Atlantic Avenue Tunnel Tours

Photo courtesy of Ellen McKnight

More Atlantic Avenue Tunnel Tours
Saturday & Sunday, January 23 & 24
Saturday, January 30

Due to high demand, OHNY and the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association are again offering special guided tours of the world’s oldest subway tunnel, built in 1844 and constructed in seven months using only hand tools and primitive equipment. Bob Diamond, who rediscovered the tunnel in 1980, will lead two tours through the half-mile long underground space. Purchase tickets here.

Guests should wear sneakers or boots (no high-heeled shoes) and bring a flashlight.

Please be aware that all attendees will have to sign a waiver and please take note of the following:

• the tunnel entrance is a manhole in the middle of Atlantic Avenue, which you climb down via ladder
• there is also a set of wooden steps that are unevenly spaced, without a hand rail
• remember to wear appropriate footwear and clothing– it is an underground tunnel and a bit dirty
• there will be 70 people on each tour
• the tour takes about 1 1/2 hours, as we all have to enter and exit from one manhole

That being said, there will be volunteers to help you down the steps and accompany the tour group. Check out photos from our recent tours and read comments from past attendees below:

I am so happy to have access to this – without heavy security, merchandising, and everything else that usually gets in the way of feeling directly linked to a historical place… but that’s why I love OHNY already!

This was awesome! If anyone has any doubt to go check this out don’t this is coolest urban spelunking experience your gonna get.

Thanks again for putting the tour on.  It was very fun and Mr. Diamond gave quite a presentation.

Field Trip Friday: “The Young Victoria” at the Museum of Arts & Design

This past Wednesday, Jessica and I attended a screening of The Young Victoria at the Museum of Arts and Design, courtesy of New York Magazine. The film was introduced by NYmag.com’s fashion editor and two representatives from Swarovski, who spoke about their involvement in the design and production of the jewelery featured in the film, including Queen Victoria’s coronation crown and scepter. The film was beautiful, especially the costumes, and provided an interesting and romantic look into Queen Victoria’s early reign and relationship with Prince Albert. After watching the film, I went home and researched the Queen and her descendants on Wikipedia!

Museum of Arts and Design

Inside the lobby

Theatre screening

Field Trip Friday: Las Vegas, NV

Jessica headed out West to Las Vegas, NV over the Thanksgiving holiday. Temperatures in the low 70s for late November and waking up to the bright, sun shining through her window every single day, what more could a girl ask for?

When you think of Vegas, what immediately comes to mind is most probably the Las Vegas Strip. Finding historic buildings on the Strip is a rarity since many hotel and casino owners tend to implode defunct buildings to construct brand, new ones to entice tourists to gamble, shop, dine, and stay at their casinos. Walking along the Strip, you can almost imagine that you are transported to places around the world like Venice, Rome, Egypt, and Paris without requiring your passport with each specially-themed hotel and casino.

Right now, the most talked about new complex of buildings on the Strip is CityCenter – featuring luxury hotels, residential apartments, entertainment districts, and high-end retail shops. The buildings and interiors were designed by recognized architecture firms including Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects Studio Daniel Libeskind, Rockwell Group, Foster + Partners, and Gensler.

Moving away from the Strip, there are plenty of other sites to explore such as Red Rock Canyon – 197,000 acres within the Mojave Desert. A newly constructed visitor’s center serves as a hub for information and interpretation about recreation opportunities and hiking trails, wildlife including wild horses and burros, vegetation, geology, and cultural resources.

Another popular and quite impressive destination is the Hoover Dam. It was completed in 1936 and is the world’s largest hydroelectric power generating plant.

The trip would not be complete without a trip to Ethel’s Chocolate Factory. Founded in 1981 by Forrest Mars, Sr., the factory was created as tribute to his mother who made gourmet chocolates in their Tacoma, Washington home when he was young child. There were plenty of tasty samples as well as a botanical cactus garden right outside the factory to burn off a few calories!

Overall, the trip proved to be a great, sun-filled relaxing two week experience for her with plenty of places to see and things to do other than gambling!

Bellagio Hotel & Casino - autumn theme

Red Rock Canyon

Hoover Dam

Ethel M Chocolate Factory

Ethel M Chocolate Factory & Cactus Garden

Field Trip Friday: Our new office!

This past Monday, OHNY moved offices! Still in Chelsea, we have moved to the office of Stephan Jaklitsch Architects, located on 27th and 6th Avenue. We have unpacked all of our boxes and settled in, although there is still some work to be done. For one thing, our phones have not been set up yet, so if you are calling us (we are checking our voicemails remotely) please email for a quicker response!

Tour The Belnord Courtyards

Private Garden Courtyard Tour on the Upper West Side

This month, visit the private garden courtyard of The Belnord, a palatial, Renaissance-style apartment building occupying a full city block in the heart of the Upper West Side. At 22,000 square feet, the courtyard was touted as the world’s largest when The Belnord was completed in 1908.

To attract upper-class tenants, architect H. Hobart Weeks designed the building around the courtyard to guarantee pleasant garden views for most of the building’s approximately 200 apartments. Functional as well as beautiful, the courtyard is encircled by a driveway loop linked to the street by barrel-vaulted passageways painted with neoclassical frescos.

Self-guided tours of the courtyard are available weekday afternoons, free-of-charge, now through December 16th, and are managed by the Trust for Architectural Easements. For more information, email rsvp@architecturaltrust.org or visit their website.

Belnord Courtyard Facing West

Archway Frescos

Focus on Architecture competition winners!

OHNY is excited to announce the winners of the 2009 Focus on Architecture competition.  Congratulations to the winners, selected by our four judges:

Sean Hemmerle, Professional Architectural and Landscape Photographer
Elliott Kaufman, Architectural Photographer and Professor at Queens College; Instructor at International Center of Photography
Margaret Morton, Photographer, Glass House, and Professor, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
Robert Shamis, Independent Curator and Consultant

Category: Details

Ellis Island, Michael George

Evergreene Architectural Arts, Mark Goldberg

Governor's Island, Tatyana Epstein

Category: Exteriors

7WTC, Steven Cohen

Brooklyn Navy Yard, Katie Chao

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, Victoria Monjo

Category: Interiors

Ellis Island Hospital, Piotr Kamela

General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, Ralph Hockens

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, Rocco Cetera

Category: People

Ellis Island, Michael George

Roosevelt Island, John Auld

7WTC, Piotr Kamela

Category: Judges Awards

Federal Hall National Memorial, Steven Cohen

Hall of Fame for Great Americans, Timothy Vogel

Pier 40, Ethan Lercher

Brooklyn Navy Yard, Ben Muessig

See all submissions on flickr, which will be used as part of an ever-expanding photographic reference of unique views of New York City’s most interesting places and spaces.

OHNY & Chase Community Giving!

Support OHNY by voting for us to win $25k with Chase Community Giving! Become a fan on Facebook and help us out!

Field Trip Fridays: The Woolworth Building

On Saturday, the winners of OHNY’s raffle took a tour of the famous Woolworth Building in lower Manhattan.  Cass Gilbert designed the Gothic building in 1910 and construction was completed in 1913.  The structure, at one time the tallest in the world, rises to a height of 792 feet and has 60 stories, depending on how you count them (Woolworth liked the round number and fudged the numbers a bit by leaving out a few floors).

Because it was built three years before the law passed in 1916 requiring setbacks from the street, the building forces itself dramatically up to the sidewalk and rises straight up nearly all the way to the top.  The lobby of the building was constructed in the style of Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, complete with colorful murals, extensive tiling, and delicate detail work.

In its earlier days, the building even housed a working swimming pool, a copper-gated subway entrance, and a full-service restaurant, but all of these have since passed out of use.  Visitors to the Woolworth Building could go to the top of this early skyscraper for 50 cents, a hefty price compared to the five cent nickelodeons showing films at the same time.  The OHNY tour visited the top of the building and also stopped into Woolworth’s office.  The misty evening created an eerie atmosphere for the visitors, who all enjoyed the building tremendously.

Lobby

Lobby

The Lobby Ceiling

Outside at the top

Among the clouds

Woolworth’s Office

Field Trip Fridays – Richard Meier Model Museum

This week’s Field Trip Friday brings us to a warehouse in Long Island City, the location of architect Richard Meier’s Model Museum.  OHNY staff had a chance to tour the museum in July and take a self-guided tour.

The museum of Meier’s work opened in May of 2007 for what was intended to be a limited four month exhibition. However, the popularity of the space among architects, students and art & design enthusiasts allowed it to become a seasonal exhibition, open during the warmer months of the year. Unfortunately, the impact of cold weather on the models prevents the space from being open year-round, but they did participate in our recent OHNY Weekend this past October.

The models, created during the architect’s 40-year career, cover an area of 3,600 square feet and feature designs from throughout his career, including the first model for his Smith House in Connecticut, as well as sculpture and furniture prototypes. The space also houses large scale models of the Getty Center, a museum that is arguably his most ambitious project. Meier is widely known for his museum designs, so visiting a museum of his work somehow seemed to bring his career full circle.  The clean lines and white walls of the minimal exhibit space emphasize the architect’s work in a unique way and make his models appear particularly elegant. One can visualize these buildings in their final constructed forms.

Field Trip Friday: Art Farm

We are back with Field Trip Fridays!

Renee recently took a trip to Ai Weiwei’s Art Farm, upstate in Salt Point, NY. Designed in 2006 by HHF Architects and Chinese artist/architect, Ai Weiwei, Art Farm is a storage facility and annex to Chambers Fine Art, a New York and Beijing gallery that specializes in contemporary Chinese art. Owner Christophe Mao decided to consolidate his archives in a stand-alone building on the property in upstate New York. The gallery space houses selections from gallery inventory and Mao’s private collection.

HHF and Ai Weiwei designed Art Farm to be viewable as a sculpture in itself. By focusing on the exterior aesthetics of the space, the designers created a structure that matched the character of the large sculptures located around the rest of the property. Corrugated steel panels, pre-fabricated for easy construction of agricultural buildings in the area, make up the walls of the space. When combined with the concrete slabs on which the structures rest, and which follow the contour of the land, the facility blends seamlessly into its surroundings.

The building includes storage spaces, an office, and showrooms. A continuous ramp hallway through the center of Art Farm, providing additional display space, draws visitors through the gallery and seamlessly blends the three levels. Interior walls are washed in white and, aided by the ceiling of exposed PVC insulation, circulate the limited natural light extremely efficiently. Concrete floors help create a bright atmosphere and also help to maintain a cool temperature inside, even during the warmer months. The facility is a unique spin on the traditional gallery and adds a special character to the rural area where it rests.

Art Farm

Inside the gallery space