Look here for New York City nostalgia

Came across this collection of vintage NYC photos this evening. Incredible collection of images, the ones of the old Penn Station are incredible and tragic at the same time. The perspective of the photo where B-25 plane hit the Empire State Building is also amazing.

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/SPEC/GAL-BW.htm

Penn Station (demolished)


From the outside:


Terrifying view


Ultimate skyline silhouette:


All photos found here: http://www.nyc-architecture.com/SPEC/GAL-BW.htm

A Weekend of NYC Urbanism

I visited the Highline with a fellow architecture friend, Julia, a few weekends back. After talking the walk, we checked out the exhibit "The Future Beneath Us" at the Public Library and Grand Central Terminal.

For those of you that aren't familiar, The Highline is a new urban park in NYC built on the elevated train tracks on the west side of the city. There was intense debate over its construction, and New York Magazine ran a great article spelling out the story. This is the first completed section, but two more sections are to come.

As an architecture major, I've found that people expect me to have insightful critiques prepared merits, successes and failures of the Highline project as it stands now. While I can't offer anything earth-shattering that hasn't been already said, I will say this: right now, the Highline is novelty. You have to wait in line to see it because everyone is making it their weekend activity, and you're going to hear a myriad of different complaints, compliments, and reactions from all of those people. When asked what I think, I just say "Come back in 10 years, see what has happened then." This is a public park, not a thrill ride, and eventually, I'm assuming that the glimmer will wear off and the Highline will melt into the fabric of NYC, a familiar constant rather than an unfamiliar outlier. When that has happened, we can take another look and see how the Highline is being used, and try to better understand what credentials we can use to best judge it.

Here's what we saw.



First building you encounter is the Standard Hotel. (see this article here about this place!)






Benches.



Nope, don't know these guys, but the seats are very cool.



10th Avenue Square: The street becomes the stage.




View looking out the windows of the 10th Avenue Square.



Back at the audience.



Architecture renderings of the 10th Avenue Square. (via thehighline.org)



Check out the clever drainage on these water fountains!



Looking back at the end.



Two more sections to come in this direction.

Then we moved onto the "The Future Beneath Us":





Drilling samples.



If you've taken a train ride into NYC with me recently, you probably sat there, rolling your eyes as I told you about "how insane this is." When the tunnel under the Hudson River was first constructed in the early 19th century, it had two tracks: one going into the city, and one going out. Guess what? There is STILL only a single track in either direction. The new rail project is going to fix this problem buy constructing new track and tunnels, but until that's built, every person that leaves or enters New York on a commuter train has to go through this tunnel (where your ears pop). How insane is that?




This drilling machine is awesome. 'Nuff said.

I didn't take as many photos of the exhibit as I should have, but it was very interesting to check out. It's always amazing to see what goes on underground and behind the scenes to keep the city going. The history and future of this kind of infrastructure is incredible.

More info and links:

-There is a also great post over at sub-studio design blog that I would recommend reading as well. Their photos have that "I know what I'm doing quality" that mine still tend to lack: The Highline@sub-studio.
-New York Magazine article: read here
-Offical Highline site: thehighline.org.
-Website for The Future Beneath Us exhibit

Dumpster Diving 2.0 and "What is New York City?"

Today, the NYTimes came out with an article talking about something I came across last week. It re-sparked some thoughts.

First written about here at Ready Made, some designers have started turning old dumpsters into pools, hidden away in the cracks of the city for a small, select group of people.

The New York Times ran the story today, citing Ready Made's original story about the dumpsters. I love this part:

After Mr. Weyland gave an interview to ReadyMade, the D.I.Y. design magazine, two weeks ago, breathless coverage and links began appearing all over the blogosphere. Soon the location was decoded. One post led to people standing on the roofs of cars in a nearby lot, snapping photos, Mr. Weyland said with an eye roll.

Who wouldn't want to get in on the action?!

Living in Princeton, I've been able to spend a bunch of my weekends in the city with friends. I've never lived in the city, but NYC's glamour as tourist destination wore off years ago, and now I go in for a more "legit" thrill. In my mind, New York is very much two different cities: one for the tourists who can see the sites, eat at the restaurants, drink at the bars, sit in the parks. The other is for people that live there. Life in the city when you're visiting friends exists off the streets and in the air, in apartment buildings, behind the scenes, getting buzzed-in or greeting a doorman.

It's the second kind of city that I prefer, where you fade into the woodwork and rely on each other for entertainment, rather than searching for a shallow thrill in the city-scene. Bars and restaurants become a backdrop for gatherings of friends and family, rather than a novel experience of fun seats and fancy drinks.

When the night is over, you don't head back to a sterile hotel or squeeze into an outgoing train. You go back home, back up into the city where the night continues in the privacy of your own place in the skyline.

These dumpster pools are neat because they're tucked away for a few people to enjoy. It's exclusive, but that's not really the draw for me. It's the private, personal space; it's an urban oasis off above the streets.

But seriously, how can I get in on the action?

New NYC Subway iPhone app let's you streamline your trip

To keep myself interested during my 1.5 hour commute into NYC last summer, I started trying to figure out how to streamline the trip. I realized that waiting at the front of the train as it arrived in Grand Central but me closer to the station, standing by the 3rd door of the second car in the S-train would give me the fastest exit, and then the 6th car on the downtown 1-line put me right next to the turnstiles to get up to the street.

Turns out I'm not the only person that was thinking like this. A new iPhone app, Exit Strategy, gives you the information in the palm of your hand so there's no trial and error involved. Apparently, people like the idea but are disappointed that there are so many subway lines and stops missing. Hopefully future versions will provide more complete coverage.

Check it out here: Exit Strategy

via Thrillist

Fin de la Blog Hiatus: A near near-death experience

(Because one of my biggest pet peeves is people apologizing and giving excuses for not keeping up to date with their blogs/sites, I won't give any flowery explanation for the silence. I've just been busy, but I've got a backlog of things to post. Get exciteddddd.)

I spent my "fourth" in NYC seeing friends, fireworks, and going crazy, and sort of almost died. Driving back to the apartment after a dinner of Pho Bang in Chinatown, our cab decided to accelerate into the a cab parked on the side of the road, resulting in a violent fender bender where the fender of the other cab fine and our cab's front-left side got destroyed. Here's the photo:



Let me answer some of your questions right off the bat:

1) Yes, we're all fine.

2) No, we're not going to sue.

3) Yes, we're sure we're not going to sue. Please see #1.

4) No, we didn't wait two hours for the cops. It would have been at least 2 hours for them to arrive with all of the 4th of July festivities going on.

5) OBVIOUSLY we didn't pay for that cab ride.

6) Yes, Mom, we're actually fine.

7) Yup, we took two more cabs that night.

8) No, I don't know what that liquid stuff pouring out from under the car is. Yes, it might be gas...at least that's what the girl on the sidewalk that screamed "GET OUT OF THE CAR!" after impact thought it was. We promptly acquiesced to her request. (thanks to Chris for the inquiry)

The funny thing was that when I got into the cab, I pulled the seatbelt across myself, but then said outloud "Nah, what am I doing?!" (Subtext: "Cab drivers are the best drivers in the entire city! Am I right?!")

I guess I can mark off that square in my game of "Bingo: The Crazy, Unpredictable and Unexpected Life Experiences Edition"?

Photos from the weekend.

Is it really that simple?

In a stroke of bizarrely kitsch urban/public development, New York City has planted 376 rubber folding chairs in the heart of Times Square.


Wait...what?

I haven't had a double take this severe in ages, but despite your completely justifiable doubts, it's true. Here are all the facts you need to know:

• Each chair, at ~$15 is 0.001% of the city's budget.
• They've already made a t-shirt design for them (apparently still too obscure to warrant any pictures on Google Images)
• Mayor Bloomberg says this kind of thing isn't going to happen again
• The chairs are pink, blue and green.
  

Consider this: We have Times Square, one of the most crowded places in the galaxy, and the city want to give people a chance to sit down. So what do they decide to do? Put in beach chairs! Genius! Why overthink, why overplan, why overspend?

I'm partial to practical moves like this that break the mold, catch people off guard, and get lots of attention. And how apropos? It happens in media hungry NYC during a time when budgets are tight and spending tons of cash on expensive solutions isn't always an option.

Longevity? Sustainability? Not part of the equation, because the chairs will inevitably broken/stolen/run over by more fire trucks soon enough, but this is a bigger move than many people—especially Bloomberg, included—seem to think.