A long weekend of events will kick off Thursday, May 22 with a free Brooklyn Philharmonic concert, fireworks show, and the debut of new festive lights for the bridge, which will get turned on every evening from 9 p.m. until 11 p.m. through Memorial Day.
Brooklyn Bridge anniversary events:
Thursday, May 22
The Brooklyn Philharmonic and special guests play a free concert at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park --followed by a Grucci Fireworks show. Enter from Main Street (map,) as early as 6 p.m.; the show starts at 7:45 p.m.
Friday, May 23
The free outdoor Brooklyn Bridge Film Series begins for the season with Disney's "Enchanted" and two historic shorts: "Panorama from the Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge" (1903) and "Manhatta" (1921). Music from 6 p.m. and the films start at 8:30 p.m. at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park.
The The American Society of Civil Engineers and the Roebling Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology will also offer free guided tours of the bridge from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. starting under the bridge's iconic arches.
Saturday, May 24
Free screening of Ken Burns' 1981 documentary "Brooklyn Bridge" at BAM. Film begins at 4:30 p.m., tickets handed out starting at 1:30 p.m. at 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn.
Frank Sinatra in 1947's "It Happened in Brooklyn" screens at the free outdoor Brooklyn Bridge Film Series, preceded by the same historic short films as the night before. Music from 6 p.m. films at 8:30 p.m. at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park.
Sunday's Working Harbor Day offers industrial cruises
This Sunday, New York's annual Working Harbor Day will encouarge the city's island-bound landlubbers to hop on a boat -- pirate ship or otherwise -- for an up-close view of how the water-bound lives and works.
Hidden harbor tours will visit tugboat yards, container ship ports, shipyards, dry docks and graving docks. The South Street Seaport Museum will offer reduced admission for $3 for the day. (They're also the ones offering the pirate ship sails aboard the Pioneer.)
The event is organized by the Working Harbor Committee, which has also announced summer dates for their hidden harbor tours. This year's hidden harbor tours are scheduled for June 10 and 24, July 8 and 29, August 12 and 26 and September 16 and 30.
The group has also scheduled a June 8 NY Harbor Rail-Marine Cruise.
Picture credit: Staten Island Ferry in a repair dock, and a tug, both seen during a June 2007 hidden harbor tour. Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
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.
Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, Piglet and Kanga recently left the children's room in the Donnell Library Center, which will be torn down to make way for a luxury hotel/library.
The stuffed animals, loved up into a shabby, patched-up state, now reside in an elegant glass case in the Edna Barnes Salomon Room of the Humanities & Social Sciences Library.
They're actually easy to find -- head up the main stairs to the third floor as if you were headed to the main reading room. But at the top of the landing, instead of heading west into the reading room, head east toward Pooh.
The animals were given to Robin Milne (the inspiration for Christopher Robin) between 1920 and 1922. Pooh was originally acquired from Harrod's. They were brought to the United States in 1947 and found a home at Milne's U.S. publisher, who then gave them to the library in 1987.
Library entrance is of course free.
Picture credit: Pooh and Friends, taken by Don Hamerman. Image provided to NewYorkology by the NYPL.
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.
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.
NY Historical Society brings epidemic to life in 'Cholera'
NewYorkology contributor Christina Ziegler-McPherson is a public historian in one of New York's "sixth boroughs" -- Hoboken, New Jersey. A specialist in American immigration and social welfare policy, she regularly crosses the river to partake of New York's many historical sites, institutions, and events. She's the author of the upcoming book "Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908-1929."
The New York Historical Society’s new exhibit, “Plague in Gotham!: Cholera in Nineteenth-Century New York” is a good example of how small can be beautiful. Packed compactly into two-thirds of a long wall in the Society’s Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture, “Plague in Gotham!” tells the story of the first cholera epidemic in New York City in 1832.
With just a few strategically selected items – a map, city health broadsides, homeopathetic remedies, gruesome portraits of victims and other artifacts – the exhibit details how New Yorkers confronted a terrifying disease that killed 3,515 people (out of a total population of 250,000) in the summer of 1832.
Cholera, a gastrointestinal bacterial disease spread by contaminated water and food, causes severe diarrhea; death can occur within a few hours if dehydration is not properly treated. But the cause of cholera was unknown in the early 19th century, and theories ranged from “miasmas” (noxious fumes created by rotting organic matter) to immorality and alcohol consumption.
Poor New Yorkers lived in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, and so died of a wide variety of contagious and water-borne diseases at a much higher rate than wealthier residents. This higher death rate on the part of African-Americans and Irish immigrants in the 1832 epidemic led to theories emphasizing individual morality and behavior.
Videos: Pope Benedict departs Manhattan by helicopter; an empty Popemobile ventures into Red Hook, Brooklyn
One of the fabulous things about living in New York City is that you never know what you're gonna see. Like maybe you're driving through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and you happen to realize the Popemobile is in the next lane.
The video:
The Popemobile, in Red Hook, turns left under the Gowanus Expressway and you head off to dinner. (Map.)
And then the people who later sit at the next table say "We just saw the Popemobile, too. At Columbia and Atlantic." (Map.)
Then you get home an hour later and wonder why there are so many hovering NYPD helicopters over the edge of South Brooklyn. And then you notice tons of flashing police lights in Manhattan heading south on the FDR -- toward the Wall Street Heliport.
Then you see a pair of Marine One-looking helicopters head out over the East River, out into the New York harbor, in front of the Statue of Liberty and out to the Verrazano Bridge -- the same route the US Helicopter commuter service takes on weekdays to and from JFK Airport.
The video:
(Just now, as the YouTube clip is uploading, the live TV feed shows the pope has just arrived at JFK with Vice President Dick Cheney. OK, still waiting on YouTube, and NY1 has just noted that indeed, the pope departed via the Wall Street Heliport.)
Pope arrives in NYC to visit U.N., Yankee Stadium, WTC
Pope Benedict XVI today starts a three-day trip to New York City with plans to address the United Nations, visit the World Trade Center site and a Jewish synagogue and celebrate mass at several locations including Yankee Stadium and Saint Patrick's Cathedral.
Friday
9:45 a.m. - The pope arrives at JFK Airport and is welcomed by Cardinal Edward M. Egan, archbishop of New York and Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio, bishop of Brooklyn and others.
10 a.m. - The pope will address the United Nations and meet with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Saturday
9 a.m. - The pope celebrates mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral with 3,000 deacons, priests and religious men and women from throughout the United States.
1:15 p.m. The pope departs Saint Patrick's and will travel by popemobile up 5th Avenue to 72nd Street. (This is your best chance to see the pope as its one of the only unticketed events.)
4:30 p.m. - The pope travels to Saint Joseph Seminary in Yonkers to bless youth with disabilities and rally with seminarians and young people.
Sunday
9:30 a.m. - The pope visits Ground Zero, blesses the ground with holy water and greets representatives of the Port Authority, fire and police workers, survivors and family members of those killed in the the Sept. 11 attacks.
2:30 p.m. - The pope celebrates mass at Yankee Stadium
8:30 p.m. - The pope departs JFK's Hangar 19 on Alitalia's "Shepherd One"
Where to find Pope Pius XII's statue at Saint Patrick's
If you visit Saint Patrick's Cathedral this week - as it prepares for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI -- you'll find busts of other popes prominently displayed near the front entrance.
First there's "Pope Paul VI, welcomed in this cathedral during his mission of peace to the United Nations 1965"
And then "His Holiness John Paul II visited this cathedral on October 2-3 1979."
Both trips are recounted in Our Sunday Visitor's story about past visits to the United States by other popes. That story also details the trip to Saint Patrick's made by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII three years after visiting Saint Patrick's in New York.
In the United States to set up diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the U.S., he also visited President Roosevelt in Hyde Park and the Kennedy in Bronxville.
But don't look for Pope Pius XII's bust alongside Pope Paul VI or John Paul II.
You'll need to exit out the cathedral's side door, cross 51st Street and venture to the back of the other cathedral gift shop. There, at the foot of the stairs, you'll find the bust of the pope whose WWII record is not without controversy.
"Pope Pius XII visited this cathedral as cardinal secretary of state 1936."
