740 Park Avenue has been called the “Richest apartment building in the world” and buying a mansion within its limestone walls is the dream of many aspiring millionaires. The hurdles to became one of the chosen few residents is a strenuous one and if the multimillion dollar price tag isn’t enough to stop you, the difficult co-op board is, turning ... Read More »
The title of Manhattan’s oldest parish might be a bit of a puzzler, since Trinity Church itself, is not the oldest church building. The parish refers rather to the land on which the church occupies and the territory it serves. In terms of Trinity Church, the Lower Manhattan parish, has existed since 1697 by a charter of King William ... Read More »
Every year, the Village Voice takes over Coney Island for the Siren festival. A completely free day of music with a circus freak theme set on two stages whose performers switch off times so that there is never a quiet moment, quite literally, during the festival. For this festival, there are no tickets in advance and no camping. There ... Read More »
In 1899, The New York Herald hired journalist, and part-time composer, Monroe Rosenfeld to write a series of articles about the burgeoning song-writing business in New York. It is Rosenfeld, in an attempt to convey the cacophony of sound emanating from the popular music houses of the day all at once, who coined the phrase “Tin Pan Alley.” Eventually, the ... Read More »
Not all things are created for the pursuit of beauty or glory. Sometimes, they are created purely from spite. Such is the case of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. In the midst of a family feud with his aunt, Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, William Waldorf Astor decided to take his revenge by building a hotel directly next store to her ... Read More »
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked… As a poet, writer, activist and founding member of the Beatniks, Allen Ginsberg spoke for a generation. A generation striving to give a voice to the drug use, racism and oppression that fueled inner-city America in the 1950s, a voice idealism and optimism from a ... Read More »
“Let us go on again, and … plunge into the Five Points….We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day, but of other kinds of strollers plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice are rife enough where we are going now.” – Charles Dickens, American Notes Never has a slum been so notorious as that of Five Points. So ... Read More »
Nestled in the tree lined Grove Street, in Greenwich Village, there is sits a white brick building with red trim. It stands out on the street full of mid-19th century townhouses not just because of its old fashioned sign and garish paint, but because late into the evenings, on any given night, the sounds of Broadway tunes can be heard ... Read More »
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