly elevate the mood. So, too, can a jazzy building. It can bring your senses alive, make you perk up and pay attention, if even for a short time. Buildings aren’t passive entities; the very good ones generate an active engagement. The best architects know this to the core. In a [...]
Entries Tagged as 'historic preservation'
Splashy Art Deco on a Staid Block
December 6th, 2012 · 11 Comments · Columns and Features, Explore New York
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan
Statue to Show Sojourner Truth as a Child
October 24th, 2012 · No Comments · Beyond Gotham, Columns and Features
Sojourner Truth knew the importance and the power of the visual. One day, as an orator and crusader against slavery, she faced a hostile group of northern students who jeered her. Truth chose a very powerful visual proof of slavery’s horror to confront them. She opened her dress collar and bared her skin to show [...]
Tracing Sojourner Truth’s Escape Route
July 31st, 2012 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Like the guiding light of daybreak that accompanied Sojourner Truth as she walked from her slave owner’s home to escape to freedom, much more illumination now reveals the early days of her life. Named Isabella when she was born into slavery, the abolitionist and champion of human rights spent the first 32 years of her [...]
In Sojourner Truth’s Footsteps
May 31st, 2012 · 7 Comments · Beyond Gotham
She never knew most of her 11 brothers and sisters. She hoed corn and lugged bottles of molasses or liquor for one slave owner when she was barely a teen. She endured merciless and unrelenting beatings at the hands of another slaveholder. Long before she changed her name, Sojourner Truth was Isabella, a slave in [...]
Redeemer Lutheran’s Staying Power
October 5th, 2011 · 8 Comments · Beyond Gotham
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 [...]
Tags: architecture·art·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·spiritual places·stone
Stained-Glass Glory in Chicago
July 11th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Beyond Gotham
The names Healy and Millet likely will never be as well-known as Tiffany. But to those who look up at two stained-glass ceilings in the building that housed Chicago’s grand first central public library, George Healy and Louis Millet created an artwork that is dazzling, like Louis Tiffany’s, in that “can’t take my eyes off [...]
A Bit of the 19th Century on Lispenard
June 10th, 2011 · 14 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
Wal-Mart Will Not Build at Battlefield
January 26th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
Preservationists today hailed the decision by Wal-Mart to drop its plans to build a supercenter within the original boundaries of the Wilderness Battlefield in Virginia. In an unexpected move early Wednesday in Virginia’s Orange Circuit Court, Wal-Mart revealed it was abandoning its proposal to construct a store on the property. The retailer said it was [...]
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 · 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 Wilderness: An “Endangered Place”
May 21st, 2010 · No Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
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 [...]
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 · 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
Terra Cotta Tales: Alwyn Court
March 4th, 2010 · 9 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
Wilderness Wal-Mart: A Day in Court
February 5th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
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 [...]
The Terrazzo Map: En Route to Recovery?
December 7th, 2009 · 13 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
