Landmarks | Mindful Walker

Entries Tagged as 'landmarks'

9/11: Still-Searing Images, 10 Years Later

September 16th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Explore New York

Every early September a day comes that is just beautiful – particularly sunny, bright, and gently warm. On such days, I’m sure many feel it again as clearly as if it was yesterday. That Tuesday 10 years ago, the morning was clear and warm, with radiant sunshine, the kind that makes you cup your eyes [...]

Stained-Glass Glory in Chicago

July 11th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Beyond Gotham, Columns and Features

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

In Our Midst: The Prison Ship Martyrs

September 30th, 2010 · 25 Comments · Explore New York

To walk thoughtfully around the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park is to be asked to delve into a story of unspeakable horror that took place right in New York City’s waters during the Revolutionary War. It’s a story that many of us in the 21st century do not know or one [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Seven Joys Amid NYC’s Holiday Mayhem

December 22nd, 2009 · 7 Comments · Explore New York

“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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Teach-In Set at Underground RR House

May 26th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Explore New York

In the mid-19th century, runaway slaves found protection in an Underground Railroad “safe house” on West 29th Street in New York, as they fled northward to freedom. A century and a half later, a group of Bronx high school students plan to take a journey of their own in defense of this house. The students, [...]

Sparks Over an Underground Railroad Site

May 11th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Explore New York

Is the architectural and historical integrity of a New York City mid-19th century row house that served as a “safe house” for the Underground Railroad during the Civil War being imperiled again? Neighbors and local historic preservationists certainly believe so, and they’re again fighting to stop construction at the Hopper-Gibbons House, at 339 W. 29th [...]

Thirty-Minute Tour: Bowling Green

May 3rd, 2009 · 2 Comments · Explore New York

Stand in Bowling Green Park in New York City and look around at the park and the buildings on its perimeter. At one time or another over the centuries here, Native American tribes gathered in council, men and women bought tickets for ocean passage in a couple of the nearby buildings, and John D. Rockefeller [...]

Obama and Thoughts at the National Mall

January 20th, 2009 · 14 Comments · Beyond Gotham

On the November night that the United States elected Barack Obama as its new President, NBC News anchorman Brian Williams called it “a seismic shift in American politics.” Yes, it is. Yet seismic shifts are, ultimately, created by many forces and actions that culminate in a particular moment. This seemed particularly poignant while walking along [...]

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Tags: Barack Obama·cities·landmarks·Washington

Prayers and Peace at St. Francis

January 6th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Explore New York

Outside, it was a post-Christmas, rush-hour frenzy, throngs crowding near the revolving doors and the holiday windows of Macy’s or walking speedily to Penn Station. Inside St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church in New York in the midst of all of this, you’d never know it. Two men were slowly and carefully placing flowers [...]

Bowery Savings: The World in a Building

November 11th, 2008 · 16 Comments · Explore New York

Tinos green marble is a vivid green-blue with wide white veins, mined from the quarries of a small mountainous Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Briar Hill sandstone is an earthy stone of warm red, rust, brown, and buff-colored tones taken from quarries in Glenmont, Ohio. Missouri is the source of Napoleon gray marble, while [...]

Architects With the Right Touch

October 28th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Explore New York

H. Douglas Ives once placed swarms of bees in the midst of midtown Manhattan, but to inspire, not to sting. High above the thousands who scurry and stroll along Fifth Avenue sit two beehives surrounded by buzzing bees. But they’re not live – they’re part of the dazzling decoration atop the Fred F. French Building [...]