Walking Off the Big Apple

A Winter's Day Walk in Inwood Hill Park and Fort Tryon Park

2012-02-11T14:49:00.003-05:00

With the present chilly gray day excluded, most of our winter days this season have been warm enough and cheerily sunny enough for something akin to a hike. Many days have hit the high 40s with several flirting with the 50 degree mark. It's good walking weather. But if more than a simple walk in the park meets one's fancy on such a winter's day, a rigorous walk through Inwood Hill Park and Fort Tryon Park should do. These parks in the upper reaches of Manhattan offer the opportunity not only to engage in strenuous exercise but also to enjoy views of nature that we typically associate with more bucolic areas farther north.

Inwood Hill Park. View of Henry Hudson Bridge.

The A train's stop at Dykman Street, just thirty-five minutes or so from the W. 4th station in Greenwich Village, is a good place to begin an exploration of both parks. Emerging from the station and into the busy commercial intersection of Dykman and Broadway, visitors should notice immediately that the flatter terrain of most of Manhattan has given way to hills. The monastery-like structure on the top of the hill to the southeast is The Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's medieval branch in Fort Tryon Park., and one of the finest attractions in the whole city. For the purposes of this walk, we'll leave The Cloisters for another day, but suffice it to say that the Cuxa Cloister Tower, the particular medieval structure of the museum's monasterial melange, provides a recognizable marker from several vantage points in the neighborhood and parks.

Inwood Hill Park. View of The Cloisters in the distance

If occasionally bothered by Central Park's sublime artificiality, visit Inwood Hill Park instead. Its varied terrain of hills, valleys, glacial markings, forest, and salt marsh show something of what Manhattan would have looked like in its prehistoric state.

Inwood Hill Park. Upper Manhattan.

There's a wildness to it, especially in the thick forest in the park's central valley, along with the sort of quiet that allows a sharpened focus on the sounds of birds and the rustling noises of busy squirrels on the forest floor. Wander north to Spuyten Duyvil Creek for a view of the Henry Hudson Bridge before walking south through the park. A walk in mid-February should bring some color to the landscape in the form of sprightly purple crocuses.

The thick natural forest of Inwood Hill Park

Crocuses near a path in Inwood Hill Park

At some point, saunter over to the Hudson River for the views. The end of Dykman Street provides pleasant views of the Palisades in New Jersey across the way, the George Washington Bridge to the south, and the river itself.

At the west end of Dykman Street, looking south. In the distance, The Cloisters is on the left, and
the George Washington Bridge is on the right.

Looking north. The Hudson River.

Before walking south through Fort Tryon Park, it may be time to sit down for a hearty lunch. Try the friendly and unpretentious Park View Restaurant. With the sun low and bright in the winter sky, sunshine fills the front of the restaurant, bringing recuperative energy. The winter sun goes particularly well with a Mexican omelet and a cup of coffee.

Perfect signage in Fort Tryon Park.

From street level, Fort Tryon Park seems like a fortress to conquer, and it does take some strategy to figure how the best way of approaching the ascent. The path of least resistance would be to simply enter the park from the southern entrance. Several of the paths from other angles are indeed steep, so be prepared for a quickened heartbeat and a few heavy deep breaths. The views will be worth it. Fewer sights are more lovely than the park's Heather Garden and the George Washington Bridge in the distance.

The Heather Garden. Fort Tryon Park.

The walk concludes at the 190th Street stop on the A train. After a particularly invigorating walk, it's sometimes hard to board the train and head back down to the real world.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from Friday, February 10, 2012. More at Flickr WOTBA.

View A Winter Walk in Upper Manhattan in a larger map

The walk suggested here is about 3.33 miles.

A Parisian Detour: Eugène Atget at MoMA

2012-02-08T07:25:00.003-05:00

Photographer Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) made over 8,500 pictures of Paris during his prolific life as an artist - the romantic city's cobblestone streets, its windows with store mannequins, luscious but tamed parks, mysterious courtyards, his own neighborhood in the 5th arrondissement, and much more - but he did not take one picture of the Eiffel Tower. Not one. A couple of reasons why this most recognizable symbol of Paris fails to show up is that didn't like to pander to the postcard set and he really didn't care. His Paris was more the ephemeral pre-modern city, a place of irregular streets and organ grinders, and less the modern city of planner Baron Haussmann's domineering boulevards and that new soaring engineering marvel constructed in the Champ de Mars in 1889.

Eugène Atget. Cour, 7 rue de Valence, June 1922. Matte albumen silver print, 7 x 8 15/16″ (17.8 x 22.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden

A new exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) titled Eugène Atget: "Documents pour artistes" displays a handful of Atget's well-known images but, pleasingly for those already familiar with these works, many more less well-known pictures from MoMA's extensive collection. Curator Sarah Hermanson Meister has organized the works into six categories that serve as representative of Atget's career, ones that mimic the artist's own system of archiving his material. Working as a provider of photographic source material for artists, Atget grouped images into categories such as courtyards, certain types of Parisians (musicians, factory workers, prostitutes), parks (like his beloved Luxembourg Gardens, or a series on the splendid Parc de Sceaux, as shown at MoMA), store windows, and neighborhoods. The MoMA exhibit displays images that Atget printed himself. Though critic Walter Benjamin famously claimed that reproducible works such as photographs lack authenticity or aura, these images on MoMA's walls, made with Atget's hand, nevertheless seem to have it.

Eugène Atget. Luxembourg, 1923-25. Matte albumen silver print, 7 x 8 13/16″ (17.8 x 22.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden

Atget's Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève from June 1925 (below) reveals characteristics of his photography while also suggesting the qualities that lead many to romanticize these types of street scenes. First of all, here we're in the Left Bank's 5th arrondissement, Atget's neighborhood, looking south on the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève toward the street's intersections with both Rue Descartes, marked with a wall sign on the left of the picture, and Rue de l'Ecole Polytechnique, as noted on the sign just to the right of center. On the left and right, two cafés establish the milieu of this student-centered Latin Quarter neighborhood.

Eugène Atget. Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, June 1925. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print, 6 11/16 x 8 3/4″ (17 x 22.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden

It has rained. As our eye follows the wet narrow street winding its way to the background, we get a glimpse beyond of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, a church that houses the shrine of Sainte-Geneviève and the tombs of Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine. (Wikipedia). A large fading ghost sign adorns the wall in the middle distance, just above a smaller sign advertising an art supply store nearby on the tiny Rue Laplace. The photograph is vignetted, typical of an Atget. This affect of softened corners forces the viewer's attention toward the center, to encourage an exploration of the receding street. The lack of color forces an emphasis on tones, composition and shapes.

Not to veer too far away from the MoMA exhibition, let's take a quick virtual detour to contemporary Paris and look at the same intersection on Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève via Google Street View (below). While the viewpoint and perspective is different from Atget's photograph - in this case, from the multiple cameras atop Google's van, we can still sort out comparisons and contrasts with the same subject matter.

View Larger Map

First, let's be amazed we can recognize the building on the right, and it looks much the same as in the Atget photo. An obvious difference, the bricks have been removed from the street surfaces and are paved over. New bumper guards help safely guide automobiles through the narrow streets. The section of the street on the left has been replaced with a paved pedestrian plaza, filled here with some snappy-looking motorbikes (just drag the cursor over a bit). What appears to be an outdoor fruit stand in the Atget photograph is gone. The ghost sign is gone. Note, however, that the Google image is dated "June 2008," and things may have changed at this intersection since that time.

Following Atget, we need to make the documents. A restaurant we like will one day close. A favorite café will be shuttered. The bookstore may soon see its final days. Making pictures should be easier to do these days than hauling a big view camera out onto the streets. Still, many people love the look of these old pictures, and we've conveniently constructed the means to produce a ready-made visual nostalgia of our own lost cities. Our camera phones often include apps with vintage looks, with several options for black and white and settings for a vignette. But, to make art, we need a command of light and form and a heightened sense of perception. These qualities belong to an artist. Paris was charmed to have had Atget.

Eugène Atget: "Documents pour artistes"
The Museum of Modern Art
Through April 9, 2012

Related post, "The City as Archive and as Playground: Atget's Paris, and Lessons for New York." (WOTBA February 2, 2010).

Additional: The Google Street View of 7 rue de Valence, the location of the first Atget image in this post, indicates a complete erasure of the former site. (map)

The Wow Factor: A Stroll in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and A Visit to Jane's Carousel

2012-02-05T16:44:00.001-05:00

One of the many charms of living the life of a flâneur, aside from being oblivious to the fact that it's the wrong time (21st century, not the 19th) and the wrong city (New York, not Paris) is to embark on a long winter's walk in a city park without caring about much of anything and then suddenly being struck by a surprising view.

The academics among us talk about the notion of visual culture, a relatively new paradigm popular among art historians that suggests that our life is characterized by the tendency to visualize knowledge. Whatever can be discovered and understood will eventually be visualized, in large part because we now have the technology - or soon will have it - to see amazing things. The paradigm that visual culture seeks to replace is the post-modern notion that everything is a "text" that can be deconstructed and read. Visual culture posits the notion that sometimes a dependence on text fails us, as things we see can be so overwhelming that words won't do. Instead, we'll just look at stuff and utter shrieks of amazement like "Awesome!" and "Wow!" If we're momentarily inarticulate with the visuals at hand, then it's dumb to hunt for a "text."

A proper flâneur journalist, on the other hand, should at least try to articulate the sights of a stroll in some words - and in words more articulate than "awesome" - but a winter stroll yesterday to Jane's Carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park did produce a "wow" factor, not to mention a ton of iPhone pictures. Jutting out on a platform in the East River on the north side of the Brooklyn Bridge, this well-restored historic carousel from 1922 with forty-eight finely-detailed animated horses and many pretty panels with pastoral scenes is housed within an elegant pavilion designed by Jean Nouvel. The carousel and the pavilion opened in September of 2011 and are a gift to the people of New York by the Walentas family. It costs two dollars a ride. The spectacle may even be more impressive at night, after the young ones have gone to sleep, but during an afternoon winter stroll, it is a most impressive sight.

While enjoying the views of the East River, the rocks along the shoreline, the skyline, the freshly renovated park areas, and the other obvious charms of such a familiar city scene, we might also want to take into consideration that much of what we're looking at here, like the carousel, is new. The skyline of Lower Manhattan on the other side of the water is also relatively new to us, as it now features 1WTC and the newly inhabited residential skyscraper, 8 Spruce Street, by Frank Gehry. The East River Ferry that docks nearby is new, and, for that matter, most of this whole park is new. That big bridge, however, looks familiar. The "wow" factor, then, can be also prompted by our chronic state of novelty.

It's funny how the city is re-landscaping the old working New York waterfront with water parks and carousels and miniature golf courses and places for our bikes and dogs. Not only are we witnessing an accelerated transformation of the waterfront from a place of production to one of consumption but also a concerted plan to replace an older city with a much younger one, an imagined more innocent city of the past recycled in bits and pieces for our present purposes. And it's happening fast, the building of the city of our lost collective childhood. As the flâneur songwriter Jacques Brel once wrote, "We're on a crazy carousel."

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from Saturday, February 4, 2012.

Jane's Carousel is located in DUMBO between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Official website.
Hours through April 5, 2012:
Thursday – Sunday 11:00 AM – 6:00PM
Tickets: $2.00

Navigating Fort Greene: Between BAM and the Barclays Center

2012-02-01T08:34:00.003-05:00

En route to a performance at the either of the main venues of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the BAM Harvey or the Peter Jay Sharp Building, especially near the train stations that service the Brooklyn neighborhood of Fort Greene, it is possible to observe many visitors from other boroughs looking tentatively around in every direction to get their geographical bearings, as if they were lost. I would wager that they are lost. Where Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall are served by immediately adjacent subway stops, making it possible to see these venues right away after climbing stairs to the street, the BAMs are visually obscured and thus take some time figuring out. I would also wager that more than a handful of performing arts patrons fail to make curtain time because of the wily geographical charms of this neighborhood.

Walking in the Brooklyn neighborhood, Fort Greene.
Intersection of Fulton and South Oxford Street.

Let's solve this confusion by exploring Fort Greene on foot, because the more we walk an area the more we get to know it. Residential streets with London-sounding names – Oxford, Cumberland, Waverly, Portland, etc. – run in pleasant parallels with Fort Greene Park. To the south, Lafayette Avenue serves as an important cultural and retail thoroughfare, beginning on the west at Flatbush Avenue and ending on the east at Broadway in Bushwick. Fulton Street zips in a southeastward diagonal through Fort Greene, intersecting with Lafayette to create two unequal obtuse triangles on the east and west. Two small parks – BAM Park and Fowler Park – are nestled within these two bigger geographical triangles. This meeting place feels like a natural neighborhood center and a good place to start a walk.

View Walking Fort Greene: Between BAM and the Barclays Center in a larger map

Fowler Park with statue of Edward Fowler, a Brooklyn resident and brigadier general
during the American Civil War. Fowler commanded the 14th regiment, stationed in Fort Greene Park.

Fort Greene has a reputation for being a friendly, diverse, and comfortable place, home not just to BAM but to many other arts organizations as well. It has a vibrant literary heritage, a soaring landmark (the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower), handsome brownstones, churches of architectural interest, and a large park with a fascinating monument and exceptional views.

Lafayette Avenue lives up to its French name in this stretch. The Eiffel Tower sign
is over the shop Stuart & Wright at 85 Lafayette Avenue.

Originally Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, 1 Hanson Place, now apartments.

Mo's Bar and Lounge at 80 Lafayette.
Welcoming and fun, in the coolest way.

A long bucolic walk in Fort Greene, however, ends at its southern boundary. Here, inescapably, on Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, rises the Barclays Center, the future home of the Nets and the showpiece of the controversial Atlantic Yards development. While the center technically falls within Prospect Heights, the neighborhood on the south side of Atlantic Avenue, it's inescapable that Fort Greene will also feel the ramifications of having a major sports and entertainment complex in its midst. A full house of 18,000 basketball fans or 19,000 concertgoers will make for a lot of feet hitting the nearby streets. The center is scheduled to open in September of 2012. London-based Barclays, currently ranked as the 10th largest global banking and financial services firm, purchased the naming rights of the arena in January 2007.

Ladies and gentlemen - the Barclays Center, under construction. View of Atlantic Avenue side.

A walk through Fort Greene is nice on any day with pleasant weather, but Saturdays and Sundays during the winter can include a visit to the Brooklyn Flea's seasonal home in the lobby of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower. The shopping choices and local food fare are exceptionally fine, but an overall view from the balcony heightens the scene. It's like a Renaissance painting:

The Brooklyn Flea, 1 Hanson Center lobby.

For worthy outdoor streetscapes, walk north on South Portland Avenue to Fort Greene Park. The street is lined with handsome uniform brownstones in the Italianate manner. For the big picture, walk up the path in Fort Greene Park to see the Prison Ship Martrys' Monument. The tall Doric column was constructed in the years 1906-1909 to honor the 11,500 American souls who died in British prison ships anchored nearby during the American Revolutionary War. Fort Greene is named for Nathanael Greene, the Continental Army major general who directed the construction of an earlier fort, Fort Putnam, built on this site.

Along South Portland Avenue in Fort Greene.

Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, 1906-1909. Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White, architects.

View from the monument looking northeast.
1WTC, under construction, is in the distance.

Enjoy these lofty views. From up here, the downtowns of Brooklyn and Manhattan are hard to discern as separate entities. It's all one big city.

For further reading:

• New York Parks website for the statue of Edward Fowler.

• New York Parks website for the Prison Ship Martrys' Monument.

• "Memorials and the Forgotten" by Elizabeth Giddens in The New York Times of September 2, 2011 contemplates the meaning of the Fort Greene monument in light of September 11 memorials.

• Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn is the name of the leading group opposing current Atlantic Yards plans. Their website with the latest news.

• Website for the Barclays Center.

• The Local: Fort Greene/Clinton Hill is a New York Times blog featuring news of the neighborhoods; in collaboration with students at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

• Website for Brooklyn Flea.

• Website for BAM.

Oh, yea. One more thing. Finding the two BAMs is easy. The BAM Harvey Theater is at 651 Fulton Street and looks like this:

And BAM (Peter Jay Sharp Theater) is to the south of BAM Harvey at 30 Lafayette and looks like this:

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from January 2012.

A Winter Walk on the High Line: A Slideshow

2012-01-28T14:51:00.003-05:00

Winter is proving elusive this season. This time last week, a snow blanketed the city, and a walk in Central Park lived up to the billing as a winter wonderland.

The snow is gone now. A walk along the High Line this past Thursday turned up all sorts of colors, few of which we normally associate with winter. Waves of wheat-colored grasses offset nicely with the cool blues of the contemporary buildings and the moody grays of the sky. Some bright orange twiggy barks dazzled along the path, and plump rosy-red buds generously covered some branches.

If it weren't for the High Line's official website, some of us couldn't identify half of these showy plants. Consulting the site, those red berries are likely from the winterberry holly, the weird frilly orange blossoms are a cultivar of witch hazel, and the surprisingly pink blossoms may be identified as Dawn viburnum. Whatever the pink thing was, it looks like winter is not only illusive but banished entirely from the city this year. (In fact, the parks department has cancelled the annual Winter Jam in Prospect Park - it was supposed to take place February 4 - because of consistently warm temperatures.)

(The embedded map includes things to see near the High Line.)

View Near The High Line in a larger map

These pictures were made with the ProHDR app for the iPhone 4, and while the process blends the high light notes with the low light notes, the effect is rather jazzed up in terms of color. Nevertheless, in memory, the walk without the aid of photographic exaggeration is remembered in vivid colors.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from the late morning of January 26, 2012.

A Walk to Weegee's Street: Centre Market Place

2012-01-26T17:36:00.001-05:00

From 1934 to 1947, the years that serve as the focus of the current Weegee exhibit at the ICP, the photographer lived in an apartment at 5 Centre Market Place in Manhattan. Living directly across the street from the old Police Headquarters, the freelance crime photographer had quick access to the activities of the police, and he often could get simple shots of suspects just by walking out his front door. While this area of Lower Manhattan has changed a great deal since Weegee's time, especially since the police long ago relocated their headquarters further downtown, the neighborhood around Centre Market Street makes a good destination for a walk.

Centre Market Place. #5, the taller building in the middle, is where Weegee lived
in the 1930s and 1940s. The building has been gutted and renovated.
The original front facade was replaced.

corner of Centre Market Place and Grand.
Centre Market Place is only one block long.

Weegee's apartment building at 5 Centre Market Place was gutted and renovated several years back, along with numbers 1, 2, and 4. (see the article "BIG DEAL; Found Treasures From All Over To Adorn Redone Town Houses" from September 26, 2004 in The New York Times). Now a rather post-modern looking townhouse and no longer a worn-looking tenement building, the current structure makes it difficult to imagine Weegee living in humble circumstances there. Using information from a photograph, the ICP exhibit attempts to do just that by recreating the interior of Weegee's apartment.

recreation of Weegee's apartment on Centre Street on exhibit at the ICP.

Several of Weegee's crime photos feature the Police Headquarters across the street at 240 Centre Street, most notably the windows protected by curvy iron bars. For example, look at the first picture from the previous post. And for comparison, here's the side of the building facing Weegee's old apartment building.

the east side of the old Police Headquarters on Centre Market Place

The old Police Headquarters, west side, looking south. City Hall is in the distance.

The Police Headquarters is grand. Converted to residential use in 1988, the Renaissance Revival building dates from 1905-1909 and is characterized by the AIA Guide to New York City as designed "in the manner of a French hotel de ville (town hall)." Truly one of the city's most elegant buildings, the old Police Headquarters must have impressed many a beat cop and smalltime mobster. The opening of the building in 1909 subsequently drew several crime-oriented businesses to the neighborhood - gun shops, bail bondsmen, police diners, and so forth.

Petrosino Square is to the north of Centre Market Place.
Cleveland Place is the street to the left; Lafayette Street to the right.
The view is toward the south.

The intersection of Centre Market Place and Grand Street, looking east.

Nearby, Little Italy still hangs in there. Mulberry Street, just south of Grand Street.

The surrounding neighborhood in 2012 currently sits in the crossroads of Little Italy, an expanding Chinatown, and the haute bourgeois bohemian area known as Nolita (north of Little Italy). It's proximate to the western edge of Soho. The area features many good restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and shops, and the mix of architecture makes for an entertaining walk. Personal favorites include La Esquina for Mexican food and the Landmark Coffee Shop for standard breakfast fare. Be sure to check out what's happening at the Storefront for Art and Architecture on Kenmare Street.

View Weegee's Street in a larger map

In 1947 Weegee moved to Hollywood. He remained there until 1952 and then returned to New York. When he was diagnosed with diabetes in 1957 he moved in with his companion, Wilma Wilcox, at her place on W. 47th Street. He died in New York on December 26, 1968. He was 69. (see Weegee's chronology on the ICP site.)

In 1973 the NYPD moved its headquarters a mile south to 1 Police Plaza near City Hall.

Street pictures by Walking Off the Big Apple from January 24 and 25, 2012. Picture of Weegee's apartment by Walking Off the Big Apple from the press preview, January 19, 2012.

Weegee CSI

2012-01-25T08:02:00.004-05:00

Leave it to Weegee (1899—1968), our flashbulb-flashing late night freelance crime photographer of New York's most noir era, to make a picture of Macy's balloon of Santa Claus look like a crime victim. But there he's done it. On November 21, 1941, in the wee hours of pre-parade inflation, Weegee climbed to a high vantage point on a nearby building and snapped the happy floating symbol of the holidays stretched out flat, bloated, and face up, open eyes looking dead as it hovers over a New York street. The image is only one of at least a hundred unexpected photographs by the inventive photographer, and several with real dead bodies, displayed in a stunning new exhibit titled Weegee: Murder Is My Business at the International Center of Photography.

Weegee, Line-Up for Night Court, ca. 1941. © Weegee/International Center of Photography.

Medium: Gelatin silver print

Weegee's brand of tabloid journalism during the years 1935 and 1946, the focus of the exhibit, casts him in a singular role as the city's biggest photo hustler on the shady late night streets. Living on the Lower East Side in a small flat on the one-block long Centre Market Place directly across from Police Headquarters, Weegee was privy to the first reports of a fresh crime scene, allowing him to quickly grab his 4 x 5 Speed Graphic press camera and be among the first to arrive. The resulting photographs often dramatized a sequence of street tableaus in black and white - a victim bleeding on the street corner, the nonchalant witnesses, the shocked face of a relative arriving by motor car. After taking the pictures, Weegee went back to Police Headquarters and read the early file reports, just so he could properly write his captions.

Beyond the crime scenes, Weegee (b. Arthur Fellig) took his camera to movie theaters, parades, the theater district, tenement houses, and beaches. When he was not snapping photos of victims and perps, he was training his eye on the everyday spectacle of the city. The "Naked City," the title of his first collection of photographs from 1945, pulls back the illusion of New York movie fantasy to reveal and illuminate vulnerable moments in the life of a sleep-deprived city. Weegee stays up through the morning to witness the absurd spectacles. Naked City opens with Weegee's prose description of a Sunday morning in the city, a peaceful time with "no traffic…and no crime either," followed by his photographs of early morning scenes. These include children sleeping on the fire escapes of tenement houses, sailors passed out in an open air canteen, and homeless curled up on the streets. Not strictly tabloid news images, these images also point to the social uses of photography, the kind practiced by New York's Photo League.

Weegee, [Installation view of "Weegee: Murder Is My Business" at the Photo League, New

York], 1941. © Weegee/International Center of Photography.

Medium: Gelatin silver print

The title of the exhibit at ICP takes its title from the exhibit Weegee self-curated at the Photo League in 1941, and a partial reconstruction of the original show is here among the many artifacts that contextualize Weegee's photography. ICP Chief Curator Brian Wallis has chosen to highlight a particularly fascinating time in the history of photography, an era when working stiff newspaper photographers began to feel threatened by photojournalists. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, photographers like Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Henri Cartier-Bresson ushered in a new photo age with the publishing of fabulous magazines. The Photo League included many well-known members of the so-called "golden age" of photojournalism. Weegee not only earned a relationship to all the working types of his photo peers, but he may have been one of the most influential. His stark images of New Yorkers prefigure the work of Lisette Model and Diane Arbus.

While he straddled the line between news photography and a socially aware form of photojournalism, Weegee did not seem to suffer an artistic identity crisis. He was fully in charge of his own PR and successful in creating his own mystique. The publication of Naked City made him famous. To further understand the mind and method of a photographer on the verge, visitors to the ICP will see a recreation of Weegee's humble bedroom. There - the bedside police radio scanner, the newspaper clippings on the wall, the Life magazine on the bed, the flash camera on the floor, and the typewriter on the desk - the evidence adds up. Weegee was just not a witness to New York in these years of transition. He took the first shot.

Images above courtesy International Center of Photography.

More information:
Weegee: Murder Is My Business
International Center of Photography
through September 2, 2012
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street

Hours of ICP:
Tuesday–Wednesday: 10:00 am–6:00 pm 
Thursday–Friday: 10:00 am–8:00 pm 
Saturday–Sunday: 10:00 am–6:00 pm
Closed: Mondays

Next on Walking Off the Big Apple: A Walk to Weegee's Street: Centre Market Place.

A Winter Walk in Central Park: A Slideshow and Map

2012-01-21T16:33:00.000-05:00

View A Winter Walk in Central Park in a larger map

Images from the late morning of January 21, 2012.

The First Winter Snow at First Light

2012-01-21T09:08:00.000-05:00

Walking in a newly fallen snow during the first hour of daylight is a great privilege for those of us who inhabit the world of city morning larks.

Some of us are by nature "morning people." Others among us, perhaps more partisan to late nights, venture out into the dawn only at the insistence of their dog companion.

Still others may enjoy looking at the beauty of the city in its quiet and undisturbed state and then go back to bed. The droning sound of snowplows will eventually wake them up. It's nice to catch the city sleeping. It's not known for sleeping.

Not everyone likes to wake up to see a newly fallen snow in New York City, while others like the sight of the snowflakes falling past their windows and gathering on the sidewalks below.

An early morning snow often reveals the postcard-perfect city, timeless images held briefly in silence and solitude. Hurry back home now, fellow morning larks. As we know, this timeless city will soon melt away.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from the morning of January 21, 2012. Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village.

For Contemporary New York, A TV Program of Interest

2012-01-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Like the Machine that identifies the next victim or perpetrator, the CBS drama Person of Interest seems to be the result of a complex algorithm spewed out by a mischievous and clever TV series generator. Take a basic New York detective drama set in New York City, with its variety of gritty and glamorous street locales, add a handsome, martial arts-kicking ex-CIA agent and an intense, meticulous billionaire software engineer, and overlay the show with post-911 surveillance visualizations. Make the storylines complicated by often confusing the good guys with the bad guys, ratchet up the "gotcha" moments, and throw in funny one-liners.

To play the dynamic duo, this hypothetical TV series generator has matched the actor that played Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ (Jim Caviezel) with the mysterious leader of "The Others" in Lost (Michael Emerson). But let's pull the curtain back right away to acknowledge that the creator of this intriguing new series is not a machine but the work of one Jonathan Nolan. With his brother Christopher, Nolan wrote the critically acclaimed film The Dark Knight (2008) and the forthcoming The Dark Knight Rises (2012). While the tone and emphasis of Person of Interest differs from these Batman movies, we can identify at least one common thread.

"Witness" -- The Machine identifies a school teacher who witnessed a mob hit as their next POI and Reese (Jim Caviezel, left) and Finch (Michael Emerson, right) rush to save his life, on PERSON OF INTEREST, Thursday, Nov. 3 (9:00 - 10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Photo: John P. Filo/CBS ©2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved

While millions of New Yorkers walk the streets and go about our daily business, someone is up there watching over us, either on a computer screen or through a high-tech zoom-lens digital camera.

Most often, the everyday surveillance in New York is conducted via a myriad of surveillance cameras. These camera eyes watch our moves as we enter bank lobbies, stroll through department stores, sit on park benches (and not just in Zuccotti Park), check in at security checkpoints in thousands of lobbies, and catch our boats and trains. Our images are captured and archived. As individuals, we are also culpable in creating this vast visual jigsaw of information, snapping thousands upon thousands of images of the city every single day and then uploading them for all the world, and authorities, to see. We help matters along by tagging the identity of our friends in our public pictures.

The dramatic anxiety of Person of Interest centers on who controls an advanced technology that can adequately predict crimes before they happen. While the ex-military runaway Reese, for reasons he deems "complicated," steps in to quickly check out the person of interest, his boss Finch, who manifests afflictions while walking, prefers to engage in research via computer. Finch is especially worried about the Machine he has created, vigilant that the information does not fall into the hands of bad guys.

screengrab from opening title sequence of Person of Interest. Union Square.

A pair of NYPD detectives also play roles in the drama. Detective Fusco (Kevin Chapman) serves as their nervous informant inside the police force, while Detective Carter (Taraji P. Henson) wearily follows our two mysterious heroes as they spread their vigilante justice. Recent news reports (see TV Guide of January 12, 2012) indicate, at the behest of CBS executives, Carter will soon make the duo into a trio. More curious will be the question of whether or not the Machine, now incapable of moral judgment, develops a higher level of artificial intelligence. Imagine a HAL9000 in the New York of 2012.

"The Fix" -- Reese (Jim Caviezel, left) is captivated by and Finch (Michael Emerson, right) is wary of their newest POI - a beautiful, shrewd and remarkably resourceful woman, on PERSON OF INTEREST, Thursday, October 27 (9:00 - 10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Photo: Nicole Rivelli/Warner Bros. © 2011 Warner Bros. Television. All Rights Reserved.

Like many of the New York crime series before it, especially the Law & Order franchise, Person of Interest can also be viewed simply as a dramatic travelogue of the city. The opening title sequence visualizes the machine processing images of individuals as they pass through the Washington Square Arch, Union Square, and other locations, and there's a nice shot of Reese and Finch strolling the Brooklyn Promenade. Less glamorous locales have also served as backdrop and context, such as Brighton Beach, although rather demonized in this instance, in a clever episode titled "Witness." Some key sequences show the picturesque voyage of the new East River Ferry as it transports our heroes and perps pass the Brooklyn Bridge toward Pier 11 in Manhattan. For those unfamiliar with this locale, this is the East River pier that serves Wall Street.

One common question of Batman and Person of Interest may be this: are the citizens of Gotham City/New York City even capable of self-governance, or must they always depend on the interventions of a billionaire watching over them from on high?

Person of Interest airs on CBS, Thursdays 8 CT/9 ET. Several episodes are available online on the show's page.

When Walking Becomes Marching: Posts for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

2012-01-16T07:02:00.002-05:00

(Versions of these posts were originally published here in January of 2010 and January of 2008.)

• When Walking Becomes Marching

On March 12, 1930, when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) set out on his 240-mile march to the seaside town of Dandi to protest the British tax on salt, he was joined by 78 followers. As the walk continued and the word spread of his unconventional means of protest, thousands more joined in the nonviolent protest against the injustices of colonialism. By the time he arrived on April 5, Gandhi had attracted the attention of the whole world.

Marches and walks as a form of demonstration were not new, finding precedents in cities in the 19th century. Years before the March on Washington in 1963, civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph and others had proposed a march on Washington in 1941 to protest discrimination in the war industries. The march was called off after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation pledging fairness. Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the historic event of August 28, 1963 when an estimated quarter of a million people took part in the walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. That walk, in terms of distance, was not long. It was the symbolism that mattered. The 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery in March of 1965 proved to be more physically difficult.

By 1966, challenges to the strategy of nonviolence emerged within the civil rights community. Responding to the calls for more direct confrontations, King articulated the effectiveness of the marches and boycotts. In the 1966 essay, "Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom," he writes about the power of marching:

"The power of the nonviolent march is indeed a mystery. It is always surprising that a few hundred Negroes marching can produce such a reaction across the nation. When marches are carefully organized around well-defined issues, they represent the power with Victor Hugo phrased as the most powerful force in the world, "an idea whose time has come." Marching feet announce that time has come for a given idea. When the idea is a sound one, the cause is a just one, and the demonstration a righteous one, change will be forthcoming. "

In other words, walking for justice is much more than a solitary stroll.

Image: The statue of Gandhi in the southwest corner of Union Square Park was presented to the city by the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation and dedicated October 2, 1986. The bronze sculpture is by Kantilal B. Patel.

• "Walks Singing": The Selma to Montgomery March, March 21-25, 1965

The distance from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, the state capital, is about 54 miles. When marchers assembled for the third attempt to make the walk in support of voting rights with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in March of 1965 - the first had met with state-supported violence at the Pettus Bridge and the second stopped by court order - several participants were not fully prepared for four days of walking 12 miles per day and sleeping in tents on the roadside at night. But conviction will overcome these kind of obstacles.

Thousands of people flew into Selma and Montgomery to assist with the march and to give whatever aid they could. The march itself had been limited to three hundred participants at any time. Among the entertainers who attended a rally on the fourth night of the march were Shelley Winters, Tony Perkins, Tony Bennett, Nina Simone, Dick Gregory, Sammy Davis, Jr., Mike Nichols and Elaine May. On this last full night of the march, the last before the final miles into Montgomery the following day, many of the marchers started falling ill from exhaustion.

Journalist Renata Adler, in her enthralling account of the march, "Letter From Selma," for April 10, 1965 issue of The New Yorker, described the scene:

On its fourth night, the march began to look first like a football rally, then like a carnival and a hootenanny, and finally like something dangerously close to a hysterical mob...Word got out that the doctors on the march had treated several cases of strep throat, two of pneumonia, one of advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, and one of epilepsy, and because of the number and variety of sick and handicapped who had made the march a macabre new joke began to go the rounds: "What has five hundred and ninety-nine legs, five hundred and ninety-eight eyes, an indeterminate number of germs, and walks singing? The march from Selma."

According to Adler, at the staged camp entertainment on Wednesday night, "A number of girls in the crowd collapsed and, because there was no other lighted space, had to be carried onstage, where Miss Winters did her best to minister them."

The march from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights laid the foundation for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Credit for advancing this particular piece of legislation needs to shared with hundreds of exhausted walkers, the thousands that traveled to Alabama to lend their support and a handful of gutsy entertainers.

Image: Photograph by Peter Pettus. Modern gelatin silver reprint from 1965 negative. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (30)

See the website for the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights Trail in Alabama.

• The April 15, 1967 Antiwar March from Central Park to the United Nations

Organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the antiwar march from Central Park to the United Nations on April 15, 1967 was among the largest antiwar marches in New York history. Though estimates widely vary from 100,000 to 400,000 in attendance that day, participants included a broad coalition of civil rights activists, among them Martin Luther King, Jr., and an ideological spectrum of antiwar activists.

After assembling in Central Park for a peace fair, speeches and performances, the marchers walked down Fifth Avenue and then made their way east to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at the United Nations. Though city officials worried about violence and mayhem, the march was peaceful, and the five people arrested belonged to the group of protesters who were opposed to the march.

The following newsreel account reveals the usual establishment sarcasm that's directed toward the protesters. In my opinion, marching with others for a just cause is a fine way to walk off the Big Apple.

Resources and Related Links

• Time Out New York has a list of many events in New York City commemorating the holiday in 2012.

• There's also a OWS-planned rally and march in Brooklyn.

• "Introduction to special issue: "the civil rights movement in New York City" from the Free Library provides an excellent overview of the key ideas and events.

• The city's official website, NYC.gov, features the page Fighting for Justice: New York Voices of the Civil Rights Movement.

• SoulofAmerica.com, a website for Black Cultural Travel, has a page with a summary of the civil rights movement in New York.

• This November 2009 article from the New York Times City Room, "Two Harlem Streets Named for Civil Rights Leaders" describes the New York connections of Randolph and W. E. B. DuBois.

4 World Trade Center Comes into View; and A Walk on John Street

2012-01-11T08:22:00.002-05:00

While walking around the city this month or while visiting friends with lofty views, it's easy to spot the soaring tower of 1 World Trade Center in the skyline of Lower Manhattan. The steel structure of this tallest of the World Trade Center buildings has now surpassed ninety floors, and workers have completed the facade more than half way up. 1WTC has been particularly showy at night during the holiday season, festooned with multicolor lights twinkling all the way to the sky. But walk to a different street - for example, Greene Street in Soho or even Fifth Avenue in the 40s - and look south, and the tower of 4 World Trade Center comes into play on the horizon.

Looking south on Greene Street in Soho. At the end - 4WTC.

Eventually rising to 72 stories, this minimalist work at 150 Greenwich Street by architect Fumihiko Maki, the recipient of the 1994 Pritzker Prize, will eventually become just as an important part of the visual and social landscape as the other nearby skyscrapers. As the building slowly slips into our peripheral city vision, 4WTC is worthy of our attention.

Zoom picture of Fifth Avenue, looking south. Near 42nd Street and the New York Public Library.
The building on the horizon is 4WTC, now under construction.

Located at the southeast corner of the World Trade Center site, 4WTC will feature 1.8 million square feet of office space on 53 floors and 146,000 of retail on five floors near or below ground level. (see sources at end of this section.) The building very nearly stalled over financing issues. This past fall, Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority issued bonds to complete the building, scheduled to open in 2013. The Port Authority has signed on to move its main headquarters to the tower. While 1WTC's height make it "a proud and soaring thing," to use Louis Sullivan's words, 4WTC's geometrical configurations - the bottom half shaped as a parallelogram and the top floors as a trapezoid - will translate into a bulkier appearance from many viewpoints on the street.

4 WTC, 150 Greenwich Street, up close.

While 4WTC's future seems clearer, the construction schedule for 2WTC and 3WTC, the ones designed by Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, respectively, depends on the success of securing tenants. The 2WTC by Foster, with its sloping diagonal roofs and illusion of four tightly bonded towers, would have been the second tallest building in the city after its neighbor 1WTC and one of the most distinctive in the skyline. The building will be finished to street level this year, but its future is up in the air. In other words, the construction schedule of these two towers depends on market conditions. As the year begins, only 1WTC and 4 WTC are done deals.

For further reading:

For more on the rebuilding projects in Lower Manhattan, consult the website, Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center.

To learn more about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, visit the official site.

See website for Maki and Associates for more about the architect.

A Walk on John Street

A walk on John Street, looking back at the WTC site.

The previous post on this site featured another new project in Lower Manhattan, Pier 15 of the East River Waterfront Promenade, along with the suggestion to walk there via John Street. While the World Trade Center and the pier offer views of the new city, John Street reveals a combination of the old, the recent past, and the new. The narrow street is currently lined with old-fashioned convenient stores, everyday diners, new drugstores, and a mix of Beaux Arts, mid-century modern, and older buildings. Several new developments signify the area's residential renaissance, including 99 John Deco lofts, a condo development inside a repurposed office building from 1933 and visited by WOTBA during this past OHNY.

John Street United Methodist Church, 44 John Street. 1841.

No more is this time-challenged mixture on the street apparent than by a visit to John Street United Methodist Church and its little side park. The church here, built in 1841, is the third one built by the congregation, making it the oldest Methodist congregation in the United States. Next to this appealing church, situated close to the street near the intersection of John and Dutch Street, sits a small courtyard. Venture in the space to visit the small sculpted bust of John Wesley. With his back against a relentless office tower wall, the venerable minister seems to be trapped inside a dystopian urban nightmare.

bust of John Wesley in the church's small urban park

The building trapping Wesley is known by its address as 33 Maiden Lane, designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee and built in 1984. Check out the cool "street" within the building that provides access to the Fulton Street subway. In other developments near here, please note, too, that a 21-story hotel is planned for a site between Broadway and Nassau Streets at 24 John Street.

interior "street" at 33 Maiden Lane.

At the end of the street near the water, John takes a playful turn with the "Imagination Playground." Beyond, we see the Seaport. And, finally, needing to take a break from our old and new urban canyons, we finally see boats and piers and the East River and the sky.

Imagination Playground

John Street ends at the South Street Seaport.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

Further reading: Website for John Street Church.

View East River Waterfront Esplanade Pier 15 in a larger map

A New Year, A New Place to Walk: Pier 15 on the East River Waterfront Esplanade

2012-01-07T11:16:00.003-05:00

Perfect for this surprisingly warm winter day in New York City, with a daytime high expected near 57°F by the afternoon, I have a new place for us to walk. It's Pier 15 on the East River Waterfront Esplanade. Find it on the water's edge at the end of John Street, directly south of the commercial Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport. It's immediately south of the historic boats.

Now in its "soft opening," according to this page on LowerManhattan.info, with an official opening scheduled for the spring, this two-level pier is agreeably sleek and modern in appearance. Pier 15 affords yet new perspectives of the East River, the bridges, Brooklyn across the way, and the changing skyline of Lower Manhattan. It's also a great place to catch an exceptional sunset.

It's good to see developments along the East River catch up to the Hudson River's recent improvements. The East River, once mighty in Walt Whitman's heyday, became much maligned over the twentieth century. While landscape painters flocked to the west side to celebrate the Hudson's natural beauty, the East River got mixed up with the Dead End Kids and crime dramas. (Read more at the post, "Tentative Steps along the East River Park Promenade" from this time last year. January 19, 2011.)

View East River Waterfront Esplanade Pier 15 in a larger map

The restoration of ferry service is also part of a resurgence of the East River as a connecting point between Brooklyn and Manhattan. We're also witnessing the larger picture of urban development in New York - a complete transformation of the piers as places of work to restorative places of leisure.

John Street provides a pleasurable means of getting there on foot. The street holds its own surprises and is featured in this follow-up post.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from the afternoon of January 6, 2012.

Walking Off the New Year's Resolutions: Exploring New York City on Foot

2012-01-04T07:30:00.005-05:00

"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it." - Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, Part 1: Autobiographical, 1829--1848, p. 412

As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) observed, cultivating the habit of walking can lead to several beneficial outcomes. Walking can help stave off illnesses, inspire new thoughts, and resolve personal difficulties. Modern research studies continue to confirm what the 19th century philosopher knew from experience. We know now that, in many cases, this modest and inexpensive form of exercise can lower anxiety, improve the mood, make for better sleep, and reduce the risk of dementia.

Let's add another important benefit of walking. In those places where we have remnants of an older pre-automobile pedestrian culture and where we're building new paths and plazas - that's our city, fellow New Yorkers - walking is still the best way to explore the landscape. Kierkegaard himself did not undertake walks just to get in better physical shape or develop a healthier frame of mind. He was checking out what was happening in his native Copenhagen.* Exercise can often seem like a drag, but not if it can be combined with a little old-fashioned socializing and sightseeing.

Instead of making a New Year's resolution to get in shape, why not make a resolution to see more of the city? Beyond the many opportunities to appreciate a picturesque urban scene or criticize an ugly development, exploring the city allows us to witness changes in the society and engages us in the welfare of the community. For those of us who appreciate what New York has to offer, the habit of walking invites us to return to familiar places but also the opportunity to travel outside the normal zones of comfort. Often, the familiar place turns out disappointing while the new place seems more exciting.

• Lesson: This sounds counter-intuitive, but often I get in better shape when I use the subway. Why is this? "It's the stairs, stupid," I say to myself. Walking up and down a long flight of subway stairs, as most New Yorkers know, can involve a strenuous effort. Walking uptown in Manhattan on a flat terrain is easy, but walking the stairs in the 5th Avenue stop of the E train (the one across from MoMA), for example, when the escalator is broken, translates into serious unplanned exercise.

• Activity: Living in northern climates makes this sort of commitment to physical exploration rather challenging. Flurries are in the air. The wind picks up, and the wind chill dips to near zero. We have options. Explore the vast indoor areas of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum, or Grand Central Terminal. Beside their stunning architecture, what else do these great NYC public institutions have in common? They all have awesome stairs.

Let the spirit of adventure take charge. Sometimes, just getting out of the house or apartment and into fresh air may be enough to rekindle a curiosity about the world. The fitness goals will take care of themselves. Modest weight loss may ensue (I'm not promising anything), provided the walks are accompanied by some concerted effort to control pastry and/or beer consumption.

• Lesson: Notice that Kierkegaard did not write, "Every day I walk off all the wonderful Danish pastry I consumed at breakfast." The sorry truth is that walking doesn't burn as many calories as cross-country skiing or running, so it's necessary to reassess a desire for "the Danish."

To enjoy the health benefits of walking, pick up the pace and walk with some deliberation, as if rushing to meet a person for an appointment or to catch the next train. A person weighing 150 pounds walking a moderate pace of 2.5 mph on a flat urban sidewalk burns approximately 204 calories an hour. (This section was originally posted on this site as "How to Walk Off a Pastrami Sandwich in New York City.")

Smaller people tend to burn less calories, and big people burn more, but other factors must be considered such as age, shape, and overall body composition. We can use calculators to get a rough idea. A caramel frappuccino with skim milk has about 167 calories in it, so for a trim person of 125 pounds, it would take nearly an hour to walk that off.

New York Food, Calories, and Distance Between New York Sites to Walk It Off

Using www.gmap-pedometer.com, I've calculated the necessary distance to walk off various New York favorite foods by connecting a walk between two New York sites or landmarks.

• slice of good New York pizza (350 cal) = Morgan Library & Museum (Madison Ave. & 36th Street) to Cooper-Hewitt Museum (5th Ave. and E. 91st St.)

• cafe latte grande (260 cal) = Walk once around the perimeter of Governors Island (2.1 miles)

• bagel (320 cal) = Sheridan Square (in the Village) to Lincoln Center

• Little cheeseburger (550 cal) = Meatpacking District (near W. 13th St.) to Cathedral of St. John the Divine (W. 112th St.). Wow. That's far.

• 1 famous frankfurter (297 cal) = St. Patrick's Cathedral to Museum of the City of New York

• 1/2 cup gelato (210 cal) = Washington Square Arch (Village) to New York Public Library (42nd St.)

• chocolate croissant (340 cal) = Essex Street Market (Lower East Side) to Sutton Place (East Side, near E. 55th St.)

• old fashioned cake donut (280 cal) = City Hall, over the Brooklyn Bridge, to Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn.

• pad thai (380 cal) = The Pond in Central Park (near 59th and 5th) to Marcus Garvey Park (Harlem)

• black and white cookie (430 cal) = Battery Park (tip of Manhattan) to the Empire State Building (34th St.)

• 1 slice standard NY cheesecake (580 cal) = Battery Park to the Plaza Hotel (59th and 5th Ave.)

• pastrami sandwich (1010 cal) = Battery Park to Audubon Terrace. In other words, the lower tip of Manhattan to W. 155th Street.

• New York bakery cupcake (389 cal) = Brooklyn Bridge Park to the Brooklyn Public Library.

Walking off a big apple is relatively easy. One apple measuring 3 1/4 in diameter has about 116 calories. A brisk walk of 3.5 mph should take care of that apple in about 30 minutes.

Activity: Find places in New York with gym-like features. Fort Tryon Park is a good example, a pretty park with challenging terrain and one that includes The Cloisters, the Met's fine medieval branch.

What about forgetting punishing exercise for a minute and just deciding to stroll each day? Visit a new neighborhood, a place with a great view, or just a familiar place. It doesn't even need to be planned.

• Lesson: Based on experience, a walk of around 2.5 miles is ideal, the kind of fast stroll that can be accomplished in 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the pace. Practice interval walking. The idea of interval walking - alternating high speed bursts with slower strolls - has been touted by many fitness experts as a way to rev up metabolism and burn calories. Walking fast for several blocks does help in warming up the cold winter body, and walking slow for a few blocks affords the occasion to look around and appreciate the scenes of the city. The good news is that almost all walking in New York is interval walking - running to beat the stop sign at the crosswalks, racing ahead to pass slow pedestrians, slowing down to look at store windows.

• Activity: Instead of filling in a diet and exercise journal, make a travel journal with notes, drawings, and photographs of the walks. It will be much prettier than a journal showing repetitive numbers indicating you've reached a plateau. Imagine nice big printed-out photos of your walk on the Brooklyn Bridge or through a snowy Central Park.

Trying to lose weight is really frustrating, especially if you've already lost weight. If you haven't seen this yet, please read Tara Parker-Pope's recent cover story, "The Fat Trap," in The New York Times Magazine (December 28, 2011). She writes of the body's transformation after weight loss, "How long this state lasts isn’t known, but preliminary research at Columbia suggests that for as many as six years after weight loss, the body continues to defend the old, higher weight by burning off far fewer calories than would be expected."

• Conclusion: Experience the city through walking. The fitness goals will be accomplished, but the main goal would be to reconnect with the city as one of its most spirited citizens, to live life larger but without such large portions.

* Read more at the essay "In the Tidy City of the World's Most Anxious Man" by Stephen Metcalf. The New York Times. April 1, 2007.

The New Year in New York City, 19th Century Style: Calling on New Year's Day

2011-12-31T09:09:00.003-05:00

Before the 1890s, when New Year's Eve celebrations became the chief means to welcome the new year, New Yorkers spend most of their time, energy, and money on the traditional custom of visiting private homes on New Year's Day.* These extravagant all-day affairs involved the well-established men of New York City, or those with social aspirations, walking about the fashionable neighborhoods to pay courtly visits to fashionable well-heeled New York women. The women - wives, mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and their staffs - spent days preparing for the visits, fixing themselves up and laying out vast spreads of food and spirits upon tables and sidebars. It wasn't unusual for a group of men to visit sixty or seventy visits from morning to night. You can imagine their condition by the end of the day. I'd hate to host the last reception.

The pressure was on. If you didn't show up at a house on New Year's Day, it meant that you must not think much of the friendship. Imagine having to visit all your Facebook friends in person during the course of one day.

The early Dutch settlers celebrated New Year's Eve with their European traditions, but even so, the reception of "callers" on New Year's Day took on great significance.

The punch sounds good -

- above, from Sunshine and shadow in New York , 1868

- above, from The life of Samuel Lover, R. H. A.: artistic, literary, and musical, with selections from his unpublished papers and correspondence, Volume 2. H. S. King & Co., 1874

- above, from three years in north america by james stuart, esq. 1833

In the years after the Civil War, many people grew tired of the New Year's Day traditions. A woman wrote to The Nation to complain of being "fatigued to death."

"A lady friend of The Nation, who writes this journal her felicitations for the New Year, and makes us a number of compliments on our manifest superiority to contemporaries (we suppress the compliments), complains of a feeling of disgust and dissatisfaction with the manner in which, obediently to a cruel law of custom, her first day of 1866 was passed. Her letter is dated the 2d, and breathes, from the rarifled atmosphere of Madison Avenue, sentiments of the most just and laudable despair for the degradation of the beautiful old Manhattan usage of New Year's visits into an absurd riot of calls, with all the wild excess of the carnival and none of its picturesqueness. She writes, in fact, fatigued to death with the social drudgery of the previous day, but resolved in spite of her fatigue not to let the folly pass her vehement protest. She is so weary of it, she confesses, that would be willing to have New Year's Day hereafter come only once a century. "

- above, The Nation, Volume 2, 1866.

The men also got tired of walking so much. Lesson: don't wear new shoes on a day like this. Ever.

- above, "The demise of New Year's Day celebrations." Lippincott's monthly magazine, Volume 55 J. B. Lippincott Co., 1894.

Obviously, it became much easier on everyone to just show up in Times Square on New Year's Eve.

• Source: Displaying women: spectacles of leisure in Edith Wharton's New York by Maureen E. Montgomery, Psychology Press, 1998

The Year in Review: Walking off the Big Apple's Top New York Stories from 2011

2011-12-27T17:23:00.010-05:00

Walking around New York City often involves bearing witness to many headline news stories. As a pedestrian journalist, I often report on the everyday life in New York City, but on occasion I like to report, if not without the occasional bias of an opinionated blogger, on the bigger stories as they unfold. The following 10 events or developments from 2011 stood out from the pack.

10. East River Ferry

Back in the Gilded Age, ferry service was a regular thing on the East River, but the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 put many of the ferries out of service. Beginning in June of 2011, the NY Waterway's East River Ferry returned to the waters, inaugurating a commuter ferry service from Manhattan to stops in Brooklyn and one in Queens. The service is a testament to the need for alternative transportation in the city.

9. De Kooning Retrospective at MoMA

Two hundred works by the influential postwar artist, almost all breathtaking in ambition and color, made this critically acclaimed retrospective richly rewarding. (through January 9, 2012)

8. High Line, Section 2

The section of the High Line north to W. 30th Street opened to the public in June, providing intimate views of adjacent old and contemporary buildings, a patch of lawn, and imaginative plantings along the way. One of the best places to walk the tracks in all of America.

7. Snowiest January Ever

Beginning in late December of 2009, the city experienced snow after snow after snow. The Mayor's team didn't handle the first snow well at all, prompting a review of when to call a snow emergency. After the blizzard of January 25-27, 19 inches of snow were measured in Central Park.

6. Sleep No More

Sleepwalking is a form of walking, of course, and in addition to Lady Macbeth's famous walk, almost anyone who has seen Punchdrunk Theater's game changing Macbeth-film noir mashup at the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea may still think it was all a dream. This one, however, they remember.

5. The Arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn

The arrest and house imprisonment of a major French political figure seemed almost like a setup for an inevitable Law & Order episode. The house arrest "set" was too pretty - a comfy house at 153 Franklin.

4. NYC Evacuation Zones for Hurricane Irene

We learned about Zone A, a geographic designation that sounds like science fiction. As an improbable hurricane in late August approached New York City, the residents of Zone A were told to get to higher ground. As it turned out, the storm arrived in the city with a whimper. Residents upstate and in Vermont were not so lucky.

3. The World Trade Center at 10 Years; The 9/11 Memorial Opens

While the World Trade Center site seemed to languish for years, suddenly we have the startling sight of the towering One World Trade Center appearing from unexpected viewpoints in the city. After President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, thousands of people gathered at the site. The tenth year anniversary in September was marked with solemn remembrances and the opening of the 9/11 Memorial.

2. Gay Marriage

In dramatic fashion, on the night of June 24, 2011, lawmakers in Albany voted to legalize same-sex marriage in New York State. In the city, celebrators headed to Christopher Street and the Stonewall Inn. On Sunday, the celebration continued with a happy Gay Pride Parade. Many participants wore wedding veils.

1. Occupy Wall Street

Just when you thought that the bankers and financiers could get away with their spurious acts, expecting the public to act like docile sheep, a miracle happened in Zuccotti Park. The police came, and they were often rough, but no one was afraid.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple. Clicking on each title will link to the original post.

From the Arch and Back Again: A Nighttime Stroll to See the Holiday Lights

2011-12-21T06:52:00.002-05:00

Running around to complete holiday preparations is often so frantic that the idea of taking an extra leisurely walk for pleasure seems somewhat ridiculous, if not inefficient. Yet, taking this additional stroll, especially in a city known to produce stress, provides the means to walk off some of the excessive pressures of the holiday season. In addition to the benefits of unwinding an overly tight psyche, a restorative walk around the neighborhood can include the pleasures of the city draped in bright holiday colors. It's a nice change from our city uniform of browns, grays and blacks.

We begin at the Washington Square Arch, our little Paris-like monument in Greenwich Village's famous park. As a neighbor, I am proud of the Arch, the holiday tree, and the views of the Empire State Building, festooned in red and green, in the distance up Fifth Avenue at 34th Street.

Taxis veer south on Fifth Avenue toward its finale in the Village at the Arch.

New York would be hard to imagine without the beacon of the Empire State Building.

Strolling up the lower stretch of Fifth Avenue we encounter apartment buildings of some architectural distinction. A tree with red ornaments and enough white lights to cause a power failure decorates the lobby of Harvey Wiley Corbett's One Fifth Avenue, the neighborhood's Art Deco skyscraper.

The Empire State Building does present itself as a worthy landmark for the city. I mean - just look at this.

It's time to turn west on W. 10th Street. On one of the most beautiful blocks in New York, at least by daylight, a few residents have made the effort to decorate their stoops, windows, and doors.

Most Americans, dependent upon automobiles, typically drive around particular neighborhoods and street blocks to see the lights. In the city, we walk. I suppose it's possible to hail a taxi and give the driver directions to drive around to look at New York holiday lights at night, but I wouldn't advise it.

The visual hegemony of Christmas, and I am sorry I just typed that phrase, still insists that the holiday should conform to the landscape of the nineteenth century. Quaint New England villages or Dickens's London provide the standard. Actually, Greenwich Village, with its human-scale architecture, winding streets, and century's old townhouses, comes close to fulfilling holiday expectations.

Many famous people have lived along this block on W. 10th at one time or another: Mark Twain, Emma Lazarus, Sinclair Lewis, Emily Post, and Hart Crane.

Also Kahlil Gibran, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Thompson, Edward Albee.

Sean Parker, the founder of Napster and co-founder of Facebook, bought the house at 40 W. 10th St. Considering the aforementioned company, I guess he aspires to write a book or a play.

At the end of the quiet stroll along the intersection of W. 10th Street with 6th Avenue, we encounter our busy New Yorkers hurrying up and down the avenue sidewalks. A few friends who have lived in the city all their lives have remarked to me that this section along 6th Avenue near the Bigelow Pharmacy has basically looked the same for decades.

At Waverly Place, we turn east for the return to Washington Square. The scene at the Washington Square Hotel's restaurant looks cozy.

Ahhh, here we are back at the Arch. The tree looks majestic. It's been a nice walk. The two Washingtons, "Washington at War" on the left of the arch by Herman MacNeil (1916) and "Washington at Peace" on the right by Alexander Stirling Calder (1918), signal the end of yet another walk toward home.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Shopping Ladies' Mile in the Second Gilded Age: A Self-Guided Walk and Map

2011-12-16T07:31:00.001-05:00

Ladies' Mile, the term for the historic shopping district of New York City's Gilded Age in the late 19th century, continues as an important neighborhood for shopping. The boundaries of the designated historic district stretch roughly from W. 15th to W. 23rd Street, the area northwest of Union Square up to Madison Square. The previous post on New York City Holiday Shopping in the Gilded Age seemed to invite this obvious follow-up post and self-guided walk.

the former Lord & Taylor Dry Goods Store,
Broadway and 20th St. southwest corner

Many of the Beaux-Arts style store palaces built for New York's wealthy class of the former century are now repurposed for contemporary needs. These blocks on Broadway are particularly rich with the fancier French 19th century architectural styles, but check out the extraordinary current locations for stores like Bed, Bath & Beyond (620 Sixth Avenue) and Home Depot (40 W. 23rd St.)

View Shopping Ladies' Mile in the Second Gilded Age: A Self-Guided Walk and Map in a larger map

Comparing the past to the present, in general, Ladies' Mile fashion shopping has given way to home improvements. ABC Carpet & Home (Broadway and E. 19th St.) and Restoration Hardware (Broadway and E. 22nd St.) are within the district. During the 19th century, when the wealthiest families lived along these blocks of Fifth Avenue, Ladies' Mile was a place to see and be seen. Today, the emphasis is more utilitarian.

That's not to say that Ladies' Mile is no longer fashionable as a place to step out. Dining is particularly strong in this neighborhood, with established restaurants, bakeries, and bars.

originally Arnold Constable Dry Goods Store,
now ABC Carpet & Home, Broadway side near E. 19th St.

A suggested self-guided walk begins at the northwest corner of Union Square, the current location for the Andy Warhol Monument. Andy was an excellent shopper himself. In the fashion of the 19th century flâneur, stroll leisurely northward up to Madison Square. (Top hats and parasols would look nice.) Turn west at the Flatiron Building and walk over to 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas). Then turn south along 6th Avenue to the intersection of W. 16th. Complete the loop by walking back to Union Square, but be sure to veer into the inheritor of the district to check out some stores and watering holes. No rushing allowed, not even during the holidays.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

New York City Holiday Shopping: Online Artifacts from the Gilded Age

2011-12-14T07:23:00.005-05:00

Several commentators in the popular press have started comparing our own time to the Gilded Age, a term for the late 19th century decades in the United States that were marked by rapid industrialization, economic development, financial havoc, and extreme inequality between the rich and the poor. New York City was one of the most important economic and social centers of the era, a city where the wealthy industrialists built their mansions in Beaux-Arts opulence while the newly-arrived immigrant families crowded together in confined tenement structures.

Between these two groups, an expanding middle class grew with the founding of new manufacturing, commercial, and retail businesses, enterprises that would depend upon consumer spending habits. The popularization and commercialization of the Christmas holiday also rapidly grew during the 1880s and 1890s, with an emphasis in the city on the festive presentation of store windows and special marketing. Here, then, are a few documents that provide a glimpse into the holidays in New York City during the Gilded Age.

I've added the bold type to emphasize geographical locations in the city.

• "Broadway" by Richard Harding Davis. Illustrations by A. B. Frost. ‪Scribner's magazine, Volume 9‬, by Edward Livermore Burlingame, Making of America Project. Charles Scribners Sons, 1891.

Broadway, south of Grace Church. 1891.
Farther ahead is Union Square and the beginning of the fashionable Ladies' Mile.

"The Broadway side of Union Square is its richest and most picturesque. The great jewelry and silver-shops begin here, and private carriages line the curb in quadruple perfection in any plate - glass window with a sufficiently dark background to throw a reflection.

This is the part of Broadway where one should walk just before the Christmas holidays, if one wants to see it at its very best; when the windows offer richer and costlier bids to those of better taste than at any other season ; and when the women whom one passes have a thoroughbred air of comfort and home about them, and do not look as though they were altogether dependent on the street and shops for their entertainment. Those you meet further up look as though they regarded Broadway not as a straight line between two points, not as a thoroughfare, but as a promenade. But in the lower part there are groups of distinguished - looking women and beautiful girls with bunches of flowers at their waists, and a certain affectation of manishness in their dress that only makes their faces more feminine by contrast. "They carry themselves well," would be the first criticism of a stranger, and they have a frank look of interest in what is going on about them which could even be mistaken for boldness, but which really tends to show how certain of themselves they are."

• "New York City - What to See and How to See it.—Fourteenth and Grand Streets at Christmas Time." from The Weekly Statement, 1885, by The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. Vol. I. No. 19. Office: Nassau, Cedar and Liberty Streets. December 23, 1885. This selection includes a glimpse of Grand Street, then a province of new immigrants.

"The streets of a great city always full of novel and interesting sights are doubly so at the commencement of the holiday season.

Shopping for Christmas begins about the first of December, although the manufacturers and merchants have been preparing for it for months beforehand. During the last week in November many of the shop windows are carefully shaded by blinds to conceal the preparations going on inside for a grand display in December. Some of these spectacular displays are really magnificent exhibitions of mechanical skill and artistic beauty. One of the largest "notion" stores in the city, on Fourteenth street and Sixth avenue, has made its window exhibition at Christmas time a display of such exceeding beauty and wonder that children are brought for miles to see it, and early or late, wet or fine, a crowd of happy little ones, held in their mothers' or nurses' arms, may be found clapping their hands and exclaiming with joy at this bit of doll wonderland.

...The street is crowded with venders of Christmas cards "cheap," boughs of holly, branches of red bitter-sweet, wreaths, crosses and stars made of cedar, spruce and ground-pine brought from distant forests. They are sold by the dozens and yard, and the making of them has become an important business in many rural communities."

"Grand street is the great shopping street of East New Yorkers and Williamsburghers. It is not grand in the construction of its buildings, nor in the magnificence of their contents, but in the display of cheap old-fashioned goods, and the grand army of human beings from every part of the world that congregate on its side-walks.
...
The children in this quarter are also of a far different class from those uptown. Very few of these can boast of a white-aproned nurse; the babies are taken out to see the sights by sisters or brothers hardly older than themselves, and many of them never owned a pair of stockings to hang up for Santa Claus to fill. They know nothing of Christmas trees, except of the one at the Mission or those they see in the shop windows.

... The corner of Third avenue is the best starting-point for a visit to Grand street, the most interesting part of which extends East from Third avenue for several blocks, and the Third or Fourth avenue horse cars or the Third avenue Elevated railroad will take one there, from either up or down town."

• The Vanderbilt Mansions, from Illustrated New York: The Metropolis of To-Day (1888)

The area north of Madison Square Park was a highly-desired residential neighborhood for wealthy New Yorkers of the 1880s. The nearby shopping district, Ladies' Mile, catered to these patrons.

• Harper & Brothers' Holiday Books for 1885, The Critic, Volume 4

• The Grant Memoirs Published, from The Critic: an illustrated monthly review of literature, art, and life, Volume 7 By Jeannette Leonard Gilder, Joseph Benson Gilder. December 5, 1885. The sensational must-have book during the holidays in 1885 was Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, still considered one of the finest autobiographies in American history. Mark Twain served as the publisher of the memoirs, persuading the general to share his story. Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in the United States earlier in the year (February 1885, Charles l. Webster and Company.)

The first of the two volumes of the 'Personal Memoirs of Gen US Grant' was issued on Tuesday last. Wednesday's Tribune contained the following account of the beginning of the distribution of the 300,000 copies which Messrs Charles L Webster & Co declare have been 'placed:' ------

There was a running to and fro of book agents throughout the land yesterday The invincible 10,000 who have been invading the privacy of the home circle to chant the praises of General Grant's book received the fruit of their months of labor. In all that time they have been walking and talking on faith and hope alone for no advances were made by the publishers whose terms have been 'Cash down on the day of publication for every book delivered.' During the last hours of the day there was a steady stream of agents coming from the publishers offices in Union Square and Nassau Street. The lesser ones had their bundles of books under their arms the greater had their orders on the warehouses in Fourteenth Street, Astor Place, Mercer Street and other places where thousands of copies are stored away. Few copies reached the subscribers, the majority of the agents taking their stock home and getting ready to sally forth to day.

'We have about 140 agents herein the city and Brooklyn said one ot the publishers yesterday and they have disposed of from 15,000 to 20,000 books. Some of them have sold from 1200 to 1500 each Some have only succeeded in working off three or four copies The average of the best men is from 150 to 200 copies. We tried at first to divide the territory up among them but had to give up that attempt finally and let them fight for it among themselves. The most of our agents are men and above the usual class because until to day they have not been able to realize a cent on their work. Thus it took a certain amount of staying power to carry a man through. Our experience has been that men make the best agents except for selling worthless trash. Then a woman can hold her ground where a man would be kicked out of doors.'

• Calendar Shopping for the holidays, 1885. Selected text from The Critic. December 12, 1885. (Bold type added to highlight titles.) Calendars for the new year are popular in our own time, but they were also on the gift-giving lists of 1885. Several featured prominent American writers - James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Lowell and Alcott were still alive when the calendars were published; Emerson had died three years earlier.

"There is no dearth of calendars this winter 'with selections for every day in the year' 1886. Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co announce that the new Lowell Calendar, containing a striking portrait of the distinguished poet, critic and diplomatist, is entirely exhausted. Their A. D. T. Whitney Calendar, however, is still obtainable. It has a Kate Greenaway design of four little girls in quaint costumes, in which scarlet, yellow and pink are tastefully mingled. A slender garland of flowers unites the four figures and encircles the red panel in which is placed the tablet of selections. A scarlet, gold and white ornament forms the top of the decorative panel. The ground is of curved gold lines."
...
The Schiller Calendar (Troy: H. B. Nims & Co.) is in the form of a circular Japanese fan, the tablet being near the handle. The colored design covers the fan. It gives a landscape, with a decorative design of medallion portraits of Schiller and some of his characters at the left. The medallions are united by a blue ribbon and large flowers are placed on the lower part of the landscape.
...
Cupid's Calendar for 1886 (Estes & Lauriat), with verses selected by Kate Sanborn, is in the form of a heart, with a colored cover showing a Cupid on a ground of blue sky, and a gold border with red hearts. The selections are judiciously made. A gold arrow at the top of the heart forms a bar to hang it up by.
...
The Temperance Calendar, published by the Woman's Temperance Publishing Association, as a colored design giving a portrait of Miss Frances E. Willard, and reproductions of two famous pictures, the ' Madonna deila Seggiola' and 'Saint Margaret with the Dragon.'" The motto of the calendar is 'We wage our peaceful war for God and home and native land.'
...
The Louisa M. Alcott Calendar (Roberts Bros.) is gracefully designed in a decorative style and printed in black, brown and tawny yellow. A portrait of Miss Alcott, a view of the one-arch bridge at Concord, and one of the Alcott residence, lend interest to the decorative side of the calendar, while the quotations from Miss Alcott's writings given on the cards make it valuable in a literary way. The design of the Emerson Calendar (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is the same as that of last year, though the selections are new. It shows good decorative use of New England floral growth. The designs are in harmonious colors on a gold ground. A portrait of Emerson has a pine tree for a background. The decorative border of yellow violets and the head-band of pansies are very effective. "
...

• Typical Advertisement for the Holidays in the 1880s

The popular shopping district during New York's Gilded Age was Ladies' Mile,
the area northwest of Union Square. The company advertising at the top right of this page,
Arnold, Constable & Co. was one of NYC's first major department stores. The location on Broadway and 19th Street
is now ABC Carpet. Read more about Ladies' Mile in this post. Also, in 1885 Louis Tiffany (1848-1933) oversees a new company specializing in art glass, incorporating as the Tiffany Glass Company in December 1885.

Further reading on our Gilded Age, 2011:

• We Are the 99.9% by Paul Krugman. November 25, 2011.
• The New Gilded Age by Dante Atkins. Daily Kos. November 27, 2011.
• Lobbyist? No, Newt's a Gilded Age "friend" by Richard White. Politico. November 30, 2011.

Read the companion post on this website - Shopping Ladies' Mile in the Second Gilded Age: A Self-Guided Walk and Map.

Imagining Christmas: Washington Irving's Solitary Walk, and a Stroll from Clement Clarke Moore's Chelsea to O. Henry's Irving Place

2011-12-10T09:22:00.004-05:00

Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore, and O. Henry

(The following post includes material previously published on Walking Off the Big Apple, now gathered together around the virtual holiday hearth. - TT)

Many of the ways we think of Christmas, in most of its secular and popular forms - the chubby Santa and his reindeer, the newly fallen snow, the warm hearth donned with Christmas stockings, family and friends celebrating in cheer, can trace its roots to the pens of two New York native sons, Washington Irving (1783-1859) and Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), and to another popular storyteller who drifted to New York, William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), better known as O. Henry.

Washington Irving's Solitary Walk Through Christmas

"Stranger and sojourner as I am in the land,--though for me no social hearth may blaze, no hospitable roof throw open its doors, nor the warm grasp of friendship welcome me at the threshold,--yet I feel the influence of the season beaming into my soul from the happy looks of those around me." - Washington Irving

New York native and storyteller Washington Irving made Christmas an important holiday in the United States, reworking Dutch folk tales of Saint Nicholas to invent the jolly Santa Claus and publishing popular sketches of the time he spent Christmas in rural England with an aristocratic family.

A subtle and important aspect of Irving's writings about the holiday is how he approached a convivial family-oriented time of year as a homesick solitary man. The much loved and charming youngest child of a large New York merchant class family, Irving was pressed to study for the law though he loved literature and drawing. He and his brother Peter started writing the witty satirical history of New York, but he was left with finishing it when Peter was called away to England for the family business. During this time Washington fell in love with Matilda Hoffman, the 17-year-old daughter of a judge, and he put his literary career aside to join the judge's law practice to demonstrate his responsibility. Matilda soon took ill of consumption and died in April of 1809. Irving never married.

Irving left the United States in 1815 and remained overseas for the next seventeen years, with most of the time spent in England. There he wrote The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, the book that includes his most well-known stories, including the Christmas sketches. In describing his experiences with the traditional English Christmas celebration, he admits to fighting what we would call seasonal affect disorder and the temptation to feel bitter about being all alone. He writes, "He who can turn churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow beings, and sit down darkling and repining in his loneliness when all around is joyful, may have his moments of strong excitement and selfish gratification, but he wants the genial and social sympathies which constitute the charm of a merry Christmas."

So, in describing how he feels, he advocates letting the merry holiday contagion to reach those dark places inside. The important story is not that Washington Irving popularized the ideal of the family Christmas, but that he figured out, as a single person, how to cope with it.

Clement Clarke Moore's Chelsea

In 1822, wealthy New York scholar and poet Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) wrote the famous Christmas poem, "A Visit From St. Nicholas," known widely as "Twas the Night Before Christmas." The poem first appeared in a Troy, New York newspaper in 1823 with "anonymous" listed as the author, but Moore acknowledged authorship in 1844 after the poem became a standard. Some scholars suggest he appropriated a poem authored by Major Henry Livingston, Jr. (1748-1828) and turned it into the most famous Christmas poem of all time.

Clement Clarke Moore Park at 10th Avenue and 22nd Street was once part of the Clarke family estate. The family mansion near Eighth Avenue and West 23rd was called "Chelsea," named for a old soldier's hospital in London, and the name became the name for the surrounding neighborhood. At the time he wrote "A Visit From St. Nicholas," Moore was a Professor at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He had donated the family land for use as a seminary, and the still-thriving seminary stands today along Ninth Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets.

Exploring Moore's Chelsea and then walking almost directly east on 18th Street to O. Henry's Irving Place invites a myriad of associations about the season, both ecclesiastical and secular.

View Larger Map

Strolling this area of Chelsea also offers a chance for some peace and quiet, a welcome respite from the frenzy of midtown during the holidays. With the emergence of the important gallery district to the west, the older townhouses along these streets have been restored and well-maintained. Be sure to ask to see the gardens at the General Theological Seminary, and stop to admire St. Peter's Church on W. 20th nearby. The German Evangelist Lutheran St. Paul's church on W. 22nd. is also worth noting.

Timely event note: The 37th Annual Chelsea Community Church Candlelight Carol Service takes place Sunday, December 18 at 6 p.m. at St. Peter's Church, 346 West 20th Street. The event is free. For more information, see the church's web page on the event here.

Clement Clarke Moore is buried in Trinity Cemetery in the Washington Heights neighborhood uptown. Every Christmas the Church of the Intercession on 155th Street and Broadway holds a holiday reading of Moore's famous poem followed by a lantern procession and wreath laying on Moore's tomb at the nearby cemetery. This year, the 101st celebration takes places on Sunday, December 18 at 4 p.m. Jazz great Ron Carter will be the guest reader. More information here on the event on the church's web page.

A Walk on 16th Street to Irving Place

The Christmas-themed walk that began in Clement Clarke Moore's Chelsea continues now to Irving Place. While it's an easy walk from west to east (and almost any street from 14th to 20th Streets would do), 16th Street, with its variety of architectural facades and some little-known wonders, affords a nice way to connect the west and east sides in this part of Manhattan.

Several places along W. 16th are worthy of attention, especially between Seventh and Fifth Avenues, including apartment buildings from the 1870s with intricate brickwork and balconies. Also of note, see the French Evangelical Church (126 W. 16th) and the Queen Anne cottage-picturesque architecture of the Young Adults Institute next door at 120 W. 16th St. The latter, built in 1878, was founded to help poor women learn how to sew.

Between Sixth and Fifth Avenues, the neo-Baroque Church of St. Francis Xavier (1887) at 40. W 16th Street stands out in much contrast to the surrounding structures, and then so does the modernist facade of the Center for Jewish History ahead and across the way. West 16th Street is eclectic throughout, including some modernist swagger with balcony apartments near the intersection of Fifth Avenue. Crossing Fifth Avenue, the buildings grow more massive in scale, clad mostly in popular styles of the 1890s.

View Larger Map

Cutting through Union Square (and what fun), pick up E. 16th on the other side and continue to Irving Place. Here we see Washington Irving High School and a nice bust of Irving himself out in front of the school on the Irving Place side.

Irving Place: O. Henry and "The Gift of the Magi"

"One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all."

When he lived at 55 Irving Place, O. Henry believed, like so many others, that Washington Irving once resided down the street. Irving was more of a downtown guy, and he probably never lived along in here, but that didn't stop a 19th-century real estate man, the same guy who developed Gramercy Park to the north and gave this area its new Irving name, from making the whole thing up. The rumor was that Irving lived specifically at 49 Irving Place, a corner house occupied during O. Henry's time by Elsie de Wolfe, the first important professional interior designer, and her companion, Elisabeth Marbury.

Sometime in 1905, in Pete's Tavern on the corner of Irving Place and E. 18th, short story writer O. Henry sat in his favorite booth, allegedly the second from the front, and quickly wrote "The Gift of the Magi," a story we can assume, in contrast to Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas," to be his own intellectual property. The holiday tale wasn't his first Christmas story. "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" in the December 1899 issue of McClure's Magazine may claim that honor, nor was it a great work of literature, but the story, published originally in The New York World, gained a sentimental following.

Nassau Street, Lower Manhattan. 1905
Library of Congress. Detroit Publishing Co.

In contrast to the warm and affluent coziness depicted in Clement Clarke Moore's poem of the 1820s, with its traditional nuclear family, a nice house, carefully-hung stockings, and a lawn with new fallen snow, etc., "The Gift of the Magi," like many of O. Henry's stories, suggests the weary masses of New York in the early 1900s. The spirit and milieu of the Bowery is more apparent than the reserved refinement of a Chelsea mansion.

By the time he arrived in New York in 1902, the writer O. Henry, born William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), was trying to start over. A North Carolinian by birth and a long-time Texas resident, he was a fresh ex-con, having been locked up in a prison in Ohio from 1898-1901 on charges he embezzled a bank in Austin, Texas while an employee. The imprisonment may have been unwarranted, as he wasn't good with money anyway. In order to support his daughter, Margaret, he started penning his short stories while in jail, and a friend would send them off to publishers. This is how his first Christmas story came to McClure's Magazine.

When he was released from prison he changed his name to O. Henry, and in 1902 he moved to New York, the city he would call "Baghdad-on-the-Subway."

Most know his famous tale. It's Christmas Eve. A poor married couple live in a gritty apartment, and hard times have come. The husband, James, has suffered a recent pay cut, and his wife, Della, frets over how to buy him something nice for Christmas. She walks down the street and sells her beautiful long hair, her source of pride, then shops for a present. She buys the perfect gift, a fob for her husband's prized watch, blowing almost all her money. After she comes home and fixes and curls her short hair, James arrives home only to go into great shock at the sight of his wife. He's sold his watch to buy her beautiful and expensive combs for her hair, and now he has received a gift with no practical purpose. Ahhh, but 'tis the sacrifice for a greater gift of love that makes this spirit count.

From December 1903 to January 1906 O. Henry wrote for The New York World, submitting a story per week, and also writing for magazines. He penned six hundred stories while he was alive, and these stories were packaged into ten published collections. He lived in several different New York apartments, including the Hotel Chelsea, a place in Grove Court, 47 W. 24th St., and 55 Irving Place. He still couldn't keep count of money, and he drank too much. At the time he wrote "The Gift of the Magi," he was basically in a slow-motion fall, five years away from dying of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 47, but he knew throughout his life how to convey the spirit of Christmas.

"The poorer you are the more Christmas does for you."

- O. Henry, "An Unfinished Christmas Story"

So, You've Arrived by Bus: Short Walks to NYC Attractions from the Port Authority Bus Terminal

2011-12-07T07:11:00.006-05:00

Due to its proximity to many of the city's well-known attractions and transit stations, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, located just a long block west of Times Square, is also one of the most convenient points of entry to the city. In addition to the Theater District, many popular destinations are within easy walking distance, including Bryant Park, Madison Square Garden, Herald Square, Rockefeller Center, and more. Even MoMA or the top of the High Line are only about a mile away, making for a pleasant walk on fair weather days. With 200,000 people making use of the facility every day, the equivalent of the population of a large city, the Port Authority Bus Terminal is not surprisingly the largest bus terminal in the world.

Interior, Port Authority Bus Terminal, decorated for the holidays.

View Arriving by Bus in NYC: Short Walks from the Port Authority in a larger map

The Port Authority Bus Terminal opened December 15, 1950, amidst New York's postwar boom, largely to consolidate the chaos of multiple bus lines congesting the streets at various locations. Ralph Kramden, Jackie Gleason's character in The Honeymooners, drove a bus for the fictional Gotham Bus Company, a business operating out of 225 River Street. A weighty bronze statue of Kramden by artist Lawrence J. Nowlan, Jr. and unveiled in 2000, a commission by Viacom's TV Land (part of a series that includes a Bewitched statue in Salem, Massachusetts), stands just outside one of the front doors of the Port Authority on 8th Avenue.

Statue of Ralph Kramden, bus driver for the Gotham Bus Company,
personified by Brooklyn native, Jackie Gleason in The Honeymooners.
In front of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, 8th Avenue.

After its opening, the Port Authority could barely keep up with increasing demand at the location. Ten years later, in 1960, the terminal underwent a major expansion, adding three levels of parking spaces for commuters arriving by car. A decade later, the terminal allocated a bus-only two-mile lane to alleviate bus congestion entering the city from New Jersey. In the decades that followed, the terminal added a north wing, many more dozens of mall-type stores, and a structural girded facade that modernized its appearance. (Source: Port Authority website)

Over time, both the bus terminal and nearby Times Square cleaned up their acts. Yet, once again, the Port Authority is showing some wear, especially in context of recent construction. The Renzo Piano-designed high-tech glass and steel tower for The New York Times faces the terminal on the 8th Avenue side, making the terminal look outdated. In addition, many of the buses are now far removed from their dingier past, especially the swank new types outfitted with free WiFi and ample leg room, and they, too, seem much fancier than the Port Authority building.

Port Authority Bus Terminal, exterior. 8th Avenue and W. 41st Street.

The Port Authority Bus Terminal is situated on increasingly valuable West Side real estate. In recent developments, a major city developer tried to construct a large tower, designed by Richard Rogers, over the terminal, along with renovations to the facility below. (see story in The New York Times.) Although those plans seem to have been dropped, another idea may come along soon.

an entrance to Port Authority, 8th Avenue.

In the meantime, the Port Authority area seems to have no shortage of beer. Heartland Brewery has opened a location in the building, and a new place called the Beer Authority will be unveiled soon across from the terminal on the southwest corner of W. 40th Street and 8th Avenue, complete with advertised home cooking and a rooftop garden. While waiting for the bus, be sure to also check out the very nice Frames (formerly Leisure Time Bowl), a modern entertainment facility with a bistro, a bar, and bowling lanes, toward the 9th Avenue side of the building. If there's no time for a walk to MoMA, enjoy the 1980 George Segal sculpture, The Commuters, inside the terminal.

The Beer Authority, opening soon across the street from the Port Authority on W. 40th St.

Frames, an entertainment venue with bowling lanes, inside the Port Authority.

Sculpture by George Segal titled The Commuters (1980). Port Authority.

* See the official website for the Port Authority Bus Terminal for more history and information.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from a rainy afternoon, December 6, 2011.

See also these related posts:
• Ten Shorts Walks From Grand Central Terminal
• From Penn Station to New York Landmarks: Measuring Walking Distance and Time in Manhattan

20 New York City Books: Gift Guide 2011, Non-Fiction Edition

2011-12-05T07:22:00.005-05:00

2011's crop of New York-centered books yields fantastic stories, uncommon vistas, and (sorry for the cliché) something for everyone. Be sure to bookmark this page while out browsing your favorite bookstore.

• High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky by Joshua David and Robert Hammond. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011. 352 pages. (paper) The two citizens who founded the city's sensational elevated park tell their story.

• Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture by John Hill. W. W. Norton & Company. 2011. 304 pages. (paper) It's about time we get a book that looks at the new New York architecture. Projects arranged by neighborhoods allow for self-guided adventures.

• Field Guide to the Street Trees of New York City by Leslie Day with illustrations by Trudy Smoke. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2011. 295 pages. (paper) A guide to fifty trees that line New York streets. Let's be well-versed on our strolls through leafy neighborhoods.

• Stories in Stone New York: A Field Guide to New York City Area Cemeteries & Their Residents by Doug Keister. Gibbs Smith. 2011. 256 pages. (hardcover) Photos and GPS directions to the city's permanent residents and their gravesites.

• Andy Warhol's New York City: Four Walks, Uptown to Downtown by Thomas Kiedrowski with illustrations by Vito Giallo. Little Bookroom. 2011. 144 pages. (paper) Warhol fans will delight in following the art giant through his favorite places in the city.

• Raised by the Church: Growing up in New York City's Catholic Orphanages by Edward Rohs and Judith Estrine. Fordham University Press. 2011. 240 pages. (hardcover) Compassionate and humorous story of a New York social worker's life and thoughts about growing up in a charitable institution.

• The Other Islands of New York City: A History and Guide (Third Edition) by Sharon Seitz and Stuart Miller. Countryman Press. 2011. 344 pages. (paper) Strange to think, but the city is situated among 42 islands in a complex archipelago. Learn about the other islands beyond Mannahatta.

• High Rock and the Greenbelt: The Making of New York City's Largest Park by John G. Mitchell, edited by Charles E. Little. Center Books. Center for American Places. 2011. 208 pages. (hardcover) Revisiting a 1976 book by an editor at National Geographic, conservationist Charles E. Little adds new information about Staten Island's Greenbelt.

• Fading Ads of New York City by Frank Jump. The History Press. 2011. 224 pages. (hardcover) We spot the ghost signs often on the buildings, signifiers of a fading New York. A New York artist and educator with a passion for the signs and his own life struggle captures the signs in great depth.

• My City, My New York: Famous New Yorkers Share Their Favorite Places by Jeryl Brunner. Globe Pequot. 2011. 256 pages. (paper) Celebrities share their insider secrets.

• Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany by Stephen Sondheim. Knopf. 2011. 480 pages. (hardcover) The accomplished Broadway musical maker continues his story with this second volume. Anecdotes abound. The lyrics and music remain in your head for years.

• Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York by James Wolcott. Doubleday. 2011. 272 pages. (hardcover) The world of gritty and intensely creative New York in the early 1970s, told by Vanity Fair's cultural critic, then a young writer determined to survive.

• Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever by Will Hermes. Faber & Faber. 2011. 384 pages. (hardcover) The story of the music that poured out of New York lofts and studios from 1973 to 1977.

• Decoded by Jay-Z. Spiegel & Grau. 2011. 352 pages. (paper) One of the most powerful figures in the music industry, as a hip-hop artist and executive, tells of his young life in Brooklyn's housing projects and on the streets of Jersey. The story explains the songs.

• Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) by Peter Kenny, Frances F. Bretter, Michael K. Brown, Matthew A. Thurlow. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2011. 312 pages. (hardcover) A catalog for the Met exhibit details the work of the nation's most well-known cabinet maker. Phyfe worked for New York's wealthiest families.

• Sol LeWitt: Structures, 1965-2006, edited by Nicholas Baume. Other Distribution. 2011. 226 pages. (hardcover) Public Art Fund's assemblage of the Structures, seen this past fall in City Park.

• De Kooning: A Retrospective by Jim Coddington, John Elderfield (editor, author), Willem de Kooning. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 2011. 504 pages. The prolific mid-century New York artist is the subject of a celebrated exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

• The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951 (Jewish Museum) by Mason Klein and Catherine Evans. Yale University Press. 2011. 248 pages. (hardcover). The catalogue of the Jewish Museum's exhibition of socially-conscious photographers.

• Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art by Leah Dickerman and Anna Indych-Lopez. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 2011. 148 pages. (hardcover) The exhibition catalogue fully tells the story of Rivera's special solo exhibition in New York in the early 1930s.

• Cecil Beaton: The New York Years by Donald Albrecht, with contributions by The Museum of The City of NY. Skira Rizzoli. 2011. 240 pages. (hardcover) Aristocratic Beaton's years in the city as a celebrity photographer, glamorizing New York's fashionistas and art celebrities.

Nighttime New York Glamour: Three Blocks of 59th Street

2011-12-03T06:53:00.008-05:00

Walking just three blocks west along E. 59th Street - from Lexington to Park to Madison to Fifth Avenue - yields the glamorous essence that many visitors expect of New York City. While a few large upscale national retailers line these blocks, stores found in other cities such as Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and Crate & Barrel, the presence of luxury European retailers and names from old New York (Argosy Bookstore is one comfortable reminder) kicks up the glamour quotient to a higher notch.

Argosy Bookstore, founded in 1925

lights along 59th Street near Park Avenue

Sherry-Lehmann, wine store established in 1934

Park Avenue

The backdrop of skyscrapers and holiday lights and taxis and hundreds of pedestrians along this stretch provide a distilled illusion of opulence and wealth. Items of luxury are on display in the store windows, the work of New York's creative class of store designers and other illusionists. We know how to do theater in New York, even for pedestrians passing by on the streets.

Baccarat store

Bally store

Bottega del Vino

Apple Store, 59th and Fifth Avenue

While walking 59th Street to traverse the avenues, glimpsing vignettes of windows, lit-up skyscrapers in the distance, and taxi jams, a sense of the present time fades into the city's astonishingly enduring ability to sustain the narrative of luxury, one found only in New York. The city demands exclusivity for this story.

Fifth Avenue

The Plaza Hotel

Horse carriage near The Plaza Hotel

Never mind many of us can't afford some of these items on display. Purchasing a little something allows access to the dream world projected by the illusionists. That's the idea behind the window shopping. And we need the theater.

GE Fountain, Apple store. Crowds on Fifth Avenue.
Have a seat. The show is free.

View Three Blocks of 59th Street in a larger map

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from a recent evening walk.

New York Museum Exhibitions, Winter 2011-12: A Selected List, With Openings in December, January, and February

2011-11-30T06:47:00.013-05:00

The warm weather of late doesn't feel like a New York winter is around the corner, but at some point soon we're likely to be bundled up against the elements and heading out of doors. The art aficionados among us will be making our way to a favorite museum, handing over our big coats to the coat check department, and then strolling the comfortable galleries as the gently falling snow gathers in arcs on the windowsills and the chimney rooftops of the city. Or not. Sounds nice anyway.

Model of the Portico Gallery for Decorative Arts and Sculpture,
south façade, by Davis Brody Bond, architects and planners for the project.
The Frick Collection.

December museum events include the opening of the new Portico Gallery for Decorative Arts and Sculpture at The Frick Collection (December 13), an exhibition at Asia Society spotlighting Sarah Sze's process (December 13), and an exhibition for the art-surviving winner of Bravo's Work of Art TV series at the Brooklyn Museum (December 15).

Two exhibitions pack heat with crime-centered photography. Police Work: Photographs by Leonard Freed, 1972-1979 opens at the Museum of the City of New York on December 20, drawing our visual memories back to the gritty 1970s. The master image-maker of criminal New York from 1935 to 1946 is the subject of an ICP exhibition, Weegee: Murder Is My Business, opening January 20, 2012. We love those big popping flashbulbs that capture the perp in blinding harsh light.

Other choice winter exhibitions include John Chamberlain: Choices, opening February 14, 2012 at the Guggenheim Museum, a blockbuster-y Cindy Sherman show at MoMA (February 26), and The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (February 28). Good thing the February art calendar is loaded with extra special exhibitions. If April is the cruelest month, February might be the most boring. By then, we're sick of the snow.

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #466. 2008. Chromogenic color print, 97 1/8 x 63 15/16" (246.7 x 162.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Robert B. Menschel in honor of Jerry I. Speyer.
© 2011 Cindy Sherman

On the Bowery, the New Museum's The Generational, a survey exhibition of the work of the less-than-35, opens February 15. Uptown, the notorious Whitney Biennial is not far behind (March 1, 2012). For our cultural visitors to New York City, book your flights and hotels accordingly. Cheers.

Winter 2011-2012 Museum Exhibitions

Upcoming exhibitions below are noted in bold type.

American Academy of Arts and Letters, 633 West 155th Street (Audubon Terrace):

Annual exhibitions are held in the spring.

• no exhibits currently on display

American Folk Art Museum, 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Ave. at 66th Street:

• 9/11 National Tribute Quilt

on continuous view
• Jubilation/Rumination: Life, Real and Imagined
Through September 2, 2012

American Museum of Natural History (Central Park West and 79th St.):

• exhibits include The World's Largest Dinosaurs; Highway of an Empire: The Great Inca Road; Frogs: A Chorus of Colors; and more.

Asia Society (725 Park Avenue at 70th Street):

Brooklyn Museum

• Sarah Sze: Infinite Line

Through March 25, 2012

Bronx Museum, 1040 Grand Concourse at 165th Street:

• Muntadas: Information >> Space >> Control

Through January 16, 2012

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York:

• 19th-Century Modern

Through April 1, 2012

• HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

Through February 12, 2012
• Question Bridge: Black Males
Through June 3, 2012
• Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919
Through August 19, 2012
• Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin
Through August 12, 2012
• Raw/Cooked: Shura Chernozatonskaya
Through April 8, 2012

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2 East 91st St.:

• galleries closed for renovation. Reopening is planned for Fall 2013.

The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster St.:

• closed for expansion. Projected re-opening date is April 2012.

El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street:

The Frick Collection

Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street :

• White Gold: Highlights from the Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain (new portico gallery opens)

Through April 29, 2012
• Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting
Through May 13, 2012
• A Passion for Drawings: Charles Ryskamp's Bequest to The Frick Collection
February 14, 2012 - April 8, 2012

Read more about The Frick Collection at the post, The Frick Collection at 75: Plain Citizens in a Rich Man's Home.

Grey Art Gallery (NYU), 100 Washington Square East:

• SOTO: Paris and Beyond

Through March 31, 2012

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th St.):

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

• John Chamberlain: Choices

February 14 - May13, 2012

The Hispanic Society of America Audubon Terrace, Broadway between

155th and 156th streets, New York City

• Permanent collection on view.

International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street:

• Weegee: Murder Is My Business

Through September 2, 2012
Read Walking Off the Big Apple's review, Weegee CSI, here.
• The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet
Through May 6, 2012
• Perspectives 2012
Through May 6, 2012
• Magnum Contact Sheets
Through May 6, 2012

Jewish Museum

Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street:

• The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951

Through March 25, 2012

• Jem Cohen: NYC Weights and Measures

Through March 25, 2012

MAD (The Museum of Art and Design), 2 Columbus Circle:

• Korean Eye: Energy and Matter

Through February 19, 2012
• Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design
February 14 - August 12, 2012

The Museum of Art and Design

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue:

(a partial selection of many exhibitions at the Met)

• Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine

Through March 4, 2012

• Storytelling in Japanese Art

Through May 6, 2012
• The Coe Collection of American Indian Art
Through May 28, 2012
• Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York
Through May 6, 2012
• The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini
Through March 18, 2012
• New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts
now open: Permanent Installation
• Rembrandt and Degas: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
February 23 – May 20, 2012
• The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde
February 28 – June 3, 2012

MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art), 11 West 53 Street:

(a selection below)

MoMA sculpture garden

• Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art

Through May 14, 2012

Read Walking Off the Big Apple's review at the post, Manual Labor: Diego Rivera Paints New York City.

At MoMA PS1, Long Island, Queens:

• Scenes from Zagreb: Artists' Publications of the New Art Practice
Through February 17, 2012
• Print Studio
January 23 – March 9, 2012
• Eugène Atget: “Documents pour artistes”
February 6 – April 9, 2012
Review: A Parisian Detour - Eugène Atget at MoMA
• Cindy Sherman
February 26 – June 11, 2012

Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street: 

The Morgan Library

• David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre

Through December 31, 2011

Read more about the exhibition at the post The Revolution Inside the Morgan.

• Charles Dickens at 200

Through February 12, 2012

• Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan

Through January 29, 2012
• Robert Burns and "Auld Lang Syne"
Through February 5, 2012
• Rembrandt's World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection
Through April 29, 2012
• Dan Flavin: Drawing
February 17 - July 1, 2012
• In the Company of Animals: Art, Literature, and Music at the Morgan
March 2 - May 20, 2012

Read more about the renovated McKim Building at the post Mr. Morgan's Library.

Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue:

• Cecil Beaton: The New York Years

Through February 20, 2012
• The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011
Through April 15, 2012
• Police Work: Photographs by Leonard Freed, 1972-1979
Through March 18, 2012
• From Farm to City: Staten Island 1661-2012
currently on view

Museum of the City of New York

Museum of the Moving Image, 35 Avenue at 37th Street, Astoria:

• Surviving Life: Collages by Jan Svankmajer

Through February 26, 2012

National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue:

• Will Barnet at 100

• An American Collection

• The Artist Revealed: A Panorama of Great Artist Portraits

• Parabolas to Post-Modern: Architecture from the Collection

• National Academicians: Then and Now

• Contemporary Selections: Aligning Abstraction

all above, through December 31, 2011
• The Annual: 2012
Through April 29, 2012

Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue:

• Selections from the Permanent Collection

on view

• Neue Galerie Tenth Anniversary

Through April 2, 2012

Read more about the museum at the post, A Visit to the Neue Galerie.

The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery:

• Carsten Höller: Experience

Through January 15, 2012
• The Generational
February 15, 2012 - April 22, 2012

New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West:

The New Museum of Contemporary Art

• Remembering 9/11

Through April 1, 2012

• Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn

Through April 15, 2012

• Making American Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy

Through August 19, 2012

• Freedom Now: Photographs by Platon

Through April 15, 2012

• Urban Visions: Views of American Cities from the New-York Historical Society Collection

Through June 17, 2012

New York Public Library (Stephen A. Schwartzman Building), 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue:

The NYPL maintains an extensive exhibition program, so check the library's website page for what's on display at the various branches.

• Celebrating 100 Years

continues TBA

Noguchi Museum, 3237 Vernon Blvd., Long Island City:
• Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City
Through April 22, 2012

Read more about the museum at the post, A Sunday Ride to the Noguchi Museum.

Queens Museum of Art, New York City Building, Flushing Meadows, Corona Park:

Rubin Museum of Art

Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street:

• Once Upon Many Times

Through January 30, 2012

• Mirror of the Buddha

Through March 5, 2012

• Modernist Art from India

Through April 9, 2012
• Hero, Villain, Yeti
Through June 11, 2012

The Skyscraper Museum, 35 Battery Place:

• Supertall!

Through January 2012

South Street Seaport Museum, 12 Fulton Street:

• historic ships open to the public Thursday through Sunday, weather permitting

ongoing

• Galleries are now reopened.

The Studio Museum in Harlem

The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street:

• The Bearden Project

• Project Space: Kira Lynn Harris

• Collected. Ritual

Through March 11, 2012

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue At 75th Street:

• Real/Surreal

Through February 12, 2012

• Sherrie Levine: Mayhem

Through TBA

• Three Landscapes: A Film Installation by Roy Lichtenstein

Through February 12, 2012
• Whitney Biennial 2012
Opens March 1, 2012 (through May 27, 2012)

Images of museum buildings, except where noted, by Walking Off the Big Apple.

* Many international cultural centers in New York showcase art work from their respective countries. Several are within walking distance of Asia Society and the Armory. Read more in the post New York as the Stage for the World: Walks Through the City's International Cultural Centers.

Visiting New York on a Monday and want to know which of these museums are open? See the list here. Clicking on museum names above will link to their respective homepages.

November Nocturnes: New York City at Night (Photos)

2011-11-26T10:22:00.004-05:00

Occasionally, I joke to myself that after four years of blogging about New York, mostly in the daytime, that I should go back and do everything again but at night. The night in the city is a different world, a theatrical space lit with artificial illumination that seems the very opposite of the city's hard-nosed reality in sunlight.

Street lamps, holiday lights, incandescents, LEDs, heat burning devices, spotlights, marquee lights, display case lamps, and a myriad other lighting devices turn New York streets into a theatrical experience. These artificial lights prompt the imagination to make up stories for night's individual street scenes. The images that follow are not depictions of the famous city at night - Times Square, Broadway, the skyline, etc. - but are simply peripatetic snapshots from the more prosaic of our streets.

Please fill in the rest of the picture with your imagination.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple made with an iPhone4 and the Hipstamatic app. November 2011.