Tag: Manhattan

Industry in New York

In today’s society where many manufactured goods are made in the South and West of the U.S. or come into the country in containers on great ships, manufacturing in New York City seems to be a foreign concept. On the contrary, the city has a long and industrious (no pun intended) history.

Being at the epicenter of a major port and with an incoming labor from overseas and across the country, New York became a major industrial hub. Manufacturing was concentrated on the West Side of Manhattan and in Brooklyn, among other locations. The industrial heritage of the city is still evident in the many lofts that dot Lower Manhattan, Williamsburg, and the Brooklyn waterfront. Unlike many other cities, New York had many varied industries, which helped the city weather downturns in a particular industry. With that said, the industries tended not to be heavy such as steel manufacturing—with concentration on food processing, consumer goods and durable goods among others.

From a high point in the first half of the 1900s, manufacturing declined over time in the city due to a combination of companies moving to Right to Work states in the South and West, the rising price of real estate in the city/confined building sites, and more liberalized international trade. Statistics by the Wall Street Journal indicate that manufacturing employs a little under 80,000 in the city—far down from 190,000 thirty years ago. Statistics indicate that this sector is growing in the city and is focused on high end goods. This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Disappeared Shopping Districts

New York is in a constant state of change. As a constantly evolving metropolis, neighborhoods change and businesses come and go. Due to the free market society that we all enjoy, there are specialty retail districts in the city that no longer exist. While there are still vestiges of some shopping districts such as garments on Orchard Street, there are several areas of the city that were once known for retailing particular products:

Radio Row
In the 1920s, radios were first put together by consumers themselves. As people began to demand nicer radio sets and companies such as Crosley entered the marketplace to fill the void, radio shops began to proliferate on Cortlandt Street in Lower Manhattan. The area soon attracted more radio and electronics vendors, filling this area of Lower Manhattan with the sounds of radios and attracting both consumers and hobbyists. At its heyday, 300 businesses selling radios and related components filled the area, giving it a crowded and loud feel. The shops in Radio Row also sold other electronic items, but were a victim of the land they sat on. As Lower Manhattan began to decline after World War II, there were many redevelopment efforts proposed. One of these included the World Trade Center, which ultimately doomed Radio Row as the district was condemned by eminent domain to construct the World Trade Center complex.

Book Row
As the epicenter of the U.S. publishing industry and with several universities, it would only be natural that New York would be the center of a large book district. Starting in the 1890s, bookstores, especially secondhand ones, started to proliferate on Fourth Avenue south of Union Square. This neighborhood, which bristled with shops and pushcarts selling books, was THE place to buy books in the city. Because of the number of bookstores, there was rampant specialization among the type of books that some stores sell. Like Radio Row, however, rising real estate values led to many of the shops closing. Today, Strand Books and a few others soldier on as the only survivors of the once vast district.

Changing tastes in retail and land values often change the nature of a district. This is evident today with the auto shops near Citi Field in Willet’s Point and with packing plants in the Meatpacking District. While the areas mentioned in this article are but shadows of their former selves, they form an important part of the city’s social history and its influence on generations of New Yorkers. The former sites of Radio Row and Book Row can be seen on a Sights by Sam tour.

Coffee in the City

Every neighborhood in New York from Tottenville to Riverdale has at least one place that will be serving the quintessential beverage of New York—coffee. Although not a native product of the state (milk is the official New York State beverage), coffee not only fuels hundreds of thousands of commuters per day, but has a big imprint on the city’s history.

Because of New York’s position as a major port, coffee was first imported to the colony by the Dutch. This was in contrast to many English colonies, where the preeminent beverage was tea. After the Revolutionary War, coffee started to become the preeminent beverage in the city as tea was seen as too reminiscent of British domination. Coffee roasters proliferated in the city and the coffee beans were primarily brought through New York for most of the history of the U.S. In 1882, a coffee exchange was set up to regulate the wholesale coffee trade in the city—which many nefarious people tried to attempt to corner (and so that the quality of coffee could be improved upon). Previously considered a pursuit for wealthier people (the traders who would later form the New York Stock Exchange often met in a coffee house), the drink eventually became more accessible to all Americans.

In addition to the cargo of coffee coming through the city, arrivals to New York from Europe, Africa, and other countries in the Americas also brought their styles of preparing coffee with them. By the time national chains such as Starbucks arrived in the city, specialty coffees and methods of preparation were hardly unknown to most New Yorkers. The city remains a bastion of caffeine-enriched goodness with the drink available in any part of the city. Unofficial estimates state that New York is the largest consumer of coffee in the country (perhaps because it is the city that never sleeps). This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

The High Line

Since 2009, the High Line in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan has delighted visitors and natives alike, helped to revitalize a formerly derelict area of the borough, and become one of the most innovative parks in the city. This linear park has a colorful history.

Before the arrival of the High Line, the Meatpacking District was similar to the Chicago Stockyards or the “Porkopolis” nickname of Cincinnati in that it was a major center of butchering and food processing. Major rail lines ran trains down tracks on 10th Avenue, leading to many people getting crushed by the trains (despite the presence of “Chelsea Cowboys” warning people of the trains). By the 1930s, the city decided that the tracks needed to be removed, leading to the construction of the High Line, which originally went from Spring Street to 34th Street. The track, which was so successful, caused major food processors such as Nabisco to build buildings around the tracks so they could offload freight. With the advent of more reliable trucking after World War II, the High Line declined in importance until the last train ran in 1980. While some sections were demolished, the present section was deemed too expensive for the city to remove. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, neighborhood activists successfully fought and won to have the viaduct converted into a linear park—similar to one in Paris, France. The park opened in stages in 2009, 2011, 2014, and 2015.

Open every day, the park has caused rapid development in the area with the opening of many new hotels and a spike in neighboring property values. The park has proven so successful that other cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia are eyeing similar proposals to build a High Line-style park. In 2017, Sights by Sam hopes to add a tour that includes the High Line and the Meatpacking District. This area is a must-do for any visitor to the city to see along with the Whitney Museum or while going to nearby shops.

New Years in New York

The turn of the new year is not only a national holiday, but a great day of celebration in New York. In addition to famous displays to mark the new year all over the world, New York differs from many in that there are no fireworks. Due to local ordinance in the city, no fireworks are allowed to be set off within city limits, leading to one of the most unique New Years traditions in the world.

In 1904, the New York Times located to Times Square. To mark the location, the paper had a grand celebration with fireworks to mark the arrival of 1905. This event attracted thousands, but the main place to mark the new year was still in Lower Manhattan. This changed for 1908 when the Times launched the first lightbulb-coated ball to drop down the 151’ pole atop their headquarters at One Times Square. This spectacle soon became the preferred way to ring in the new year (coupled with a fireworks ban that would force this to become the main celebration for the city after supposed problems with fireworks ringing in 1907 that nearly caused a stampede in Lower Manhattan). Over the years, six different balls have been used to ring in the new year. The sixth and newest has been in use since 2009—weighing nearly 12,000 pounds and over 12’ in diameter.

The only time there has not been a ball drop since 1908 was during World War II in 1942 and 1943. Due to blackout restrictions, no lights were allowed. Instead, crowds gathered in Times Square and prayed for the safety of U.S. and Allied soldiers fighting around the world—accompanied by Army sound trucks playing chimes. For this year, as in all years, up to 1.5 million people (along with thousands of NYPD and NY State Troopers) will ring in the new year at Times Square. This is the type of information that you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Port Authority Bus Terminal

On the west side of Midtown is one of the most important transportation centers in the city. The very aptly-named Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT) is managed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Its construction was meant to consolidate the various smaller bus terminals around the city into one unit, of which close to a dozen were believed to exist in the city limits at one point.

Constructed between 1950 and 1979, the PABT has 223 slips to allow large intercity buses to bring passengers into Manhattan. Many of these arrivals and departures are for New Jersey Transit commuter buses that bring thousands of commuters into the city from New Jersey. These commuter buses are bolstered by fleets of smaller buses (jitneys or vans) that help to bring in more people. Long distance buses from the East Coast and all over the country also call on PABT. During the morning, so many buses make their arrival into PABT, which is near the NY entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, that the buses have an exclusive lane from the New Jersey side that brings them directly to the terminal.

With the proliferation of Chinatown buses and other transportation providers operating (sometimes illegally) curbside bus pickup, the city’s Department of Transportation estimates that it would take at least four PABT-sized terminals to completely clear the streets of the city of intercity bus traffic. Although it has been talked about for some time, an immediate solution to crowding at PABT is still several years away. This is the type of information that you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Jefferson Market Courthouse

In addition to the NYPD and the great collection of civic buildings at Foley Square, there are many symbols of law and order in the city. One of the prettiest is the ornate Jefferson Market Courthouse in Greenwich Village.

Built in 1877 by Calvert Vaux, who designed the structures in Central Park and Prospect Park, the Jefferson Market Courthouse was built on the former site of a fire watchtower for the city. Between 1877 and 1945, this court was the location of the courthouse for the Third District of New York. Being located near Union Square, then the vice district of the city, the court tried cases in the infamous “Tenderloin” district of the city. Prominent trials such as the infamous “Trial of the Century” and the obscenity trial of Mae West in 1927 were among two of the most important cases heard before judges before its closure as a courthouse.

Through adaptive reuse (and the fact it was city property), the city rehabilitated the building into the Jefferson Market Library in 1967, the local branch of the New York Public Library for Greenwich Village. This building is the starting point of my “Around the Villages” tour and one of the highlights of any visit to New York. You can learn even more about this building by taking this tour.

Essex Street Market

Even though Americans live in an age with massive supermarkets and even online delivery of groceries, markets provide character and are part of the identity of a city or a neighborhood. This is true of the Italian Market in Philadelphia or Findlay Market in Cincinnati to give two examples. The same is true of the Essex Market in the Lower East Side of New York.

The Essex Street Market was built in 1940 as part of an urban renewal project. Before this building was built, the streets of Little Italy and the Lower East Side were packed with vendors selling items out of pushcarts. These merchants, mostly Eastern European Jews and Italian immigrants to New York, sold mostly food, but anything that could be sold out of a cart—including books, glasses, and underwear. The sheer number of pushcarts were a significant hazard to cars, trucks, and wagons on Delancey Street and made some side streets in the Lower East Side nearly impassible. Seeking to make the traffic flow better and remove a symbol of labor thought to be demeaning to immigrants, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned pushcarts and moved to consolidate the pushcart vendors into several markets throughout the city, including the Essex Street Market.

The market reflects the local population—selling Jewish and Italian goods in the 1940s to 1950s, Puerto Rican goods from the 1960s, and goods geared toward urban professionals that have moved into the Lower East Side since the early 2000’s. The City of New York also spent millions in the 1990s to rehab and renovate the market hall so that it may last for decades more. When in the Lower East Side, the Essex Street Market makes a fun stop for a snack or to see the types of wares on offer. This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Triumph in War: Two Soldier’s Memorials at Grand Army Plaza

The Civil War was the most destructive war in American History. The conflict was commemorated in somber battlefield memorials throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, as well as in several major cities throughout the country. Several large Civil War memorials exist in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and in Washington, DC, among several other locales. New York contains memorials to the war between the states as well— one in Manhattan and the other in Brooklyn. Ironically enough, both memorials are in Grand Army Plazas—both named after the Union Army’s veteran organization, the Grand Army of the Republic.

The Civil War Memorial in Manhattan at Grand Army Plaza is at the southeastern corner of Central Park. The main statue in the square is a golden equestrian statue of General William T. Sherman, the Civil War general who led the famous March to the Sea in Georgia. The statue was sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who is known more for designing American coins. While the statue and the plaza are not well known landmarks for this generation of visitors, the Plaza Hotel, located across the street from Grand Army Plaza, is one of the more known landmarks in this part of the city.

The other main Civil War memorial in the city is in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Near the entrance to Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Museum, and the main library in Brooklyn, Grand Army Plaza contains one of the largest arches in the city: the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch. This arch was built between 1889 and 1892 and designed by McKim, Mead, and White. It contains several scenes of the Civil War and the reconstruction of the Union after the Civil War.

Other Civil War memorials exist in the city, such as the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in the Upper West Side. With that said, the two Grand Army Plazas and their memorials are awe-inspiring and give testament to the lives lost in preserving our great country. Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan can be seen on a Sights by Sam tour. The plaza in Brooklyn will be a stop on a future Sights by Sam tour.

Studio Museum in Harlem

On 125th Street is the Studio Museum in Harlem, an art museum dedicated to displaying artwork completed by African Americans and people of African descent from all over the world. It sees thousands of visitors annually and anchors a stretch of 125th Street that is close to the Apollo Theater and the Hotel Theresa.

Founded in 1968, the museum was established by African American artists and residents of Harlem. The museum has an emphasis on contemporary art and has a collection of over 2,000 pieces of artwork in its permanent collection. The Studio Museum is known for its temporary exhibits that showcase everything from retrospectives on famous African American artists to displaying artwork from local students. It is also known for having an artists-in-residence program that showcases emerging artists and their work.

The Studio Museum is housed in a former bank building on 125th Street and is known for its American flag in the colors of the African American flag (black, red, and green) flying over its entrance. This museum can be seen at the end of a Sights by Sam “Upper Manhattan” tour and is the type of information that is presented on all Sights by Sam tours.