Update 9/11/2013 – Been meaning to update for a while. 5 Beekman is NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR FILMING, EVENTS, OR ANY OTHER RENTAL PURPOSE due to ongoing construction. 5 Beekman Street has a secret. You’ve probably passed it a million times in your travels through downtown Manhattan. Certainly anyone who has ever visited J&R Row…
One of my favorite bits of unusual New York City history is located on the sidewalk in front of West Village’s iconic Village Cigars store. It’s pretty well known, but I’m going to re-tell it because it’s such a great story. Set into the sidewalk is a small triangle (see my sneaker for size comparison),…
On Saturday night, I was walking through Astor Place past the iconic “Alamo” sculpture (aka The Big Black Cube That Has Never Actually Been Called The Alamo By Anyone Ever Other Than The Artist’s Wife Who Named It) when I noticed it looking distinctly Christmas Tree-ish: I crossed to the island, where something neat was…
From the ground, you’d never know there was anything special about the building at 409 East 60th Street… …but, as anyone who’s ever walked across the Queensboro Bridge knows, it has a pretty great rooftop secret… An abandoned rooftop greenhouse! And sadly, it won’t be around for much longer… The now-ruined skeleton covers the entire…
Two of my favorite ruins in Manhattan can be found partially submerged in the Hudson River, overshadowed by the nearby West Side Highway and row of ugly, bland Trump apartment high rises. They’re certainly not secrets to anyone who’s ever walked through Riverside Park, but I recently scouted them as backdrops for a film, and…
If you believe Hollywood, every single college lecture hall in New York City looks like the one below: Rows of individual wooden desks and tiered seating… …an enormous wood-framed green chalkboard with sliding panels for additional writing space… …a wood-paneled front desk for the lecturer… …and even one of those little doors that swings back…
I saw the coolest thing as I was driving over the Williamsburg Bridge the other day… Above this building at the end of Delancey Street… I noticed a huge flock of birds circling overhead…Except, they never left the area. They just kept circling, and it soon became clear they were following something… That’s when I…
I love stumbling on New York’s ghost signs – essentially, signs or advertisements for businesses long since deceased. I wrote about the great stationery store sign hanging on Broadway just north of Canal Street a year ago (I promise, that arrow doesn’t lead to greeting cards anymore): Anyway, I was driving by the intersection yesterday,…
I was walking past this art deco apartment building on East 67th Street yesterday… …when I noticed a series of really neat animal designs surrounding this side entrance. Above the door, a bulldog: Perched in the corners are an unhappy-looking dog and a menacing-looking rabbit: And above the entrance is this fanciful relief: It seemed…
If you’ve ever been annoyed at the fact that most of Fifth Avenue’s mansions probably don’t want you knocking at their front door, do yourself a favor and check out one most don’t realize is open to the public: the Ukrainian Institute at the corner of 79th Street and Fifth Ave, built in 1899 as…