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Long Island CIty Comes Into its Own
There was a time when Long Island City’s waterfront area wasn’t exactly a hot residential neighborhood. With its looming industrial buildings
with a few small residential buildings thrown together near the East River, the
area was more On the Waterfront than Sex and the City.
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Beautifying with Rooftop and Community Gardens
New York City is known for many things beautiful—architecture, a rainbow of diverse cultures, and its fabulous skyline, but let's face it, outside of Central and Prospect Parks, most people aren't aware of how much park land actually exists in the city. Read More
The Best and Worst of Life in New York City
The Big Apple. Paris has just as much romantic cachet. Rome is every bit as frenetic. London has excellent theater, too, and there are also esteemed financial institutions in Zurich and Hong Kong and Frankfurt. Tokyo and Mumbai and Jakarta have just as much population density, if not more. Berlin’s art scene is probably more robust. Kuala Lampur has tall skyscrapers as well. And the cabbies drive just as crazily in Naples. But no other city has all of those things, and more. As former Mayor Rudy Giuliani put it to David Letterman a few years ago, suggesting a new motto for New York: “We can kick your city’s…” Well, you can imagine. It was Rudy talking, after all. Read More
Rego Park, Queens
Rego Park, Queens is a neighborhood that has seen many changes over the years. Once considered the suburbs, it is now a bustling community home to many families, a diverse population of immigrants from all over the world and a large number of senior citizens. Residents like Rego Park's convenient location for its proximity to other areas of the city, as well as local offerings. As the population has grown and the face of the area has changed, the community has adapted to reflect the changing, diverse residents and their needs. Read More
Living the Loft Life
If only I had had an extra $100,000 25 years ago. (OK—an extra $100,000, today would be good too.) But that’s what I kept thinking as I sat chatting with Oliver Allen, a retired journalist and author who is now a regular contributor to his neighborhood’s monthly community newspaper, The Tribeca Triband its “unofficial” historian, in the to-die-for loft that he has shared with his wife Deborah since 1983. That’s the year the two of them pulled out of suburban Pelham, New York and never looked back. Read More
Williamsburg's Most Recent Reinvention
Over the past 15 years, freelance photographer Simon
Russell and his wife, Ann Delilkan, worked hard to make a home out of their
small basement-level apartment on MacDougal Street. Read More
Battery Park City
A walk along the Esplanade is all it takes to absorb the beauty and essence of Battery Park City. Running the entire length of Battery Park City, the 1.2-mile route is a wide walkway that provides breathtaking views of New Jersey's "gold coast" and Jersey City's up-and-coming downtown district. Historic Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty can be seen in the distance, while closer by are hundreds of species of plant and flora. Rollerbladers and bikers roll along the riverside, while others sit on benches or stroll by the view. Read More
The New Bronx
The Bronx has quite a reputation. Grim and featureless slums as far away as Catena, Sicily have been dubbed "The Bronx" by their local residents. For decades, the name of the once-promising borough of New York City has been synonymous with urban blight and drug-related street crime—but it wasn't always so. This iconic borough, made up of many smaller, unique neighborhoods, has been host to both the American Dream and a decaying housing nightmare. The factors are complex and span centuries, but like a phoenix, the Bronx has begun its ascent from its literal ashes. Read More
A Happening Place
Want to know what it is like to live in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan—that strip between Madison and Third avenues that runs roughly between 29th and 38th streets? You could ask someone who lives there, but be forewarned—the answer you get will depend on who you talk to. Read More
More Thans Just Glitz, Glamour & Crystal Balls
The heart of New York City is Times Square. Named for the good times you have when you are…in it,” says Michael Scott in the NBC comedy, The Office. He then heads into Sbarro for a ‘real’ New York slice. Read More
From Amalgamated to Central Park West
Emma Lazarus perhaps said it best in her immortal poem in which she spoke about the wave of immigrants that were welcomed to American’s golden shores. Generation upon generation of newcomers have chosen to settle in New York City and its boroughs to find their piece of the American dream. They came from every country, economic class and social strata to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, to Brooklyn and Queens, to places like Bushwick and Bensonhurst and many other neighborhoods, to start a new life in America. Between 1820 and 1860, a total of four million immigrants entered the United States, most coming through New York City. Read More
A Look at Traditional Queens
Few people think of Flushing, Queens as a neighborhood of rich historical importance but they're missing the big picture. Perhaps best-known as the birthplace of television star Fran Drescher (and her unforgettable accent) and home to one of history's most recent miracles—albeit a secular one that took place on a baseball diamond—the truth is that Flushing is home to a long tradition of diversity and tolerance. The neighborhood took early, important steps toward the cultural freedoms we take for granted today, and is now one of the most culturally diverse areas in the world. Read More
Community and Commerce
The northeast corner of the Bronx is one of New York City's most diverse areas. It's home to Co-op City—the state's largest housing cooperative—and includes such neighborhoods as Throgs Neck, Pelham Bay, Westchester Square and others. As a result, the area is also home to one of New York City's largest community boards, Community Board 10. Like just about every other community board in the city, CB10 needs to address the concerns of its residents and maintain a level of quality of life in an ever-changing city. Read More
Cross-Roads Village to a Modern Suburbia
Back in 1900, a little village sprouted up on Long Island called "Comac" along the Huntington/Smithtown town line. Located in the little hollow created by the gently rolling hills that surrounded the intersection of Jericho Turnpike and the Commack/Townline Road, it was a cross-roads community that stretched out to the north, south east and west from Comac Corners. Read More
The Largest Cooperative in Queens
In 1939, when the WPA Guide to New York Citywas first published, South Queens, and particularly the area around what would become Rochdale Village, had little to recommend the visitor. Read More
Harlem on the Rise
Nearly every neighborhood in New York City has had its fair share of ups and downs over the decades. Yesterday's demilitarized zone is today's luxury condo haven. Double-wide strollers wheel down sidewalks where yuppies once feared to tread. This has been the pattern everywhere from the East Village to Hell's Kitchen—and don't even start with Brooklyn—but nowhere has the resurgence of development and renewed real estate interest been quite as clear as it has been in Harlem. Read More
A Look at the Financial District
For all the incredible diversity embodied in its population of eight million people and the many industries that call it home, New York City has always been a center of commerce. The city was founded not by a nation but by a corporation—the Dutch West India Company, in 1626 one of the wealthiest and most powerful commercial enterprises in the world. New Amsterdam, as it was originally called, was established not as a colony but as a trading post. Indeed, Broadway itself is paved over a trail used by Native Americans to come and make trade - for them, too, Manhattan was a commercial center. That the neighborhood containing the original Dutch settlements is called the Financial District, then, is hardly a misnomer. Read More
The Bronx Borough President
Lobbying for one cause or another has always been a part of the daily life in New York City. These days, in the Bronx, it's the borough president who is the most prominent person lobbying for the interests of those living in the borough. Things have changed from the rough days of a century or so ago, when citizens of what was to eventually become the Bronx had no elected official to contact for help with everyday problems. Read More
Skid Row to Luxury Gold?
Examining a few pounds of freeze-dried goji berries in the Bowery neighborhood’s Whole Foods market, it is easy to forget that you might be standing in the
exact spot where the Bowery Boys, clad terrifyingly in stovepipe hats and
flared trousers, clashed with rival gang, the Dead Rabbits. You snag a smidgeon
of organic goat cheese and stroll up the Bowery, completely unaware that in a
different time you might have been stepping over Bowery bums stumbling out of
McGurk’s Suicide Hall. And passing the New Museum of Contemporary Art with a parasol
slung over your shoulder, you can scarcely hear the piercing electric echoes of
CBGB, a launching pad for American punk rock and bands like the Ramones,
Blondie, and the Talking Heads.
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From Urban Renewal to Urban Luxury
Affordable apartments with fresh air, good light, and
attractively landscaped grounds for middle-income people—those were
the goods Park West Village was created to deliver in the late 1950s and
early 1960s as part of a government-subsidized urban redevelopment plan. Read More
The Sounds of Silence
For more than 60 years, the Greenbrook Sanctuary has served as an unparalleled refuge of natural beauty and wonder for city dwellers and suburbanites in search of a landscape without cars, without noise and without the flat grayness of concrete. Read More
Coney Island, New Development and Progress
Coney Island: Two words that, for many, evoke memories of summers at the beach in Brooklyn, eating Nathan's Famous hot dogs, enjoying rides and boardwalk games. The rides and beach at Coney Island have long attracted visitors to the area, and have become New York icons. Read More
A Look at Buildings, Landmarks and Neighborhoods of the Past
With so much going on, so much frenetic energy, life in New York City takes the utmost focus. The senses are overwhelmed with stimuli—people, dogs in sweaters, neon advertisements, new construction, bleating traffic—and amidst all that, there is work, board meetings, family; personal lives and the responsibilities of day-to-day life. In some ways, like carriage horses in Central Park, we all have to put our blinders on sometimes, and in a bustling city like this, it is no wonder that as the present moves forward, some relics of the past—buildings, landmarks, even whole neighborhoods, are largely forgotten. Read More
