manhattan Archives - Page 7 of 14

September 21, 2017May 1, 2018

Governors Island National Monument

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	48 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	A plaque (reproduced just below) visualizes how New York’s historic harbor defenses overlapped to protect Lower Manhattan and the Hudson. With the actual harbor spread majestically before you, it’s phenomenally effective.

Harbor Defenses, Governors Island — Historic Harbor Defenses, Plus Harbor

I’ve seen three forts (Totten, Schuyler, Clinton) in the course of this project so far, with several more yet to come. Governors Island features a twofer, which (like the others) speak to changing military technology and adaptation to new uses.

All the extant fortifications around New York Harbor and Long Island Sound have two things in common. The military never had to use them to defend the city, and advances in military technology very quickly rendered them obsolete. Not that it was necessarily money down the drain; the mere existence of the chain of forts around the city may well have helped deter attacks from, um, pirates or Canadians? They almost certainly helped ensure New York remained unmolested by the British during the War of 1812. Continue reading “Governors Island National Monument”

September 18, 2017

Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	61 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	In 1912, this 50-page speech, folded in Teddy Roosevelt’s overcoat pocket, helped slow a bullet fired by a would-be assassin on the way to a campaign event in Milwaukee. Bullet lodged in his side, Roosevelt proceeded to give his 90-minute speech, extemporaneously, before seeing a doctor. He later said of being shot, “It is a trade risk, which every prominent public man ought to accept as a matter of course.” Brevity may be the soul of wit, but verbosity can block a bullet.

The first thing you should know about the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace is that it’s a fake. Artificial. Teddy Roosevelt was decidedly not born in the master bedroom of that house in 1858, nor did he spend his formative childhood years in that building.

The family moved uptown and sold the original brownstone in that location, TR’s actual birthplace, in 1873. In 1916, in a fit of early twentieth century anti-sentimentality, developers demolished it in in favor of a retail building. Then, after the great man died, sentimentality won out. A group of dedicated Rooseveltians bought the property, reproducing the brownstone in its original location. The current building opened as a museum in 1923. Continue reading “Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site”

September 13, 2017

Guggenheim Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	92 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Joseph Cornell, “Setting for a Fairy Tale,” 1942, and Untitled (Fortune Telling Parrot for Carmen Miranda), ca. 1939. I’ll always pick Joseph Cornell’s achingly lovely, idiosyncratic boxes, wherever I happen to find them.

I despise the Guggenheim Museum. It sucks and you shouldn’t go there.

Guggenheim Museum

The brevity of those two sentences would make for a welcome break from my normal museum review, but my highly contrarian feelings toward the Guggenheim require justification. Let’s start with the building itself, and then move on to what’s inside. Continue reading “Guggenheim Museum”

September 12, 2017

New York City Police Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	20 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	From the 1940s until the 1970s, policewomen in New York received these combination makeup and weapon holsters. So practical!

New York City Police Museum The Police Museum is currently in flux. Formerly housed near City Hall, it’s been homeless since Sandy. For the moment, it’s found space on Governor’s Island, where a scaled-down version tells a few selected stories of Gotham’s police force.

It’s in Pershing Hall, a beautiful, well-preserved, historic building, with two odd flags outside.

The green, white, and blue one is the flag of the NYC Police Department — five stripes for the five boroughs, and 24 stars for the 23 towns and villages that make up NYC, plus one for the city as a whole. I’m not making that up. Continue reading “New York City Police Museum”

September 6, 2017September 6, 2017

New-York Historical Society

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	94 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	John Singer Sargent’s “Gassed,” 1919, a monumental oil painting on loan for the WWI show from the Imperial War Museum, London. It’s a Sargent, so it’s as civilized and genteel as war gets. But at the same time, it’s a far cry from the fancy society folks I’m used to from him.

new-york historical society

The New-York Historical Society came into being in 1804, making it (according to itself) the oldest museum in the city. Its recent evolution presents a case study of a dusty old institution retooling itself for the social media age. Over the past decade or so a series of renovations turned it from the somewhat hermetic, academic attic of the city into a bright, airy, less-dense institution. Bronze statues of Abe Lincoln and Frederick Douglass welcome you outside the front doors, and that unexpected, slightly eccentric vibe continues within.

Of the many things I like about the Historical Society, I sometimes think my favorite thing is the hyphen between “New” and “York.” Nowhere else bothers with that anymore. However, without it visitors might think that they are visiting the new historical society of York, England. I bet that happened a lot in the 19th century. It’s really thoughtful. I shall feel quite cross if they ever drop it and rebrand as the Newyork Historical Society. Continue reading “New-York Historical Society”

August 30, 2017

Fraunces Tavern Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	71 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	The 1883 commemorative china for the Sons of the Revolution’s Turtle Soup Feast marking the 100th anniversary of Washington’s farewell to his officers. Cute turtle.

Fraunces Tavern Museum, Manhattan Fraunces Tavern started out as a private home in 1719, then opened for business as a drinking establishment in the 1760s. It served as the venue for two important events:

The governor of New York, George Clinton, held a public dinner there to celebrate the withdrawal of the British from New York (and the rest of the colonies), an event known as Evacuation Day. Evacuation Day (25 November) used to be a major New York holiday, though it’s mostly forgotten now, except by the Sons of the Revolution (about whom more anon).
After the war, General Washington gathered some of his staff in one of the private dining rooms to retire and say farewell to them. This was before the U.S. was the U.S., before the Constitution and before the country decided it needed a president (and what a fine idea that has turned out to be), and so before Washington knew he’d have another major role to play for his country.

If you’ve read any of my other historic place reviews, you can guess my questions: when was Hamilton there? And secondarily, what did he have to drink? Continue reading “Fraunces Tavern Museum”

August 27, 2017

Mount Vernon Hotel

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	94 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	One of the owners of the Mount Vernon was a guy named Joseph C. Hart, who was, in the words of my guide, a Renaissance man. In addition to running the hotel, his career spanned roles including teaching school, writing geography textbooks, serving as a Colonel in the national guard, writing a novel about whaling that influenced Moby-Dick, writing a memoir called “The Romance of Yachting,” in which he became one of the first people ever to assert that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays, and dying while serving as U.S. Consul in Tenerife, the Canary Islands. Clearly a Joe after my own heart.

Mount Vernon Hotel Museum

Imagine yourself an up-and-coming middle class antebellum New Yorker. You live in the grime and congestion and excitement of the city, and spend a great deal of time working. What do you do for respectable fun on Sundays, or whenever you’re able to snatch a bit of leisure time?

The answer is probably the same as it is for respectable middle class New Yorkers today. You get the heck out of the city. Today, New Yorkers decamp to the Hamptons, the Jersey Shore, or the Rockaways. In the era before the Civil War, they didn’t have to go quite as far. Indeed, one popular day-trip destination from that era survives today, tucked near the midtown East River shore of East 61st Street.

History of the Mount Vernon Hotel

The Mount Vernon Hotel was built in 1799 as a carriage house for a great estate. However, the building was quickly converted into a residence. The associated mansion burned down in 1826, and coincidentally that same year the carriage house opened as the Mount Vernon Hotel.

Mount Vernon Hotel In Its Era — Hotel Neighborhood in 1820s

The public parts of the building today are decorated as a hotel of that era would look. You can visit the ladies’ parlors, the downstairs tavern area, a sample of a room for an overnight guest, see what supper would have looked like (turtle soup!), and view a well stocked, “modern” kitchen.

Most visitors to the hotel would have just gone for the day, to socialize and relax in the country, returning to the city in the evening the same way they came — typically by stagecoach or ferry. So the place emphasized public spaces over private rooms.

Hart and the other owners furnished the hotel with things that would’ve spoken the aspirations of New Yorkers of the era: an upright piano, birds, transferware china, lacquerware and other import goods from the Far East. And it would have featured equipment for suitably respectable pastimes: needlework, music, parlor games, keeping up with the news. Drinking, naturally. The hotel also featured riding trails on the grounds, and commanding views of the East River and a rather impressive prison that once stood across the way on today’s Roosevelt Island.

The house only served as a hotel for about 7 years— it changed back into a private residence in 1833. The Treadwells of the Merchant’s House Museum just barely missed the chance to visit.

What You’ll See

I had a great guided tour of the Hotel. I think that’s the only way to see it; there’s little in the way of written explanations or descriptions of the furnishings of the rooms.

A visit begins with a rather lengthy “setting the stage” video. The introduction room also holds a model of the carriage house when it was actually used for horses and carriages, a great timeline, and a model of the hotel’s neighborhood back when it was the countryside.

The tour wraps in a peaceful little back garden, though it’s not representative of the hotel’s actual garden, which would have stretched a lot farther. And it’s not nearly as nice as the grounds of the Morris-Jumel or the Barstow-Pell mansions.

The Hotel deploys specific people well in its story — for example, the aforementioned story of Joe Hart. And the tour highlights one of the Hotel’s more famous guests, James Stuart, a Scottish “duelist and pamphleteer,” who wrote about visiting America, including his stay at the Mount Vernon. They help bring the place to life.

Mount Vernon Hotel — Hotel Stonework — “1799” Visible

Currently, the Hotel also has a small exhibit on the rise of newspapers in 19th century New York. It feels a little beside the point. That said, catching up on and discussing the news of the day was an important activity for guests. It’s always good to check what ships are departing and arriving.

An Historic Building With Differentiation

The hotel survived because the Colonial Dames of America decided to make it their headquarters in the early 1900s. Originally they called the place the Abigail Adams Smith Museum, and focused on the original builders of the carriage house. Makes sense: daughters of founding fathers tightly align with the Colonial Dames’ interests. But in the 1980s the Dames decided to re-focus on the hotel story instead.

I’m really glad they did. Historic houses are somewhat common in New York, but aside from this place and Fraunces Tavern, places where people went to socialize or enjoy a spiked lemonade are rare. It’s a distinctive story and perspective. Even though Hamilton never visited and no one you ever heard of stayed at the Mount Vernon Hotel, the sheer unlikelihood that Turtle Bay served briefly as sort of the Hamptons of its day justifies a visit to this even more unlikely survivor of that era.

Mount Vernon Hotel Porch

For Reference:

Address	421 East 61st Street, Manhattan (between
Website	mvhm.org
Cost	General Admission: $8

August 10, 2017August 10, 2017

New York Public Library (Stephen A. Schwarzman Building)

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	79 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	In 1921, Christopher Robin Milne received a stuffed bear (of very little brain) for his first birthday. Other stuffed animals joined his menagerie, inspiring his father to write stories about them. Amid the sum of human knowledge, the Library keeps Christopher Robin’s friends safe for generations of kids to come.

The Croton Distributing Reservoir stands out as a stunning architectural and engineering accomplishment, even on an island with no shortage of them. Two city blocks long, it stretches from 40th to 42nd Streets, and halfway from Fifth to Sixth Avenue. Built in an eccentric, Egyptian Revival style, it features walls fifty feet tall, and the zillions of gallons it holds help ensure a somewhat safe drinking water supply for Manhattan. The promenade along the top provides unmatched vistas of the Crystal Palace, nearby Longacre Square, and indeed, stretch all the way to Long Island Sound and New Jersey, making it a huge attraction for New Yorkers and visitors alike.

Wait, what? They tore it down? In 1900? I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

New York Public Library, New York Whenever I visit the New York Public Library’s spectacular main branch, I always stop and imagine the imposing ramparts of the old distributing reservoir, which stood on its location from 1842 until 1900. There’s still a reservoir on the site, it’s just that now it stores and safeguards the sum total of knowledge of humankind. Continue reading “New York Public Library (Stephen A. Schwarzman Building)”

August 9, 2017

Asia Society Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	68 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I loved a small room entirely filled with Anila Quayyum Agha’s “Crossing Boundaries,” a cubical, laser-cut steel sculpture from 2015 that cast amazing shadows on the walls, floor and ceiling. Immersive, serene, and beautiful, and none of my photos do it justice. (See link to her site at the end of this review.)

Asia Society, New York In terms of attempting to cover an enormous mandate in an undersized area, the Asia Society Museum wins the prize for New York City museum with the most chutzpah.

In two modest floors of gallery space, it aims to present the world’s largest landmass, home to a population of billions and myriads of diverse cultures. Call it “Asia” or “the Orient,” either way the label lumps together people who have nothing in common aside from location in a place that Europeans for centuries defined as “that exotic place that’s not here.”

The Asia Society Museum doesn’t succeed. Moreover, it can’t succeed. Well, it can. The Met will give you a great overview of the arts and cultures of China, Japan, Korea, India, the Himalayan cultures of Tibet and Nepal, the Islamic world, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. But you need an institution the size and scope of The Met to do that under one roof. Continue reading “Asia Society Museum”

August 8, 2017August 7, 2017

Swiss Institute

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	14 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	To complement the silent Warhol videos, the Swiss Institute played a recording of Erik Satie’s piano piece, “42 Vexations.” I felt a goodly number of vexations while at the Swiss Institute, but fewer than that.

Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York The Swiss Institute is a tiny open gallery space in the ground floor of an old Tribeca building. It’s small and very straightforward, with a little exposed brick and some antique floor tile, but without much floor area to play around with.

Seeing the place, I hypothesized that it was named after a guy, like it’s the gallery of Mike Swiss. However, I’ve confirmed it is the country, not a person. I’m a little puzzled by why the Swiss might want to have a tiny art space in a city replete with them. Is it fiercely neutral? Quixotically democratic? Do they serve great chocolate? None of those things as far as I could tell.

Currently the Swiss Institute is participating in the artist Ugo Rondinone’s multi-gallery birthday present to his husband, “I ♥ John Giorno.” I saw another part of that installation at White Columns a week ago.

Warhol Films Sleep, Induces Same

Here, Rondinone (who is Swiss, so at least there’s some kind of connection) features a series of Andy Warhol videos. Young John Giorno was Warhol’s muse and lover. Projected super-large on the wall in digitized grainy black-and-white is “Sleep” (1963), featuring over five hours of Giorno sleeping. *Yawn.*

Warhol's "Sleep," Swiss Institute New York — Warhol’s “Sleep,” and other videos

Cathode-ray tube monitors around the perimeter of the gallery feature other Warhol videos of Giorno and mutual friends. Two videos show him in the altogether: hanging out (literally) in a hammock and doing the dishes.

I appreciated that they’re showing the videos on CRTs. As at BRIC House, showing video art on the intended screen works way better than trying to put it on a modern, retina display panel.

However, I find Warhol’s videos insanely boring. His screen test close-ups of people just sitting there, his home-movie-style shaky cam videos of his friends goofing around, his naughty videos of naked guys… All of it seems amateurish and tame and lame. Rondinone curating Warhol’s work in the context of his self-indulgent project doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It also doesn’t make it particularly Swiss. Swiss Institute New York

You Can Miss the Swiss

I don’t know who should go to the Swiss Institute. Of course, it might be worth it depending on the content of future shows. But unless they move, they will never have space to show very much of anything. There are many better, bigger, more interesting places to see art in this city. Unless they manage a blockbuster coup of a show (which old Warhol videos of Giorno are definitely not), or start giving away free chocolate, it’s very safe to skip this one.

For Reference:

Address	swissinstitute.net
Website	102 Franklin Street, Manhattan
Cost	Free