Come inside the magnificent structure that is St. John the Divine in Manhattan with Laura Buchner, a Senior Conservator at Building Conservation Associates, Inc., a group which has been part of restoration efforts at St. John the Divine over the past 25 years. Through amazing historic photos of areas of the building no one but a […]
New York’s Fifth Avenue is one of the most remarkable thoroughfares in the world. By the end of the 19th century it had become synonymous with the most fashionable lifestyles and mansions (and all that accompanied them) of the wealthy. Aggressive arrivistes such as Alva Vanderbilt and Marietta Stevens used their "new money" to employ […]
A decade before Agatha Christie entered the scene, another female writer was already queen of the country house murder. Churning out multiple thrillers a year from her Upper West Side apartment home, Carolyn Wells was dubbed “about the biggest thing in mystery novels in the U.S." in the 1920s. Wells' output was a seemingly endless […]
The Great Blizzard of 1888 was among the first photographed natural disasters in the city’s history. Weather historian Rob Frydlewicz of the NYC Weather Archive blog uses some of the most indelible images to take us back to the days of a storm without parallel. A time before subways and snowplows, when 24 million cubic […]
Over the course of history, countless vehicles have moved across our city. But it is the bicycle that has had the longest running claim to New York’s streets: 200 years and counting. This is the story of how that happened. Of how bicycles came and went and came back againPedal back with LW! and history […]
Historian Kevin Baker (a real major leaguer) returns to LW! with a look at America’s national pastime in the country’s largest city. Visionaries and fixers, heroes and gangsters—both the game and the city had them all. Baker introduces us to the motley/larger-than-life crew of New York hustlers, scalawags, and dreamers who made baseball such a popular and compelling game.
n 1975, architectural educator, researcher, and writer Christopher Gray founded the Office of Metropolitan History as a repository and resource on the architectural history of New York City buildings. Today, that legacy is overseen by Sam Hightower, building detective, blueprint wrangler, and the Director of the OMH. Hightower gifts all fans of NYC architectural history this special evening, beginning […]
Italian sculptor Costantino Nivola's 18 cast-concrete horse sculptures for Stephen Wise Towers are back! Uber conservators Mary Jablonski and Ed FitzGerald will tell the incredible story of how they recreated the beloved herd and returned it to its UWS home. May 7 via Zoom at Landmarkwest.org.
Sara Cedar Miller, historian emerita of the Central Park Conservancy, and author of Before Central Park shares her always-fascinating, uber deep-dive research--this time with a focus on what came before the grand Museum and Library that are now at 170 Central Park West. Miller takes us to worlds we could never otherwise see. What she unearths connects 17th century landowners, enslaved persons […]
Old houses share their secrets only if they survive. Lee McColgan committed to preserving a ramshackle 1702 house using period materials and methods. But his enchantment withered as he discovered the massive repairs it needed. Fighting deteriorating bricks, frozen pipes, shattered windows, and a punctured foundation, he began to question “Why restore anything?” Enter a quirky yet […]
