Category Archives: New York

New York City

Battery Park City

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Battery Park City was built on landfill – the ground removed for the original World Trade Center excavations.

The architecture, naturally, is all new – post-1980. But the interesting part of Battery Park City is how its apartment and commercial buildings have been combined with green space: there really is a park in the middle of Battery Park City.

The Esplanade is the park’s backbone, running from Battery Place up to Chambers Street along the Hudson River. It is a link in the growing “Greenway” bike/pedestrian path along most of New York’s waterfront.

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Astor Place and Vicinity

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The Cooper Union Foundation Building has New York City and National landmark status, as the first building in the U.S. to use steel beams. Across the street on Cooper Square is the equally striking Arthur Nerken School of Engineering. Next door is sail-shaped Cooper Square Hotel.

It seems that every block in the area has a landmark – or future landmark – building. Hey, even the local K-Mart is in a landmark building, the former Wanamaker Department Store Annex.

Here’s a brief tour to whet your appetite.

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East River Bridges

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New York has more than 75 bridges connecting the boroughs to each other and to New Jersey. It’s fascinating how so many different engineers came up with so many different solutions for the same problem: How to cross a river. Here are views of some of the principal East River bridges.

To come: Bronx-Whitestone, Throggs Neck and Rikers Island bridges.

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Central Park – Bethesda Terrace and Fountain

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Bethesda Terrace and Fountain are lavishly detailed works of art, from the herringbone brickwork pavement to the English Minton encaustic ceiling tiles in the arcade under the terrace, to the sculpted fountain inspired by the Biblical account of the miraculous pool of Bethesda.

This is a perfect place to start your Central Park photo collection – The Lake to the north, Conservatory Water to the northeast, and The Mall to the south are all highly photogenic.

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Central Park Grand Tour

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Central Park is a magnificent piece of architecture – parkitecture, if you will – for make no mistake, the 843-acre landmark is man-made, constructed in 1858-1873. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the same team that later designed Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. You could easily take a week or two to explore all of Central Park’s nooks and crannies – there are close to 200 named attractions within the park.

While it may seem strange that a park should be engineered, there is method to the madness. For example, entrance paths were laid out with sharp turns so that a screen of trees was quickly placed between the visitor and the city. Cross-park traverses at 66th, 79th, 85th and 97th Streets were sunk below grade level to make them disappear into the landscape.

This “Grand Tour” of 100+ slides covers the high points – but we’ll need several installments to really show the entire park. You may be interested in the companion gallery, focusing on Bethesda Fountain.

You may also be interested in learning more about Central Park from Central Park Conservancy, the private non-profit group that maintains the park in cooperation with New York City. Visit their site at www.centralparknyc.org.

Enjoy!

Getting There: Central Park is surrounded by 15 subway stations: N, R, and Q at Fifth Avenue/59th Street; A, B, C, D, and 1 at Columbus Circle; B and C along Central Park West at 72nd, 81st, 96th, 103rd and 110th Streets; 2 and 3 at Lenox Avenue/ 110th Street; 4, 5, and 6 along Lexington Avenue at 59th, 68th, 77th, 86th, 96th, 103rd and 110th Streets (walk 3 blocks west). Paths are NOT well marked. If you want to explore, you really need a detailed map! Make The Dairy/Visitor Center your first stop. It’s just south of the 65th Street Transverse, about midway through the park.

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Septuagesimo Uno

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It may not qualify as New York City’s smallest park, but I’ll bet it’s the only park with a Latin name (which means 71).

Septuagesimo Uno is among the “vest pocket parks” created during the Mayor John V. “Fun City” Lindsay administration. (The mayor is, unfortunately, better known for poor handling of a snowstorm cleanup.) A sign on the park’s front (and only) gate tells all.

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General Grant National Memorial (Grant’s Tomb)

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Why not President Grant National Memorial? A National Park Service ranger explains that Ulysses’ record as General was more impressive than his record as President. General Grant National Memorial it is.

Either way, the memorial is probably better known as Grant’s Tomb. It is the largest mausoleum in the Western Hemisphere, and is said to be copied from the original Mausoleus’ tomb.

The memorial was financed by donations, not by the government, though the National Park Service now maintains the monument. There’s a small National Park Service visitor center well-hidden across the southbound lanes of Riverside Drive and down a flight of stairs.

“The Rolling Bench,” a series of 17 mosaic-covered concrete benches, was installed around the monument in 1974. Personally, I think the benches are an atrocious, grotesque defacement of the monument; bureaucratic vandalism. But that’s just my opinion, and what do I know?

P.S. – “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” Well, technically, no one. The General and his wife Julia are entombed (above ground), not buried (below ground).

General Grant National Memorial Vital Statistics
  • Location: Riverside Drive at W 122nd Street
  • Year completed: 1897
  • Architect: John H. Duncan
  • Style: Roman Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1975
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1966
General Grant National Memorial Suggested Reading

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