Entries Tagged as 'manhattan'

9/11: Still-Searing Images

September 16th, 2011 · 3 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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ····

A Bit of the 19th Century on Lispenard

June 10th, 2011 · 20 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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ····

Details, Details: Greenwich Street

April 27th, 2011 · 2 Comments · 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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

A Tree Grows in Chain Link

April 15th, 2011 · 9 Comments · Explore New York

New York City has 5.2 million trees, and each one of them has a life story. For a very long time, a lovely European larch has marked the seasons for those walking in Central Park. It is a deciduous conifer whose needle-like leaves turn yellow in the autumn and fall off. A tulip tree in […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

Honoring Triangle’s Victims in the Streets

March 24th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York

A year after the tragic Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in 1911, sculptor Evelyn Beatrice Longman created a memorial, commissioned by the City of New York, to the seven female victims whose remains could not be identified. The city installed the sculpture with little public attention in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. This memorial […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

New York Recalls the Triangle Factory Fire

March 10th, 2011 · 8 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York

“Rose Mehl – 15 years old.” The words jump out from the flip side of a business card on which they are imprinted. Rose was a Jewish girl who lived on East 7th Street in New York, and she had a job as a factory worker. Her name and age are printed on the back […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

A Riveting Blue in the Lower East Side

January 21st, 2011 · 2 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, […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·····

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

The Place Where the Draft Riots Erupted

July 16th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Explore New York

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

Duane Park’s Compact Patch of History

April 7th, 2010 · 7 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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ····

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·····

Terra Cotta Tales: Alwyn Court

March 4th, 2010 · 14 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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·····

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·····

Terra Cotta Tales: Apostolic Church

November 20th, 2009 · 8 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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ······

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·····

Taking In the Subway’s Old Powerhouse

August 10th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York

It was on the perimeter of a legendary slum that back then fit its name, Hell’s Kitchen. Yet it was conceived and designed by men in suits who believed that fine, grand civic buildings served to reflect the great accomplishments and ambitious aims of a city crossing a threshold. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ······

New York’s Great Sunset Spots: Pier 84

July 17th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Explore New York

Several children splash through the dancing waters of an interactive fountain, a guitarist plays at P.D. O’Hurley’s bar, a woman points out a gargoyle in the flower garden to her toddler daughter, and dogs and humans socialize at the dog run. A man lies on a landing, with his khaki-dressed legs draping over the steps, […]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···