Tag: Manhattan

The Race to the Top

In large clusters in Lower and Midtown Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City in Queens, there are skyscrapers.  The quintessential New York architectural form rises up all over the city.  A casual observer can tell the era a skyscraper was built in by its height and ornamentation.  This entry will give a basic history of the skyscraper.

The skyscraper is a perfect building for New York as it rises vertically from a sometimes small parcel of land.  It also allows a company to locate its offices together and for a landlord to rent out to many tenants to collect more rent for one building.  The invention of the safety elevator and steel in the 1800s allowed structures to rise higher than six or seven stories (what the average person can tolerate walking).  Other advances in mechanical technologies such as pumps to bring water up and sewage down, as well as more recent technologies such as solar panels and water recycling systems make the skyscraper desirable.  New York is also geologically fortunate in that there is good bedrock to anchor these massive towers into the Earth.

The first skyscrapers were built in Chicago after that city’s great fire.  The skyscraper first appeared in Lower Manhattan with many newspapers building skyscrapers along Park Row near City Hall.  Others, such as the Equitable Life Building in Lower Manhattan was one of the first to have features of being a skyscraper; the structure had elevators and a high floor count.  Many, including this building, had a Gilded Age/Beaux Arts style to them.  This structure stood from 1870 to 1912, when it burned down.  The company would build a much taller and larger building that would lead to a distinctly New York style.

The new Equitable Building was completed in 1915 and covered an entire city block, rising up to 40 stories and 538 feet.  It ended up casting a shadow over the surrounding blocks.  In response, the New York City Council passed the Zoning Ordinance of 1916, which required that skyscrapers adopt setbacks until the floor area matched 1/4 of the building’s site.  At this point, the 1/4 segment could rise as far as was feasible or profitable to build.  Many art deco-era skyscrapers in the city such as the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building apply setbacks in their form. This same era saw a “race to the top” where skyscraper builders competed to have the world’s tallest building.  Since the end of World War II, there has been a trend toward glassed-in International Style and contemporary-style buildings.  Many of these rise straight up as they do not occupy the entire plot of land they are on (in compliance with the 1916 law) and have windows that reflect light down onto the streets below.

Although major building of skyscrapers still continues today, the tallest buildings are now located in the Middle East and Far East, where other countries are trying to pierce the heavens with taller and taller buildings.  With this said, New York is still graced by some of the tallest buildings in the world, including 1 World Trade Center, the tallest in the Western Hemisphere.  You will be able to see skyscrapers on any Sights by Sam tour.

American Museum of Natural History

I was once among people who believed that all natural history museums were more or less the same.  The Natural History Museum in D.C. and the Cincinnati Museum Center are two of the finest in the country, but their collections of natural artifacts and specimens are similar.  I was hesitant to go to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) with these thoughts in my mind, but put my natural history museum biases aside to come here.

I was rewarded immediately upon entry when I saw the memorial to President Theodore Roosevelt (former NYPD commissioner and the only president born in New York City).  A rich mosaic covering T.R. negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth, his African expedition (that netted around 4,000 objects in the museum’s collection), and the building of the Panama Canal takes up most of the entryway.  These three episodes are interspersed with quotes from T.R. and giant U.S., New York State, and New York City flags that make this the coolest museum entryway in the city.

The AMNH was established in 1869 and moved into its current location in 1874.  The building has two million square feet and contains millions of specimens of plants, animals, and cultural artifacts.  The museum is home to stuffed animals from habitats from every corner of the planet, the skeletons of dinosaurs and ice age mammals, and a collection of native costumed mannequins from indigenous cultures all over the world.  For those who prefer their science in outer space, the Hayden Planetarium is attached to the museum.

Due to the fact that children love to see dinosaur bones and animals, this museum has a high population of little ones during the day—and doubly so on a rainy day.  Rain or shine, Sights by Sam tours will show you the sights and attractions that make New York New York.

The Second Avenue Subway

One of the most commonly-talked about subjects among residents of a certain part of Manhattan is the Second Avenue Subway line.  First postulated in the late 1910s-early 1920s, the first section of this long-awaited line is scheduled to open by 2017.  This will not arrive a moment too soon for residents of East Harlem and the Upper East Side—where the Lexington Avenue IRT Lines carry more riders per day than the subway systems of Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco combined.  The slow pace of construction has been lampooned on the show Mad Men and even is the subject of several popular blogs.

Originally conceived to be part of the city-owned IND Subway system, the Second Avenue Subway was to originally be built in the 1930s at a cost of $86 million, but halted due to the Great Depression and World War II.  After the war, the city had difficulty getting the project approved as costs continued to mount.  At the same time, elevated rail lines along Second and Third Avenues were torn down, creating the crowded conditions along the Lexington Avenue IRT Lines today.  In the 1960s and 1970s, bond issues were approved and federal funding was secured, but in 1975, the project was cancelled as the city’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly—leaving several uncompleted sections of tunnels under Manhattan.  Construction resumed in the mid 2000s, but has been beset by delays since.  As finances for the subway line have become more precarious over the years, a planned express configuration with three tracks has been reduced to two tracks up and down the entire line.

While the Second Avenue Subway is scheduled for partial completion soon, it is really anyone’s guess as to how long it will take to finish the complete line from Upper Manhattan to near the South Street Seaport.  The line continues along, constructed with a mix of cut-and-cover construction and a tunnel-boring machine (so that residents and business along Second Avenue are ideally not adversely impacted by construction).  The is the type of information that you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

South Street Seaport

One of the great sources of wealth of New York has always been its harbor.  Allowing protection from the sea and connecting the city to a vast hinterland spread across multiple regions of the country, New York’s harbor has allowed for people and products to both enter and leave through its vast port.  Although the majority of shipping is done today in the modern harbor complex in Staten Island and New Jersey, the earliest port can be traced back into the East River and is commemorated in the South Street Seaport today.

Shipping on the East River has been important since the pre-colonial era when the Native American tribes would trade with each other up and down the river.  The Dutch commenced trading on the East River in the 1600s—later continued by the British and the Americans.  One of the supposed advantages of the East River was that it was more resistant to ice than the Hudson River.  The heyday of the port lasted from the colonial era until the early 1900s when the deeper Hudson River was better able to accommodate the increasingly larger oceangoing vessels.  The South Street Seaport was also famed for being the location of the Fulton Fish Market, which lasted from 1822 until 2005 when it was moved to the Bronx at Hunts Point Market and the Fulton Ferry, which joined Manhattan and Brooklyn between 1814 and 1924 (made obsolete by the East River bridges).

After the seaport fell out of use in the 1950s, the area began to decline.  A concerted effort was made to revitalize the area: first with a museum in the 1960s to commemorate the district’s maritime heritage and then in the 1980s with a “festival marketplace” style shopping complex that was pioneered at Fanueil Hall in Boston and the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.  The area also has kept and restored many early 1800s-vintage buildings, making it one the largest concentration of such buildings in the city.  In addition to many shops and a branch of the TKTS booth (where discounted Broadway show tickets are sold), there are several old ships such as the Wavertree and the Peking which show the types of ships which once called on the area.

Today, most ships on the East River are ferries to Governor’s Island, Staten Island, or other boroughs, some freighters, and a few pleasure craft.  Although the heyday of the cargo ports of the East River are gone now, the South Street Seaport recreates some of the history in which the area is steeped.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

The High Bridge

As I mentioned in my post about the Brooklyn Bridge, many cities are defined by their bridges.  Structures such as the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong, the Roebling Bridge in Cincinnati, and the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia, are instantly recognizable symbols of the city.  Like San Francisco or Pittsburgh, New York is a city of bridges—with many stately structures connecting the city together.  While there are many bridges worthy of blog articles on this website, one of the most important bridges to the city is the High Bridge.

Connecting Manhattan to the Bronx across the Harlem River, the High Bridge was completed in 1848.  The bridge is 2000 feet long and was the first permanent bridge connecting Manhattan with the mainland.  It was partially designed by James Renwick, Jr, who is known for designing the Cathedral of St. Patrick in Midtown.  The bridge had a dual purpose—to allow transportation between the two boroughs and to transport water into the city.  The water was held in the stately water tower and reservoir where High Bridge Park in Manhattan is now.  According to some accounts, the tower was needed to increase water pressure so that increasingly common modern toilets could flush.  When initially constructed, the area became a destination for amusement and pleasure seekers as it was near the river, leading to many restaurants and hotels being built.

As industry grew along the river in the 1900s, this area lost its cache as a tourism destination and declined.  This led to part of the High Bridge being demolished and replaced with a metal span to allow larger ships to pass up the Harlem River.  As the Harlem River Drive and the Major Deegan Expressway were completed in the 1950s and 1960s, the neighborhood was cut off from the waterfront.  Faced with increasing crime in the area and vandalization of the bridge, the High Bridge was closed in the 1970s.  It was closed until 2015 after a massive restoration project fixed the bridge and rehabilitated it for pedestrian use.

While not a sweeping suspension bridge like so many of the more photographed bridges, the High Bridge is a historically important bridge that is a true symbol of the city.  If in this part of Manhattan, the High Bridge is worth your time for a walk.  The views from the bridge of Manhattan and the Bronx as well as the high bluffs on both the Manhattan and Bronx sides make this a great place to take photos—especially on a sunny day.  This is the type of information that you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Located in Central Park, with over two million square feet of exhibition space at its Central Park flagship, collections encompassing every period of history, and now spanning three locations, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), is the largest museum in the U.S.  The collection of the museum has artifacts in it such as a medieval hall of armor, baseball cards, Tiffany lamps, a paintings collection that is world class, and an Egyptian temple.  The museum is also the setting for one of my favorite books from the fourth grade, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

The main museum campus opened its doors in 1872 further down Fifth Avenue from its current location.  The current location was built in 1880, and was added onto over several years (the original building is actually encased by its additions—look for the red walls while inside of the museum).  Over the years it has greatly expanded to encompass a large super block between 79th and 86th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

A trip to the Met can encompass an entire day.  Check out the temporary exhibits (which change every few months), which are done well and always stunning.  The Hall of Armor is always a crowd pleaser as is the reconstructed Ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur (reconstructed in the northern edge of the museum).  If you are there in the summer, the roof deck offers a stunning view of Central Park and has an installation on it.  As I am a big fan of modern art myself, while not the MoMA or the Whitney, the Met can hold its own with regard to its collection of 19th and 20th century art.

If you somehow have more time after a day of gallery cruising at the Fifth Avenue location, your admission will allow you to enter another Met affiliate (such as the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan or the Met Breuer in the Upper East Side) for free the same day.  There is almost no way that you can see the entire collection in one sitting.  Plan ahead with the art and artifacts you want to see in mind.  If it is raining outside, rest assured that most tourists and locals from the Upper East Side will be in the main location of the Met with you.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

The Yiddish Rialto

Today the beginning of Second Avenue in the East Village is a commercial strip and an up and coming residential area.  In the early part of the 20th Century, this area, then in the center of the Jewish Lower East Side, was the location of a thriving live theater district.  Colloquially, this area was called the Yiddish Rialto after the language the vast majority of the immigrants spoke and the area in Venice, Italy.  This theater district experienced its heyday from the turn of the 20th century and the 1950s.

In the late 1800s to early 1900s, around two million Eastern European Jews arrived in New York, fleeing religious persecution in their former homelands.  They mainly settled in the Lower Eat Side of New York and often worked in menial jobs in sweatshops or hawking items from pushcarts.  The main source of entertainment for many of these immigrants was Yiddish theater.  The first one was in the Lower East Side on Grand Street, but the district soon spread to Second Avenue, with over a dozen Yiddish language theaters lining the street.  In the beginning, Yiddish theater used Shakespearean plays or borrowed themes from other theater productions, but soon came into its own, with original productions being produced.  Actors such as Jacob Adler and Fyvush Finkel both got their starts in Yiddish theater productions.  Songwriters Ira and George Gershwin also were great fans of Yiddish theater in their youth.  At one point, there were over 20 Yiddish language theaters in the district, rivaling Times Square as the second largest theater district in the city.  The rise of Yiddish theaters also promoted a rise in new businesses such as restaurants and clubs around where the theaters were located, such as the Second Avenue Deli (which opened at the time that the district started to decline).

In the 1950s, with the arrival of television and changing settlement patterns—where Jews were leaving the neighborhood, the Rialto fell into decline and vanished.  An additional factor in the district’s decline was that many Jewish immigrants did not teach their children Yiddish in order to help them assimilate into American society.  Today there is only one Yiddish theater company in the East Village.  There is also the Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame where the Second Avenue Deli used to be at the corner of 10th Street and Second Avenue.  You can see the former Yiddish Rialto on the Sights by Sam tour, “Lost in the Lower East Side.”

Manhattan Civic Center

New York has been the largest city in our country since the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.  The city covers over 300 miles and has over eight million people within its borders.  Governing this city is no easy task.

In addition to an elected mayor, comptroller, and public advocate (who acts as a watchdog/ombudsman for the citizens of the city), a 51-member city council governs the city.  The council meets in a stately building located at the heart of the Manhattan Civic Center.  Built in 1811, the building was designed by Joseph-Francois Mangin and John McComb Jr..  City Hall was built at the then Northern edge of the city.  It was originally clad in marble on three sides–the northern side used another type of stone as some in the city government felt the city would never expand far enough north where people would notice (the building was restored in Alabama limestone in the 1950s).  The building is done up in a French Renaissance style on the outside.  The interior has a more English Georgian style.  The building also has a portrait collection worth millions of dollars.  The governor’s room, originally for use when the governor of New York was in the city, now houses a desk used by George Washington and a desk used by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (if you take my tours, you will know he is my favorite mayor).  The building is the meeting place for the City Council and used to have a second chamber for the Board of Estimate, which was declared unconstitutional in the 1980s.  The Board’s chambers are now used by the Mayor of New York.

Across City Hall Park from the City Hall is the Municipal Building.  This hulking edifice containing 1 million square feet of office space and housing a couple thousand workers was built to consolidate numerous city departments.  The building, opened in 1916 and designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White, is 580’ tall, has a subway station built into it, and arches made out of Guastavino tiling on the outside.  The building also has a statue at the top, the gold-covered Civic Fame, sculpted by Adolph Weinman, which symbolizes the union of the five boroughs in 1898.  The five pointed crown is evident of this.

The Municipal Building also contains one of the most unique gift shops in the city–the CityStore, which being run by the city, has gifts such as park signage, taxi medallions, and municipal books that are difficult to obtain elsewhere.

There are numerous court buildings in the area, but that will be the subject of another entry at another time.  You can learn about these on a Sights by Sam tour of Lower Manhattan.

Upper West Side

Extending on the west side of Manhattan and bounded by 59th Street to the south, the Hudson River to the west, 110th Street to the north, and Eighth Avenue/Central Park West to the east, the Upper West Side is one of the largest neighborhoods on Manhattan in terms of real estate and with a population nearing 200,000, is one of the more sizably-populated neighborhoods in the borough.

The Upper West Side was sparsely settled through most of the early part of New York’s history.  Broadway was cut through the neighborhood.  A great amount of settlement began in the period after the Civil War, when New York grew and the street grid pushed northward.  Many brownstones and apartment buildings were built—especially after the arrival of elevated railroads and subways in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Along Central Park, there exists a very fashionable area where upscale apartment buildings such as the Dakota and the San Remo are located.  The largest house on Manhattan, the 75-room Schwab Mansion, used to be located on Riverside Drive between 73rd and 74th Streets.  This mansion was torn down after World War II.  The neighborhood is also defined as being bounded by both Central Park, and a great portion of the 172 acre Riverside Park, which runs alongside the Hudson River.  The neighborhood is mostly residential.  Exceptions to this are some grand hotels along the southern edge around Columbus Circle and 59th Street, the Lincoln Center on Broadway and the low-60s, and the headquarters of ABC on 66th Street.

Today, the Upper West Side is known for being a cultural hub.  It is in this neighborhood that one can find the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the American Museum of Natural History, and the New-York Historical Society, among many other cultural institutions.  In terms of famous residents, the neighborhood is home to such personalities as Tina Fey and Denzel Washington.  Some other famous people associated with the Upper West Side include Woody Allen (through many of his early movies) and Jerry Seinfeld (both his longtime home in real life and the neighborhood where Seinfeld was set).  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour—and a tour of this neighborhood can be done on request (go to sightsbysam.com for more details).

Cherry Lane Theater

Along with London, New York is one of the centers of English-speaking theater in the world.  The most well-known part of this industry in New York are Broadway theaters, which produce original and revival productions of musicals and other shows.  Broadway theaters are  also a significant economic generator for the city.  Often, the incubators for Broadway shows are the so-called “Off-Broadway” theaters that have more experimental productions or those by new and emerging writers or actors.  While there are many Off-Broadway theaters in the city, one of the most famous is the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village.

Founded in 1924, the Cherry Lane Theater is the longest-running Off Broadway theater in the city.  According to the theater’s history, the building was originally used as a box factory before being converted into its present form.  Noted poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was among the founders of the theater—along with the Provincetown Players.  Over the years, there have been many famous writers who have had plays performed such as Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, John dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, and T.S. Elliott, among others.  In terms of actors, Cary Grant, John Barrymore, James Earl Jones, and Gene Hackman have all performed in plays at the theater.  In 1996, Angelina Fiordellisi bought the theater and made numerous renovations to the performance areas in addition to starting a mentoring program for new playwrights.  There are two theaters in the complex: a 179 seat main stage and a 60 seat studio theater.

Today, the Cherry Lane Theater still hosts performances by new and emerging playwrights and actors.  This institution helps to carry on the artistic legacy of Greenwich Village and still continues to be a place for new actors and playwrights to gain exposure.  With the location of the theater in the heart of Greenwich Village, it is hard for the setting of the theater itself to be more ideal or idyllic.  You are able to see the Cherry Lane Theater on an “Around the Villages” tour offered by Sights by Sam.