This bank, founded by an ordained rabbi, apparently decided to decorate its new building (the tallest on the Lower East Side when it was finished in 1912) with a common symbol of financial stability and security: two guys sitting on toilets. The bank failed two years after this building opened.
This is one of the 26 Chinatown bus companies shuttered in the massive government crackdown a few months ago. But what has become of all those buses?
You can hear a subway train rumbling by overhead about 30 seconds in.
This sculpture indicates the route of a great circle connecting New York, China, and the Caribbean, three places of origin well represented here at the multi-ethnic Governor Alfred E. Smith Houses.
mounted on a (presumably) reappropriated base
This former synagogue, built in 1903, has served as studio and residential space for artists since 1973.
Intended "to impress both the officer and the prisoner with the majesty of the law", this building was, according to the NY Times, "a magnificent anomaly: an ornate Beaux-Arts palace of 1909 in the middle of Little Italy, its grandeur contrasted utterly with the little buildings and crooked streets around it. To come upon the building has always been something like finding the Invalides in the middle of the Marais: its formal sumptuousness didn't fit with what was around it, but somehow that made it all the more mysterious and wonderful."
After the police left in 1973, the building began to fall into disrepair. In the '80s, however, it underwent a multi-million-dollar renovation and conversion into luxury condos. Thus restored to its former glory, it continues to amaze and perplex passersby who happen upon it for the first time.
over the two-block-long alley known as Staple Street
Part of Independence Plaza, this bridge bears a remnant (the Pier 23 sign) of the old elevated Miller Highway, which once ran alongside the nearby Hudson River (almost visible beyond the trees at the end of the block).
A grizzled old-timer on the trendy streets of Tribeca
Plumed celosia blooms in the foreground at this little park named for Philip Schuyler Finn, son of the beloved "Battery Dan" Finn. On a nearby sign, the Parks Department relates some colorful tales from the life of Finn the Elder:
He became a city magistrate and police judge in 1904, dispensing advice rather than harsh sentences. Admonitions like "Don’t try to compel a girl to love you if she prefers someone else. Get another to take her place," to two youths fighting over a girl, or "Don’t wreck or sell your body and soul for diamonds and automobiles," to a prostitute endeared him to New Yorkers across the city. No incident caused more amusement than Finn’s encounter with three bulldogs on his way to a court session in the Bronx. Under attack, he climbed a lamppost and yelled for help. Local papers carried the story and New York loved it.The NY Times's obituary for Battery Dan contains an expanded version of the don't-fight-over-a-girl advice:
"You are both as foolish as the fellows who years ago fought over a girl named Helen of Troy. The one who got her had nothing but trouble. Don’t try to compel a girl to love you if she prefers some one else. Get another to take her place."
The Parks Department has plans to rehydrate this little downtown plaza that lies within the historical boundaries of Collect Pond, one of the city's primary water sources for more than 150 years. As you may recall, we previously learned about the canal that was built to drain Collect Pond in the early 1800s after it had essentially become an open sewer, polluted beyond hope.
Once emptied, the pond was filled in with dirt from the surrounding hills, including Bayard's Mount, formerly the highest point in lower Manhattan. New homes were built on the site, but the landfill was not well engineered, and poor drainage caused the ground to subside, leaving the area swampy and stagnant. The wealthier residents moved away, poor immigrants flooded in, and the neighborhood became the notorious slum known as Five Points.
We happened upon the current version of the Tombs earlier today; its first incarnation was built atop the former pond in 1838 on a raft-like foundation "imbedded in quicksand". The Prison Association of New York's 1895 annual report delivered a searing condemnation of conditions at the jailhouse:
Such treatment of dogs would be gross cruelty; and when it is considered that the men so treated have not been convicted, and in many instances never are convicted of any crime, and that the prison is only intended to be a place for safe detention and not a place for punishment, no language which can be employed can be too severe in denunciation of such an infamy. The Tombs prison, as it has existed for years past, is a disgrace to the city of New York. It ought to be immediately demolished. It cannot be made decent. It is defective in every modern appliance. It is dark, damp and ill-ventilated.A new facility, with a much more substantial foundation, was built in 1902 to take its place; remnants of that foundation were recently discovered by workers during construction here at Collect Pond Park.
"We are old men. We like bringing the birds and drinking the coffee. We feel better."
The same warning is painted directly behind the car as well. What does it mean?
Completed in 1887, this was the first grand synagogue built by European Jews in the US, its spectacular sanctuary (a "majestic collage of psychedelic polychromy") a world away from the dingy tenements many of its impoverished worshipers inhabited in those days. By the middle of the 20th century, however, the congregation had dwindled and was unable to maintain such a magnificent space; the remaining congregants decided to seal off the sanctuary and meet in the basement instead. Now, after years of restoration and renovation (including the installation of a gorgeous new stained-glass window on the back side of the building), this "ethereal vault" has been returned to its former glory, and is open to the public as a museum.
Rocket ships, along with some of NYC's iconic wooden rooftop water tanks, take flight in this mural at MS 131.
A different take on a theme we've seen several times before
Yet another inspired name — only the best for our public housing developments!
Incongruously plopped down in the middle of an otherwise forgotten-looking park
The columns running down the middle are holding up the subway tracks.
Pearl Street's monstrous Verizon building
As we learned when we passed by this cemetery's successor: Shearith Israel, founded in 1654, was the first Jewish congregation in North America and the only one in New York City until 1825. The little graveyard above, which has been whittled down in size over the years, was established in 1682 and received its first interment in 1683, making it "the second oldest extant burial ground in Manhattan". It is known as Shearith Israel's "first cemetery", although there may have been an even older one: in 1656, the city's Jewish community was granted permission to use "a little hook of land situate outside of this city for a burial place", but there is no definite record of this burial ground's establishment or location. Still an active congregation today, Shearith Israel honors its Revolutionary War veterans with a ceremony here at the cemetery every year around Memorial Day.
Opened in 1837, it's the city's second-oldest surviving Catholic church building (by some measures, anyway; this ranking is not as straightforward as it sounds). Check out these photos of the beautiful interior, taken on the final day of one man's two-and-a-half-year quest to attend mass at each of Manhattan's 96 Catholic churches.
The New York Chamber of Commerce became the first such institution in the US upon its establishment in 1768. Perhaps the city's most influential business organization by the turn of the 20th century, it finally acquired a permanent home in 1902 when it built this "little Beaux-Arts treasure".
You can see a terrific collection of historical photos of the building here, including an image of the grand assembly hall with its stained-glass ceiling and walls lined with the Chamber's extensive collection of portraits of powerful New York business leaders and politicians. Four large marble statues (of Mercury, Alexander Hamilton, DeWitt Clinton, and John Jay) once adorned the facade (Mercury was above the door; the other three fellas stood atop the now-vacant pedestals located in the gaps between columns), but had to be removed after sustaining serious damage from years of acid rain.
The Chamber's prominence subsided as the 20th century wore on, and it moved to more modest quarters in 1980. The building sat vacant for a decade until it was purchased by the Taiwanese International Commercial Bank of China; it currently houses a representative office of Taiwan's central bank.
A construction-site shrine at Four World Trade Center. You can take a closer look here.
Visible at the bottom of the photo is Men at Work, the younger brother of Walking Men 99.
This piece, from Jenny Holzer's Truisms collection, is one of four benches by the artist featured in City Hall Park's Common Ground exhibition, a reimagining of civic monuments. These benches blend in with the surroundings so well that I just assumed they were stodgy old memorials until I started reading the text.
This plaque lies on a 100-foot-diameter stone ring marking the former location of the spectacular Croton Fountain, built in 1842 and fed by water from the monumental Croton Aqueduct. The aqueduct, as we learned back in July, was an extraordinary feat of engineering and a tremendous boon to the water-deprived city; it opened to great fanfare here at City Hall Park, and even had an official ode written for it ("Croton’s waves in all their glory / Troop in melody along"). In 1871, the fountain was replaced by the smaller (though quite ornate) one you see in the background (which itself was removed from the park in 1920 before making a return, complete with gas-burning lamps, after renovations in 1999).
Also part of the Common Ground exhibition, this "unconventional self-portrait" is a 360° rotation of the (obviously bearded) artist's profile.
