Urban Gadabout: Last call for Jack Eichenbaum's big day on the L train (this Saturday!)

With the rapid gentrification of Williamsburg, then Bushwick, and continuing farther out on the line, NYC's L train has gone from a forlorn stepchild of the subway system to its "boom" line.

by Ken

I'm hoping that by now urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum -- who's also the Queens borough historian -- needs no introduction to readers, and if he does, just click on the tag below. As I've noted, Jack's wide-ranging tours around NYC (I've toured all five boroughs except Staten Island with him), with their emphasis on the evolving forces of urban geography, have done more than I could tell to enable me to see how and why the city has developed and continues to develop.

One of Jack's choice tour modes is to devote an entire day to a single subway line, usually involving a half-dozen off-the-subway mini-walking tours along the route, giving urban gadders a sense of how variously the urban fabric both absorbed and was shaped by the line. He's probably best-known for what he calls his "signature" tour, "The World of the #7 Train," showcasing the diversity of what may be the world's most "international" rail line. But with Jack I've also toured the J train (from Lower Manhattan across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn and then Queens) and the Brighton line in Brooklyn (revisiting Howie's and my old lifeline into "the City").

Now, as I've noted here previously, Jack is taking on the L train, in advance of the year-and-a-half shutdown of its connection from Williamsburg to Manhattan, to make possible desperately needed reconstruction and repair of damage caused by the ravages of time and Superstorm Sandy.


The Subway Nut's caption: "A Manhattan-bound R143 L train leaves Atlantic Avenue passing the tracks that lead from the L to the East New York L. (29 May, 2007)"

Life and Art Along the L Train
Saturday, October 22, 10am - 5:30pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route which traverses three boroughs. We explore the West Village and meatpacking district -- including a portion of the new Highline Park— and on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods, stimulated by the movement of artists.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $49 

For a complete prospectus, email: jaconet@aol.com

The L train will soon be shut down for repairs; join this tour prior to that.

Obviously, it isn't going to be possible to do this tour again at least until the L line reopens, and even then, who knows? So if this sounds like something you might be interested in, now is the time to get on board. At last word from Jack, there's still space, but since we're talking about this coming Saturday, you need to contact Jack ASAP, either by e-mail or by phone (if you e-mail me at dwtkeninny@aol.com, I'll send you the number).



While the Manhattan connection is still operational, before it closes for post-Sandy reconstruction and repairs, rhe L train runs from Eighth Avenue and 14th Street crosstown under 14th Street, then under the East River to Williamsburg (Brooklyn) and then eastward, eventually hooking southeastward to Canarsie, within bus range of Canarsie's Jamaica Bay shore. [Click to enlarge.]

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Urban Gadabout: A fall gadding preview, Part 1

With Wolfe Walkers update: Oh no, it's the final season!


Yes! On Oct 22 Jack Eichenbaum is doing another of his day-long explorations of a single NYC subway line -- this time the L train.

by Ken

With the Municipal Art Society's Sept-Oct schedule already up and open to registration and with early (members-only) registration for the New York Transit Museum's fall schedule having begun this morning, we're already late for a fall gadding preview if we're ever going to do one. We'll get back to them, but I want to start with what for me is the fall highlight, another of urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum's all-day excursions built around a subway line, this time the L train, especially timely as its Manhattan-to-Brooklyn link is about to be shut down for 18 months for rehabilitation of its Sandy-damaged East River tunnel.


JACK EICHENBAUM

Jack, who's the Queens borough historian, always calls his day-long exploration of and along the #7 (Flushing) line his "signature tour" (you may recall that he recently did a wholly revamped version), but I've also spent days with him on the J train and the Q (Brighton Line). So I whipped out my checkbook when he announced this to his mailing list (which you should sign up for on his website, Geography of New York with Jack Eichenbaum):

[Click to enlarge.]

Life and Art Along the L Train
Sat, Oct 22, 10am-5:30 pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route which traverses three boroughs. We explore the West Village and meatpacking district -- including a portion of the new Highline Park -- and on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods, stimulated by the movement of artists.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $49. For a complete prospectus, email jaconet@aol.com. The L train will soon be shut down for repairs; join this tour prior to that.

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So I'm D.C.-bound -- all I have to do is catch my 3am train

The great John Russell Pope's National Archives Building (1931-35), one of the landmarks mentioned in Francis Morrone's description for tomorrow's "Monumental Washington in the 1930s and 1940s" tour for the National Civic Art Society

by Ken

As long-time DWT readers may recall, Howie is my oldest friend in terms of continuous service -- dating back to the 9th grade at the James Madison HS Annex on the top floor of a public school way the hell on the other side of Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. Long-time readers will also have heard more than once from both of us about our 9th-grade English teacher, Mr. Fulmer, one of the great influences on both our lives. Mr.Fulmer was wont to say pithy things like "In a thousand years we'll all be dead, and all that will matter is our record of truth and beauty," or to point out helpfully, whenever a hapless student would say unthinkingly, "I think that . . . .," that "That's not thinking."

Now you may think, especially if you're not conversant with the math that includes our ages, that 9th-grade isn't going back all that far as friendships go. Certainly not among the kids I encountered growing up, when my family seemed to move every couple of years (if not oftener), either within cities or, a couple of times, from city to city, so that every couple of years (if not oftener) I found myself standing alone on the playground of a new school among kids who'd been going to school together their whole lives.

Still, from this vantage point of antiquity, a continuous friendship dating back to the 9th grade and Mr. Fulmer counts for something. Warning: You don't want to get him started on our 10th-grade English teacher, Miss Kliegman, who still comes up fairly regularly in our conversations. And so maybe it's not entirely beside the point that you encounter us both, all these years later, in the act of shoving words around.

Our more obvious connection, which long-time readers will also have noted, is political and worldviewish. For all our differences, I am still regularly startled by how similarly we respond to Stuff That Happens Out There in the World -- the way our attention tends to be caught by the same events and our responses tend to be so similar.

Possibly factoring into the above (or possibly not) is that Howie is the only friend I've ever had who's as geography- and map-obsessed as I am. Again, our geographical, er, styles are different. He's the one who, as he has chronicled here a number of times, set out one summer for the Pacific island kingdom of Tonga. No, he didn't get there, but for a high school kid getting across our native continent was no small deal. Not to mention that you would never in a lifetime find me doing any "setting out for" of that sort.

And again, long-time readers will have glimpsed that difference in our recorded travel adventures. Howie is the one who, with his grueling health crisis still clearly visible in the rear-view mirror, planned and executed a several-weeks' expedition to Russia with a side swing to Azerbaijan. (I wish you could have heard the hair-raising stories of just the adventures in visa-hunting he and especially his friend and frequent travel companion Roland underwent for this trip.)

Whereas my traveling is done mostly via armchair -- most happily in the happy company of Michael Palin on DVD. And, of course, the urban gadding that has become my latter-years evening and weekend preoccupation -- most always in day-trip form, and almost invariably within the geographic boundaries of NYC.

Which is a prelude to explaining why I'm not tackling one of my customary "serious" blog topics (that's right, the depredations of Next Food Network Star will have to await another occasion) today, as I prepare for a journey that will respect my "day trip" boundary but not the geographic one. 'Cause I'm busting out of the Greater NYC area -- all the way to Our Nation's Capital. And I'm doing it on a 3am train out of Penn Station. (Shudder.)

True, the impetus is local-ish. Which is to say that one of my most cherished walking-tour leaders, Francis Morrone, mentioned not long ago during a Municipal Art Society tour that he was going to be doing a tour in Washington on July 9. He didn't say any more, and I didn't ask, but after letting the thing percolate in my head awhile, I finally decided to try to track it down online, and track it down I did -- to the final event in a series, "Classical Architecture, Classical Values," offered by the National Civic Art Society:

Tour V, Saturday July 9

V. Monumental Washington in the 1930s and 1940s. Classicism in the era of Modernism.

We will explore works from the 1930s and 1940s--when the Modern Movement was in the ascendant--by such architects as Arthur Brown Jr., York and Sawyer, William Adams Delano, Milton Medary, and especially John Russell Pope (National Gallery, National Archives, Jefferson Memorial), with a big tip of the hat to the relatively unsung Otto Eggers and Daniel Higgins. Along the way we'll note other things, including, for context, later works by I.M.Pei and Partners and Pei Cobb Freed. Please note that this is an outdoor tour only. We'll leave the glorious interiors en route for another day.

The tour meets at 10 AM at the intersection of Constitution Ave. NW and 6th St. NW.

Again, it took me a bit of time to process this information, and discover that I had a conflict with a Brooklyn Brainery event I'd already registered for, "Blintzes, Malaysian Peanut Pancakes, and the Many Faces of Crepes" with Jonathan Soma (half of the great Masters of Social Gastronomy team, with Sarah Lohman; they have a slew of interesting-looking events planned for July and August), part of Soma's BB Summer of Pancakes series. However, as I'm a bit embarrassed to note, I quickly recalled that Brooklyn Brainery, in addition to offering interesting programs at eye-catchingly low prices, actually allows you to cancel events, and I did just that. (I just checked, and tomorrow's class is sold out, so maybe the Brooklyn Brainery folks aren't as naive as we might think, allowing registrants to cancel with enough advance notice. I'm delighted to see that my ruthlessly abandoned slot hasn't gone to waste! And I've still got my place on the 19th for Soma's "Going All-in on American Pancakes," which I see is also sold out. I don't plan on canceling that one.)

From there the details fell into place in rapid order. I had no trouble booking my spot for Francis's tour.(I guess the D.C. folks don't know about him. In NYC, that tour would probably have been sold out within days of being announced), for a measly 15 smackers. Of course adding in carfare hiked the total trip cost a bit: $74.80 (advance-purchase senior fare) for a train down, then a mere $23 for one of those cheap-cheap Chinatown-bassd buses back in the evening. I've taken the cheap-cheap bus before, and would have done so for the trip down if there's been a bus that would enable me to get to the tour meeting point by 10am, but there wasn't -- not even close.

And even the Amtrak scheduling was tricky. There's a 6am train that's scheduled to arrive in Union Station at 9:30am, and judging by the map, that should leave me enough time to make my tour -- that is, assuming I have such faith in Amtrak's on-time performance. Not to mention the consideration that I only theoretically know how to get from my Point A to Point B, and I would spend every second of every minute today all the way through boarding and then all the way on train obsessing over the time. So I swallowed hard and instead of booking the 6am train pulled the trigger for the 3am one, due into Union Station at 6:30am. Meaning that, once I'm on the train, nothing short of a derailment (a possibility one can't ever entirely discount) should prevent me from making the rendezvous with Francis. (Who, incidentally, has no idea that I'll be there. I've done at least one MAS tour with him since I made all these plans, and thought I would find a way to drop it into conversation, but I didn't. It should at least be interesting to note his response to seeing me amidst the tour group.

So today, in addition to planning everything around the 3am train departure, I'm occupied with finishing my research and resource planning, including printing up all sorts of Google maps, including locations of local ATMs of my bank and gym branches that my membership card should get me into. (In addition to not wanting to skip a day at the gym, I'm inclined to have some possible indoor activities in my arsenal. Not at all to my surprise, thunderstorms are predicted for tomorrow.) I thought I could piggyback some serious apartment decluttering in the form of a frantic hunt for my buried D.C. street atlas and aging Time Out guide, but wouldn't you know, I found both of them almost as soon as I started looking. Of all the luck!)

So you'll see why I don't have time today to prattle on about, say, the Supreme Court, or the wide-screen version of Gilmore Girls I'm now a mere two episodes away from finishing on UP. What's more, I"ve got another crossing-state-lines day trip planned for next month, built around an event my college alumni people have planned at Connecticut's Mystic Seaport, which I've heard about much of my life but have never visited. Highlighting the festivities, one of our distinguished English professors will be offering a presentation on "The Myth and Legend of Moby Dick," so part of my adventure will be finally reading Moby-Dick. (Yes, I was supposed to have read an abridged version -- in, I think, Miss Kliegman's 10th-grade English class. But there are a lot of things I was supposed to have read that I haven't.)

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Maybe the best reason to spread word of Nancy Reagan's first home is that she doesn't seem to like people knowing

Justin's caption: "Though this modest 2-story frame house with yellow siding at 149-14 Roosevelt Avenue, between 149th Street and 149th Place, remains unmarked by a plaque or medallion of any kind, this is the home where former First Lady Nancy Reagan spent the first two years of her life."

by Ken

The other day I promised to return to what sounds like a fairly routine question: Where was Nancy Reagan born? What makes the question rather more interesting is that it seems to be a touchy subject for Mrs. Reagan, and suggests in turn that Mrs. R has a relationship to reality reminiscent of that of her late husband, the sainted Ronnie, whose most enduring legacy to the country seems to me the lesson, now totally absorbed by the Right, that reality is whatever you want it to be -- or, to put it another way, whatever makes you feel best.

Now of course "feeling best" doesn't necessarily mean "feeling contented." For right-wingers, in fact, it often means what seems like the opposite: feeling mad as hell. We just need to remember that one of the things they like best in life is feeling outraged, aggrieved, betrayed, and so on. And of course the people who treat the unwashed rubes like brainless puppets know this better than anyone, and know how much return there is to be gotten from getting the pathetic, otherwsie-useless, doody-kicking legions of right-wing saps hopping mad at the usual targets. Thus the ease of spreading psychotic delusions about, say, Hillary Clinton, or Planned Parenthood, or indeed anyone with a working brain and an ounce of decency or humanity.


IF YOU WERE TO LOOK NANCY REAGAN UP --

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Urban Gadabout: Return to Queens's historic First Calvary Cemetery

Plus: Where was Nancy Reagan born?


In Calvary Cemetery, Long Island City (Queens), with a familiar skyline in the distance. Photo by Mitch Waxman (click to enlarge).

All I need is an angle, an angle, an angle.
And some timing, timing.
All I need is an angle, an angle, an angle.
It's the angles and the timing that count.

-- Hubie Cram, in "Take a Job," from Do-Re-Mi (lyrics by
Betty Comden and Adolph Green, music by Jule Styne)

Nancy Walker (Kay Cram), Phil Silvers (Hubie Cram); Original Broadway Cast recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded December 1960

by Ken

Forget the angles. Just now my timing is, shall we say, off.

I got all excited last month when my pal Mitch Waxman mentioned, during a walking tour around the Dutch Kills tributary of his beloved Newtown Creek, that he was going to be doing a walk in First Calvary Cemetery, the original section of the now-mammoth Calvary Cemetery, on the northern shore of the Creek, in the Blissville neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens. Mitch had been enthusing mightily about First Calvary on his Newtown Pentacle blog, in a post called "ordinary interpretation" (with subsequent posts: "sepulchral adorations" and "obvious empiricism). As he's written:

It's the largest chunk of 'green infrastructure' found along the Newtown Creek as well as serving as the final resting place of literally millions of Roman Catholic New Yorkers. It's part of the firmament of LIC, and a significant touchstone for the history of 19th century NYC.

So I was gung-ho for the tour. But as soon as I was able to check my calendar, I discovered that I was conflicted out. Rats! But that's old business, which I wrote about (at the above link). Subsequently, even before Mitch announced it himself on the blog, I got excited all over to see that he was doing Calvary again -- this coming Saturday, October 3, at 11am -- for New York Obscura Society (the local arm of Atlas Obscura), with whom he does periodic tours, as he does with Brooklyn Brainery. (It was on account of Mitch, in fact, that I first learned about both outfits. I've now done a bunch of events with both.)

This time I approached my calendar gingerly, and found what I thought would be a tight fit but a perfect match: That same day I was already registered for a Municipal Art Society tour of Transmitter Brewing -- located under the Pulaski Bridge over Newtown Creek, on the Queens side. That's not exactly a stone's throw from Calvary up the creek, but it's about as neat a pairing as you could hope for. The timing might be a little tight getting from one to the other, but it was certainly workable, based on the 2pm start time I had entered on my calendar.

Unfortunately I had entered the Transmitter Brewing time wrong, as I discovered right after I registered for the Calvary tour. It starts at noon, not 2pm. The Obscura Society folks have been kind enough to refund my registration, and I'll have to wait for another opportunity to do Calvary with Mitch. But if you're free Saturday, you don't have to wait:

Flanked by the concrete devastations of western Queens’ industrial zone and backdropped by an omnipresent Manhattan skyline, Calvary Cemetery is a historical smorgasbord and aesthetic wonderland of sculptural monuments.

Founded in 1848 by the Roman Catholic Church, Calvary Cemetery is the resting place of over six million dead, among them Senators, Governors, Businessmen, Mafiosos, most of Tammany Hall in fact - and on a certain hill - an heir to the throne of Ireland. The Roman Catholic Church continues to upkeep and maintain its administration over the cemetery to this day. In addition to its original purpose, Calvary also serves the City of New York as a significant parcel of Green Infrastructure, a green oasis in the middle of the Newtown Creek's industrial zone which drinks up billions of gallons of water during storms.

Join Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman for a walk upon the rolling hills of what was once known to Queens as Laurel Hill. We'll visit the 300 year old headstones of the colonial era Alsop cemetery - which is uniquely a Protestant cemetery encapsulated by a Catholic one - see the memorial to NYC's Civil War soldiers laid down by Boss Tweed and the Tammany elite, and one dedicated to the "fighting 69th."

Meeting Place: North east corner of Greenpoint and Review Avenue, nearby the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge in Blissville.

Details: We will be exiting the Cemetery through the main gates at Greenpoint and Gale Avenue, nearby Borden Avenue and the Long Island Expressway. Afterwards, discussion will continue informally over food and drinks at the Botany Bay Publick House, a bar and restaurant at the corner of Greenpoint and Bradley Avenues.

Dress and pack appropriately for hiking and the weather. Closed-toe shoes are highly recommended. Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the end of the walk.

The price is $30. For information and ticket purchase, go here.


WHERE WAS NANCY REAGAN BORN?

I thought I was going to get to this in tonight's post, but perhaps it's better to deal with it separately (perhaps tomorrow, perhaps not). It's not a trick question, and if you look it up, you'll probably get an answer that's correct as far as it goes but that doesn't go quite as far as one might have reason to expect. It's kind of as if Mrs. R has been hiding something all these years. (Speaking of which, just how many years has it been? This is another Nancy Reagan question that's just a little tricky.)

Stay tuned.

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Somewhere between spooky and romantic: images of Queens in the dark

We're looking at "the Long Island Expressway’s 106 foot trussed apex over the Dutch Kills tributary of the fabled Newtown Creek," according to Mitch Waxman, who took this picture (click to enlarge), which is included in today's Newtown Pentacle post, "could furnish."

by Ken

I love this picture -- not least, I think, for the upside-down reflection of the LIE overpass, which is more vivid, I guess being nearer, than the right-side-up original, except for the cool starburst lights adorning the real thing, but their creekly reflection not so much. Then there's the mind-confounding combination of subject matters and moods. Is it concretely imposing? Alluringly mysterious? Starkly romantic? Yes, and dark too!

"This happens every so often to a humble narrator," Mitch explains in the blogpost "could furnish."

Circadian rhythms short circuit somehow, and a distinctly nocturnal phase occurs. Desire to record scenes observed remains, however, and specialized kit is required. Queens looks so interesting at night, as the concrete devastations are generally well lit.

Mitch notes that today, like yesterday, while we've been sleeping, he's been "out working." In yesterday's post, "joined to," he reported: "One seems to have caught the “night shooting” bug again, and my various bits of camera support have been dusted off," and led off with this shot, "captured one recent evening during a thunderstorm," made with a 15-second interval. "NYC never looks better than it does during the rain," he noted. (There was also a gorgeous shot of a thunderstorming sky which he described as "cloud porn" -- "it doesn’t deliver anything other than a puerile thrill and doesn’t say much.")

Today's nocturnal post features two striking shots in addition to the LIE overpass up top -- the first featuring more spectral reflections in Dutch Kills, then this one of the overpass over Sunnyside Yards for the No. 7 subway line ("notorious for its multitudinous and unexplained delays"), newly risen from underground, atop which he chanced to find an actual train "just sitting there waiting for a humble narrator to record it." (Again, click to enlarge.)



In both yesterday's and today's posts Mitch provides some interesting technical notes on how a number of the photos were shot.

"GLITTERING REALMS," SUNDAY WITH MITCH

A Mitch's-eye view of Greenpoint, Brooklyn

I had intended to toss in a plug here for Mitch's Brooklyn Brainery walking tour this Sunday, "Glittering Realms: A Walking Tour of Greenpoint," Greenpoint being the hunk of land on the Brooklyn (i.e., southern) side of the mouth of Mitch's beloved Newtown Creek. I have multiple schedule conflicts for Sunday, but clicked through to get the link on the Brooklyn Brainery website, I discovered that the tour is all filled up -- though you can get on the waiting list. (Don't say I suggested it, but since the tour description does include the meeting point, if a person happened to show up there at the appointed time flashing the appropriate amount of cash, who's to say that something might not be worked out?)

Let this be a lesson to us all to keep track of Mitch's upcoming activities via the update at the end of each day's Newtown Pentacle post. Meanwhile, take a look at the tour description, and keep it in mind as you watch for it to be offered again.

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Urban Gadabout: Exploring Calvary Cemetery and the L train -- plus fall schedules from the NY Transit Museum and MAS

First Calvary Cemetery occupies a commanding position on the Queens side of the borough's western border with Brooklyn. (Click to enlarge.) Mitch Waxman will be leading a Calvary walking tour on Saturday, August 22, 11am to (approx.) 1pm.

by Ken

Awhile back Mitch Waxman devoted a Newtown Pentacle post to Queens's First Calvary Cemetery ("ordinary interpretation," August 5), when he called it "my favorite place in Queens." That post has taken such root in my head that I was delighted when he mentioned during his recent walking tour of Newtown Creek's Dutch Kills tributary that he'd cleared a date for a walking tour there: Saturday, August 22. The date left me with a bad feeling, and sure enough, when I was able to check my calendar, I was reminded that that's already my date from scheduling hell.

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW, ON THE 22ND --

I'll first be LIRR-ing it out to Port Washington, on the eastern shore of Long Island's Manhasset Bay, for a 2pm "Great Gatsby Boat Tour" with the Art Deco Society of New York, which you better believe I signed up for as soon as I saw the announcement. (And wisely so. ADSNY has a waiting list for the event.) I have been to Port Washington, and fairly recently; it was our lunch stop on a bus tour with Justin Ferate, en route between visits to two noteworthy Long Island estates. But I've never been out on a boat in Manhasset Bay.

Where things get crazy is that from there I absolutely must catch the 4:39pm train out of Port Washington, which, if everything goes right, should get me to the LIRR Woodside (Queens) station in time to get to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria for a 6pm screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm. (Lawrence is also being screened at 4pm Sunday the 23rd, but in order to do that I would have to leave an MAS tour of Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza with Francis Morrone after an hour or even less.)

If I were really crazy, I could top the day off with a wild overnight (10pm-1am) Obscura Society of New York outing to "a hidden Chinatown den of iniquity" for "The Cheaters Party -- A School for Scoundrels," where participants will be given demonstrations in the art of card-playing sleight of hand, including, yes, full-fledged cheating, with opportunities (and, yes, permission) to try out this newly acquired, er, skill, not to mention indulging an open bar dispensing "Rat Pack-inspired cocktails"! Actually, what's holding me back isn't so much a lack of craziness as a lack of any known gambling instinct. And even that open bar isn't the lure it might once have been. Also, music is promised, and I would expect that to be both deafening and horrible.)

First Calvary Cemetery, with a view! Photo by Mitch (click to enlarge)

By the way, Mitch -- wearing his hat as official historian of the Newtown Creek Alliance -- will also be participating in a pair of Open House New York boat trips up his "beloved" creek, along with NCA program manager Will Elkins and representatives of the NYC Department of Environmental Preservation (and I think I read somewhere of the EPA) on Thursday, September 3, at 5pm and 7pm. Scroll down to "Newtown Creek Boat Tour" on the OHNY programs page, or go directly to the ticket and booking info.


"LIFE ON THE L TRAIN" WITH JACK EICHENBAUM

The L train has a fascinating history -- and a booming present and near-term future, as ridership has been undergoing huge increases. (Click to enlarge.)

As regular readers are aware, one of my favorite genres of NYC tours is Jack Eichenbaum's day-long single-subway line explorations -- most famously his "World of the #7 Train" (the Flushing line), which he describes as his "signature" tour, and which he does pretty much every year. Over the length of the route, Jack has picked out half a dozen stops as sites for mini-walking tours of neighborhoods that not only are enormously different from one another but have rich and various histories unto themselves, all scheduled around a long lunch stop at the Flushing end of the line, with all the dining options of Flushing's flourishing Chinatown and Koreatown.

I was delighted finally to get to "do" the #7 train again in June, at which time Jack noted that by the next time he does this tour, it will undergo major changes, starting with the incorporation of the under-construction extension of the #7 from Times Square to the Javits Center at 11th Avenue and 34th Street. (Completion dates have come and gone fairly regularly since the days when then-Mayor Bloomberg liked to terrorize NYC Transit with phone calls demanding to know when it would be done. Mayor Mike really didn't have much interest in improved transit as such, but he wound up deeply immersed not just in the #7 expansion but in the massive East Side Access project that will bring Long Island Rail Road passengers into Grand Central Terminal -- because they're both crucial to multi-zillion-dollar area redevelopments, something our billionaire ex-mayor was very interested in.)

Jack does other subway lines too, though, in that same basic format: usually a half-dozen mini-walking tours along the route, visiting enormously contrasting neighborhoods with even more contrasted histories. In recent years I've had the pleasure of joining Jack in explorations of the J line, which runs from Lower Manhattan across to Brooklyn and on into Queens, and Brooklyn's Brighton Line (now the Q), the descendant of one of the original steam railroads to the resort haven of Coney Island. During the June "World of the #7 Train," Jack announced that he would soon be doing the L train, which actually functions as a crosstown subway in Manhattan, running across 14th Street from Eighth Avenue to First Avenue, then under the East River to Brooklyn's Williamsburg and Bushwick and onward, till it comes to rest in Canarsie, within bus reach of the shore of Jamaica Bay.

Somehow I missed Jack's announcement of the actual date -- Saturday, October 17 -- and by the time I learned the date, I had a schedule conflict, and now that MAS tour prices have increased to $20 for members ($30 for non-members), I'm not as quick to blow off the tour I've registered for as I might once have been. (Besides, I want to do that tour!) So it looks like I'm going to miss:

LIFE ALONG THE L TRAIN
Saturday. October 17, 10am-5:30pm

The L train has a complex history: first as a steam railroad line, later as an elevated BRT train, eventually integrated into the subway system with its expansion to Eighth Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930’s. Beginning in the 1950’s the L train has stimulated artist-spearheaded gentrification along its route. We’ll explore the West Village and meatpacking district— including a portion of the new Highline Park— and then on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood, noting the status of transformation in each of these neighborhoods.

This tour is limited to 25 participants and requires registration by check of $42/pp to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St #6C, Flushing, NY 11354. For a prospectus and any questions, contact Jack at jaconet@aol.com

These days, owing in good part to its Williamsburg (and now Bushwick) connection, the L train is the city's fastest-growing, ridership-wise, and has gone from being a stepchild of the system to its proudest prodigy, with much-improved service finally catching up to the dramatic increase in use.


NEW SCHEDULES FROM MAS AND THE TRANSIT
MUSEUM -- AND SOME SURPRISES FROM MAS

I should mention too that both the New York Transit Museum and the Municipal Art Society have announced and begun booking tours for September and October.

As noted, the fall MAS offerings come with the price increase (I mentioned earlier, from $15 to $20 for members, and from $20 to $30 for non-members). On the plus side, tour registrants now get nearest-transit information for the meeting point (not exactly an innovation, since this used to be included in all tour descriptions) and also -- and this is new, and most welcome -- approximate tour end-point information.

All of this was mentioned in a covering e-mail to MAS members. What was not mentioned, and I didn't in fact learn until I registered for five tours that I knew I wanted to do and didn't want to get closed out of, is that tours have been shrunk from two hours to 90 minutes.

Of course we don't buy tours by the minute, but if we did, then the member price has increased not by 33 percent but by 78 percent, and the non-member price not by 50 percent but by a full 100 percent. It's not the price that concerns me, at least not so much, as what represents a radical change in format. A 90-minute tour isn't just shorter than a 120-minute one; it's really a different animal, especially when you consider how long it takes any tour to actually "get going." And while there are undoubtedly tour subjects that are better-suited to a 90-minute format, and would have to be padded out to fill two hours, a two-hour tour that was a proper two-hour tour to begin with is probably going to have to be reconceived to make the cut, and I can't help thinking shrunk in ways other than just time.

In fact, the two-hour format, which has become a much more rigidly enforced time limit since I began doing MAS tours not that many years ago, was really more like two and a half hours back then. I gather, though, that MAS received enough complaints to start cracking the whip about the time limit. This boggles my mind, that people would complain about getting more than they paid for. But there you are.

Clearly the people in charge believe that this is what people want. (I'm pretty sure that I don't count among the "people" they're concerned about.) And the September-October list contains lots of interesting-looking offerings -- I jotted down 17 tours I was interested in, after allowing for known schedule conflicts. As I mentioned, I've already registered for five, and it was when I downloaded my tour info that I discovered that what I registered for are 90-minute tours. Suddenly I found myself thinking that maybe the five tours I've registered for will do it for me.

Like I said, at some point we should probably talk about this. But not now.

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Movie Watch: "See It Big! 70mm" at the Museum of the Moving Image. Plus an Urban Gadabout note: "I Remember NY"

Coney Island (this Sunday, August 9) is one of two neighborhoods tour leader Joe Svehlak will be revisiting this month in his Municipal Art Society series I Remember New York. Also coming up is Downtown Brooklyn (Sunday, August 30). See below.

by Ken

As I mentioned recently, I wiped out most of a day of potential Jane Jacobs Weekend walks to catch a 70mm screening of Robert Wise's 1965 film version of The Sound of Music, which as it happened I had never seen in any form, at the Museum of the Moving Image. These days, as digital projection takes over for theatrical showing even of movies that weren't made digitally, it's getting harder and harder to see films on, you know, film, and the 70mm jobbies -- forget about it. At the MoMI Sound of Music event, though, Chief Curator David Schwartz mentioned that the museum would be showing a 70mm print of West Side Story -- the 1961 film musical Wise had already directed which established him as candidate for the Sound of Music film when, apparently, nobody else wanted to direct it -- in an upcoming installment of its See It Big! series, this one devoted to 70mm films.

Well, See It Big! 70mm is here! Eight films, ranging chronologically from 1961 (West Side Story) through 2014 (Interstellar), each being shown either two or three times between August 7 and August 30.

As the introduction to the series notes:

With a higher resolution and more light hitting the frame, 70mm film offers a bigger, brighter image than 35mm. It also offers richer sound, with more space on the soundtrack. It is the ideal film format for ambitious cinematic spectacles, yet with the transition to digital filmmaking, 70mm movies have become increasingly rare.

But, as the introduction goes on to note, 70mm hasn't been entirely abandoned.

Filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Christopher Nolan are keeping the tradition alive, with films that were surely inspired by the work of Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Douglas Trumbull, and Robert Wise. From West Side Story to Interstellar, here is a selection of great 70mm films, including adventure, comedy, drama, musical, and science fiction -- and all indelible experiences.

THESE ARE BIG MOVIES

In the listing below, culled from the museum's listings, it occurred to me to include the films' running times, because so many of these are really big time-wise in addition to film-format-wise. Four of the eight are over 2½ hours, and a fifth, Interstellar, is only six minutes short. Two, in fact, are over 3 hours, and one is over 3½ -- Lawrence of Arabia, of course. Although director David Lean has been dead for 24 years, there are people who'll swear that the movie still hasn't ended.

It's a wild mix of films. I'm taking a pass on 2001, which I just saw at MoMI in 70mm -- but if you haven't seen it in 70mm, you should. It doesn't solve the film's problems or plug its gaps, but for the considerable effect it makes nevertheless, it really should be seen in full format. But I'm hoping to get to all the others -- some that I haven't seen, or seen theatrically, since they were new, and four that I've never seen at all.

It's the usual MoMI deal: Screenings are free for members at the "Film Lover" level and above; for others it's $12 ($9 for senior citizens and students), which includes museum admission for that day. Both members and nonmembers can book ahead; go to the link below and if you prefer follow it to the alternate date(s); then click on the "Order tickets online" link. I would be especially careful with the films that are only being shown twice.

See It Big! 70 mm

August 7-30

With a higher resolution and more light hitting the frame, 70mm film offers a bigger, brighter image than 35mm. It also offers richer sound, with more space on the soundtrack. It is the ideal film format for ambitious cinematic spectacles, yet with the transition to digital filmmaking, 70mm movies have become increasingly rare. Filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Christopher Nolan are keeping the tradition alive, with films that were surely inspired by the work of Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Douglas Trumbull, and Robert Wise. From West Side Story to Interstellar, here is a selection of great 70mm films, including adventure, comedy, drama, musical, and science fiction -- and all indelible experiences.

See It Big! is an ongoing series organized by Reverse Shot editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert, Chief Curator David Schwartz, and Assistant Film Curator Aliza Ma.


2001: A Space Odyssey
(dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968, 159 mins)
Friday, 8/7, 7pm; Saturday, 8/8, 2pm; Sunday, 8/9, 2pm


Brainstorm
(dir. Douglas Trumbull, 1983, 106 mins)
Saturday, 8/8, 6pm; Sunday, 8/9, 6pm


Tron
(dir. Steven Lisberger, 1982, 96 mins)
Saturday, 8/15, 7pm; Sunday, 8/16, 7pm


It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
(dir. Stanley Kramer, 1963, 205 mins)
Saturday, 8/15, 2pm; Sunday, 8/16, 2pm


West Side Story
(dir. Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, 1961, 151 mins)
Friday, 8/21, 7 pm; Saturday, 8/22, 2pm


Lawrence of Arabia
(dir. David Lean, 1962, 217 mins)
Saturday, 8/22, 6pm; Sunday, 8/23, 4pm


Interstellar
(dir. Christopher Nolan, 2014, 169 mins)
Friday, 8/28, 7pm; Saturday, 8/29, 6pm; Sunday, 8/30, 6pm


The Master
(dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012, 144 mins)
Saturday, 8/29, 2pm; Sunday, 8/30, 2pm

URBAN GADABOUT NOTE: Joe Svehlak's
MAS "I Remember New York" walking tours

This month Joe Svehlak, the total sweetheart among NYC tour guides, a lifelong New Yorker who pours passion as well as charm into his tours, and has always given a generous sense of historical development in his neighborhood walking tours, has two more tours coming up in the wonderful "I Remember New York" series he's been doing for the Municipal Art Society: Coney Island this Sunday, August 9, 10:30am-12:30pm, and Downtown Brooklyn.

These will be more personal versions of popular tours Joe has been doing for some time, tracking changes in these much-changing neighborhoods. His tours have always been personal, but in this I Remember New York series he's undertaken at age 75, he has been unabashed in sharing his history with the places he's leading us through. It says something about Joe that I run into him all the time taking other people's tours; his enthusiasm and curiosity seem if anything to have continued growing with time.

On the first tour in the I Remember New York series, Joe mentioned that at his age he doesn't know how much longer he'll want to continue leading tours, and for anyone who appreciates the value of experience and memory, the walks in this series so far have been treasures. On those my schedule has enabled me to do, there was a special warmth to this walk through Manhattan's Financial District, where he had his first job and later worked for a considerable time; and then in the two-part traversal of Brooklyn's Sunset Heights, where he did much of his growing up and later returned as a first-time homeowner and pioneering preservationist. I really should have posted something about the series sooner. Sorry!

Not to mention that Joe is just good company. Again, there are links for online registration for both members and nonmembers. I'm embarrassed at how long it took me to find my way to MAS; now I can't imagine not being a member.

I Remember New York: Coney Island, Brooklyn
Sunday, August 9, 10:30am-12:30pm

Join tour guide and preservation activist Joe Svehlak who still swims here, to reminisce about Coney Island in his younger years when Steeplechase Park was still a great amusement attraction before it was demolished in the 1960s. Hear Joe describe the thrill of the Parachute Jump and the Steeplechase. In addition to Steeplechase Park, Joe remembers four rollercoasters, merry-go-rounds, and an assortment of other rides, sideshows and games of chance. Both the Cyclone rollercoaster and the Wonder Wheel are New York City landmarks and a testament to Coney Island's illustrious past and resilience. We'll also view a new amusement park, a restored carousel, and two poignant memorials by the ballpark. Stroll the boardwalk as Joe remembers family outings, amusements, bathhouses, and other facilities and attractions by the sea. On our walk we'll learn about Coney Island's honky-tonk past and issues of preservation and planning for the future. Coney Island has seen many changes in Joe's lifetime. He's happy to see it coming back with new amusements, activities and restaurants. Stay for a swim and treat yourself to a Nathan's Famous! Please note that this tour has been offered before with a slightly different theme, and there may be significant overlap in content. Cost: $20 / $15 Members

I Remember New York: Downtown Brooklyn
Sunday, August 30, 10am-12n

In his lifetime, tour guide and preservation activist Joe Svehlak has seen major changes Downtown Brooklyn. Growing up in the 1940s and 50s, Joe remembers Brooklyn's Downtown as one of New York City's premier shopping and entertainment centers, with grand elegant department stores, specialty shops, fine restaurants and magnificent movie palaces. He would look forward to the special holiday shopping trips Downtown and the occasional treat of a movie in one of the great theaters. By the 1970s economic decline, the days of the grand department stores were over. The Fox and the Albee theatres were demolished for other commercial purposes. The Paramount became part of Long Island University and the Metropolitan is now the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Fifteen years ago Joe moved Downtown and is now witnessing dramatic high rise construction all around him. New streetscapes and plazas are adding to Downtown Brooklyn's new livability. New Hotels and shops are opening and even a new park is planned. Joe's thoughts and memories will guide us through his neighborhood as we view old civic buildings, new commercial development, designated New York City landmarks, the revitalized Fulton Mall, redesigned Flatbush Avenue, Metro Tech expansion, and even some surprising religious edifices. End by the landmarked monumental Dime Savings Bank and Junior's Restaurant, noted for its cheesecake. Please note that this tour has been offered before with a slightly different theme, and there may be significant overlap in content. Cost: $20 / $15 Members

SPEAKING OF MAS --

The new walking-tour schedule, likely to cover September, October, and November, should be coming out in the next week or two. Meanwhile there are still a whole bunch of really interesting-looking walking tours that can still be booked for August. Check them out here -- or go to mas.org anytime and click on "Tours."

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Mark the dates for this year's Open House New York Weekend: October 17-18 -- and check out these upcoming OHNY events

by Ken

Open House New York is probably still best known for the mid-October weekend that is one of NYC's great events, Open House New York, where the general public is offered rare, often this-time-only access to sites of all sorts in all five boroughs, and to talks, and to tours of projects of every description that are planned, or under construction, or recently completed -- always guided by people intimately involved with the site or project.

The full schedule isn't announced until shortly before the great event, but bits of information may be dribbled out earlier, so you want to keep checking the OHNY website. (It couldn't be much easier to remember: ohny. org). OHNY members get a slightly earlier peek at the full schedule, but come the start of registration everyone's thrown into the same online maelstrom -- the saving grace being that there are so many events of such diverse interest that for most tastes some of the most interesting ones aren't among the most popular.


AND CHECK OUT THESE OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS

I said above that OHNY is "probably still best known" OHNY Weekend, but the OHNY schedule is now so jammed with fascinating events that I've come to think of OHNY Weekend as almost the least of it. We'd be here all night if I tried to list the places I've been and the things I've done in my year and two-thirds as a member.

Most events are open to non-members, but members get the advantages of prompt e-announcements of events and significant discounts -- or even free admission, especially in the case of lecture-type events like the new series of presentations on projects still in the planning stage, like the redevelopment of the highly visible former Domino Sugar Factory on the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) waterfront. And there are members-only events. (Note the "special combo" package of event-plus-membership offered for the Gowanus Canal Boat Tour.)

You'll also get to see most if not all of the hard-working OHNY team at most every event. They're good people -- you'll like them. If you're curious about past events, many of which are parts of still-ongoing series, you can find listings of "Recent Program" following the "Upcoming Programs" section of the website "Programs" page, and reports on many of them on the OHNY Blog. For information about membership, click here. In case it isn 't obvious, this is an exceedingly worthy organization to support.

Now let's get to those upcoming events.


A boat trip up Brooklyn's, er, historic Gowanus Canal

I can't believe these won't fill up pretty quickly. If you think you might be interested, you should check it out pronto and see if there are still places.



Gowanus Canal Boat Tour
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Tours at 5 and 7 pm

Following the successive openings of the Erie Canal in 1825 and Brooklyn's Atlantic Basin in 1841, the Gowanus Canal grew to become the busiest commercial waterway in the United States for almost four decades, from 1915 through the early 1950s. Today, the Canal is contaminated from this past intensive industrial use, as well as ongoing dumping from the city sewage system, but there are ambitious plans for its restoration and redevelopment. Join David Briggs, director of Gowanus by Design, and Andrea Parker, director of Gowanus Canal Conservancy, along with representatives from the US Environmental Protection Agency working on the canal's cleanup, for a boat tour along "Brooklyn's coolest SuperFUNd Site" to learn about how one of New York City's most polluted waterways is being reimagined for future generations as a model for 21st century urban planning.

Registration
$30 OHNY Members
$40 General Admission
$75 Special Combo: 1 General Admission + 1 Friend Membership

Registration is in progress here.


And the next two events in OHNY's "Final Mile" series

We've done with the bus pilgrimages to the Hunts Point peninsula in the Bronx, where we had the amazing opportunities to tour the operations of: two of the three public wholesale markets operated by the NYC Economic Development Corp., the New Fulton Fish Market (for that one we had to meet in front of OHNY's office by 3:45am for a 4am departure!) and the Hunts Point Produce Market (the Hunts Point Meat Market, we were told, is differently structured and doesn't offer tours); and two enormous distribution operations, Baldor Specialty Foods and Food Bank NYC. It was four one-of-a-kind events, but the "Final Mile: Food Systems of New York" series is a year-long project, and these next events look pretty darned interesting too!


Registration is in progress here.


Registration begins Monday, July 20 (normally at 10am).


There's also this note concerning upcoming installments of the "Final Mile" series":

Fifty percent of the food that New Yorkers consume every day is supplied by the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center. But what about that other half of the food we eat? This summer, Open House New York's year-long series The Final Mile: Food Systems of New York will continue its exploration of how food shapes the urban environment through visits to a mix of typologically diverse sites where food distribution is integrated more directly into the multi-use urban fabric of the city.

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Urban Gadabout: Last call for the latest incarnation of Jack Eichenbaum's "World of the #7 Train" extravaganza

The route of the #7 train, from Times Square at the western end (pending the still-unfinished expansion to the west and south, to 11th Avenue and 34th Street), across 42nd Street in Manhattan, through the Steinway Tunnels under the East River to Queens, and on to Main Street, Flushing -- click to enlarge

by Ken

It looks like this time NYC Transit has no last-minute obstacles to throw in our path, and so this Saturday, June 13, urban geographer (and Queens Borough Historian) Jack Eichenbaum expects to do the latest incarnation of what he always refers to as his "signature tour": the all-day "World of the #7 Train" extravaganza.

I've written about this famous trek a number of times, and have been eager for an opportunity to do it again, especially since I know that Jack has done some revamping of the tour to reflect ongoing changes in the neighborhoods covered, most of which have been heavily influenced (if not actually created) by the coming and continued operation of the #7 train. But the last time he scheduled it -- or was it the last two times? -- fate, or rather NYCT, intervened. We gather in Manhattan at 10am and stagger to the finish line around 5:30pm at the 74th St.-Roosevelt Ave. megastation of the #7 and the E, F, and R lines. I think Jack may be able still to handle late registrations, but you should contact him ASAP -- e-mail him at jaconet@aol.com.

Here's how Jack describes the event on his website, "The Geography of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum":

THE WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN
Saturday, June 13, 2015, 10am-5:30pm

This series of six walks and connecting rides along North Queens’ transportation corridor is my signature tour. We focus on what the #7 train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service in 1914. Walks take place in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Flushing, Corona, Woodside and Jackson Heights and lunch is in Flushing’s Asiatown. Tour fee is $42 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) The full day’s program and other info is available by email jaconet@aol.com

The tour is limited to 25 people.

Imagine, all this for a paltry $42! In the information-and-itinerary sheet for the tour, Jack adds this:

Long Island City-Sunnyside-Woodside-Elmhurst-Jackson Hts-Corona-Flushing

Your tour leader, Jack Eichenbaum, Queens Borough Historian, maintains a storehouse of researched facts and biased memories of bygone eras. I hold a Ph.D in urban geography, teach Geography of NYC at CUNY and have been riding the #7 for six decades. My expertise lies in historical geography and ethnic and technological change. I focus on what the #7 train has done to and for the surrounding neighborhoods since it opened in 1914. The #7 has been designated a “National Millennium Trail” for its pioneering role in transporting people in what is probably the most demographically diverse cityscape in the world.

See you Saturday!

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Our pal Mitch Waxman takes a walk through NYC's under-construction Second Avenue subway

Gathering for a descent into the under-construction Second Avenue subway: Says Mitch, "There were a sizable number of sharp elbowed reporters in the group, including the former First Lady of NYC, Donna Hanover. She seemed nice."

by Ken

Last weekend I had outings both days with our old pal Mitch Waxman, historian of the Newtown Creek Alliance and stalwart of the Working Harbor Committee, walking scholar of western Queens, and photographer-wanderer around the NYC metropolis -- Saturday, on the Obscura Society's Obscura Day, a walking tour of the Skillman Corridor in Long Island City, Queens, and Sunday he did a heroic job on the mike for a WHC voyage up Newtown Creek -- or, as he would likely refer to it, "my beloved Newtown Creek.

That gave me a chance to tell him how much I was loving the photos he had been sharing in a series of Newtown Pentacle blogposts in progress from a walk he'd been invited to participate in along with a gaggle of other journalists and photographers along the route of the still-under-construction Second Avenue subway in Manhattan, from the nearer-to-completion south end, at 63rd Street, up to 86th Street. (This first stretch of the Second Avenue line, when it opens, maybe in December 2015 and maybe not, will run as far as 96th Street, with stations at 63rd, 72nd, 85th, and 96th.)

I've done scant justice to the series by picking a single photo out of each day's wonderfully diverse offerings. (At least you can enlarge all the photos by clicking on them.) I encourage you to check it out.


"Who can guess . . ."
Lord and Ladies, the Second Avenue Subway project (May 26)


The 63rd Street station "is quite far along." "There’s track, for instance, and the far wall is sporting some actual finishes. The MTA didn’t use tile, to avoid the maintenance costs experienced whenever water infiltrates behind it. Instead, the wall has a sort of rack on it, and the “tiles” clip on to it leaving a bit of leeway for flowing liquids to find their way to drains."


". . . all that there is . . ."
Second Avenue Subway Series, continues in today's post (May 27)


"The atmosphere in this newly carven intestine of the Megalopolis was actually a bit on the warm side, but not uncomfortably so, and no unpleasant nor mephitic odors were encountered in any abundance. Curing concrete coupled with a somewhat static and dusty air mass contributed to bodily perspiration, however, a process exacerbated by the requirements for wearing 'PPE' or 'Personal Protective Equipment' insisted on by the work site management."


". . . that might be . . ."
From somewhere under Manhattan, the Second Avenue Subway Series continues (May 28)


"The design of the Second Avenue Subway passenger stations is distinct from the older sections of the system, there were no steel beams hanging down from the ceiling for instance. The stations take the shape of a series of flattened cylinders with cathedral like interiors."


". . . buried . . ."
Second Avenue subway, beyond 72nd Street (May 29)

The chamber that will be the 72nd Street station: "Northward, we continued moving through the construction site, and one paused for a moment to grab a shot of the chamber we had just exited."

The chamber that will be the 72nd Street station: "Northward, we continued moving through the construction site, and one paused for a moment to grab a shot of the chamber we had just exited."


" . . . down there?"
Second Avenue Subway, 72nd to 86th street (June 1)


The 130-step climb back up to daylight:: "Some anonymous laborer had scrawled the graffito “heart attack ridge” on the temporary landing and by the time a humble narrator had achieved that height, a heart attack felt like it was a real possibility. As my grandmother would have said – I couldn’t stop shvitzing."

MITCH'S UPCOMING TOURS

June 11th, 2015

MADE IN BROOKLYN Hidden Harbor Boat Tour
with Working Harbor Committee, click here for details and tickets.

June 13th, 2015

The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek Walking Tour
with Atlas Obscura, click here for details and tickets.

June 20th, 2015

Kill Van Kull Walking Tour

with Brooklyn Brainery, click here for details and tickets.

And of course keep up with Mitch's comings and goings on his Newtown Pentacle blog.

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OMG, it's Friday the 13th on a Wednesday, and Postcard Thursday on a Friday!

Ernest Flagg's late, lamented Singer Building
(No, the loss wasn't recent, but you see --)

by Ken

Maybe you had to grow up with Pogo -- at best half-understanding it, at that -- to have a proper horror of this week's upcoming Friday the 13th fallling on a Wednesday. Compared with that, Postcard Thursday happening on a Friday is like a walk in the park. As a fan of Postcard Thursday, when it happened this week, I just took it as sweet gratification stretched out a day. Isn't it good to have to, you know, wait for stuff? (That's what I was told, though maybe not in those exact words.)

Nevertheless, Michelle and James Nevius, authors of Inside the Apple: A Streewise History of New York City and Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers, and keepers of the Inside the Apple blog, were apologetic when it happened yesterday. "Astute readers will note," they began, "that today is Friday, but sometimes (as the late, great Douglas Adams once said), it can be hard to get the hang of Thursdays."



Which was a perfect setup for talking about the late, great Singer Building, or Tower. "And speaking of late, great," they went on, "the image above depicts the Singer Tower, Ernest Flagg's 1908 skyscraper in the Financial District."

This was the second building Flagg completed for the Singer Manufacturing Corporation, America's premiere sewing machine company. The first, a 12-story manufacturing and retail space in SoHo, still stands at 561 Broadway, and is where Flagg tried out his unusual red-and-green color scheme. Before that tower was finished in 1904, he'd already received the commission to build Singer an office tower downtown -- and to make it the tallest in the world. The new skyscraper held that title for just two years (1908-1909) before being dethroned by the Metropolitan Life tower on Madison Square.

The Singer Tower, an increasingly unique structure among the uniformity of postwar design, stood until 1968, when it earned the dubious honor of being the tallest building in the world ever to be intentionally demolished. As James wrote in a piece for Curbed this past week:

Having been acquired by US Steel [in the mid-1960s], plans were underway to demolish the tower to build the company's new headquarters, today known as One Liberty Plaza. Though preservationists rallied to have the Singer Tower designated a landmark, the LPC hesitated. Having been unable to find an appropriate buyer for the Jerome mansion, the LPC was leery of designating the Singer Tower only to have to find a new buyer willing to move in and preserve it. Instead, the commission declined to save it and it fell to the wrecking ball in 1968.

One Liberty Plaza, aka the U.S. Steel Building, which was built on the site occupied by the Singer Building and the adjacent (also demolished) City Investing Building, took its current name from Liberty Plaza Park, across the street to the south, which was created in 1968, in exchange for a height bonus, when the U.S. Steel Building was built in 1968. The park, adjacent to the World Trade Center site, is now called Zuccotti Park, aka the site of the late, great Occupy Wall Street occupation.

The thing here is that I have kind of a thing about the Singer Building, for the simple reason that I have no actual memories of it as a standing building, even though we cohabited NYC for nearly seven years from the time my family moved here, in the fall of 1961 -- until, of course, it got in the way of Progress. Which makes it the most striking as well as largest building I have no excuse for not having any memories of. In my defense, I was young and didn't know from things like the great architect and urban visionary Ernest Flagg (1857-1947, seen here in 1911) and his great skyscraper.

Now, there must have been a zillion significant buildings in town whose acquaintance I hadn't made by 1968. The difference is that after 1968, of course, it was no longer possible to make the acquaintance of the Singer Building, and it's now a building I really wish I had some memory of.

I feel bad in much the same sort of way about our dearly departed Penn Station. How regrettable and inexcusable it is of me to have so little personal remembrance, and yet of it, unlike the Singer Building, I have at least some, even though we coexisted for a far shorter time, barely two years prior to its demolition. But at least I have some memory of the place. I know I was in it. I atcually do remember seeing my grandparents off on their annual fall snowbird departure for Florida. (They always took the train because my grandmother didn't fly.) I can't say I have any actual recall of the place, beyond having been there and sort of hurrying to make the train (a lot of my memories seem to involve hurrying), but at least I have that.

Whereas the Singer Building? Granted, it's not a part of town I spent much time in in those years, and for several of its last years I was away at college much of the time. Still, it seems likely that in all that time we shared the metropolis, as it were, I must have seen it and walked past it -- without being in any way aware of it. But then, even for decades after, I suffered the curious New Yorker's affliction of seeing most of the city strictly from ground level. Sure, we know our famous buildings, the Empire State and the Chrysler, maybe even the Woolworth, but the streets of Manhattan in particular are lined with almost nothing but buildings, and we walk past them, for the most part, without looking up, as if their street faces are all there is to them.

My awareness of such stuff was not only late in coming but is so scattered, if not downright ass-backwards, that the first real association I had for Ernest Flagg was picked up just a few years ago, during a walking tour in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where we saw one of the last things he built: the still-handsome apartment complex Flagg Court.

Part of the interior courtyard of Flagg Court, Bay Ridge

On January 11, 2011 (yes, 1/11/11!), 7200 Ridge Blvd. was the Brooklyn blog Brownstoner's Building of the Day, and the commentary was written by much-admired architectural blogger Montrose Morris, aka Suzanne Spellen, now an immensely popular walking-tour leader, in partnership with architect Morgan Munsey, mostly in the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn, which she described in a February 2014 New York Times profile as places she can no longer afford to live in. (Montrose Morris, a prolific 19th-century Brooklyn architect, is a favorite of hers.) Here's what Suzanne wrote about Ernest Flagg and Flagg Court:

Ernest Flagg was one of the early 20th century’s pre-eminent architects. Born in 1857, he lived until the age of 90, dying in 1947. This apartment complex is his last major work, designed when he was 76. It shows the innovation of a man who made his fame and fortune designing mostly Beaux-Arts style buildings for the industrialists and self-made men of the Gilded Age. A cousin by marriage to Cornelius Vanderbilt II, he received his formal education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, sponsored by Vanderbilt. Coming back to NYC, he opened a firm with several partners, and began designing the classically inspired buildings that brought him fame and fortune. Among them, the original St. Luke’s Hospital, two buildings and a mansion for Charles Scribner, book publisher, including the beautiful building at 597 5th Ave, between 48th and 49th St. He designed the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, DC, and designed several important buildings for the Singer (sewing machine) family, including the Singer Building, now demolished, for a while the tallest building in the world, the Little Singer building, still on Broadway in Soho, and the Towers, a huge “castle” for the Singer family on an island in the St. Lawrence, one of the 1000 Islands. Throughout his career, Flagg was an advocate for intelligent zoning restrictions. He believed that setbacks, and restrictions on height were necessary for light and air to reach all parts of a building. This concept is most excellently illustrated in Flagg Court. The six contiguous buildings in the complex are grouped around a large central court, and every apartment’s large windows either face the street or the courtyard. The apartment windows were designed with reversible fans under each window, and outside window shades that could be drawn against the heat, both long gone. He also designed the apartments with concrete ceiling slabs, now an everyday practice. The complex also had an auditorium of vaulted concrete. Today, Flagg Court is a very successful co-op, and is still a beautiful example of intelligent urban multi-family living. Flagg’s principles have been copied in countless examples since, including in public housing, but these buildings, in spite of their density and repetition, maintain a lightness that public housing, in particular, does not share. Theories?

Suzanne (aka Montrose) on a tour at the time of her NYT profile

BY THE WAY, JAMES NEVIUS IS LEADING
A PUBLIC TOUR MEMORIAL DAY MORNING

ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S NEW YORK
A Memorial Day Walking Tour

Monday, May 25, 2015 at 11:00AM

$20 per person; $30 if you'd like a signed copy of Footprints in New York

Whether you had the chance to see Lin-Manuel Miranda's brilliant Hamilton at the Public Theater or have plans to see it when it makes its transfer to Broadway this summer, there's no better time to brush up on the life and death of New York's most famous Founding Father: Alexander Hamilton.

In an updated reprise of this popular walk, we will be exploring Lower Manhattan, following in the footsteps of Hamilton from his arrival in the city as a teenager to attend King's College (today's Columbia University) until his death at the hands of Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804. Along the way, we'll talk about the first rumblings of the Revolution in the 1760s, the outbreak of the war, Hamiton's derring-do during British shelling of the city, the city's role as America's first capital, and much more.

To reserve email footprintsinnewyork@gmail.com your

* name
* number of people in your party (including how many people are $20 [tour only] or $30 [tour + book])
* a cell number to contact you if there's any last-minute changes

RESERVATIONS are limited and taken on a first-come, first-served basis.

You can pay for the tour by cash or credit card when you check in. Instructions on where to meet will be email within 24 hours of when you reserve.

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