The 8th Avenue Post Office is extremely film friendly – shoot me an email for details at nycscout@gmail.com! On October 9th & 10th, 2010, over 350 sites, tours, and events were made available to the public FREE for the annual Open House New York program. Open House New York is…well, an open house of New…
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…
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’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…
You’ve probably passed 225 Lafayette Street at the corner of Spring Street in Soho a zillion times in your travels and not thought much of it. Built in 1909, it was converted to condos in 1988; a typical unit now goes for over $1.5 million. The ground floor space, formerly the East River Savings Bank,…
This past Christmas, my aunt gave me a really neat gift she found in storage. Apparently, my grandmother took a trip to New York sometime in what must have been the 1950’s or early 60’s, and purchased one of those souvenir tablecloths with a cartoon tourist map of New York. The artwork is great, but…
There’s a strange little building at the corner of Lafayette and Howard Street, and for years, I’ve wondered what the story is with it: The small portion on the left is a tiny one-level office, with the facade extending to cover the wall of a parking garage, whose entrance is through that roll-gate on the…
I was walking down West 58th Street when I saw it: exactly half a brownstone (12.5 feet), gloriously smooshed between two much larger apartment buildings: I was immediately reminded of one of my favorite buildings in midtown, the very similar 19 West 46th Street, also measuring 12.5 feet. A number of readers have written me…