Tag: Manhattan

Law and Order in the City

The New York Police Department (NYPD) works to uphold the law in all 300+ square miles of the city.  The NYPD has 49,500 officers (additionally there are 120 equine officers and 34 canine officers) working out of 77 precincts, 12 transit divisions, and 9 public housing division districts.  The NYPD has been portrayed in countless books, movies, and television shows.  While the department has come under fire from time to time, “New York’s Finest” help to protect the city for native and visitor alike.  Eleven other city agencies and several state and federal law enforcement agencies also have a presence in the city (including the Port Authority Police officers you will see at airports, and around Port Authority property such as the World Trade Center complex and the bus station).

In the 1600s, the Dutch organized a night watch to patrol the city.  Judgment was often fierce and brutal–with banishment a particularly favored penalty.  Law enforcement remained a very informal affair until the 1840s, when the city organized a municipal police force.  For a time, there were two police forces: the municipal force and a New York State-dominated Metropolitan police force in the 1850s.  As a result of a massive riot between the two police forces and street gangs in 1857, the municipal police were disbanded and law enforcement reformed into the NYPD.  There have been ups and downs in the department’s history: Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner in the late 1800s.  Endemic corruption n the department was an issue of concern in the early 1930s and in the 1970s.  Starting in the 1990s, the NYPD has been lauded in its role in helping to make New York one of the safest large cities in the country.

The NYPD maintained a small but fascinating museum in Lower Manhattan that documented the history of the department and hosted several events—including an auto show consisting of old police cars and the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit (SWAT team) vehicles.  This museum was sadly damaged during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and is looking to reopen in the near future.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Federal Hall

Ninety miles down the New Jersey Turnpike from New York lies Philadelphia, the former capital of the United States and the site of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated upon and agreed.  Many visitors to Philadelphia may not realize that the first government of the United States (after the American Revolution) was based out of New York City.  The seat of the government was Federal Hall.

Federal Hall stands at the confluence of Wall Street and Broad Street in Lower Manhattan, within very very easy walking distance of the New York Stock Exchange and the House of Morgan.  The structure that stands here now was built as a Custom House in 1842.  This building was designed by John Frazee in a neoclassical style.  It later became a subtreasury annex before being declared a National Historic Site in the 1930s.  Today, it contains exhibits about the National Park System in New York City and memorabilia associated with George Washington being inaugurated as president, including the Bible he used during the inauguration ceremony.

The original building for Federal Hall, however, was built in 1700 and served as the City Hall for New York.  It housed the council and the courts.  It was here that the Zenger trial of 1735 took place, which helped to establish the precedence of Freedom of the Press.  After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the United States under the Articles of Confederation met here, where they voted to approve the Northwestern Ordinance of 1787—annexing several new territories west of the Appalachian Mountains into the U.S. to become states eventually.  When the Constitution was ratified, Congress met here for only one year in 1789, where they approved the Bill of Rights and the Judiciary Act.  When Congress moved to Philadelphia the next year (in preparation to move to Washington, D.C.), the building became the City Hall of New York again.  The original structure was demolished in 1812 when the current City Hall was completed.

While not as high in the minds of many visitors as Independence Hall, Federal Hall is a place of important historic pilgrimage as many of the rights that all Americans enjoy today were secured in this important building.  You can see the statue of President George Washington and the imposing facade of Federal Hall on a Sights by Sam “Foundation of New York” tour.

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.

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.

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.

Professional Baseball in the City

The American Pastime has always been well represented in New York City.  The game was invented by Alexander Cartwright in the 1840s.  Cartwright’s team, the New York Knickerbockers, were even believed to be the first team to wear uniforms.  Teams from the city have been represented in the National League (1876), the American League (1901), and the two attempted competitors to the Major Leagues—the Federal League in the 1910s and the Continental League in the 1960s.  Major League Baseball’s headquarters is located on Park Avenue in Midtown while the Hall of Fame is only a four-hour drive away in Cooperstown.

In terms of the two main major leagues, New York used to be a National League stronghold.  The city had two teams: the New York Giants (who played at the Polo Grounds in Washington Heights) and the Brooklyn Dodgers (who would be most remembered for playing at Ebbets Field in Flatbush, Brooklyn).  The Giants were one of the most dominant teams in the game early in its history, while the Dodgers were not so dominant in their early history, but came to personify the Borough of Brooklyn through their hard style of play, fiercely loyal fans, and the first team in the modern era to have African-American and Latino players.  Changing population patterns and market realities would lead the Giants to relocate to San Francisco and the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1958.  The absence of a National League team would lead (after abortive attempts to bring the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Philadelphia Phillies to the city) to businessmen led by William Shea trying to form a third major league (the Continental League) to bring a second team to the city.  Major League Baseball, wanting to protect its hold on professional baseball, gave the city the New York Mets as an expansion team (you can see where Shea Stadium’s name came from now).  The Mets have often been the also-rans in their history, but have had several memorable seasons, including in 1969, 1986, and in 2015.   The Mets now play at the new Citi Field in Flushing, Queens. The Mets have an A-level minor league team in Brooklyn, the Cyclones, who play at a stadium in Coney Island, and a AA-level team in Binghampton.

The American League team of the city has been the New York Yankees.  Relocated from Baltimore in 1903 and originally called the Highlanders (because they played at Hilltop Park in Upper Manhattan), the team changed its name to the Yankees in 1913 when they moved to the Polo Grounds.  After nearly 10 years, the Yankees had outdrawn the Giants in their own stadium and were evicted.  The owners of the Yankees built Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, directly across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds in the Bronx.  The Yankees were the team of Babe Ruth, one of the first superstars of the sport.  Through astute management and cultivation of talent (and what detractors would argue as underhanded tactics and buying out the best players from other teams), the Yankees have managed to build on a winning legacy, winning 27 World Series, 40 American League Pennants, and being in the postseason at least once in every decade since the 1920s.  The Yankees play at a new Yankee Stadium that was built across the street from the old park.  The Yankees have an A-level team, the Staten Island Yankees, that play near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in the St. George neighborhood, as well as their AAA-level team near Scranton,PA, and their AA-level affiliate in Trenton, NJ.

New York has been host to several “Subway Series” World Series, most recently in 1999, but also throughout the 1950s.  Recent studies have shown that despite the increasing popularity of basketball and football, baseball still remains the most popular sport in the city (one of the few regions of the country where this is true).  Given that every borough except for Manhattan has a major or minor league team, the game remains very accessible to the general population.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.