Tag Archives: New York City

Quick Review: The Island at the Center of the World

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Russell Shorto argues the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam helped kickstart the American mindset and dream even though the city’s history before the English takeover is often ignored. Shorto bases his claims on research in recent decades that involves translating the old Dutch records and revealing the political and social history of the colony. In the end, Americans might see their origins largely in the English colonies but Shorto suggests “it helped set the whole thing [the American experiment] in motion…They reshuffled the categories by which people had long lived, created a society with more open spaces, in which the rungs of the ladder were reachable by nearly everyone.” (317)

Here is what the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam gifted to the United States:

1. Emphasis on trade. Even in its early decades, the city was a hub for shipping in the New World. The English colonies in New England and Virginia both worked through the Dutch port. The protected harbor was important as was its connections to the interior.

2. Giving rights to all the citizens. While the English colonies only had a limited number of freedmen, the Dutch had much broader citizenship rights and this social standing allowed people of all backgrounds to rise up the social ladder. This also involved quite the fight for control over the colony; Shorto describes the efforts of the lawyer Adriaen van der Donck to fight for citizen control rather than the autocratic rule of the Dutch West India Company and their charge Peter Stuyvesant. This did have an interesting side effect in the end. When the English ended up moving in from their colonies in Connecticut, the people of New Amsterdam wanted to be handed over peacefully to the English in order to continue the life of their city and the English largely granted them the continuation of their lives.

3. Religious tolerance. The Netherlands was open to people of different faiths – mainly different Christians – and this continued in their colony. Thus, a number of immigrants ended up in New Amsterdam rather than the much more restrictive English colonies. Other fun fact: those same Puritans who founded Plymouth and its more narrow restrictions had arrived from the Netherlands where the Dutch had offered them religious freedom.

4. Openness to immigrants. With the emphasis on trade, rights, and religious tolerance, New Amsterdam from the beginning was home to people of many backgrounds.

Another large factor in shaping New Amsterdam: the larger political and military conflicts between England and the Netherlands over this period. The two countries fought three wars and the colony’s fate was often caught in the middle.

Overall, an interesting summation of recent research on the early decades of New York City. The English weren’t the only Europeans to help found the United States and the Dutch played an important role in this influential global city.

Bad building names in NYC

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Curbed has put together a list of some of the worst building names in New York City. Here are some of the contestants:

Weird Spellings of Addresses

260N9 leads us into our first category: buildings that are almost just going by their addresses, but have decided to randomly spell out numbers, or abbreviate and/or combine words to create some monstrosity that no one will ever say out loud. 2ND7TH is a recent offender in this category, as is Five FortyOne, and, less recently, Twenty9th Park Madison. These types of buildings also sometimes like to combine a random word with the number from the address, such as Colony 1209, which sounds like it’s on the moon.

Human Names

Another very common approach often taken by building namers is to name them as one would a human child, with a “the” in front. This can result in condos that sound like your grandfather (The Seymour, The Leonard) or a pop star (The Adele, The Robyn) or…just some guy…that you live inside of. (That one, The Nathaniel, gets an additional dishonorable mention for being named after the protagonist in an Ayn Rand novel.)…

Anything With the Word “Mews”

A mews is a row of stables and carriage houses constructed around a paved courtyard. The few that still exist in New York City have, for the most part, seen the stables torn down and replaced by houses which essentially now exist on a private and secluded dead-end street—a rarity, obviously, in Manhattan. This makes them quite coveted. It has also led a number of condo developers to call their buildings, erroneously, Soho Mews, Chelsea Mews, Carlton Mews, etc.

Names That Sound Like Things They’re Not Supposed To

Had no one involved in the creation of Jade8 ever heard of J-Date? Did no one on the development team behind Mantena think to Google that word? Other honorable mentions in this category include BKLYN Air, which sounds like an off-brand sneaker, and MiMa, which sounds like something you call your grandmother. And then there’s the Isis Condominium on the Upper East Side (h/t to commenter newkyz). Though that one isn’t exactly the developers’ fault (it was developed in 2008), it has declined to change its name, unlike the Isis in Miami.

This list suggests buildings suffer from the same name problems that face subdivisions or suburban streets. Builders are looking to brand their construction so the names often deliberately invoke other liked objects, such as a well-regarded address (it’s the location to be in!) or the past (we’re invoking the grandeur of history!). Does the branding itself reveal much about the architecture or design of the building and its units? Probably not. Do the mews buildings have more garden/leisure space? Do the address buildings make a unique contribution to the neighborhood? Of course, more functional or accurate names would have to be longer and wouldn’t be able to quickly invoke such images.

The next step here in this analysis might be to look at the relative values of these different properties by name. Take two buildings in similar settings: does having mews in the title add value or would the owners be better offer with an address name?

Mass transit as repository of microscopic organisms

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A new study found all sorts of organic material in the New York City subway:

To get a clearer picture of what that ecosystem is made of, Mason and his team set out to map the vastness of the urban microbiome. Using nylon swabs and mobile phones, the group identified 15,152 different organisms lurking on railings, trash cans, seats, and kiosks in 466 New York City subway stations. Their findings were published this week in the journal Cell Systems.

The team also found that, on a microscopic level, the subway is littered with leftovers—evidence of what New Yorkers like to eat. Cucumber particles were the most commonly found food item, along with traces of kimchi, sauerkraut, and chickpeas. Bacteria associated with mozzarella cheese coated 151 stations. And other traces of pizza ingredients such as sausages and Italian cheese were everywhere. (The Wall Street Journal transformed much of that data into a clickable map that lets you explore the findings by subway line.)

And although Mason and his team also found particles of harmful bacteria related to the bubonic plague and anthrax, the levels were so low that they pose little danger to humans. “The important fact is that the majority of the bacteria that we found are harmless,” Mason said. Much more common were the protective bacteria that eliminate toxins and make the subway cleaner. “They represent a phalanx of friends that surround us,” he said…

Of the more than 10 billion DNA fragments that the team sequenced, about 5 billion were unaccounted for. That’s not to say that these DNA fragments belong to never-before-seen organisms. Rather, it shows that the library of sequenced genomes still has many empty shelves. Where beetles and flies were most prevalent in this sampling, evidence of cockroaches was absent—not because New York isn’t crawling with them (it is), but because scientists haven’t fully sequenced the cockroach genome yet. Once that information becomes available, cockroaches will become better represented in the sampling, according to Mason.

While I’m sure plenty of people will be grossed out by such knowledge, it highlights the level of microscopic complexity going on all around us and suggests there is a lot of scientific work in this area still be done. We know the bottoms of the oceans might be the last large frontier on Earth but it sounds like the NYC subway offers plenty of opportunities itself.

Now that we have such information about what is in the subway system, I want to know how the organic material interacts with humans on a regular basis. Where is this material? How many people are made sick and, conversely, does such a collection provide benefits for users?

Walk-NYC-sociologist gives pricey tours based on his knowledge

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Sociologists often debate or lament their public role but one sociologist who has walked all of New York City 16 times makes money on giving tours:

Helmreich, who wrote “The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City,” wants more than anything to share these lesser-known wonders of New York with others. He’s even willing to play tour guide, showing off his knowledge of the city’s more than 121,000 blocks…

Helmreich’s tour, dubbed “The New York That Nobody Sees,” can accommodate up to six people on an eight-plus-hour tour to any of the five boroughs. The cost: up to $1,500 per person, including meals, luxury transportation, travel expenses and signed copies of his book.

If a descendant of Italian immigrants wants to see the neighborhood his great-great-grandfather lived in when he came to America, Helmreich can show him and tell him about how it’s changed. If a real estate developer wants to know what the next hot neighborhood will be, Helmreich, a sociology professor at City College well-versed in gentrification patterns, can bring her to the precise block with the best housing stock ripe for a renaissance…

“The New York Nobody Knows” was such a hit that Princeton University Press signed him to write five more books, each one delving deeper into one of the boroughs.

Is he doing a public service through sharing his research knowledge or is he out to make money? Can he do both? It is not uncommon for academics to get involved with consulting or working with organizations. Yet, it sounds like the opportunities created by these tours are primarily for the wealthy and people who could capitalize on the information. Additionally, how recognized are his sociological observations by other sociologists and other scholars of New York City? Sociologists can seem to discredit more popular appeals – see the discussion around Sudhir Venkatesh’s The Floating City – even as many want to have broader recognition from the public.

More broadly, it would be worth hearing from more sociologists about the line between research and entrepreneurship. Is there a line where one has “sold out”? How can one do both?

Modern wonder: NYC’s water system

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Here is a look at the vast system that keeps pumping clean water flowing in New York City:

The pipes that carry this life-giving force are largely invisible to New York’s thirsty masses. (Here’s a great map.) The system includes 19 reservoirs nestled in the rolling hills and mountains, draining a sprawling 1.2 million-acre watershed; three controlled lakes; 300 miles of underground thruways, including one that burrows 1,100 feet underneath the Hudson River; and thousands of miles of thin pipe under New York’s streets. Together, they deliver fresh, potable water to 8.4 million people in New York City and another 1 million people upstate…

The system emerged as a matter of necessity. “New York City developed this water system because it was unlucky,” says Kenneth T. Jackson, the Columbia University historian and authority on New York City. “It couldn’t could take water out of the rivers, because the Hudson is salty all the way up to Poughkeepsie.” In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the city’s growing number of residents relied on wells, water brought in on ships, and spring-fed ponds like the Collect (near what is now Foley Square), which quickly turned into dumping grounds for sewage and garbage. The fetid waters helped spawn the cholera epidemic of 1832, which killed more than 3,500 residents. And the absence of significant water sources in city streets thick with wooden buildings led to a series of disastrous fires. After the Great Fire of 1835, which consumed about 700 structures, municipal leaders were moved to act…

Built at a time when the city’s population stood at about 200,000, the Croton system served well until the early 1900s. By then, New York’s population soared to more than 3 million, thanks to immigration, expansion, and the annexation of the Bronx and Brooklyn. In the early 20th century, the city expanded the system to develop new resources in the Catskills. The Ashokan Reservoir, whose creation required the submerging of seven villages, came into service in 1915. A system of pipes and canals were constructed to ferry water via the Catskill Aqueduct 92 miles to the Kensico and Hillview Reservoirs in Westchester—including a circular tunnel with a diameter of 14 feet that goes 1,100 feet under the Hudson River near West Point. Water Tunnels No. 1 (completed in 1917) and No. 2 (completed in 1937) carried the water from Yonkers into Manhattan. Next came the Delaware system to the city’s northwest. Starting in the 1950s, vast pools of water created by damming tributaries of the Delaware River were fed into new infrastructure, including the Delaware Aqueduct, which at 82 miles is the longest continuous underground water tunnel in the world. Here, again, gravity does the work. The highest reservoirs are about 1,200 feet above sea level. And the volume of water pushing down through the pipes creates an enormous amount of power. Today, Bosch notes, “the pressure is so great that it can take it to the sixth floor of most boroughs without any pumping,” said Bosch.

The 500 miles of fat pipes upstate are augmented by 6,500 miles of narrower underground conduits that run underneath the five boroughs, from the crags of Riverdale to the distant, wave-tossed shores of the Rockaways. From the Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers, right on the Bronx border, pipes plunge a few hundred feet into one of the three massive water tunnels that carry water to the south about 500 feet below ground level. Every 20 blocks or so, vertical tunnels sprout up to feed into trunk water mains, with a diameter of about a foot. Ultimately, they connect to buildings, whose pipes are private property.

It would be really difficult to have the #1 global city without a well-designed water system. Such planning and engineering may not get much attention in explaining New York City’s rise but it certainly had to be present. Interestingly, histories of Chicago tend to note the importance of reversing the flow of the Chicago River so that waste was sent downstream towards the Mississippi rather than into Lake Michigan where it polluted the water supply.

Luxury building boom continues in New York City

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The housing market may still be somewhat sluggish throughout the country but the luxury market continues to grow in NYC:

New York City developers will spend 60 percent more on new homes this year, while adding only 22 percent more units, a sign of the market’s tilt toward luxury condominiums, the New York Building Congress said.

Spending on new housing will reach $10.9 billion, the most in records dating to 1995 and $4.1 billion more than last year’s total, the trade group said in a report released today. The number of homes that money will build is 22,500, up from 18,400 in 2013.

A record wave of ultra-luxury condo projects planned or under construction in Manhattan accounts for the “wide disparity” between costs and unit production, said Frank Sciame, chairman of the New York Building Foundation, the trade group’s philanthropic arm…

Even as construction spending increases, the number of homes produced still falls far short of the 30,000-plus built annually from 2005 to 2008, the building congress said. In 2008, the city gained 33,200 units at a cost of $5.9 billion.

This echoes the larger housing market in the United States: while the market for cheaper or more affordable homes is slow, the luxury market still has plenty of builders and buyers. And we are talking about New York City, one of the places to be for the wealthy and influential.

The article also hints that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio promised lots of affordable housing in the next ten years. Having more luxury condos doesn’t necessarily preclude also building cheaper units but the statistics above suggest overall building is down. What big-city mayor could truly turn down or fight luxury projects? Cities desperately need such money even as they need to find ways to help promote housing for more average residents.

The New York Times has compared many places to Brooklyn

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The New York Times has been fond of comparing Brooklyn to all sorts of places including Oakland, Beijing, New Orleans, The Hudson Valley, and Everywhere. What might be the effect of doing this?

Beyond beards and Girls (or why NYT trend pieces are problematic), I always wonder how the residents these cities feel about being deemed a Brooklyn-like place. I also wonder what it’s going to do to their property prices.

There are two reasons: First, studies show that a prestigious sounding name adds value to a neighborhood. For example, researchers found that buyers were willing to pay a 4.2 percent premium for the term “country.” The Brooklyn dream branding has become a certain kind of prestige to young professionals looking for housing. They loosely know what real estate being “Brooklyn” means: cool neighbors, artisanal food shops, Zagat-rated restaurants and bars. It’s the stylish land of Blue Bottle coffee and No.6 clogs. The sell is: It has places you want to be and people you want to be around.

This narrative is problematic because it is unfairly discounting vast parts of the borough that’s not being gentrified in this specific way, which is why so many Brooklynites hate Brooklyn trend pieces. But it’s also just another way of saying it has a specific set of amenities that are appealing to a certain group—Brooklyn has become a euphemism for a kind of urbanism that millennials like.

Interesting that both reasons above deal with the hip, cool side of Brooklyn that appeals to young people. They imply that Brooklyn has become a trendy brand, even if many of its residents don’t see these benefits. Being a trendy brand also likely means that the frequent comparisons will stop at some point as Brooklyn (1) becomes less cool and (2) other neighborhoods, perhaps in New York City and perhaps elsewhere, become the places to be.

At the same time, I wonder why the Times has to make such comparisons at all. Is it because it helps their readers understand unfamiliar and foreign places? Or is it because New Yorkers think they have the best places (New York exceptionalism) so they impose their vision on other contexts?

The new High Line extension opens

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I thoroughly enjoyed my one visit to the High Line in New York and I look forward to seeing the new section that recently opened:

Officially titled The High Line at the Rail Yards, this is the park’s third section, extending from West 30th to West 34th Streets, bounded by 10th and 12th Avenues on its east and west. With this extension, visitors are now able to explore the former elevated railway-turned-park in its entirety, from its southern end at Gansevoort Street, up to its new northern terminus at 34th Street — an impressive 22 blocks. The 10th Avenue Spur, incorporated into the Hudson Yards mega-development, remains unfinished and will open towards the end of 2015, in tandem with the 52-floor tower that will straddle it.

A few nice pictures here. Also, as this brief description hints, there is some interesting potential for interaction between the new parts of the park and nearby buildings.

“Graphic Standards Manual” for the New York City Transit Authority

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Check out the decades-old guide for the signage of the NYC subways:

The New York City subway was a confusing mess in the 1960s, with inconsistent, haphazard signage that made navigating the system a nightmare for commuters. In 1967, the New York City Transit Authority decided to do something about it. They hired Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda of the design firm Unimark International to design an improved signage and wayfinding system. The designers spent four years studying the labyrinth of the subway, analyzing the habits of commuters, and devising the iconic visual identity of the NYC subway that is still in use today, documented in the 1970 New York City Transit Authority Graphic Standards Manual…

Reed emphasized that the manual is meant to be read as much as seen. He pointed to a passage on letter spacing that demonstrates how Vignelli and Noorda expected serious attention to every detail: “A modular system has been devised, which offers consistent spacing for letters and words for the three sizes of type. This unit system must be scrupulously adhered to at all times as this will preclude any inconsistency, regardless of where or when any given sign is being manufactured.”…

“These guys literally spent months analyzing the traffic and behaviors of subway riders. Legend has it that Noorda spent weeks underground stalking riders to study their movements.”

As for the design itself, he added, “there are moments of beauty in the most minute details. For example, the four-degree reduction on the diagonal bar of the arrow, which allows for visual accuracy, rather than mechanical calculation.”

A classic behind-the-scenes project that gets little attention though the signs are seen by millions. By now, the signage is iconic just like the lettering and signage of the London Underground and the Paris Metro. It’s hard to imagine the signs looking any other way yet because of New York’s position in the world, another system might have become equally iconic.

New York parking spots going for $1 million each

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A new development project in New York City includes the option to buy a parking spot priced at $1 million:

A new development, 42 Crosby Street, is pushing the limits of New York City real estate to new heights with 10 underground parking spots that will cost more per square foot than the apartments being sold upstairs.

The million-dollar parking spots will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis to buyers at the 10-unit luxury apartment building being developed by Atlas Capital Group at Broome and Crosby Streets, itself the former site of a parking lot. At $250,000 a tire, the parking spaces in the underground garage cost more than four times the national median sales price for a home, which is $217,800, according to Zillow…

The number of off-street parking spaces in the city was 102,000 in 2010, or about 20 percent less than in 1978, when there were 127,000 spots, according to the Department of City Planning. While scarcity is a factor in the price of parking, $1 million for a parking spot may still be a reach.

Last year, a private garage with space for two cars at 66 East 11th Street was listed for $1 million by the Manhattan real estate firm Delos. It is still available in conjunction with the sale of the building’s $50 million dollar penthouse. In April 2012, a parking space at 60 Collister Street, a loft condominium building in TriBeCa, sold for $345,459.

Over the past year, residential parking spots in Manhattan have been selling for an average of $136,052, according to Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel.

Actually, that $1 million gets you a 99-year lease contingent on living in the building.

I understand some of the shock registered in the New York Times or at Slate, but at the same time, this is high-end real estate with the precious commodity of a parking spot. There are plenty of people who make the general argument that parking rates should rise in places like New York City to encourage more residents and visitors to use public transportation instead. Can one be in support of higher parking prices and then not like limited parking in this facility going for really high rates? Granted, there are lots of good things that could be done with $1 million – and even the Times article notes that this parking spot costs more than four times more than a median home in the US – but that could be said of a lot of consumer goods.