Salvaged JFK stained glass for sale at Olde Good Things
Sharp-eyed Tropolism points out the exciting news that the lamented JFK stained glass wasn't destroyed, but instead much was salvaged by Olde Good Things.
The company's website has an extensive feature about the salvage effort -- and how to buy sections for yourself.
In Manhattan, Olde Good Things is located at 124 West 24th St. in Chelsea.
Picture credit: (top)Brian Armitage, American Airlines’ Terminal 8 at JFK before the glass was gone.
(right) Olde Good Things website.
Waldorf's lost train off-limits, other tunnels offer tours
Matt Lauer of the "Today" show this morning got rare access into one of New York's City's best hidden spaces -- the abandoned rail platfrm under the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Most famously used by President Franklin Roosevelt to help hide the fact he was wheelchair-bound, the track allowed VIPs to enter Manhattan by train and take an elevator directly up to the luxury hotel without ever setting foot on the street.
In 2006, the Waldorf's general manager told NewYorkology that the hotel's entrance to the rail platform had been reconfigued and is no longer easy to access. He also debunked a few myths about who used the private entrance. Researchers at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park also did some research on the matter for NewYorkology, making it clear that the abandoned rail car under the Waldorf isn't the polio-stricken president's famous Pullman car, the Ferdinand Magellan.
So unless you're Matt Lauer, you're probably not ever getting access to the train cars under the Waldorf. But you can get access to a couple other abandoned rail stations in NYC. The oldest option is in Brooklyn, directly under Atlantic Avenue as it leads out to the East River. Tours of the 1844 tunnel are offered about once a month by the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association. But be warned that you do enter the tunnel by crawling through a manhole in the middle of the street at the intersection of Atlantic and Court.
Your other option is to catch one of the rare tours the NY Transit Museum offers of the city's original subway station that opened in 1904 under City Hall in Lower Manhattan. The stunning station, with chandeliers, skylights and tiled, vaulted ceilings, is next open for tours on July 19.
Not quite as glamorous, but still cool, the old Knickerbocker Hotel on Times Square had its own stairs from the subway platform leading up to the hotel. See Forgotten NY for pictures. (In 2006, the Dubai royal family announced plans to convert the Knickerbocker back into a luxury hotel but the Post reported last week that instead they've decided to sell the landmark building which now houses offices and a Gap shop, streetview map.)
Also of note: Julia Solis' intriguing "New York Underground" recently came out in paperback.
Contributor Heesun Wee has been writing for NewYorkology since 2005. By day, she's a video segment producer for Yahoo'sTech Ticker. She’s also writing a screenplay entitled “War Photographer.” Recently she stopped by the Guggenheim, which has just announced it will stay open an extra two hours every day for the final week of Cai Guo Qiang's installation. (That's 10 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. from May 23 through May 28.)
Art in New York lately has been disappointing me. I’ve cruised through the Chelsea gallery ghetto thinking, ‘This is it?’ If I wanted cutesy prints and photographs I’d buy Domino or some other glossy fashion magazine run by cookie-cutter 30-somethings in $300 blue jeans.
But the current car-and-light installation at the Guggenheim in New York is amazing. Part of a larger retrospective, Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe, is beautiful, violent, spatially stunning, postmodern, reflective of 9/11, and East meets West -- all wrapped into one.
Inopportune: Stage One is Cai’s largest installation to date. It showcases nine real cars that are suspended in a cyclone-like progression in the central atrium of the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda. Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, has said the project "may be the best artistic transformation of the Frank Lloyd Wright space we've ever seen."
Cai, born in southern China and now living in New York City, has said constant media images of car explosions after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks inspired the project.
Whether you’re on the ground floor looking up at the swirl of cars or peering down into the tornado-like shape of metal and flashing lights, it’s as if you’re inside a massive bomb about to go off, with Wright’s cylindrical museum as the bomb’s exterior casing.
I’ve always thought of the beige museum on the trash-less Upper East Side of Manhattan as peaceful. That’s no accident. Wright created the seashell-like building with an interior circular design. You take the elevator to the top and wind down a spiral ramp as you enjoy the art seamlessly.
But by installing his art – cars, stuffed wildlife, sculptures -- in the middle of the museum’s atrium and winding ramp – Cai interrupts the spatial peace. Throughout my visit I felt the push-and-pull of the beautiful building against the violence often depicted in the art. Indeed Cai has said his work explores both the beauty and violence human beings are capable of.
BEAUTY AND VIOLENCE This beauty-violence juxtaposition is a recurring theme for Cai. In his gunpowder drawings, also on view at the Guggenheim, his images are made with gunpowder, fuses and traditional materials such as ink. The explosions left behind on canvases have a blurry, eerie death quality. It was as if Cai was forcing me to imagine my own gunpowder-y body silhouette, in essence my own humanity, and asking, "What are you capable of? Do you know? Do you want to know?"
Cai created many of the gunpowder drawings on multi-part panels meant to resemble Asian paper scrolls. The long, continuous images stretch and fill the museum’s ramp, another clever move by Cai to meld his art with the space it inhabits.
The four waterfalls, which could start flowing as early as late June are positioned at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge (on the Brooklyn side,) at Manhattan's Pier 35, between Brooklyn's piers 4 and 5 (where the floating pool was docked last summer,) and at Governor's Island, facing Manhattan's Staten Island Ferry terminal.
The 90- to 120-foot waterfalls will flow from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day -- and will be lit after sunset. They'll come down mid-October.
Statue of Liberty's insides twisted, but no beating heart
In Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City, which is apparently New York City in a parallel universe, a number of things in the video game are cleverly inspired by the real.
Serious Eats has charted the places to eat in Liberty City (including the "Steinway Beer Garden,") while Gawker points out that the "Statue of Happiness" in the harbor "contains at its heart... a beating heart, chained to the exterior walls."
But since NewYorkology dwells in the travel blog realm, it would be proper to proffer some pictures of what the inside of the Statue of Liberty actually looks like.
Also, keep in mind that if you're planning a trip out to the Statue of Liberty, it's key to buy your time-specific ferry tickets in advance and tick the box for the free monument pass (otherwise you can't see up inside the statue or gain access to the museum.)
Can't wait for fall to set foot up on the High Line when it will start opening to the public as a park? Then sign up for a High Line sketching class in May.
A section of the HIgh Line opened for (legal) tours during last year's Open House New York, but the sign-ups maxed out super fast. Currently, there are 34 spots available for the sketching spots.
The sketching classes will be taught by artist Ann DeVere. The price is $25 for High Line supporters or $50 otherwise -- and art supplies will be provided. Participants must be at least 18 years old. And apparently there's no prerequesite that your art skills have to be any good before you arrive.
The High Line -- an abandoned, elevated freight train tracks built in the 1920s and '30s -- is on schedule to open its first park section in fall from Gansevoort Street up to 20th Street. See construction pictures on the High Line's website.
Other upcoming (off-site) High Line events include a May 6 lecture with artist Spencer Finch who will discuss plans for the public art work he's creating for the High Line.
Picture credits: High Line above the Hudson Yards during the OHNY tours in October 2007. Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
Darwin, edible lawns on May's garden-events agenda
NewYorkology contributor Jane Berger has compiled a list of selected garden-related events for May. Jane is a professional landscape designer working throughout the Northeast and is editor and publisher of Garden Design Online.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden (718) 623-7200
May 3 and 4
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sakura Matsuri, weekend-long Cherry Blossom Festival
May 6
6 to 8 p.m.
Annual Garden Secrets, lecture by BBG Curator Nancy Seaton
May 14
10:30 a.m. to noon
Urban Gardening Workshop, author Linda Yang
May 14
9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Tour of NYC Flower Market led by floral designer Nancy Kitchen
May 31
10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Japanese Pruning Techniques for Small Gardens, workshop with arborist Asher Browne & BBG curator Brian Funk
May 31
3 p.m.
Small Urban Gardens of Japan lecture with Asher Browne
NY Botanical Garden (718) 817-8747
Through June 15
Darwin’s Garden, special exhibition in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
May 6
5 p.m. in the Ross Lecture Hall, NYBG
Darwin: Yesterday and Today, panel discussion featuring Darwin historian David Kohn, philosopher Michael Ruse and Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation.
May 8
6:30 p.m. at the Kaufman Theater, American Museum of Natural History
Human Evolution & the Complexity of Living Organisms panel discussion featuring Barbara Schaal, VP of the National Academy of Sciences; biologist & author Kenneth Miller and biochemist Gerald Edelman
May 17
10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in NYBG's Watson Bldg
Photo Workshop: The Power of Natural Light with photographer Allen Rokach
Canadians open Rock Center roof garden for two nights
The Canadian Tourism Commission is one-upping Open House New York by opening up access to one of the Rockefeller Center roof gardens for free and providing a wine garden, food, music -- and Canadian sophistication.
The two-night event, called The Ultimate Canadian Room-With-A-View, will be held May 14 and 15 (a Wednesday and Thursday) in the 620 Fifth Ave. loft and garden on the 7th floor, which is normally closed to the public.
The roof garden was been open for a quick walk-through during the past two Open House New York weekends, offering eye-level views with the spires of Saint Patrick's Cathedral just across the avenue.
(This year's OHNY is scheduled for the weekend of October 4 though participating locations haven't been announced.)
Image credit: Rockefeller Center roof garden during OHNY 2006. Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
