Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City

17 April 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Living, Working, Building, Museums, Exhibitions, New York City Reading Time:  16 minutes

© flickr.com - ajay_suresh/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – ajay_suresh/cc-by-2.0

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a National Historic Site. The museum’s two historical tenement buildings were home to an estimated 15,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 2011. The museum, which includes a visitors’ center, promotes tolerance and historical perspective on the immigrant experience.   read more…

NoMad in New York City

2 March 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, New York City Reading Time:  10 minutes

French Renaissance revival © Richardfalk2/cc-by-sa-3.0

French Renaissance revival © Richardfalk2/cc-by-sa-3.0

NoMad (“North of Madison Square Park”), also known as Madison Square North, is a neighborhood centered on the Madison Square North Historic District in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The name NoMad, which has been in use since 1999, is derived from the area’s location north of Madison Square Park. The neighborhood is bordered by East 25th Street to the south, East 29th or East 30th Street to the north, Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) to the west and Madison or Lexington Avenue to the east. The surrounding neighborhoods are Chelsea to the west, Midtown South to the northwest, Murray Hill to the northeast, Rose Hill to the east, and the Flatiron District to the south.   read more…

The Battery in New York City

1 February 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, New York City, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  6 minutes

Battery Park and Financial District © Gryffindor/cc-by-sa-3.0

Battery Park and Financial District © Gryffindor/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Battery, formerly known as Battery Park, is a 25-acre (10 ha) public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City facing New York Harbor. It is bounded by Battery Place on the north, State Street on the east, New York Harbor to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. The park contains attractions such as an early 19th-century fort named Castle Clinton; multiple monuments; and the SeaGlass Carousel. The surrounding area, known as South Ferry, contains multiple ferry terminals, including the Staten Island Ferry‘s Whitehall Terminal; a boat launch to the Statue of Liberty National Monument (which includes Ellis Island and Liberty Island); and a boat launch to Governors Island.   read more…

U Thant Island in New York

11 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, New York City Reading Time:  8 minutes

© Pacific Coast Highway

© Pacific Coast Highway

U Thant Island (officially Belmont Island) is a small artificial island or islet in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The 100-by-200-foot (30 by 60 m) island, created during the construction of the Steinway Tunnel directly underneath, is the smallest island in Manhattan. Mean sea level in the East River is sometimes measured in reference to the “Belmont Island Datum”, 2.265 feet (0.69 m) below that of Sandy Hook.   read more…

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City

7 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: 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…

Lower Manhattan in New York

29 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: 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…

Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan

27 November 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, New York City Reading Time:  9 minutes

Part of Billionaires' Row and Central Park (background) © Itrytohelp32/cc-by-sa-4.0

Part of Billionaires’ Row and Central Park (background) © Itrytohelp32/cc-by-sa-4.0

Billionaires’ Row is a set of ultra-luxury residential skyscrapers, constructed or in development, that are arrayed roughly along the southern end of Central Park in Manhattan, New York City. Several of these buildings are in the supertall category, taller than 1,000 feet (300 m), and are among the tallest buildings in the world. Since most of these pencil towers are on 57th Street, the term has been used to refer to the street itself as well.   read more…

Avenue of the Americas in New York City

15 November 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  9 minutes

Historic Ladies' Mile shopping district © Beyond My Ken/cc-by-sa-4.0

Historic Ladies’ Mile shopping district © Beyond My Ken/cc-by-sa-4.0

Sixth Avenue – also known as Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers – is a major thoroughfare in New York City‘s borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or “uptown”. It is commercial for much of its length. Sixth Avenue begins four blocks below Canal Street, at Franklin Street in TriBeCa, where the northbound Church Street divides into Sixth Avenue to the left and the local continuation of Church Street to the right, which then ends at Canal Street. From this beginning, Sixth Avenue traverses SoHo and Greenwich Village, roughly divides Chelsea from the Flatiron District and NoMad, passes through the Garment District and skirts the edge of the Theater District while passing through Midtown Manhattan. Sixth Avenue’s northern end is at Central Park South, adjacent to the Artists’ Gate entrance to Central Park via Center Drive. Historically, Sixth Avenue was also the name of the road that continued north of Central Park, but that segment was renamed Lenox Avenue in 1887 and co-named Malcolm X Boulevard in 1987.   read more…

Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City

9 November 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  9 minutes

Entrance © flickr.com - Shaggy Paul/cc-by-2.0

Entrance © flickr.com – Shaggy Paul/cc-by-2.0

The Museum of Jewish Heritage, located in Battery Park City in Manhattan, New York City, is a living memorial to those murdered in the Holocaust. The museum has received more than 2 million visitors since opening in 1997. The mission statement of the museum is “to educate people of all ages and backgrounds about the broad tapestry of Jewish life in the 20th and 21st centuries — before, during, and after the Holocaust.” The museum’s building includes two wings: a six-sided building with a pyramid-shaped roof designed to evoke the memory of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, and the Robert M. Morgenthau Wing. The six-sided building, opened in 1997, contains the museum’s core exhibition galleries. The Morgenthau Wing, opened in 2003, contains the museum’s offices, theater, and classrooms, as well as the Irving Schneider and Family exhibition gallery. Both wings were designed by designed by Roche-Dinkeloo. The museum’s collection contains more than 30,000 objects relating to Jewish history and the Holocaust. These objects are used in a variety of exhibitions and installations.   read more…

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