Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City

7 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, New York City, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries Reading Time:  10 minutes

David H. Koch Theater (left), Metropolitan Opera House (front), and David Geffen Hall (right) © flickr.com - Ajay Suresh/cc-by-2.0

David H. Koch Theater (left), Metropolitan Opera House (front), and David Geffen Hall (right)
© flickr.com – Ajay Suresh/cc-by-2.0

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a 16.3-acre (6.6-hectare) complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 million visitors annually. It houses internationally renowned performing arts organizations including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the Juilliard School. A consortium of civic leaders and others, led by and under the initiative of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, built Lincoln Center as part of the “Lincoln Square Renewal Project” during Robert Moses‘s program of New York’s urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. Respected architects were contracted to design the major buildings on the site.   read more…

Bonsecours Market in Montreal

5 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Shopping Reading Time:  6 minutes

© Gribeco/cc-by-2.5

© Gribeco/cc-by-2.5

Bonsecours Market (French: Marché Bonsecours), at 350 rue Saint-Paul in Old Montreal, is a two-story domed public market. For more than 100 years, it was the main public market in the Montreal area. It also briefly accommodated the Parliament of United Canada for one session in 1849. Named for the adjacent Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel, it opened in 1847. During 1849 the building was used for the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. The market’s design was influenced by Dublin‘s Customs House. Bonsecours Market was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1984.   read more…

Lower Manhattan in New York

29 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, New York City Reading Time:  2 minutes

© flickr.com - Daniele Pieroni/cc-by-sa-2.0

© flickr.com – Daniele Pieroni/cc-by-sa-2.0

Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with over 8.8 million residents as of the 2020 census. Lower Manhattan is defined most commonly as the area delineated on the north by 14th Street, on the west by the Hudson River, on the east by the East River, and on the south by New York Harbor. The Lower Manhattan business district, known as the Financial District (FiDi), forms the main core of the area below Chambers Street. It is a leading global center for commerce, housing Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.   read more…

North Pole in Alaska

23 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  6 minutes

© Dylan Avery/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Dylan Avery/cc-by-sa-4.0

North Pole is a small city in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, United States. Incorporated in 1953, it is part of the Fairbanks metropolitan statistical area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 2,243, up from 2,117 in 2010. Despite its name, the city is about 1,700 miles (2,700 km) south of Earth’s geographic North Pole and 125 miles (200 km) south of the Arctic Circle. The city is a summertime attraction for tourists visiting nearby Fairbanks and, due to its location on the Richardson Highway, those traveling to and from the Alaska Highway and Valdez. North Pole was home to two oil refineries, the town’s major industry aside from tourism, but closed because of sulfolane contamination in groundwater. The larger refinery, operated by Flint Hills Resources, was a major source of jet fuel for Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Tanker car traffic on the Alaska Railroad, entering and leaving the refinery, frequently bisects the city.   read more…

Kamehameha Highway on Oahu

22 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  9 minutes

Palm trees along the beach at Punalu'u Beach Park © Famartin/cc-by-sa-4.0

Palm trees along the beach at Punalu’u Beach Park © Famartin/cc-by-sa-4.0

Kamehameha Highway is one of the main highways serving suburban and rural O‘ahu in the U.S. state of Hawai‘i. Informally known as Kam Highway, it begins at Nimitz Highway near Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, serves the island’s older western suburbs, and turns north across the O‘ahu Central Valley to the North Shore. At the North Shore, Kamehameha Highway heads northeast around the northern tip of O‘ahu, then southeast to and just beyond K?ne‘ohe Bay on the windward coast. The road was named after King Kamehameha I. A short detached segment of the Kamehameha Highway exists for a few blocks in the Honolulu neighborhood of Kalihi. This segment runs as a short extension of Dillingham Boulevard from Pu‘uhale Road (near the O‘ahu Community Correctional Center) to exit 18B on Interstate H-1. This section was contiguous with the rest of the highway before the construction of the H-1 viaduct.   read more…

Staten Island in New York City

16 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, New York City Reading Time:  8 minutes

Conference House © Dmadeo/cc-by-sa-4.0

Conference House © Dmadeo/cc-by-sa-4.0

Staten Island is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city’s southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull and from the rest of New York by New York Bay. With a population of 495,747 in the 2020 Census, Staten Island is the least populated borough but the third largest in land area at 58.5 sq mi (152 km²).   read more…

Miami Modern architecture (MiMo)

14 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Architecture, Miami / South Florida Reading Time:  7 minutes

Bacardi Building in Edgewater © Averette/cc-by-3.0

Bacardi Building in Edgewater © Averette/cc-by-3.0

Miami Modernist architecture, or MiMo, is a regional style of architecture that developed in South Florida during the post-war period. The style was internationally recognized as a regionalist response to the International Style. It can be seen in most of the larger Miami and Miami Beach resorts built after the Great Depression. Because MiMo styling was not just a response to international architectural movements but also to client demands, themes of glamour, fun, and material excess were added to otherwise stark, minimalist, and efficient styles of the era. The style can be most observed today in Middle and Upper Miami Beach along Collins Avenue, as well as along the Biscayne Boulevard corridor starting from around Midtown, through the Design District and into the Upper Eastside.   read more…

Philadelphia City Hall

6 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

© flickr.com - nakashi/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – nakashi/cc-by-2.0

Philadelphia City Hall is the seat of the municipal government of the City of Philadelphia. Built in the ornate Second Empire style, City Hall houses the chambers of the Philadelphia City Council and the offices of the Mayor of Philadelphia. It is also a courthouse, serving as the seat of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, and houses the Civil Trial and Orphans’ Court Divisions of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County.   read more…

Brownstones in New York City

3 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Architecture, Living, Working, Building, New York City Reading Time:  11 minutes

Brownstones in Park Slope © Mikeruggy/cc-by-sa-4.0

Brownstones in Park Slope © Mikeruggy/cc-by-sa-4.0

Brownstone is a brown TriassicJurassic sandstone that was historically a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States and Canada to refer to a townhouse clad in this or any other aesthetically similar material. Brownstone, also known as freestone because it can be cut freely in any direction, was used by early Pennsylvanian Quakers to construct stone mills and mill houses. In central Pennsylvania, some 1700s-era structures survive, including a residence known as the Quaker Mill House.   read more…

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