Category: Blog

Staten Island: Forgotten New York?

As you learned in a previous entry, Staten Island was named for the parliament of the Netherlands.  The population of the borough stands at under 500,000 and is about 60 square miles.  Despite being part of the city, the island can sometimes seem like a world apart from the rest of the hustle-and-bustle of the city.

Staten Island was discovered in 1524 by Giovanna da Verrazano (for whom the bridge linking Brooklyn and the island was partially named).  The island was lightly settled by the Dutch.  A wave of more settlers came to the island under the British, who incorporated it into the Province of New York and named it Richmond County (for the noble title of one of King Charles II’s sons).  The island was the site of a failed negotiation between British General Howe and several Continental Congressmen at the Conference House in 1776.  A peace settlement in exchange for withdrawing the Declaration of Independence failed, leading to the British invasion of New York.  The island was consolidated in 1898 with the other four boroughs to form present-day New York City.  The borough was also linked to New Jersey by three bridges (Bayonne Bridge, Outerbridge Crossing, and the Goethals Bridge) and to Brooklyn (the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge) in the 20th Century.

While a part of the city, Staten Island residents have not always seen eye-to-eye with the rest of the city.  Some residents feel neglected by the local government—with this having to do with political differences, a much smaller population on the island, and the siting of a large garbage dump on the island between 1947 and 2001.  Additionally, residents have expressed opposition to the lack of zoning restrictions on the island (which the city government hopes will encourage development on the island while some residents believe this will destroy the low-rise character of the area).  A secession vote passed in the 1980s, but was not approved by the State of New York.  Despite this checkered past, Staten Island is very much a part of the city.

During your visit to New York, consider taking in some sights on the island such as the Tibetan Art Museum, Conference House, Old Richmond Town, or a game at the Staten Island Yankees’ home stadium.  At the very least, the Staten Island Ferry is the best bargain in town—it’s free and riders are able to take in New York Harbor at a relaxing pace.  In time, Sights by Sam hopes to be able to add Staten Island to its array of tour destinations.  In the meantime, this is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

The Whitney Museum

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was born into the wealthy Vanderbilt family–the ones that owned the New York Central Railroad. She married Harry P. Whitney, becoming even richer as the Whitney family owned substantial oil interests. Whitney turned toward art as a hobby and became an impressive sculptor in her own right.

Starting in 1914, Whitney began to amass American art. She felt that American artists needed to be exhibited and promoted. In 1929, she attempted to donate her collection of American modern art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which declined her collection–as did the Museum of Modern Art. Whitney’s artwork would be formed into what is now known as the Whitney Museum of Art in 1931.

The museum has moved from Greenwich Village to Midtown to the Upper East Side (in a Marcel Breuer-designed building now housing an extension of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), to a new, Renzo Piano-designed edifice opened in 2015, which anchors the southern entrance to the High Line Park and contains 200,000 square feet of exhibition space. Many of the galleries have decks outside which provide great views of the surrounding city. The immediate neighborhood provides many opportunities for walking and eating in several restaurants and bars that have proliferated in recent years.

In addition to hosting a permanent collection of American artists such as Charles Demuth and Edward Hopper among more contemporary artists, the museum also has many temporary exhibits and hosts the famous Whitney Biennial every other year (next scheduled for 2017). Between 7:00PM and 9:30PM on Fridays, the museum has a “pay what you wish” policy. The Whitney should be on your itinerary for the modern building alone. A Sights by Sam walking tour of New York should be on the itinerary of any visitor to this great city.

Bowling Green: First in New York

New York has hundreds of public parks ranging from the massive Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx to small “parklets” that are scarcely larger than a parking space. At the foot of Manhattan sits Bowling Green, the oldest public park in the city—established in 1733.

The area where Bowling Green is located was used as a “commons” where residents of New Amsterdam and later New York fed their animals. In 1733, the council of the city designated the area as a park for the enjoyment of all its residents.

In 1770, the British government erected a two-ton lead equestrian statue of King George III in the park. Due to poor relations between the mother country and the colony in the lead up to the American Revolution, the city passed one of its first anti-graffiti laws to counter the growing wave of vandalism toward the statue. On July 9, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read out loud in the city. The Sons of Liberty, immediately after the reading, ran to the statue and toppled it, melting the lead into musket balls. Some alleged pieces of the statue and the original fence reside at the New-York Historical Society today.

In a more contemporary era, the statue Charging Bull by Arturo di Modica was placed here after it had been removed from in front of the New York Stock Exchange. The statue was placed in front of the exchange in 1989 as a symbol of the perseverance of the American spirit after the stock market crash of 1987. It was moved to its present place on Bowling Green after the public clamored for it to be publicly displayed. The bull weighs a little over three tons.

Bowling Green is one of the main parks in the area of Wall Street, close to other attractions such as the New York Stock Exchange, the Alexander Hamilton Custom House, and Trinity Church, to name but a few. Bowling Green can be viewed on a Sights by Sam tour of Lower Manhattan.

The Empire State Building

Rising 1454 feet tall and the tallest building in the world for nearly forty years between 1931 and 1970, the Empire State Building has featured in the imaginations of tourists, immigrants, and New York natives since it punched through the clouds. It has made numerous appearances in movies, tacky souvenirs, and even New York license plates.

The building was constructed in a record 410 days at the corner of 5th Avenue and 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The site was the original home of the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel. The firm of Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon was tasked with constructing the tower. The tower is allegedly patterned off of the then recently-completed Carew Tower in Cincinnati (which also coincidently is the home of the prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge). Over 3,400 workers labored on the structure, which provided needed jobs during the Great Depression. Construction proceeded at such a fast pace and such a precise timetable that workers reported the steel from mills in Bethlehem, PA, was still warm when it arrived. The tower was designed in an Art Deco style and clad in Indiana limestone.

Although the building was the tallest in the world, it was not fully occupied until the 1950s, leading it to be called the “Empty State Building.” The observation deck and its broadcasting antenna (added later) proved to be major sources of income for its owners. A well-circulated story about the building’s mast being used as a mooring mast for airships is unfounded–a U.S. military test showed an airship could be anchored, but no one could enter or exit easily. The tower was a sight of tragedy in 1945 when a lost B-25 bomber crashed into the tower between the 79th and 80th floors. Fourteen people were killed in the incident.

The tower itself has over two million square feet of usable office space. Environmental retrofits over the years have earned the Empire State Building LEED certification. Special occasions have been observed since 1976 with the color of the floodlights of the tower being changed for the occasion. In 2012, LEDs replaced the floodlights, allowing thousands of color combinations.

If you are going up to the tower, it is recommended to buy tickets on their site in advance, lest you be subject to lines that will take away most of a day of sightseeing. If you can splurge for it, go to the 102nd floor observation deck to get an incredible view of the city, although the deck is no longer the tallest in the city–1 World Trade Center’s deck is–for now… Many tourists go to 30 Rockefeller Center nearby to get a less crowded view of the city and see the Empire State Building standing proud among the concrete and steel canyons of Manhattan. Even if you do not go up the tower and despite the massive construction boom, you cannot help but see one of New York’s tallest ambassadors from most vantage points in the city. This building’s towering profile and more can be seen on any Sights by Sam tour.

Under the Streets

Under the very streets of New York is one of the most important sights to behold, yet important for ferrying over three million people through the metropolis daily.  The New York City Subway, with 469 stations and enough track to go from Manhattan to Chicago, is essential to the functioning of the city as we know it.

Before 1904, when the current system opened, a crowded, seemingly never ending mass of horse carriages plied across the city.  The horses powering these carriages produced thousands of gallons of waste daily. This was in addition to the dead horses, which had to be removed.  For many, transportation was done via streetcars and cablecars, but these were dangerous for pedestrians in some areas (the Brooklyn Dodgers earned their nickname from fans dodging trolleys careening around their ballpark).  There were several elevated lines, but these were initially powered by steam (sending their pollution onto the streets below) or blocked out light to the bottom of the street (such as on the Bowery).  A new solution had to be found.

Inspired by developments in London in the mid 1800s, underground rail was sought.  Inventor Alfred Ely Beech developed a short subway line that was powered by large fans blowing the car from one terminal to the other in the late 1800s.  This line was short-lived due to political issues.

In 1900, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) began building its lines on the east and west sides of Manhattan and opened in 1904.  The IRT was soon joined by the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) and later the Independent Subway System (IND, run by the city, as it was built independently of private investment).  The City of New York wound up owning all three systems a little before World War II.  Being three different companies, the stops often overlap, with many stops converging in Lower Manhattan as the idea was to move as many people as possible to the business district for work in the morning and back home at night.  The old systems are all incorporated into the current system: the IRT (numbered lines), the BMT (J through Z lines), and the IND (A through G lines).  Many lines can run in a local-express configuration, and the system is the largest of its type in the world that runs all day, every day.

The subway, in addition to being mostly utilitarian in its purpose, does have art in it such as Guastavino tiling, while other stations have intricate mosaics (Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall has pictures of the great bridge and Astor Place has beavers, which allude to the source of the Astor Family’s wealth in furs).  Several stations also have pieces from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts and Design Program, which features local and well-known artists.

The next time you are traveling from point A to point B in our great city, take a moment to look for hidden design accents and marvel that this is the busiest, hardest working system of its type in the country and an instant symbol of the great city.  This is one of the many things you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.