Category: Blog

National Museum of the American Indian

While I am very biased that New York is the perfect vacation destination for all—as it has buildings from all eras of American history and so many cultures that you can travel around the world without ever leaving the five boroughs, it can sometimes be difficult to find free destinations.  Although there are many museums that have “pay what you wish” policies and others with free days or nights, New York will probably never have as many free museums as the capital of our great country, Washington, DC, has.  With that said, New York does have Smithsonian Institution Museums (two to be precise), including a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).

The NMAI branch in New York dates back to the early 1900s when oil and construction magnate Carl Gustav Heye began to amass a collection of Native American artifacts after supervising several infrastructure projects in the Southwestern U.S.  Heye would found the Museum of the American Indian in 1916, where it would be based in Upper Manhattan and contain artifacts and objects from native peoples across North and South America.  In the 1980s, Congress passed an act that created the NMAI and would amalgamate the Museum of the American Indian’s collection into the Smithsonian Institution.  Several of Heye’s collected artifacts—including many funerary objects and pieces sacred to Native American tribes, were returned.  In the 1990s, the NMAI began to occupy two floors of the recently renovated Alexander Hamilton Custom House in Lower Manhattan—as part of a stipulation in Heye’s will that the collection not leave New York City.  In 2005, some of Heye’s collection was transferred to the new main NMAI location in Washington, D.C.

One of the other remarkable things about the NMAI branch in New York is where it is housed.  The museum is located in the former Alexander Hamilton Custom House, which was built by architect Cass Gilbert in 1907.  The front of the building contains statues representing the continents and the inside contains a vast rotunda that was repainted in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration, containing scenes of the Port of New York and New Jersey in full swing.  In addition to the NMAI and the historic rotunda, the building also contains a branch of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and a branch of the National Archives.

Although not one of the more well-known museums of the city, the NMAI branch is worth a visitors time—not only because it is free, but also since it provides a world class collection of artifacts in a well-preserved and historical setting.  This is not only the kind of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour, but also you are able to see the Alexander Hamilton Custom House on my “Foundation of New York” tour.

Lower East Side

Long considered by many “where America begins,” the Lower East Side has seen successive waves of immigrants live in its teeming buildings.  Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican, African-American, and Chinese arrivals have contributed to what the Lower East Side is today.

In the early 1800s, New York expanded northward and the land was settled.  Industry located at the former Collect Pond (near Foley Square and the court complex) was relocated, the pond drained, and the land filled in.  New housing was built, but began to sag under the wet land—making the area undesirable.  Immigrants working at the nearby wharfs and docks on the East River made this district their home, including many Irish and Germans.  As more immigrants came to this area, they crowded into apartments and tenements that were built to house the masses.  Beginning in the late 1800s and lasting into the 1920s, Jews and other Eastern European immigrants fleeing persecution and war in Europe fled to America and to the Lower East Side.  Being one of the most densely populated areas in the country (and some would say the world) during this wave of immigration, many families worked from home sewing clothes in piecemeal fashion or in sweatshops.  Other enterprising residents of the neighborhood sold food and nearly every other household necessity out of pushcarts that crowded up and down the streets of the district.  Between the 1920s and 1960s, when there was a limit on foreign immigration, African Americans from the South and Puerto Ricans came to settle in the neighborhood.  The neighborhood entered a downward spiral between the 1960s and the 1980s due to less civic investment (the parcel where the Essex Crossing property development is being built was leveled in the early 1960s and left empty for nearly 50 years), neighborhood residents leaving for more spacious quarters in the Outer Boroughs and beyond, and rising crime rates (which have since fallen dramatically).

Starting in the 1990s and continuing to today, wealthier arrivals to the neighborhood have changed the character of the Lower East Side.  The area has attracted higher end businesses to the neighborhood, and new civic amenities such as the New Museum.  Longtime residents and businesses have been displaced.  This has created challenges, but is attracting another wave of new arrivals to the neighborhood—as has happened throughout its history.  With that said, there are still remnants of the old neighborhood in some of the old businesses along Houston Street, the Essex Street Market (which was built as a civic improvement project to take pushcart vendors off the streets), and grand religious structures such as the Bialystoker Synagogue.  Currently on Sundays, Orchard Street is closed so that shoppers can go down the street to the many clothing shops that still line it—as some of their ancestors may have done more than a century ago.

Throughout its history, the Lower East Side has been a beacon to newcomers to the city and to the country.  Any visitor should see this dynamic neighborhood, especially on a Sights by Sam -led tour, such as “Lost in the Lower East Side.

Coney Island

Synonymous with summer and sun worship, Coney Island in Brooklyn is an integral part of the culture and history of the city.  The area is actually no longer an island (due to public works projects after World War II), but it still feels like a getaway from the bustle of Manhattan.

The etymology of Coney Island is shrouded in historical uncertainty, but it is believed to be a corruption of the Dutch name, which translates into “island of rabbits.”  Resorts started appearing in the mid-1800s.  Efforts to preserve the area as wilderness in the 1800s failed as the area became saturated with hotels, restaurants, and other establishments near the beaches.  In the 1880s, amusement parks were established, with Luna Park, Astroland, and Steeplechase Park among the more recognizable.  Due to changing consumer patterns and people leaving New York City after World War II, the area fell into decline.  Amusement parks closed and there was a protracted battle to redevelop the area.  Other development efforts in the region have included a new baseball stadium (built), casinos, and proposals for new amusement parks.

While the amusement parks of the past have receded into history, there are still many attractions worth making a trip out for.  Coney Island has the closest beach to the city, making it very popular on summer days with nice weather.  If amusement attractions are more your thing, there are rides including bumper cars and merry-go-rounds.  Two of the most famous are Deno’s Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone rollercoaster (in service since the 1920s—and possibly the only landmarked rollercoaster in a major city).  Many bars and restaurants abound as well.  For those who like baseball, the New York Mets’ single-A level affiliate Brooklyn Cyclones play ball at a ballpark facing the Atlantic Ocean.  From the outfield of the park (and through most of Coney Island), the former Parachute Jump ride is visible.  This attraction first premiered at the 1939 World’s Fair.  Although it no longer offers rides, it is periodically lit up at night by thousands of LEDs and often displays psychedelic patterns.

Coney Island may no longer have rabbits, but it is a welcome trip on any hot summer day.  For the area at its best (and a real sight in New York), it may be worth seeing the Mermaid Day Parade in late June, where revelers dress up as sea creatures.  Consider taking a tour of Brooklyn with Sights by Sam.

Woolworth Building

With its green top peaking through the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan, the 792 foot-tall Woolworth Building stands out.  Between 1913 and 1930, it was the tallest building in New York and in the world.  Originally designed to honor the F.W. Woolworth Company, the building is now being converted into apartments.

Completed in 1913, the Woolworth Building was built to house the headquarters of the eponymous F.W. Woolworth Company.  It is rumored that Woolworth paid $13 million in cash for the building.  Woolworth hired noted architect Cass Gilbert (who would later design the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington) to design the edifice.  Gilbert used a neo-gothic style of architecture.  On its opening night, President Woodrow Wilson lit the lights from a specially-configured switch in the White House.  The lobby contains terra-cotta sculptures, including Woolworth and Gilbert.  Because it is an office building, the ornate lobby can only be accessed by workers and those on special tours.  An observation deck at this building has been closed for decades.

When first built, the building elicited a number of responses.  A well-known reverend dubbed the building “a cathedral of commerce” as an insult to what he felt was its ostentatiousness.  As it was his company’s headquarters, Woolworth took it as a compliment.  This building today never fails to elicit reactions from native and visitor alike.  It also helped to ensure Cass Gilbert as one of the first “starchitects” in American history.  This building can be seen on a Sights by Sam tour of Lower Manhattan.

The Apollo Theater—A Harlem Legend

Sitting near the intersection of 125th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard is the world-famous Apollo Theater.  Known for its Amateur Nights every Wednesday and being the destination of emerging acts and some of the most famous of all time alike, the Apollo Theater is one of the cornerstones of Harlem and of African American culture in the city and the country.  Through its Amateur Night and former show Showtime at the Apollo, which was beamed nationwide from 1987 to 2004, most Americans should have at least a familiarity with this famed venue.

The 1500+ seat venue was designed by George Keister in a neoclassical architectural style.  The theater began life in 1913 as a burlesque theater open to whites only that was called Hurtig and Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater (named after its owners).  When Fiorello LaGuardia became mayor in 1933, he sought to end vice and burlesque in the city, including Hurtig and Seamon’s theater.  Theater owner Sidney Cohen bought the theater and integrated it, making it one of the most popular venues in the city—and giving it the current name.  Between the 1930s and the 1990s, the theater would change hands several times, including being owned by former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton.  In 1991, the nonprofit Apollo Theater Foundation began to manage the theater.  The theater and famous marquee were restored in the 2000s, helping the Apollo Theater to go confidently into the next 80 years.

In terms of performers at the Apollo, the list of people who have premiered there or played sold out shows is a veritable who’s who of some of the greatest talents in America.  Artists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Pearl Bailey made their debuts at the Apollo.  Other great singers and performers such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Billie Holliday were all performing when the theater first opened.  Others such as Tito Puente, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Aretha Franklin would be major performers in the 1960s and 1970s.  In the 2000s, the theater has become a place of pilgrimage after famous performers such as Michael Jackson, James Brown, and Prince passed away.  A walk of fame under the Apollo Theater shows some of the greatest performers to ever take the stage of the theater.

The Apollo Theater forms an important place in African American culture in New York and in the musical history of our country.  You can see the Apollo Theater and the Walk of Fame on a Sights by Sam tour of Upper Manhattan.

An Olympic Performance for New York

The Olympic games occur every four years and are not surprisingly a symbol of great prestige for the host city.  In recent years, the cost of hosting the game has attracted great scrutiny due to corruption scandals in international athletic federations and the willingness of authoritarian regimes to spend money on sporting mega events with little to no public accountability.  In the U.S., Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Lake Placid, NY, and St. Louis have all hosted the games.  Denver turned down the offer of the games after taxpayers in Colorado turned down a tax increase while Chicago failed in its bid to get the 2016 Olympic Games.  New York also failed to get the Olympics in 2012, but the ramifications of the failed bid are still felt in the city today—and not in a negative way.

For the 2012 bid, the initial plan was to have the Olympic Stadium on the West Side over the Penn Station rail yards—to be turned over to the New York Jets NFL team after the games (and to be used as the site for several Super Bowls).  When this failed to get approval, the city decided to move the stadium to Queens—on the site of where Citi Field is now.  The Olympic Village was to be constructed in Queens as well.  Several areas such as Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and the Javits Convention Center were to be used as well.  Bids were submitted in 2003 to the International Olympic Committee.  New York ended up placing third on the list of Olympic finalists—ultimately losing to London in 2005.  Opposition to the original Olympic stadium location was led by the owners of Madison Square Garden, who feared that a new stadium would take away from their venue.  It was argued by opponents of the bid that the games would have brought greater traffic and worries about terrorism in one of the most crowded cities in the world already.

The city reaped several intangible and tangible benefits from its abortive bid to host the games—an extension of the 7 Line, the development of millions of square feet of commercial and retail space in the Hudson Yards complex, and new residential space in Queens.  Additionally, a massive rezoning of the city in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan that was approved at the same time helped to develop derelict areas.  While this is commendable in working to house new residents and help the tax coffers of the city, longtime residents of some of the areas have been priced out of their neighborhoods.  The Olympic games may yet be hosted in New York as there is talk that the state government is exploring a bid for a future games.  Already an international city as the headquarters of the United Nations and with people from every corner of the world, the Olympics may bring even greater prestige to the city—or more traffic depending on the opinions of some.

While hosting an Olympic event can bring great prestige to a city (and also great challenges), it has been argued that New York’s failed bid helped to bring improvements to the city.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Busing Around New York–A Short Guide

Every day, millions of people in New York take to the streets to get from point A to point B to work, play, or sightsee.  Among the well known symbols of the city are its subways that operate every day at all hours and the fleet of over 13,000 yellow taxis that ply the streets looking for fares.  Arguably the unsung heroes of the city’s transportation system are the buses that ferry travelers around the city.  This entry will deal exclusively with the city buses and related transit, not with the large intercity buses that come into Port Authority Bus Terminal or the George Washington Bridge Bus Station.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) manages 307 bus routes that encompass all five boroughs.  Before the consolidation of bus operations by the MTA, independent operators and then the City of New York operated bus lines.  Many of the bus lines cover former streetcar routes, especially in Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Bus routes—with a few exceptions—tend to stay within the city limits and are prefixed by the borough that they primarily serve (B=Brooklyn, Bx=Bronx, M=Manhattan, Q=Queens, and S=Staten Island).  There are also express buses between boroughs (prefixed with X).  Bus fare mirrors subway fare and is payable via a Metrocard or coins (buses do not accept cash because the coins are collected from fareboxes via a vacuum cleaner and this would shred paper money).  In the coming years, MTA is looking to add buses that allow customers to use wifi and have outlets for electronic devices.

Supplementing the city buses in certain areas of the city are smaller buses that are privately owned but connecting certain communities in the city together.  The most famous of these are the buses that go between the three New York Chinatowns (these are not the intercity Chinatown buses that go up and down the East Coast and beyond).  At terminal points such as under the Manhattan Bridge or near 8th Avenue in Brooklyn, these smaller, white-with-red Chinese lettered van sized vehicles convey mainly Chinese Americans between Flushing in Queens, Manhattan Chinatown, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.  The fare is comparable to the subway and many regular riders feel that it gets them to their destination quicker than the subway.  Similar services exist that connect Latino or West Indian areas together.  In some areas with large Hasidic Jewish populations, there are buses that convey people between neighborhoods with high populations of Hasidic Jews.  In other communities, private operators have taken it upon themselves to ply routes down former bus lines that were cancelled.

While it is not the most romantic form of transportation in the city, the bus systems form a needed link in the city and are especially important if going crosstown in Manhattan or traveling to some areas of the city (such as some sections of the Bronx or Staten Island) where subway service is thin under the ground.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

How the City Gets the News—a Capsule History

Today, most people get their news from the Internet or television.  In most places, newspapers seem like an afterthought.  Beset by declining revenues and a population that wants the news now instead of tomorrow morning, many newspapers are folding (no pun intended) or scaling back significantly.  New York is no exception to this trend, with the city having far fewer papers than in the 1940s—when nearly 40 English, German, Chinese, and Yiddish papers were published daily from the city.  But being the capital of media in the U.S., the city is home to several of the country’s most important papers.  This entry will cover some of these papers and the way that they have made an impact on the city and the country.

Founded in 1851, the New York Times is nicknamed “The Old Gray Lady.”  It is considered the paper of record of the city and has outlasted virtually every other broadsheet paper in town. The paper has a circulation of around 1.3 million and has nearly 120 Pulitzer Prizes, making it one of the most respected names in news.  While the paper initially started out as a voice for conservative and later Republican politics, it now has a very liberal bend.  The Times is famous for bringing down Tammany Hall’s Tweed ring in the late 1800s and being able to publish the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s.  Since the 1890s, the Ochs Family and their descendants have owned the paper.

Competing for broadsheet readers in the city is the financially-focused Wall Street Journal.  This paper is the nation’s largest in terms of circulation at about 2.4 million copies.  It was first published in 1889 by Dow Jones and Company as one of that company’s products.  The paper has changed hands a couple times since its founding, now being owned by the News Corporation.  The Journal has a reputation for reporting financial news in a straightforward manner and for using profile drawings of people being featured in articles for decades (still used today, but less so).  In order to become more competitive with the New York Times, the Journal has started to feature more news about New York City in recent years.  The Journal has earned over 30 Pulitzer prizes for its coverage over the years.

Although now a tabloid, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the U.S. is also published from the city.  The New York Post was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.  It was most famous in the 1800s for being edited by William Cullen Bryant, an ardent abolitionist and for whom Bryant Park in Midtown is named for.  The Post suffered declining circulation in the early  1900s—it was once affiliated with the left-wing Nation magazine.  It was bought by Rupert Murdoch in the 1970s and its editorial format changed from liberal to conservative quite sharply.  The paper is known for its rather creative headlines such as the perennially famous “Headless Body Found in Topless Bar” from the 1970s.  The Post has a circulation of around 500,000 and is locked in perpetual combat with New York’s fourth main paper, the Daily News.

Billing itself as “New York’s Picture Newspaper” (the icon on the front of its flag is an old-style camera), the Daily News has a circulation of around 500,000 as well and has a liberal editorial bend.  For many years, the paper was headquartered in a 476’ building designed by Raymond Hood on 42nd Street in Midtown that some have said was the inspiration for the Daily Planet of Superman.  The most famous headline of the Daily News is probably from the 1970s when the paper had “Ford to City: Drop Dead!” after the federal government refused to provide a financial bailout of the city in the later part of that decade.

As I mentioned before, while newspapers are facing an uncertain future,  these four papers are still among the most famous in the country.  They are joined by other papers in the city such as The Village Voice (which covers goings on in the Villages neighborhoods), New York Amsterdam News (news geared toward African Americans),  The Staten Island Advance (the only borough-specific paper left in the city) and several foreign language papers such as Der Tog (Yiddish language).  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Graffiti in NY: Art or Vandalism?

Graffiti and street art in New York is a controversial subject among many.  Graffiti is unsanctioned by a government or property owner.  Some graffiti is associated with gang and criminal culture, creating law and order issues.  While some see it as expressing their freedom of speech, others see it as willful vandalism of private (and sometimes public) property.  Before you pick up that spray can, unauthorized painting of a building or other piece of property is a violation of NYC law § 10-117, punishable by fines into the hundreds of dollars if caught..

Graffiti has existed since the days of ancient civilization.  It has often carried a political message, but also can be of a more personal nature, with taggers painting their name or a “tag” in a public area.  It is believed that Philadelphia was the birthplace of the modern graffiti movement  (which has led that city to have one of the largest graffiti abatement/public mural programs in the world).  The center of graffiti in the U.S. shifted to New York by the 1970s.  With declining municipal resources to go after graffiti artists and deferred maintenance, graffiti exploded all over the city and into every borough, especially in the Bronx, Upper Manhattan, and some neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side and Manhattan Chinatown.  Many graffiti painters worked alone, but some worked in groups called crews. It became a frequent source of pride to have a graffiti’ed piece somewhere high up (a water tower for example), on a landmark, or for a crew that could paint the most intricate piece in the shortest amount of time.

Perhaps the most endemic example of graffiti in the city were subways that were covered in paint by taggers and artists from the 1970s through the late 1980s.  As with other areas of the city, deferred maintenance and a lack of funds led to many subway trains becoming covered in graffiti—many trains were single pieces of art done by a crew.  While many of the artists thought that this allowed for their art to be seen throughout the city, others saw it as a visible symbol of the city’s decline and a growing sense of lawlessness (accompanied by a rise in crime in the subway system).  By the end of the 1980s, a concerted effort by the city government and the MTA led to all graffiti’ed cars being pulled from service, repainted a deep red (the classic “redbird” paint job that was harder for spray paint to adhere to), or put through a chemical wash in Coney Island (called the “orange crush” by graffiti artists).  While there is still graffiti in the city, it has not approached the nearly endemic levels that it once did.

In the contemporary era, many famous artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat originally painted graffiti murals before gaining fame.  The British artist Banksy is a continuation of this trend and painted several pieces on the streets of New York in October 2013 (many of which in turn were vandalized by local taggers).  Those looking for graffiti should head for areas such as the Lower East Side, Williamsburg and Bushwick, which are three of the more recognized sites in the city for graffiti and sanctioned street art—but graffiti can be found in all parts of the city today.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour, in addition to probably seeing some graffiti during your stay.

Brooklyn Bridge

Bridges are a part of every city.  Even inland cities such as Atlanta, GA, or Phoenix, AZ, have highway bridges, train trestles, or flyovers.  With only the Bronx on the mainland of the U.S., New York is defined by its bridges.  Thousands of viaducts, trestles, and bridges exist all over the city.  Because New York enjoys making a statement, no bridge quite symbolizes the city like the Brooklyn Bridge, which connects the commercial center of Manhattan to Brooklyn, the most populous of the boroughs.

A bridge across the East River between the city of New York and the formerly independent city of Brooklyn had been postulated for decades.  Transportation between the two cities, since the colonial era, was dependent on ferries.  Although they got the job done, they were subject to Mother Nature in the form of storms and the river freezing.  It was on one of these frozen ferries one day, according to legend, that John Roebling, an engineer, felt that a more permanent solution was needed.  Roebling specialized in designing suspension bridges—where high strength metal wires suspended the roadway between two anchorages.  Roebling designed and built demonstration bridges throughout the U.S.  A dry run for a New York bridge was shown to be feasible when Roebling completed a suspension bridge over the Ohio River between Cincinnati, OH, and Covington, KY in 1867.

Construction on the Brooklyn Bridge began in 1869.  Roebling died of tetanus in 1869, leaving his son, Washington Roebling, in charge of the project.  Washington would sustain a massive injury due to “the bends”, caused by ascending too quickly from massive submerged caissons constructed to anchor the bridge into the bedrock.  Due to Washington’s injury, his wife Emily finished construction.  Although she was trained as an engineer, Emily forged Washington’s instructions as they were unsure if work crews would follow directions from a woman.  The bridge opened to much fanfare in 1883.  After a scare in which there was a stampede on the bridge, circus elephants were marched over the bridge to show it was built to last.  Over the years, it has been “sold” to gullible tourists and is argued to have helped to unify the boroughs.  The bridge is currently undergoing restoration to ensure it lasts into another century.

Today, the bridge form an important part of the city and any tourist’s itinerary.  When walking between the boroughs, please be sure not to stray into the bicycle lanes.  While you are in town, consider seeing more of New York with a Sights by Sam tour when you leave the bridge.