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.
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 Metropolitan Museum of Art on Wednesday will open "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy" but tonight, the museum is all about the red carpet as a black-tie, celebrity gala will fete the fashions.
For tonight, the museum's main information desk has been replaces by three superhero statues that look as though they belong just down the hall in the Greek and Roman sculpture galleries.
The exhibition itself will feature costumes from "IronMan," "The Dark Knight," "Superman," "SpiderMan 3," "Wonder Woman" and "X-Men: The Last Stand." The honorary chair of tonight's gala is Giorgio Armani, with co-chairs George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Anna Wintour.
The exhibition features paintings, videos, sculpture, photographs and installations -- including one made up of giant boobie bean bags -- from 20 Icelandic artists.
Eliasson's work here is made up of a series of photographs, the Green River series, (pictured, above) and a light installation called "Limbo Lamp for Petur," (video, top.)
The Icelandic Love Corporation take part as well, with "Nest," a mixed-media sculpture that includes black-licorice type tubing, a tire and shiny baubles all weaved into a home for a family of birds.
The exhibition, which runs until August 15, is free. It's open Tuesdays through Saturdays from noon to 6 p.m. The Scandinavia House is located at 58 Park Ave., map.
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.)
Mary Whalen leaves Brooklyn Navy Yard for Red Hook
NewYorkology contributor Vidiot commits journalism by night and explores NYC by day. He's especially interested in the infrastructure, transit, architectural wonders, drinking establishments, and hidden corners of the greatest city in the world. This past weekend he was onboard the Mary Whalen for something of an East River repositioning cruise.
The 70-year-old Mary A. Whalen, a retired oil tanker slated to become a floating museum, was moved Sunday from GMD Shipyard in the Brooklyn Navy Yard to its current home in Red Hook, Brooklyn. PortSide New York, the non-profit that owns the 176-foot ship and is converting her into a museum and event space, invited NewYorkology along for the ride.
It was a gray day, but the crowd of guests was in high spirits as the tugboat June K. nosed alongside and hauled the Mary A. Whalen stern-first out of the Navy Yard and into the East River. We passed under the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, and into Buttermilk Channel before docking at the American Stevedoring terminal in Red Hook.
Related: The Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is normally closed to the public, will be the subject of a June 1 tour organized by the Center for the Urban Environment. A guided bus tour will be led by Richard Drucker, senior vice president for external affairs of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, followed by a walking tour of Vinegar Hill, home to Irish immigrants and other ethnic groups who worked on the Brooklyn waterfront in the late 19th century.
Cherry blossoms peaking for Sakura Matsuri weekend
The cherry blossoms are in peak bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, perfectly timed for this weekend's Sakura Matsuri festival, which will feature Taiko drumming, samurai sword performances, ninja theater, tea ceremonies and dance parties.
Some of the performers were in the garden this mornng, offering a preview of this weekend's events, inlcuding the the samurai sword fighters:
The Spinnin Ronin Martial Arts Dance Theater created a ninja cosplay just for Sakura Matsuri. Here's a scene from "The Legend of Ninja Kotaro" performed near the cherry walk:
See the BBG's website for the full list of events. Arrive close to the 10 a.m. opening time on Saturday or Sunday to beat the crowds.
Bank of America offers free museum access for a year
Starting in May, Bank of America cardholders will get free admission during the first Saturday and Sunday of each month for the next year at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, New York Hall of Science, Jewish Museum, the Bronx Zoo and New York Aquarium.
The bank's Museums on Us also offers free entrance to New Jersey's Liberty Science Center, Montclair Art Museum and the Newark Museum.
In past years, the bank's offerings were limited to May, but the Museums on Us website currently lists free weekend offerings through April 2009.
But if you don't have a Bank of America account, plenty of New York City's museums have free hours each week, and many are pay-what-you-wish, such as the Met Museum (which actually only costs a penny.)
Picture credit: Met Museum, 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.
