Photo via Flickr
Adding to straphangers’ woes this summer, the MTA will be shuttering three Manhattan subway stations for repairs in July. The 57th Street F, 28th Street 6, and 23rd Street F and M stations will close for six months of repairs as part of Governor Cuomo’s Enhanced Station Initiative. Last month, the MTA closed the 72nd Street and 86th Street stations on the B, C line–neither station will reopen until late October.
Photo by Phil Roeder / Flickr
Rejoice: Straphangers are being a granted a relief from the past two weeks’ truly brutal service changes this weekend and upcoming week. That’s not to say the subways won’t be a mess, especially for those reliant on the 4 and 6 trains, but the track work’s impact will have, by comparison, a far more manageable planned impact.
Central Park, 1900 © Ray Simone
6sqft’s series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Ray Simone shares vintage photographs of New York City he has lovingly restored to stunning quality. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected].
Born-and-raised Manhattanite Ray Simone has a native knowledge of New York, as well as an intimate understanding of its past lives. When he’s not taking current photos of the city, he’s in his Williamsburg studio, restoring its past, negative by negative to shocking quality. While some negatives take under an hour to restore, the more badly damaged ones can require more than 40 hours of painstaking work, going pixel by pixel. “You can only work at something a certain amount of hours at a time,” Simone reflects, “You get tunnel vision after a while; carpal tunnel.” Ahead, 6sqft talks to Simone about his photo restoration business and his thoughts on NYC’s history and future, and we get a special look at some of his greatest restoration works.
Rendering by Morris Adjmi Architects
Just over three years ago, an explosion from an illegal tap into the gas main destroyed three buildings on Second Avenue and killed two people in the East Village. Last year, two lots of the three at the site were sold for just over $9 million. And this week renderings have been revealed for a new condo building set to rise on the same plot. The images were found by EV Grieve in an application for a Certificate of Appropriateness by the new building’s developer, Yaniv Shaky Cohen’s Nexus Building Development Group.
The plan will be reviewed by Community Board 3’s Landmarks Committee next Monday. (A paper meeting notice was taped to the fence surrounding the property on Monday, according to EV Grieve). Designed by Morris Adjmi Architects, the renderings depict a single 21-apartment, six-story, grey brick luxury building to encompass both lots, with a detailed cornice and ground floor retail.
Photo via Christina McCartey/Flickr
For the second week in the row, the incumbent late night weekday service changes are arguably worse than those on the weekend. The Q and S alone are the only lines without set service changes, and who knows what kind of signal delays might change even that small bit of reassurance.
In terms of service changes, the weekdays are beginning to meld with the weekends
Photo by Rashaad Jorden via Flickr
The weekend will be extending into the week in the worst way possible this Monday, with the kind of service changes usually reserved for Saturday and Sunday spilling into workdays. While the A and C trains win this week for most convoluted service changes, the 4 also deserves a nod, and the vast majority of lines have far more than average changes.
6sqft’s series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Basia Serraty shares her photos of Ridgewood. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected].
While Basia Serraty admits in an essay she wrote for Ridgewood Social that, upon moving to New York from her small town in Poland, the city did not fit her expectations, she has grown to love this place nonetheless. Her photos of Ridgewood, her neighborhood since moving here in 2004, capture the quiet but colorful corners of the nabe, portraying a clear sense of life despite a general lack of people. Ahead, we talk to Basia about her journey from Poland to NYC, her work, and why she loves Ridgewood.
Star Tattoos
6sqft’s series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Bill Hayes shares photos from his book “How New York Breaks Your Heart“. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected].
A writer, Guggenheim Fellow, photographer and, since 2009, a New Yorker, Bill Hayes is quite familiar with the beautiful and painful ways New York City can play with the human heart. He recently published a book of his many portraits of the city’s inhabitants, “How New York Breaks Your Heart,” showing in black and white and living color some of the city’s many faces, all very real and alive and core to this city’s aura. We spoke with Hayes, a West Village resident, about the book, the, ity and its people.
Photo by Hannah Frishberg
This week was a big one for the MTA, with NYC Transit President Andy Byford releasing the Fast Forward plan, with 10 years worth of road map for necessary modernizations to be made to the subway system, as well as an announcement that subway service will possibly be increased during off-peak, weekday hours beginning in November along the A, D, E and F lines. Much more immediately, many of this weekend’s subway service changes will extend into Monday and early Tuesday due to Memorial Day and the long weekend.
6sqft’s series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Hannah La Follette Ryan shares photos from her “Subway Hands” Instagram account. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected].
While many street photographers have been inspired by straphangers over the years, Massachusetts- born Hannah La Follette Ryan has taken a very different approach to subway photography: focusing on riders’ hands. Her viral Instagram account, “Subway Hands,” is closing in on 20,000 followers and features nearly 1,000 photos, all shot on her iPhone, of the impossibly varied things people do with their hands on the NYC subway.
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