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Jim Dykes (www.richandfamoustours.com) is back to share his thoughts on his incredibly thorough visit to one of our city's greatest buildings.
Here's Jim:
Recently a group of New York City tour guides were invited to increase our knowledge of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—or "St. John the Unfinished"--by attending a specially organized seminar on two of the coldest, snowiest days of the winter. On the first morning, we had a general highlights tour of the cathedral. The guide, Kevin Blum, was a very nice young fellow from Iowa, who had followed his studies (and his girlfriend) to New York City. His tour was fine and efficient, but underwhelming for a group of well-read New York guides who had been leading groups to the church for many years.
In our group alone, we calculated about 100 years of NYC guide experience, including myself, Mike Brennan, Tour Goddess Jane Marx and another guide who doesn't want her name shown. Kevin soon began letting us all contribute and embellish his accounts of Cathedral history, including the struggle between the architectural firms in the 1890s which resulted in two architectural styles--Romanesque Revival and French Gothic Revival—which usually clash but are surprisingly harmonious at St. John the Divine.
After lunch, we had a chance, casual meeting with the Dean of the Cathedral (an Aryan from Darien) and were able to ask any question we liked. Following this, we had a special Numerology tour. Various numbers are repeated quite a bit for various religious reasons (4 signs of the cross, 7 deadly sins, 12 apostles, etc.). It doesn’t sound interesting but the numerologist, a young volunteer named Howell, was excellent and spoke compellingly for 2 hours.
The next morning began with an in-depth tour of the fabulous stained glass windows, including the Media window (with its images of Jack Benny on the radio and the Gutenberg printing press) and the American History window donated by the Astor family in memory of John Jacob Astor, who died on the Titanic. (Its sinking is depicted in the lower right corner of the window.)
After lunch on the second day, we finally got to do the one thing I’d been wanting to do for 20 years: The Vertical Tour, where we would be permitted to venture through locked doors and climb more than a dozen flights to view the Cathedral from above. The guide distributed flashlights and told us the rules. We climbed up and up. First stop: a view of the nave from a balcony 4 flights up. Second stop: a view of the altar from 8 floors up. Third stop: a close-up view of the ceiling 12 stories above the floor. Along the way, the guide spent a few minutes at each landing discussing the art and the windows from this wonderful vantage point.
Just as I thought we’d be heading downstairs, the guide led us up through more passages and more flights to the huge attic area above the cathedral ceiling (who knew it existed?), where we viewed the giant iron supports and the Guastavino tiles from the flip side. Then she took us up even FURTHER, to the very roof of the Cathedral, to the stone balconies that ring the building where we viewed the Morningside Heights in its entirety. Truly breathtaking.
Of course, my camera’s battery died after only a few pictures (isn’t that always the case?) but a few pictures survived of the gorgeous limestone carvings and the bird's eye view of the nave.
After years of restoration, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine is now entirely open to the public...though the Vertical Tour is a rare offering.
Every Thursday for the rest of 2009, we'll be taking you through a forty-part history of New York City. Today we start with 1600-1609; we'll end on New Year's Eve with 2000-2009.
"And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Next Thursday, I'll be describing the world the Dutch sailors saw in the early seventeenth century. This week I want to write about the transformative year that New Yorkers are observing throughout 2009: the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival in what would become the harbor of New York City.
Technically, two European explorers had already discovered what's regarded as the greatest natural bay in the Atlantic Ocean. In 1524, Giovanni Verrazzano, a Florentine employed by France, passed through the narrows that would eventually be named after him. In 1525, Esteban Gomez, a Portugese explorer under a Spanish flag, entered the bay and named its most significant river Rio de San Antonio.
With the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the seas and the New World had opened to the competition. 1602 saw the birth of the Dutch East India Company, one of the most profitable ventures in the history of the world. In 1607, John Smith established Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the Americas. Smith would soon pass on maps and information to fellow Englishman, Henry Hudson, who set out on two failed expeditions to find an easier route to the east than the one around the Cape of Good Hope.
In 1607, for the Muscovy Company, Hudson tried to sail due north, over the top of the world. Didn't work. In 1608, again for the Muscovy company, he sought out a Northeast Passage. He couldn't. By the fall of that year, Hudson moved from London to Amsterdam, employed now by the Dutch East India Company. In 1609, he set sail again. He was ordered to seek only the NorthEAST Passage, but after heading up the coast of Norway, he took a sharp left and sailed three thousand miles to Newfoundland.
For six weeks he kept close to the North American coast, moving south towards Jamestown. He didn't stop in the Virginia colony, however; he continued toward Cape Hatteras and then turned again and backtracked along the shoreline. On August 28th, he became the first European to enter Delaware Bay. Five days later, on September 2nd, 1609, Henry Hudson and the Half Moon landed on Staten Island.
From The Island at the Center of the World (Russell Shorto): "Then, just like that, people appeared...Out came the products. Hemp, dried currants, oysters, beans. Knives, hatchets, and beads. Over the next three days, as the ship explored an intricate mesh of islands, bays, and rivers, making the rounds of Brooklyn, Staten Island, and coastal New Jersey, there would be two violent encounters with Indians, which Juet (Hudson's first mate) claims were initiated by the Indians. People died. It's ironic that immediately upon entering the watery perimeter of what would become New York City, these two things take place: trade and violence."
On September 11th, Hudson pushed into the Upper Bay and encountered Manhattan and several large waterways, the greatest being the river that would one day bear his name. Hudson sailed up the Hudson as far as present-day Albany and, in smaller boats, voyaged up to Troy. The river had narrowed significantly. This was not the Northwest Passage. Hudson returned to Europe, leaving the inhabitants to wonder what the hell that was all about. They would have fifteen years before the Dutch returned to create an outpost called New Amsterdam.
Sources: Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto; and The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky.
Two weeks ago, I stopped with a tour group at the Federal Hall National Memorial and gave them a chance to explore the Lincoln exhibit and to use the facilities.
Unfortunately, I was told that the bathrooms were closed due to a "sewage backup on Wall Street."
I said, "That's one way of putting it."
That weekend I was on Wall Street with another group and took these photos of the sewage being pumped.
These show Wall Street getting a much needed colonic. Hopefully, this will get the credit running again.
Although yesterday's video is almost six minutes long, we STILL had extra material we wanted to include.
--There are actually TWO Manhattan bridges named after George Washington. The other crosses the Harlem River at 181st. Besides these bridges, Washington's name is attached to twelve avenues and streets as well as the large neighborhood near the top of Manhattan. I think it's fitting that we named so much of our city after the first president since the earliest known use of the term "New Yorker" comes from a letter written by George Washington in 1756.
--William Randolph Hearst assumed that the bridge to span the Hudson would line up with the midtown bridge that spanned the East River (the Queensboro), so he bought up a row of real estate lining 57th Street. (This explains why the Heart Headquarters is located on 57th and Eighth Avenue. See the Newest Star of the Skyline in our First Hoparound Tour.) To his surprise, however, the bridge was eventually built over 100 blocks north.
--The GW took 4 years to complete and cost 13 lives, not including the one man who died of a heart attack while waiting in the crowds on Opening Day.
--The main span of the GW Bridge is 3500 feet, more than twice as long as the span of the Brooklyn Bridge. Six years later, however, the GW was surpassed by San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge (4200 feet). In 1964, New York reclaimed the title of America's longest suspension bridge when the Verrazano-Narrows opened. The Verrazano is currently the seventh longest suspension bridge in the world.
Yesterday's video post was directed by Nona Lloyd and featured Berda Gilmore as the enthusiastic real estate broker. Nona directed several of the Little Bytes up Broadway--between Madison Square and Columbus Circle--and Berda appeared in several bytes shot in Central Park and along 46th Street.
Berda Gilmore recently moved to Los Angeles from New York City where she worked and studied as an actress. Berda is having such a good time on the West Coast that she has been chronicling her adventures on her hugely popular website www.berdagilmore.com.
Nona Lloyd is now the General Manager of the new hot lounge, WATERMARK,located on the Jersey Shore in Asbury Park. While it may seem that she's left the theater world, she's still using all of her producing and directing skills, every ounce of her creativity, and is sure to jump into "show biz" again.
One of my favorite exchanges of the last few months took place on Election Night between Andrea Burns (Danielle in the Tony-award-winning In the Heights) and her son, Hudson, who appeared in several Little Bytes videos when he was three. (He plays the eponymous Little Tourist Who Could in the Bowling Green tour.)
(This picture was taken of the family one year before the 2008 debate.)
Hudson was kneeling behind a chair in the living room, putting on a puppet show for his parents and me, but he was four and I'm not afraid to say that the narrative was all over the place--the characters were inconsistent, the voice work muddy, the themes carelessly established and then just as carelessly abandoned.
Besides, Andrea and I hadn't seen each other in a while and we were trying to catch up. When the constant chatter became too much for the puppetmaster, he stood up from behind the chair and scolded us for not paying attention.
"Hudson," Andrea stopped him, declaiming: "The number one rule in the Theater: Never bully your audience."
Hudson, who's been attending the theater since he was less than a year old, replied: "I thought the number one rule was: The audience has to be quiet."
Touche.
The puppet show resumed.
Today we have a guest writer: Jim Dykes, friend and co-founder of Rich and Famous Tours, who appeared in the Little Byte, Madison Square, Part One. Who better to respond to the loss of yet another New York City mainstay, Liz Smith's column in the New York Post?
OMG, I couldn’t believe it when it was announced that the reigning “queen” of NYC gossip columnists, Liz Smith, was being canned by the New York Post after nearly 20 years. I mean, the woman is an institution--older than the Empire State Building. Liz Smith calls herself “The 2000-year-old gossip columnist.” She arrived in Manhattan from the University of Texas journalism school in 1949 and has worked constantly in celebrity/show biz media for 57 years including a stint as a radio and TV producer. I immediately called a friend who is a theatre reviewer/columnist who knows Liz and who has ghost-written her column on occasion and I asked him what was going on with Liz and Rupert Murdoch, publisher of the NY Post and owner of Fox News (where Liz still appears).
“Rupert Murdoch and Liz’s agents just couldn’t come to an agreement because of several reasons. Her money demands are ridiculous. Murdoch had already cut her back to 3 columns a week instead of daily. Also, because of her advanced age (Some sources say she was born Feb. 2, 1921, some say 1923; either way, the woman is over 85), Murdoch didn’t want to give her a multi-year contract which her agent was insisting on, for the fact that at her age she might drop dead at any moment. He wanted to keep her on a month by month retainer.”
Heck, most of her columns aren’t even written by her any more. They are written by a team of younger writers. Liz is too busy going out on the town and being feted by all of her celebrity friends and attending charity galas. She herself started out in 1949 as a ghost writer for Cholly Knickerbocker and Walter Winchell.
Continue reading "Jim Dykes of Rich & Famous Tours on the Liz Smith Firing" »
This photo isn't the greatest, but I didn't want to stand around a men's room taking too many pictures. This was taken on Liberty Island and I just loved the parenthetical clarification. (Click on the picture to enlarge.) While listing the "many features that are environmentally preferable," someone thought it necessary to explain that the water-less urinals could be found in the "Men's Restroom only."
It reminded me of the sign in Braille on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building telling Braille readers that telescopes are located on the 86th floor observatory. That just seems cruel.
I was also recently puzzled by another extraneous statement on the side of a Starbucks cup. Here's what was printed on that grande drip:
The Way I See It #21
"People need to see that, far from being an obstacle, the world's diversity of languages, religions and traditions is a great treasure, affording us precious opportunities to recognize ourselves in others."
Youssou N'Dour, Musician
This is the author's opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks.
In other words, Starbucks might believe that the world's diversity is indeed an obstacle and one to quash the world over. Really? Until they start printing excerpts from Mein Kampf, I'm going to assume that they agree with the quotations they're selecting.
Winter will be ending.
Finally.
Savor one last winter afternoon.
For my birthday last week I wanted to check out one of the scavenger hunts run by Watson Adventures. They host hunts in New York, LA, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia and I had heard raves about their most challenging: Murder at the Met.
I invited eleven I felt would love the game to join me. (Apologies for the blurry pictures, but, remember, you're not supposed to use flash inside the museum--not even for a special occasion.) I thought that twelve players divided into three teams of four would be ideal. A team of two would have a difficult time since there's so much ground to cover, items to find, and codes to break, while a team of five or more might get in each other's way or leave a few people out of the fun.
For the sake of your own potential hunt, I'm not going to divulge any of the details other than to say that in Murder at the Met, you have two hours to loop through the museum locating objects, filling in clues and then using the clues to solve the mystery.
There were nine other teams playing that night and I'm proud to say that two of our teams tied for third and for second, and one of our teams won with a perfect score. (I have very smart friends.) Mine was one of the teams in second place, short of a perfect score by only one measly point. We couldn't find the thingamajig in the whatchamacallit room. This was one of the hardest items to find and since it was early in our loop (every team follows the same route but starts in different locations), we expected all the searches to be that difficult and forced ourselves to move on. By the end of the game we convinced ourselves that the temporary answer we had put down was probably the right one. It wasn't. And apparently, according to the other teams, the correct item is "really, really beautiful." (I look forward to admiring the "really, really beautiful" thingamajig on my next visit.)
The scavenger hunts are designed as team-building projects and I was fascinated to see and hear how each individual took a specific role in the hunt. Consider my group. Since I knew the floor plan very well, I became the navigator, moving my group from gallery to gallery and to a few of the objects without a single false turn, but I could not for the life of me get my mind around the mystery we were supposed to solve. "I know who was murdered!" I proclaimed at one point even though the murder victim was stated in the opening line of the handout and was never, at any moment, in question. Becca turned out to be the story sleuth, keeping track of every suspect, relationship and motivation; Doug was the code breaker; and Sarah was the voice of reason, bringing us back to earth whenever our rationalizing got too complicated. (What's most interesting is that these aren't necessarily the roles we would have played if the teams were different.)
Pictured on the right--Laura, Tessa, Marc and Chris: the winners of last Friday's Murder at the Met:
To solve the Murder at the Met or to find another scavenger hunt near you, visit Watson Adventures.
Two years ago, I had a group that was supposed to leave New York on a Thursday afternoon, but because of a winter storm couldn't leave the east coast until Monday evening...from Baltimore! Listening to the weather reports, I thought that the group I led this weekend would suffer a similar fate.
But I was wrong. My thirty-three did fly home yesterday despite the winter storms and all of the other cancellations. Then again, they weren't flying south where airports are closed by an inch of snow--they were flying between JFK and Minneapolis.
The picture was taken on Sunday afternoon, before the snowfall, when they paid me one of the highest compliments a group of Minnesotans can pay a New Yorker. "We were freezing," they told me at dinner. "You looked so much warmer than we were."
I might have blushed at this--I endured a winter day better than a Minnesotan?!?!?!
But before I buy myself a trophy, here's a likely explanation: While dressing that morning, the Minnesotans thought, "This is New York, it's not nearly as cold as Minneapolis. I don't need a hat, I don't need my gloves, I'll wear my light jacket."
Meanwhile, this New Yorker, hearing the forecast, thought: "Holy crap, it's going to be cold today. Layer and bundle, layer and bundle. I'll wear long underwear, my heaviest coat, my hat, my scarf and my gloves."
Click on the photo to enlarge it and count the number of hatless heads.
One last note: Since they were a theater group, I thought I'd post an informal poll. While the shows they saw (Billy Elliot, Shrek and Fuerza Bruta) were very different, I forced them to pick a favorite.
Fuerza Bruta: 60%
Billy Elliot: 40%
Shrek: 0% (Yikes.)
I guess the meteor- ologists weren't just going for the ratings. It did snow last night, so this morning I'm sitting by the window in long johns with a cup of coffee and listening to the radio. New York City public schools are closed and I'm settling in for a cozy snow day.
Wait a second. I don't work in the public school system. What's wrong with me? I have a job today. I need to meet my group at 11, give them tours of Central Park, the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and Harlem before taking them out to JFK for their flight home.
(The snow just started falling again, so I have a hunch that last part is going to be modified.)
The cats, always intrigued by snow, flashes of light, reflections...
Olive waiting for more--she prefers when it's falling...