PortableNYC – New York history, architecture and secrets – New York City wonders, secrets and famous drinking spots

Charging Bull – One Giant Christmas Present

The Charging Bull, representing a rising market, is one of the most easily recognizable symbols of Wall Street. The Charging Bull was created by sculptor Arturo Di Modica in his Soho studio on Crosby Street. Conceived by the sculptor as an antidote for the sour mood caused by the 1987 stock market crash known as…

Central Park — the First Landscaped Public Park in the Nation

Central Park, the green wonder of New York, is the first designed urban park in the United States. It’s not the largest park in New York, falling in size behind Pelham Bay and Van Cortlandt Parks in Bronx, Greenbelt Park in Staten Island, and Flushing Meadows/Corona Park in Queens. Nevertheless, at 843 acres it is…

Rockefeller Center – a City Within a City

Strangely enough, the story of Rockefeller Center starts with that of the Metropolitan Opera. The Met, located at the time on Broadway and 39th, needed a bigger space. The land around 49th Street behind 5th Ave belonged to Columbia University and seemed like an ideal new place for the opera house. As the wheels of…

The Guggenheim – “unlike any other museum in the world”

Solomon R. Guggenheim, a businessman, art collector, and part-heir to a great mining fortune, began collecting abstract art in the 1920s. After retiring from his business endeavors, he became a full-time art collector, focusing specifically on modern and contemporary art. In order to display his collection, he founded the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in 1939. The collection,…

How the Metropolitan Museum was Born

On July 4, 1866, while celebrating America’s Independence Day in Paris, a group of American businessmen, financiers, artists, and thinkers of the day decided that New York City needed its own art museum. Thus, the idea of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was born. After four years of discussions in which American civic leaders, art…

Statue of Liberty Pedestal and the Invention of Fundraising

Nobody had attempted building a colossus since the Colossus of Rhodes, the towering wonder of the ancient world — until the Statue of Liberty. Constructing such an edifice presented not only titanic technical obstacles but also a formidable financial challenge. Raising funds for building the modern-day colossus — Lady Liberty — is the story of…

Statue of Liberty – an American Colossus

The iconic statue was a gift to the people of the United States from the people of France. Location: Liberty Island (Bedloe Island) Built: 1884 Dedicated: 1886 Sculptor: Frederic Auguste Bartholdi Engineer: Gustave Eiffel Pedestal: Richard Morris Hunt Lady Liberty was christened “Liberty Enlightening the World” and gifted to the people of the United States…

Diego Rivera’s Rockefeller Center Mural

Diego Rivera, a prominent Mexican painter and giant of 20th century art, was commissioned by the Rockefellers to create a monumental fresco for the lobby of the newly-built RCA building, the largest structure of Rockefeller Center. The mural was to be titled, laconically, “Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the…

Lunch atop a Skyscraper – a photo with a story

The iconic photo depicting 11 workers casually eating their lunch 840 feet above ground was staged as a promotion for the newly constructed Rockefeller Center. The photo is mesmerizing, as it plays on the contrast between the ease in the men’s demeanors and the danger of sitting on a narrow beam 69 floors in the…

The Woolworth Building – “Cathedral of Commerce”

Location: Broadway b/t. Barclay St and Park Pl Built: 1913 Architect: Cass Gilbert Height: 792 feet Stories: 57 The Woolworth Building became the tallest in the world in 1913 and kept that distinction for the next 17 years. In 2013, 100 years after its construction, it still stood remarkably as one of the twenty tallest…

Frank Sinatra: from Hoboken to Eternity

1915 Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915, at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, NJ. He was the only child of Italian immigrants Natalina “Dolly” Garaventa and Antonino Martino “Marty” Sinatra. Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds at the time of his birth and had to be delivered with the aid of forceps, which severely scarred his left cheek, neck, and ear…

A Family Quarrel, Steamboats, and US Patent Law

If all family disagreements resulted in innovation and progress, then, well… the world would be a far better place! A particular quarrel between Colonel John Stevens and Robert Livingston led directly to the establishment of steamboat operations on the Hudson River as well as the creation of US patent law. Colonel Stevens, the founder of…

PortableNYC – New York history, architecture and secrets

Consuelo Vanderbilt – A Wedding on Fifth Avenue

Audrey Munson – American Venus

Evelyn Nesbit and “the Trial of the Century”

Edwin Booth, the Hamlet of New York

Margaret Bourke-White and the Chrysler