| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value | |
| Should you go? |  |
| Time spent | 76 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | The name “Margaret” scratched in the glass of the library window. Back in the 1960s, Margaret Lindsay, daughter of Mayor John Lindsay, decided to test whether her mom’s diamond ring was really a diamond. Caroline Giuliani scratched her name in one of the windows, too. Copycat. But I like that in an official house filled with history and art, they’ve allowed those little human touches to remain. |
Visiting Gracie Mansion for this project made me realize I knew nothing about Gracie Mansion, beyond the name.
Gracie Mansion is both older and newer than I thought. Older, in that I didn’t realize that the original house was built in 1799, in the classic Federal style I’m coming to know well. Newer in that it only became the official mayor’s residence of the city in 1942. La Guardia was the first mayor to live there; prior to that it served several roles, including as the home of the Museum of the City of New York.
The Executive Director of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, who was one of the leaders of our tour, described the situation as “Robert Moses wanted to be the mayor’s landlord.” (He was head of the Parks Commission at the time.) And it became so.
I also didn’t know exactly where Gracie Mansion is. I always assumed it was in the East 50s or so. More central. Actually it’s in Carl Schurz Park, high in the East 80s, making it really far from everywhere in the city I tend to go. And a beneficiary of the Second Avenue subway.
Doing the math, this year is the 75th anniversary of the house becoming the mayor’s residence, and so they’ve decorated the public spaces with a great variety of art that hearkens back to the city in 1942, a time of war and jazz, fear and excitement. Weegee photos, a Noguchi scuplture, a 1941 signed Yankees champion baseball, Joe DiMaggio prominently in front…
The house has evolved substantially from its original form, with additions true to the Federal style in the mid 1960s (which apparently was fairly scandalous in a time of architectural modernism, but I can’t imagine a modernist wing stuck on the old house).
As with all buildings over a certain vintage in the city, there is a Hamilton connection, although ironically it’s a recent one. When they built the 1966 addition, they located and installed the mantelpiece from the Bayard Mansion in the new ballroom. Thus Hamilton died post-duel in front of the ballroom’s fireplace. According to Curbed, there’s a chance that Gracie Mansion and Hamilton Grange were designed by the same architect, too.
The tour was excellent, the art on display evocative and well chosen. We got a little rushed, as there was an event going on with the Onassis Foundation that evening in honor of Greek Independence Day, and so we got chased out of the last few rooms. Sadly the mayor did not crash our tour. Still, I appreciated the overview of the history of the building and its evolution, and learned a bit I didn’t already know about LaGuardia and some of the other mayors who lived there. All of the 14 or so people on my tour were New Yorkers, and I strongly encourage everyone who lives here to visit.
For Reference:
| Address | E 88th St & East End Ave, Manhattan |
|---|---|
| Website | www.nyc.gov/site/gracie/index.page |
| Cost | Free but tours are limited and advanced reservations required |
| Other Relevant Links |
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I was just 
Here’s another place that I had no idea existed before starting this project. The Society of Illustrators occupies a very handsome townhouse on East 63rd Street, and includes an ample museum space (and even a gift shop!) for showing off the work of illustrators of all kinds.
The museum is terrific, although given that it is a townhouse, there are some stairs to navigate — fair warning if you’re movement impaired.
The Czech Center’s museum space is small but effective, and it comes associated with three things that no cultural institution I’ve seen thus far can match:
Gary Simmons’s “Ghost Reels,” an installation in the stairway featuring the names of black stars of the silent film era, written in the style of a typewriter typeface, and partially blurred or erased, evoking a part of film history that many have forgotten.
The Drawing Center occupies a beautifully designed SoHo space, cast iron Corinthian columns outside, several gallery spaces within. It’s all very clean and spare and modern. Imminently Instagrammable, as they say.
The ground-floor space is great, with large windows looking out onto both Fifth Ave. and 13th Streets. 
The Center for Architecture claims to be “the premier cultural venue for architecture and the built environment in New York City.” I can’t say that I was all that impressed with it. 
The Leslie-Lohman Museum occupies the newest museum space in the city, having moved into spiffy new digs in SoHo in just the last two weeks. 
The new space for the museum is mostly terrific. You enter into a fairly narrow area where two greeters welcome you and point out what’s on. There are two gallery spaces, a smaller one to the left as you walk in , and a larger one to the right and back. There’s also a kitchen space as well. I am torn between thinking it’s charming that there’s a kitchen right sort of in the open, and thinking their architect really should’ve found a way to separate that from the public space.
The inaugural show is sort of a hodge-podge. I get that survey shows do that, and I would be disappointed if they’d segregated the gay art over here, the lesbian art over there, etc. Sorting by chronology or medium can oversimplify, too. But I would’ve appreciated some effort to put a lens on the collection. Love versus sex. Ideals of beauty. Something.
Should you go? It depends on how you feel about diversity and penises. And maybe, even if you are squeamish about either of those two things, you should consider going anyway. It might be good for you.
Perched up on the fifth floor of an old industrial building in the middle of the High Line / Chelsea art gallery district is the International Print Center New York, a non-profit that puts on regular shows on the art of printmaking.
The Schomburg Center is the New York Public Library’s research branch focused on the African American experience. It’s a complex of three buildings in Harlem, hosting a ton of talks, events, and exhibitions. Much of the Schomburg Center is currently undergoing a thorough renovation, so I couldn’t visit anything beyond the exhibition space.
The current show at the Schomburg Center is on the Black Power movement of the late 60s and 70s. (2016 marked its fiftieth anniversary) Well chosen quotes highlighted the establishment reaction to the Black Power movement, actual newspapers, magazines, flyers, photographs, pins and other key documents made an exhibit that involved a great deal of reading much more immediate and interesting. Music from the era helped convey the emotion of the time. And some well chosen videos on a couple of screens added variety.
The show covers a large amount of ground, reflecting on the political and 
organizational tactics of the Black Power leadership, as well as on the movement’s impact on fashion, the arts, and popular culture. I confess I always wondered about the berets that were such a signature part of the Black Power look. The show suggests they came from the influence of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
The Schomburg’s exhibition space itself is beautiful, light and airy, with big windows. It’s not large, but it was the right size for the show it contained.