Little Bytes Recommends: The New Stretch of the High Line

The new stretch of the High Line, which extends the park from 20th to 30th streets, opened last week.  Now twice as long, you can enter at 30th (elevator access); 28th, 26th, 23rd (elevator access coming soon), 20th, 18th, 16th (elevator access), 14th (elevator access), or Gansevoort Streets.

More photos after the jump.

New York Video Friday: Episode 22

Before the snows completely melt and we bid adieu to the winter, let's enjoy one of our favorite video-makers, Improv Everywhere, with their homage to ice skating at Bryant Park.

How sharp are your skates?

Gormley and Gaudens

Since March, the Madison Square Park Conservancy has presented Antony Gormley's EVENT HORIZON, wherein thirty-one life-size sculptural self-portraits stand throughout the park and on the tops of local buildings, including the Flatiron and the New York Life Insurance Company.  One of my groups couldn't get past the fact that "you can see the man's doo-dah."

That reminded me that this isn't the first time visitors to Madison Square have craned their necks to gaze upon a human figure floating above the park.  New York City made national headlines in the 1890's when a sensational and scandalous nude by Augustus Saint Gaudens was unveiled as a weather vane for Stanford White's Madison Square Garden. 

What was the name of that statue?

Photos from the Middle Ages

The NYC Parks Department and the Washington Heights and Inwood Development Corporation have been co-hosting the city's Medieval Festival in Fort Tryon Park since 1983.  This year's events were held on Sunday and thousands came to the home of the Cloisters to celebrate feudalism, superstition, internecine warfare, and the plague. 

There seemed to be hundreds of vendors in stalls that lined Margaret Corbin Drive.  Almost all were in costume, including two men representing Manhattan Mini Storage which people don't realize started in Avignon in 1146.  Besides securing your storage locker, you could have your fortune read while shopping for talismen, incense and battle axes.   

And there was lots of entertainment.  A grand procession at 11:30 was followed by performances throughout the park, around every corner, by singers, dancers, instrumentalists, falconers, actors, knights, jugglers, magicians, and jousters.  The Cloisters also offered a garden tour, a highlights tour, and two costume demonstrations. 

I was impressed by how many people dressed up for this festival and by how long the lines were to partake in the grilled feast--massive drumsticks that would make a hobbit happy and golden cobs of corn...wait a second!  Corn?!  There was no corn in Europe in the Middle Ages!

More photos after the jump.

Little Bytes Recommends...an Afternoon (Maybe Even an Eternity) at Green-Wood Cemetery

As reported yesterday, Green-Wood Cemetery opened in 1838.  Inspired by Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Green-Wood was landscaped by David Bates Douglass as one the country's first rural cemeteries.  Initially, people still preferred to bury their dead in churchyards and on family land, but in 1845 the widow of DeWitt Clinton, one of the most important New Yorkers in our history who died in 1828, had his remains transferred from a graveyard near Albany to Green-Wood.  For the rest of the nineteenth century, many of the most famous New Yorkers chose Green-Wood for their final resting place and visitors from across the country made it one of the most visited attractions in the United States.

Green-Wood was also an inspiration for Central Park and it probably wasn't coincidental that the winning proposal put forth by Olmsted and Vaux was called the Greensward Plan, a name that would surely evoke pleasant associations.  Green-Wood is 478 acres of rolling hills and valleys, thousands of trees, four lakes, and a myriad of avenues and pathways with names like Glade, Birch, Sassafras, Marigold, Vernal, Jonquil, and Garland. 

Besides the landscaping, the cemetery is home to some of the finest sculpture and mausoleums in America.  Sometimes called the Pere Lachaise of Brooklyn, there is stunning artistry almost everywhere you turn.

Green-Wood is huge (more than half the size of Central Park) with so many twists and turns and ups and downs, and almost 600,000 buried, you can't expect to see it all.  A friend and I were lucky to have had a security guard pick us up while we were walking along Sylvan Lake and took us for a tour in his air-conditioned car, showing us graves and remarkable sculptures we never would have reached on foot.  

On Wednesdays, at 1:00, the cemetery offers a tram tour for $15, which can be booked online here.  I'm actually planning to take that tour next Wednesday, 09/09/09.  Join me!

What family tomb is the largest private mausoleum at Green-Wood?  ANSWER AFTER THE JUMP...

Update on Central Park Storm Damage

More than 200 trees were felled in that brief Tuesday storm. 

The Central Park Conservancy, already operating on a reduced budget, needs your help.

Storm Damage Update

 

"The staggering cost of clean-up is estimated at several hundred thousand dollars, but it is impossible to attach a monetary figure to some of the losses. "We had a wonderful chestnut tree at 100th Street and Central Park West," said Neil Calvanese, VP of Operations for the Central Park Conservancy. "Records indicate the tree was planted by the Park's designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, more than 150 years ago." The tree was devastated by the storm and will be removed."

To remind yourself how terrific the park is:

Teeny tidbyte from stormin' Cayce

Video Tour of Washington Square Park

After a recent stroll through the renovated Washington Square Park (pictures posted yesterday), we thought we would feature our two-part video tour of the park we shot in August of 2007.

 

These are from our tour of public spaces along Broadway from Bowling Green to Columbus Circle.

Pictures of the New Washington Square

 

 

 

 

This Week's Quiz--Our Largest Parks

1--What is the largest park in Manhattan?  (This is too easy...name the second and third largest.)

2--What is the largest park in the Bronx?

3--What is the largest park in Queens?

4--What is the largest park in Staten Island?

5--What is the largest park in Brooklyn?

6--In what three boroughs can you can find a park exceeding 1000 acres?

7--Which borough has the most acreage of parkland?

8--Where does Central Park rank in the city's largest parks?

9--What park is pictured?  Where is it located?  (Hint:  It has the largest public garden with unrestricted access in the city.)

Love, Lies and Lessons at Linden Terrace

 

 

 

LOVVES? 

 

 

 

But then it all melted!!  Never, NEVER, buy ad space in the snow from someone named Bernie Madoff!!

Fort Tryon Park: The First Snowfall of 2009