Day 461


Day 461



Day 461

Yield not to evil

April 4th, 2013



The Bronck family coat of arms, as featured on the flag of the Bronx (and seen here above a doorway in Mullaly Park)

Day 461

Park Plaza

April 4th, 2013



From the Landmarks Preservation Commission's 1981 designation report:

The Park Plaza is one of the first Art Deco apartment houses to have been built in the Bronx. Its designer, Marvin Fine, knew of and consciously synthesized the major elements of the new modernistic skyscraper style being developed in Manhattan by Raymond Hood and William Van Alen, and adapted them to the lowrise apartment houses of New York's residential neighborhoods. One of the handsomest Art Deco buildings in the Bronx, the Park Plaza was a pioneering work which helped change the face of the borough.
Here's a close-up of some of the beautiful terra cotta work.



Day 461

Concourse Village

April 4th, 2013



This apartment complex (you're looking at the eastern half of it) was the first of five waves of buildings that have been erected above the old Mott Haven rail yard over the past five decades.

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There have been many notable graduates of Cardinal Hayes, but George Carlin was not one of them.

Day 461

Cardinal Hayes baseball

April 4th, 2013



on the Cardinal Hayes football field

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This shiny new building is a shelter for homeless families.




More salvaged ornaments from the Bronx House of Detention

Day 461

FINETHNX

April 4th, 2013



HWZURS

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The Power House

April 4th, 2013



According to a sign here in Mill Pond Park, this remnant of the Bronx Terminal Market "was built between 1925 and 1927 and was crucial for the preservation of perishable goods. The building housed ice-making equipment and a machine shop, and helped to maintain temperature-controlled food storage in the Wholesale Market and Storage Building." It has since been incorporated into the park, and now contains offices, restrooms, and a café, among other things.

Day 461




lingering on a Major Deegan support column

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as seen from the top of the parking garage at the Bronx Terminal Market shopping center

Day 461

9/11 memorial #134

April 4th, 2013


Day 461

Hey, you heard the sign

April 4th, 2013


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150th Street siding

April 4th, 2013


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Graffiti Over Dose

April 4th, 2013


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The dungeon entrance

April 4th, 2013



to the Castle on the Concourse

Day 461

Willis Avenue Bridge

April 4th, 2013



Back on a mid-July day in 2010, as I was making my way across central Montana, people were standing along the banks and bridges of the Hudson River in upstate New York, gawking at this 2,400-ton structure gliding downstream toward New York City, perched atop two barges that had been welded together specifically for the task. After a fortnight of R&R in New Jersey, it was hauled up the East River to this spot on the Harlem, where it would soon replace the original Willis Avenue Bridge. In an attempt to preserve the old bridge (as required by funding agreements with the federal and state governments), the city offered to sell it to any interested party for $1 — and provide up to 15 miles of free shipping — but there were no takers. Instead, it was floated to a junkyard in Jersey City, where it was dismantled and sold for scrap.

(That's the Harlem River span of the Triborough Bridge in the background.)

Day 461

Slender livin’

April 4th, 2013


Day 461

Crown Fried Chicken

April 4th, 2013



A highly prolific offspring of Kennedy Fried Chicken

Day 461

9/11 memorial #135

April 4th, 2013



The Freedom Engine, soon to be retired

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Portal of the day

April 4th, 2013



Now glance up a little higher.

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Built in 1879-82, this building currently serves as the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center.




Built in 1891 as a German Methodist Episcopal church

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Info rock

April 4th, 2013



at Seabury Playground. 15 years from now, some kid's gonna ace a question about the Seabury Commission on his college history exam and have no idea how he knew the answer.



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This is the former site of the Spite House, a four-story structure built on a 5-foot-by-102-foot sliver of land. Even if you never click on the links in my posts, you need to read this article about the house. Trust me. And then check out these pictures.

Day 461

Thomas Hunter Hall

April 4th, 2013



Opened in 1913 at Hunter College (then known as Normal College), this Lexington Avenue castle was built to house an elementary school and a high school, and was designed by — who else? — Charles B.J. Snyder.

Day 461




Dedicated in 1918; designed by Bertram Goodhue. Take an architectural tour!

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Central Synagogue

April 4th, 2013



Completed in 1872, this magnificent structure (photos!) was almost destroyed by fire in 1998. It was fully restored, however, and was rededicated a few years later — note the date of this article about the reopening.

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A tower on stilts

April 4th, 2013



From the pages of The New Yorker:

When planning for Citicorp Center [now known as Citigroup Center] began, in the early nineteen-seventies, the site of choice was on the east side of Lexington Avenue between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Streets, directly across the street from Citicorp's headquarters. But the northwest corner of that block was occupied by St. Peter's Church, a decaying Gothic structure built in 1905. Since St. Peter's owned the corner, and one of the world's biggest banking corporations wanted the whole block, the church was able to strike a deal that seemed heaven-sent: its old building would be demolished and a new one built as a free-standing part of Citicorp Center.

To clear space for the new church, [the architect and engineer] set their fifty-nine-story tower on four massive, nine-story-high stilts, and positioned them at the center of each side, rather than at each comer. This daring scheme allowed the designers to cantilever the building's corners seventy-two feet out over the church, on the northwest, and over a plaza on the southwest. The columns also produced high visual drama: a nine-hundred-and-fourteen-foot monolith that seemed all but weightless as it hovered above the street.
In 1978, the year after Citicorp Center was completed, Bill LeMessurier, the project's structural engineer, was reviewing his design and discovered, to his horror, that a perfect storm of factors — an omitted calculation (one not required by the city's building code) on his part, plus two cost-saving shortcuts taken by the construction team (neither of which would have been a problem on its own) — had resulted in the building being highly susceptible to catastrophic collapse if hit by strong diagonal winds.

And it was almost peak hurricane season.

LeMessurier alerted the architect and the Citicorp higher-ups, and they embarked on a secretive plan (known by city officials, but not by the general public) to strengthen the structure's wind braces, bringing in welders every night over the course of two months to fortify more than 200 bolted joints in the building's skeleton, starting with the most critical locations.

If people had found out what was going on, it could have been extremely damaging to the reputations of the bank and the design team, but the media never picked up on the story. The day after Citicorp put out a press release "in language as bland as a loan officer's wardrobe" about the upcoming welding work, the city's papers went on strike, and they didn't resume publication until weeks after the last joint had been fixed. It was only the aforementioned New Yorker article (well worth reading) that finally revealed the tale to the public in 1995.

And as for the building: with its reinforced, welded joints, Citigroup Center is now said to be one of the safest structures ever built.

Day 461

The Chanin Building

April 4th, 2013



Although it's been surpassed in height by many nearby buildings since its 1929 completion, this "exuberant Art Deco" skyscraper was once a prominent feature in the Midtown skyline. Here's a great video of a daredevil named Benni doing his "acrobatic lamppost act" on top of the building in 1933.

Day 461

This could be you!

April 4th, 2013





The "ultimate boutique hotel".

The sign at the bottom of the photo reads "Welcome to all personnel of the Armed Forces of the United States and its allies".

Day 461

69th Regiment Armory

April 4th, 2013



From the NY Times:

On Feb. 17, 1913, an act of cultural sabotage called the International Exhibition of Modern Art, or the Armory Show, hit the 69th Regiment Armory on East 26th Street, lodging there for nearly a month. Installed in a sequence of temporary rooms, the show revealed horror after grating horror in the form of up-to-the-minute European paintings and sculptures by the likes of Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse.

New York had never seen anything like it. The American artists in the exhibition, all milquetoast traditionalists, were stunned into silence. No one even noticed they were there. The critics and the paying public, shocked and appalled, had eyes only for the European art and looked daggers at it.

That, at least, is the account of the Armory Show that has come down to us, repeated endlessly in the history books. But in the show’s coming centennial year, at least two exhibitions will propose alternative readings that attempt to dispel, or at least modify, an accumulation of myths and misperceptions, and in the process suggest that shock can be just another form of entertainment.

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Now a residence hall for the School of Visual Arts

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36 Gramercy Park East

April 4th, 2013



"Deep in the Heart of Texas, a Glimpse of Old New York"




Or was it? According to the AIA Guide to New York City:

Irving's connection with this house is the wishful thinking of an ancient owner; this is one Washington who never slept here. In the real world, Elsie de Wolfe and Elisabeth Marbury lived here from 1894 to 1911, maintaining a salon where notables from all walks of life gathered amid Elsie's "white decor," the stylistic statement that launched her career as America's first paid (and highly paid) interior decorator.

Day 461

Washington Irving

April 4th, 2013



and his namesake high school