Postcard Thursday: Trinity Church (Redux)

Sure. we've done this postcard already -- you can read all about it here.

We posted it today to point you to yesterday's post, in case you missed it, which is our review of the new One World Observatory at the World Trade Center. Scroll halfway down the post to the video of the elevator ride to the 102nd floor. At approximately the 16-second mark, look for Trinity Church to appear in the center of the screen. The ride is awesome, but you might not find it worth $32 (or just less than $1 a second).

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

One World Observatory

The view south toward Battery Park and Governors Island.

Yesterday, we were lucky to be invited to a preview of the new observatory atop One World Trade Center, which opens to the public on Friday.

For a history buff, the best part is the elevator ride to the top (see video, below). In 47 seconds you are whisked from the bedrock level to the 102nd floor and during that time, state-of-the-art LED screens, which line three sides of each elevator, show the evolution of Lower Manhattan from the pre-contact era to the present day. As you’ll see in the video, it all goes by so quickly that you can’t take in a fraction of it in. We knew to look at the screen to the right (south) side of the elevator in order to see the old World Trade Center appear in the late 1960s and fade away in 2001.

The journey begins in the basement of One World Trade, where each person’s ticket is scanned and a light appears on the map to indicate what country (or, in the USA, which state) he or she is from.

A corresponding welcome message is displayed on a monitor nearby in the vistor’s language, showing a scene from New York City. We found it amusing that in addition to the Statue of Liberty representing France, another French scene is Washington Square, presumably since the famous arch there is modeled on the Arc du Triomphe.

Wending your way to the elevators, you pass video installations of construction workers talking about the building of the tower.

Then you pass through a bedrock chamber with facts and figures projected on the rock face. Except it’s not rock face. It’s all fake.

Then, the elevator ride:

Once at the top, you still don’t get to see the view until you watch a two minute video montage in the SEE FOREVER™ theater (ALL CAPS for some reason), which ends with the big reveal: the screen rises to give visitors their first look at the amazing view.

After being guided downstairs past the restaurant / bar / cafe, you reach the main observatory on the 100th floor. (By the way, the bar wasn't open yet, but looks great and might be worth the $32 admission price.)

The scenery is what you are here for, obviously:

The Lower East Side's "Blue" apartment building stands out.

Looking up the West Side Highway and the Hudson River Greenway.

A great view of the Tweed Courthouse.

Santiago Calatrava's new PATH station (under construction) and the World Trade Center museum and memorial pool.

Is this all worth $32 a person? It’s hard to tell. We were up there with two dozen other people and it was glorious to have the place to ourselves. Once operational, the observatory will admit approximately 200 people every 15 minutes with timed tickets. People are, of course, free to stay as long as they want, but David Checketts, the CEO of Legends, which operates the facility, told us that he expects the average visitor to stay between 45-60 minutes. In our best estimation, there will probably be 500-800 people on the 100th floor at any given time, which may feel like a madhouse. If you go, let us know what you think.

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Postcard Thursday: Lindbergh Air Mail Stamp

Instead of a postcard today, a stamp -- and a remarkable one at that. On May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. To honor that achievement, the U.S. Postal Service issued the above airmail (or "air mail") stamp on June 11, just three weeks after the historic landing. That was the same day Lindbergh received the Distinguished Flying Cross, but five days before he collected his $25,000 prize from Raymond Orteig for making the flight.


The competition to be first to fly across the atlantic, known as the Orteig Prize, was sponsored by hotelier Raymond Orteig who owned the Lafayette and Brevoort Hotels in Manhattan. Orteig, hoping to boost Franco-American relations, first offered the prize to complete a transatlantic flight in 1919. When no one had made an attempt in five years, Orteig extended the competition and by 1926 it had begun drawing serious competitors. However, the hazards of aviation meant that by the time Lindbergh began his historic flight, six of his fellow competitors had died.

Lindbergh's flight in the Spirit of St. Louis began on May 20 at 7:52 a.m. with his ground crew pushing the heavy plane down the muddy runway. The plane carried 450 gallons of fuel but Lindbergh had removed as much as possible from the plane, including his sextant -- meaning that Lindbergh would have to fly by the stars (if they were visible) or dead reckoning. Lindbergh dodged bad weather across the Atlantic (sometimes flying as low as twelve feet above the waves) and reached Le Bourget, France, at 10:22 p.m. on May 21st where he was mobbed by a crowd of eager well-wishers.

Upon his return (by steamship) to America, Lindbergh was feted in Washington, D.C., before heading to New York. On June 13th, the aviator was honored with a tickertape parade on Lower Broadway.

Three days later, he collected the Orteig Prize at a breakfast at the Breevort Hotel with Orville Wright in attendance. (The Breevort Hotel was demolished in 1953 to be replaced by the Brevoort apartments.)

The successful flight spurred tremendous interest in aviation and Lindbergh became America's most visible spokesman for commerical flight.

Alas, the stamp is not very valuable today. A mint condition single stamp is only $13.50.

[This post was adapted from an earlier entry.]

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Postcard Thursday: Chelsea Piers

Last week was the centennial of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, one of the events that pulled America into World War I. The ship had left on its final voyage from Cunard's Pier 54 on what was then still widely called the North River by mariners, even if the general public knew it as the Hudson. In the postcard above, Pier 54 is just off the frame of the postcard to the left. This image, ca. 1910, instead features is Pier 61, where White Star's Titanic was slated to dock; the survivors were ultimately brought to Pier 54.

When commerce left the Hudson River in the latter half of the 20th century, the piers fell into disrepair. Most of Pier 54 was demolished in the early 1990s and the northerly piers in this postcard were rebuilt as the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex.

The remnants of Pier 54 today. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Anyone interested in exploring this neighborhood more should check out our Chelsea walking tour.

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Postcard Thursday: The Singer Tower

Astute readers will note that today is Friday, but sometimes (as the late, great Douglas Adams once said), it can be hard to get the hang of Thursdays.

And speaking of late, great: the image above depicts the Singer Tower, Ernest Flagg's 1908 skyscraper in the Financial District. This was the second building Flagg completed for the Singer Manufacturing Corporation, America's premiere sewing machine company. The first, a 12-story manufacturing and retail space in SoHo, still stands at 561 Broadway, and is where Flagg tried out his unusual red-and-green color scheme. Before that tower was finished in 1904, he'd already received the commission to build Singer an office tower downtown -- and to make it the tallest in the world. The new skyscraper held that title for just two years (1908-1909) before being dethroned by the Metropolitan Life tower on Madison Square.

The Singer Tower, an increasingly unique structure among the uniformity of postwar design, stood until 1968, when it earned the dubious honor of being the tallest building in the world ever to be intentionally demolished. As James wrote in a piece for Curbed this past week:

Having been acquired by US Steel [in the mid-1960s], plans were underway to demolish the tower to build the company's new headquarters, today known as One Liberty Plaza. Though preservationists rallied to have the Singer Tower designated a landmark, the LPC hesitated. Having been unable to find an appropriate buyer for the Jerome mansion, the LPC was leery of designating the Singer Tower only to have to find a new buyer willing to move in and preserve it. Instead, the commission declined to save it and it fell to the wrecking ball in 1968.

Read the full story about New York's struggle to hold onto its landmarks at
http://curbed.com/archives/2015/04/29/how-some-of-nycs-first-landmarked-buildings-became-rubble.php

Today's postcard was sent 105 years ago on May 16, 1910. It is one of the first generation of cards where the message could finally be written on the back (Congress changed the law in 1907), but the bulk of the space is still reserved for the address. The message reads:

Hope you are all well as usual. I am just the same. Can see this bldg from where we are working. Will write some time this week. WDH

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Memorial Day Walking Tour: Alexander Hamilton's New York

ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S NEW YORK
A Memorial Day Walking Tour
Monday, May 25, 2015 at 11:00AM

$20 per person; $30 if you'd like a signed copy of Footprints in New York

Whether you had the chance to see Lin-Manuel Miranda's brilliant Hamilton at the Public Theater or have plans to see it when it makes its transfer to Broadway this summer, there's no better time to brush up on the life and death of New York's most famous Founding Father: Alexander Hamilton.

In an updated reprise of this popular walk, we will be exploring Lower Manhattan, following in the footsteps of Hamilton from his arrival in the city as a teenager to attend King's College (today's Columbia University) until his death at the hands of Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804. Along the way, we'll talk about the first rumblings of the Revolution in the 1760s, the outbreak of the war, Hamiton's derring-do during British shelling of the city, the city's role as America's first capital, and much more.

To reserve email footprintsinnewyork@gmail.com your

* name
* number of people in your party (including how many people are $20 [tour only] or $30 [tour + book])
* a cell number to contact you if there's any last-minute changes

RESERVATIONS are limited and taken on a first-come, first-served basis.

You can pay for the tour by cash or credit card when you check in. Instructions on where to meet will be email within 24 hours of when you reserve.