By Devin Gannon, Thu, June 3, 2021 All listing photos courtesy of Ryan Lahiff/Rise Media
The Park Slope mansion owned by the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture for the last 75 years has hit the market for $30 million. If sold for the asking price, the property would set a record for the most expensive home sale in the borough. Located at 53 Prospect Park West, the grand four-story building boasts 5,724 square feet of interior space and a landscaped outdoor space nearly double that size, which the listing describes as the “largest private garden in Brooklyn.”
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By Emily Nonko, Mon, May 24, 2021 Photo by Ling Tang on Unsplash
138 years ago today, throngs of New Yorkers came to the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts to celebrate the opening of what was then known as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. It was reported that 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people total crossed what was then the only land passage between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The bridge–later dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a name that stuck–went on to become one of the most iconic landmarks in New York. There’s been plenty of history, and secrets, along the way. Lesser-known facts about the bridge include everything from hidden wine cellars to a parade of 21 elephants crossing in 1884. To celebrate the anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge, 6sqft rounded up its top 10 most intriguing secrets.
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By Devin Gannon, Tue, May 4, 2021 Photo by Ken Lund on Flickr
The Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday voted to calendar the Kimlau War Memorial, a tribute to Chinese American veterans located in Chinatown. Designed by architect Poy G. Lee, the memorial honors Americans of Chinese descent who died during World War II. If designated by the city, the Kimlau War Memorial would be New York City’s first individual landmark that relates specifically to Chinese American history and culture.
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By Devin Gannon, Mon, April 26, 2021 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. (1915). Seamen’s Church Institute of New York, 25 South Street
The campaign to landmark and restore the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, a monument in New York City built in 1913 to honor those who died aboard the Titanic, continues. Designed by Warren and Wetmore, the architecture firm behind Grand Central Terminal, the 60-foot-tall lighthouse originally sat atop the roof of the Seamen’s Church Institute and featured a working time ball that dropped down the pole each day, along with a green light. Preservationists are now raising funds that would help restore the lighthouse, currently located at the entrance to the South Street Seaport, to its original condition.
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By Devin Gannon, Tue, April 13, 2021 While visiting the major, most popular attractions of New York City can be fun, it can also be stressful, overwhelming and full of selfie-taking tourists. However, the great thing about the Big Apple is that plenty of other attractions exist that are far less known or even hidden in plain sight. To go beyond the tourist-filled sites and tour the city like you’re seeing it for the very first time, check out 6sqft’s list ahead of the 20 best underground, secret spots in New York City.
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By Devin Gannon, Wed, April 7, 2021 Photo via banjo d’s Flickr
In a city full of symbolism, from bright yellow taxis to black-and-white cookies, New Yorkers also find comfort and nostalgia in a certain cardboard coffee cup. Known as the Anthora, the blue-and-white drinking vessel first became an icon of New York City in 1963 when Leslie Buck, a Czech-American immigrant, designed the first-ever to-go coffee cup to appeal to Greek-owned coffee shops and diners. With its customer-friendly “We Are Happy to Serve You” inscription and Greek-style letters, the Anthora has now become an important part of the city’s identity.
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By Michelle Cohen, Thu, April 1, 2021 1912 World Series at the Polo Grounds. Image via Wikimedia Commons
Baseball may be a long-standing tradition in New York City, but not so very long ago that seemingly innocent pastime was illegal on Sundays. As one of the infamous “blue laws” on the state books–that other beloved NYC pastime, shopping, was illegal as well–the ban was part of a sweeping statute from colonial times called the Statute for Suppressing Immorality. Enacted in 1778, it was the first state “Sabbath law.” Section 2145 of the revised New York State Penal code of 1787 outlawed all public sports on Sunday–so as not to “interrupt the repose of the Sabbath”–and wasn’t repealed until 1919.
No movies, either
By Lucie Levine, Thu, March 25, 2021 “Mourners from the Ladies Waist and Dressmakers Union Local 25 and the United Hebrew Trades of New York march in the streets after the Triangle fire” 1911. Reproduction. The National Archives, via Wikimedia Commons
Around 4:30 p.m. on March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Asch Building at Washington Place and Greene Streets, just as the young employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, who occupied the building’s top three floors, were preparing to leave for the day. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed 146 people, nearly all of them Jewish and Italian immigrant women and girls who toiled in the city’s garment industry. Triangle stood out as the deadliest workplace tragedy in New York City before 9/11. It served as a bellwether in the American labor movement, galvanizing Americans in all walks of life to join the fight for industrial reform. It also highlighted the extraordinary grit and bravery of the women workers and reformers – members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and the Women’s Trade Union League – who fought and died for fairer and safer working conditions in New York and around the country.
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By Michelle Cohen, Mon, March 8, 2021 (1917) Picketing in all sorts of weather. N.Y. Day Picket. United States Washington D.C. New York, 1917, [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
International Women’s Day, and what later became Women’s History Month, originated in New York City over 100 years ago. On February 28, 1909, “Women’s Day,” was celebrated as the one-year anniversary of the city’s garment industry strike led by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. The Socialist Party of America chose the day to honor the women who bravely protested miserable labor conditions. American socialist and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman addressed a New York crowd, saying: “It is true that a woman’s duty is centered in her home and motherhood but home should mean the whole country and not be confined to three or four rooms of a city or a state.” At the time, women still couldn’t vote.
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By Devin Gannon, Wed, March 3, 2021 All photos: NYC Parks / Daniel Avila
The New York City Parks Department on Tuesday reinterred the human remains of early New Yorkers found during construction in and around Washington Square Park. The skeletal remains were placed in a wooden box and buried five feet below grade within a planting bed, with an engraved paver marking the site at the southern entrance of the park near Sullivan Street. The remains were uncovered between 2008 and 2017, including the unearthing of two 19th-century burial vaults in 2015 that held the remains of at least a dozen people.
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