“Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you? That it could sense your presence and feel the care you extend towards it?” John O’Donohue Beauty: The Invisible Embrace If we are blessed with such kinship, then the Irish Hunger Memorial is a place of its embrace. This small. lush […]
Entries Tagged as 'manhattan'
A Summer Walk at the Irish Memorial
July 10th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Explore New York
Tags: landscape architecture·manhattan·meditations·nature·new york·spiritual places·stone
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, […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·new york·women
Springtime at the Irish Hunger Memorial
April 15th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Explore New York
New York City may seem like a curious place to go looking to see gorse, the small shrub that thrives in rural fields and along hillsides, its yellow flowers rippling across the countryside in spring. But there’s at least one sure place I’ve enjoyed the sight of it in New York – the Irish Hunger […]
Tags: landscape architecture·manhattan·nature·new york·spiritual places
The Place That Powered the Subway Lines
March 29th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Explore New York
Its architecture and ornate decoration reflect the City Beautiful movement, in which public buildings were expressions of a city’s beauty, order, and harmony. Yet it had a belly-of-the-beast interior containing massive boilers, conveyors, engines, steam pipes, and seven bunkers capable of holding up to 18,000 tons of coal. The Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) Company Powerhouse […]
Tags: architecture·cities·historic preservation·manhattan·midtown·new york·terra cotta
Wanna Buy an Art Deco Gem? Ask AIG
March 20th, 2009 · 11 Comments · Explore New York
When corporate kingdoms fall, they often lose their castles. That may well be the case with AIG. The bailout-dependent conglomerate that has made “bonus rage” a media catchphrase said Wednesday that it’s considering the sale of its legendary 66-story headquarters at 70 Pine Street in Lower Manhattan, Bloomberg confirmed. Like other assets that the American […]
Vertical Cities: Hong Kong and New York
January 29th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Explore New York
Sometimes in a sea of numbers, it takes just one stat to astound you into getting the picture: In one of the New Towns of Hong Kong, Tseung Kwan O, some 350,000 people live within four square miles. They live in towers that vary from 57 to 62 stories. Here’s another stat: 80 percent of […]
Tags: architecture·Asia·cities·international·manhattan·museums·new york
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 […]
Tags: architecture·art·cities·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·spiritual places·terra cotta
Manhattan’s Dyckman Farmhouse
December 15th, 2008 · 8 Comments · Explore New York
In a world where teens hang out for hours in their bedrooms playing video games and a household may have three or four computers and several TVs, consider the parlor of Jacobus Dyckman. In the early 19th century, Dyckman’s family, servants, and one slave – up to 10 people – would likely have confined many […]
Still Missing McHale’s
November 30th, 2008 · 25 Comments · Explore New York
In some ways, buildings are like people. They have a birth and a prime of life. As they age, they either wear well or not. They’re either cherished and well cared for, or neglected. The lives of some buildings are cut short way too soon. Others seem to thrive year upon year upon year. Still […]
Tags: cities·historic preservation·manhattan·midtown·new york·taverns
Bowery Savings: The World in a Building
November 11th, 2008 · 101 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 […]
Tags: architecture·art·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·new york·stone
Pecks and the City: My Sparrow Friends
November 2nd, 2008 · 2 Comments · Explore New York
Birders glory in having spotted a Tennessee warbler in Central Park, and I would, too, if I was fortunate and plucky enough to see one. But day-to-day, this New Yorker exults in the sparrows of Hell’s Kitchen. They chirp and call locally outside our apartment window every morning. Happily, it seems. Sparrows are to 6 […]
Tags: birds·Central Park·manhattan·nature·new york
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 […]
Tags: architecture·art deco·cities·french building·landmarks·manhattan·midtown·new york·terra cotta
