City Living

The Brooklyn Navy Yard has since its inception acted as a pole for the cutting edge and creative, from its time as the "The Can-Do Shipyard" where U.S. warships assembled, to present day as urban farmers, photographers and filmmakers carve out spaces for themselves on the campus' more than 300 acres. But the latest most notable addition to the Navy Yard is most certainly New Lab. New Lab is the creation of Macro Sea (who many will remember brought dumpster pools to NYC a few years ago) and is a revolutionary hub that turns an 84,000-square-foot former shipping building into a thinkspace for nearly 300 engineers and entrepreneurs working in advanced hardware and robotics. Here, members whose work include everything from designing nano microscopes to using synthetic biology to engineer cities can take their ideas from concept to prototype to production under one roof. It's what the founders are calling "a breakthrough ecosystem of shared resources." In this 6sqft feature, we speak to New Lab's co-founder and Macro Sea Executive Director and founder David Belt. David is also the founder and Managing Partner of DBI, which is currently managing the realization of the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center, amongst other high-profile projects around the city. Ahead, he takes us through the new facility and gives us some intel on what inspired the design, the cutting edge companies that have taken up space, and what he ultimately hopes to achieve with New Lab.
Learn more about New Lab with David here

September 30, 2016

Spotlight: Maya Valladares helps artists copy famous works at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Susan Cohen

If you've ever visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art and watched an artist working at a canvas or sculpting amongst the museum's larger than life pieces, then you've seen the Copyist Program in action. Founded in 1872, two years after The Met first opened, the program has provided countless artists the opportunity to copy the great works that fill the museum's numerous galleries. The Copyist Program is overseen by The Met’s Department of Education, and Maya Valladares, an artist focusing on textiles, serves as the its Assistant Educator for Public Programs and Creative Practice. Her role requires her to create holistic experiences through the museum’s public programming, and through the Copyist Program, she works to enhance the experience of copying for the students and cohorts that come through the museum's doors. 6sqft recently spoke with Maya, who shared details about the program’s rich history, what copying offers artists, and what it’s like to duplicate the works of a world-class museum.
Read the interview here

September 29, 2016

Interactive map shows when and where to find fall foliage at its peak

If you want to know when and where you can experience autumn in all its glory, look no further than this incredible map from SmokyMountains.com. The predictive map is the ingenious creation of Wes Melton, an engineer who developed a complex algorithm that can compute several million data points—ranging from historical temperatures to historical precipitation and forecast temperatures—to forecast exactly when fall will reach its fiery perfection in any given county across the United States.
Give the interactive map a try here

City Living

September 28, 2016

New startup TheGuarantors helps renters qualify for apartments and protects landlords

For NYC renters who don't have a parent or well-to-do friend who can guarantor their apartment, getting on a lease can be a challenge. In addition to wanting a credit score of at least 700 and looking at bank statements, landlords usually want to see that a prospective tenant's annual income is 40 times greater than one month's rent. If that's not the case, their guarantor must earn a whopping 80 times the monthly rent. Aware of this hardship in a country where rents have risen 20 percent over the last five years, a new financial startup hopes to help clear these hurdles. As noted by the Wall Street Journal, TheGuarantors sells payment insurance to tenants, which gives landlords a guarantee that they'll still be paid if the tenant fails to meet rent.
More info ahead

September 27, 2016

Inside the mind of Ernest Burden, one of New York’s preeminent architectural renderers

By Diane Pham & Ondel Hylton

The art of architectural illustration paints a window into the future and intends to portray a designer's vision or work in its purest, most ideal light. As the art form has progressed from hand mediums to digital, Ernest Burden III and his studio Acme Digital have straddled the industry's dramatic transformation using both computer and manual approaches to inform and improve what they produce. As a renderer with more than 30 years in the industry, Ernest's roster of clients include some of the country's biggest real estate heavyweights, such as the Trump Organization, Related Companies and Tishman-Speyer Properties; and renowned architectural clients like I.M. Pei, Robert A.M. Stern and Kohn Pedersen Fox. Recently, Ernest completed a collection of renderings and detailed vignettes for Toll Brothers' and Barry Rice Architects' 100 Barrow Street. In the series, he effortlessly juxtaposes the timeless intent of the new structure with the energy of the surrounding West Villlage. In fact, Ernest's renderings played a considerable role in the Landmarks Preservation Commission's vote to approve the project in 2014. To learn more about Ernest's unique style and his thoughts on the evolving business and craft of architectural rendering, 6sqft sat down with him for a chat.
read our interview with ernest here

September 23, 2016

Spotlight: The Museum of Math’s Cindy Lawrence on making math a fun and interactive endeavor

By Susan Cohen

In a city with a museum in an elevator shaft and another all about transit history, it should come as no surprise that there's a museum dedicated to math. Located across from Madison Square Park, the National Museum of Mathematics is an institution devoted to the numerous possibilities that numbers hold. Since opening in 2012, MoMath has been a place for visitors of all ages to gets hands on with the subject through interactive exhibits that explore conundrums like how it's possible for a square-wheeled tricycle to pedal on a circular, curved surface. And as of last week, the museum offers the chance to drive remote-controlled cars on either a Möbius strip or a trefoil track in the newly opened Twisted Thruway. 6sqft recently visited the museum to speak with Executive Director and CEO Cindy Lawrence about the importance of making math interactive and most importantly, fun.
Read the interview ahead

September 21, 2016

The Urban Lens: A walk through the 90th annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy

By James and Karla Murray

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, award-winning authors and photographers James and Karla Murray introduce us to the faces and food vendors that make up the 2016 Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. 2016 marks the 90th anniversary of the Feast of San Gennaro, which is held in the "Little Italy" neighborhood of lower Manhattan from Thursday, September 15 through Sunday, September 25th. The Feast is an 11-day salute to the Patron Saint of Naples, Saint Januaries, and it is the longest and most popular street fair in New York City (anticipated to bring in one million tourists and New Yorkers this year). Little Italy was once known for its large population of Italian immigrants and is now centered on Mulberry Street between Broome and Canal Streets. Italians first began to settle in the area during the 1850s, but by the 1960s, wealthy Italians began to move out and Chinese merchants for the first time began to move north of Canal Street—the traditional boundary between Chinatown and Little Italy. Observing the changes in the neighborhood, Italian merchants and restaurateurs formed an association dedicated to maintaining Mulberry Street north of Canal as an all-Italian enclave, which it still largely remains. Ahead we document some of the longtime New Yorkers, tourists, and decades-old Italian vendors who've added their own flavor to this year's festivities.
our account and more photos here

September 20, 2016

De Blasio announces early progress on green building programs

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday early progress on green building programs in conjunction with the eighth annual Climate Week held in the city, which runs from September 19-25. With a new president of the United States being elected in just weeks, “Climate Week NYC 2016 will gather leaders from business and government to demonstrate […]

September 19, 2016

When does daylight saving time end in 2016?

Now that Labor Day is over and the kids are back in school, summer is becoming a distant memory and fall’s cooler weather is on the horizon. The end of summer also means shorter days are coming, with the sun setting before some of us can even escape the office. Daylight saving time (DST), which gave us […]

City Living

MAP: More millennials live with their parents in the New York region than anywhere in the U.S.

It's no one's dream to live in their parents' basement, but since the recession this has been a growing norm for young adults across the country. As Digg points out, a recent study from the Pew Research Center reports that in 2014, for the first time in 130 years, adults ages 18 to 34 were more likely to live with their parents than with a spouse or partner. They attribute it mainly to the postponement of marriage, fueled by social shifts as well as career and salary concerns. But this trend is not blanketed evenly across the country, and a new map from Metric Maps breaks down the trend by both state and county, which shows us that the Tri-State region has more millennials living at home than anywhere in the U.S.
More this way

City Living

Catie and Jon Hamm by Andrew Walker courtesy of Shutterstock

September 16, 2016

Spotlight: Employee of the Month’s Catie Lazarus on interviewing the who’s who of the world

By Susan Cohen

Catie Lazarus might have one of the coolest jobs in New York, interviewing the likes of actor Jon Hamm, singer Patti LuPone, United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, and even a hand model. As the host of Employee of the Month, a live interview series at Joe’s Pub, Catie delves deep into her interviewees' careers, adding in some of her own fun (she used to be a stand-up comic) alongside Lin Manuel Miranda's Freestyle Love Supreme, the hip hop host band, and a sketch illustrator. 6sqft recently reversed roles, offering Catie the chance to be the interviewee and talk about her job.
Read the interview here

Image © Thomas X. Casey, BronxNYC

September 16, 2016

Bronx building boom leads to a population comeback not seen in over 40 years

A recent report from the New York Building Congress outlined how the Bronx had outpaced four-year frontrunner Brooklyn for the most residential permits issued, which was attributed in large part to the affordable housing push in the borough. And a story in the Times today takes a wider look at the borough's resurgence, noting that this building boom has led to a "population comeback" not seen since the 1970s.
All the stats, this way

City Living

The best and worst major U.S. cities to raise kids

Image © Michele Barber-Perry

September 15, 2016

The best and worst major U.S. cities to raise kids

When it’s time to raise a family, many couples think about moving to a smaller, less populated town outside of a large city, but some want to stay in an urban setting—seeing the advantages that it has to offer their future children. Wallethub “compared the 150 most populated U.S. cities based on 36 key metrics that […]

City Living

September 14, 2016

VIDEO: Lose yourself in these sweeping drone and helicopter views of NYC

If you’re already feeling bogged down by the workweek, fix your eyes on Brandon Bray and Tim Sessler’s film "Balance" to help put your mind in a more tranquil state. In their 3.5-minute short, the pair compiles various drone and helicopter shots into one seamless work that depicts New York City as an almost peaceful space unspoiled by modern life. Some of the vantages featured in the piece are quite jaw-dropping, including a fully inverted skyline, a crowd-covered 30 Rock, and a plunging aerial close-up of the massive Calvary Cemetery in Queens—a place most of us have only experienced from the BQE.
see the full film here

City Living

September 14, 2016

You can now find ‘fuhgeddaboudit’ in the Oxford English Dictionary

You can fuhgeddaboudit, if you insist this phrase isn’t a real word. The famous saying associated with New York City and New Jersey residents has just been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Made popular in pop culture by Italian-American characters, such as in “The Sopranos,” the word, according to Oxford, means “‘forget about it’; […]

City Living

September 14, 2016

Interview: Time Equities’ Francis Greenburger, a Renaissance man in NYC

By 6sqft

Francis Greenburger is the definition of a Renaissance man. Beyond running the full-service real estate firm Time Equities, Inc., he also helms the Greenburger Center for Social and Criminal Justice, he serves as Chairman of the literary agency Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, Inc., and he is also deeply involved with the OMI International Arts Center—and this is on top of the numerous non-profits […]

September 12, 2016

Why people hate revolving doors and how to curb the phobia

By Michelle Cohen

You know that moment of awkwardness when you’re sucked in to a totally irrational game of chicken with up to three other human beings while attempting to do something as simple as enter your office building through an innocuous-seeming revolving door? While it was reportedly first patented in 1888 by a man who couldn’t deal with having to hold regular swinging doors open for the ladies, the revolving door comes with its own means of sorting us according to levels of everyday neurosis. The first revolving door was installed in a restaurant called Rector’s in Times Square in 1899. And that’s probably when people started avoiding it. Will some part of me get stuck? Do I have to scurry in there with someone else? 99% Invisible got their foot in the door and took a closer look at how this energy-efficient invention still gets the cold shoulder and how to fight the phobia.
How to turn this trend around

September 7, 2016

Two years after its launch, .nyc domain lacks popularity

Anyone with a computer and a credit card can register a domain name, but a .nyc extension is limited to a more select group. The Wall Street Journal points out that only local residents and business owners can purchase the domain, limiting the buying pool. There's also a $20 wholesale registration price, which is nearly three times the $7.85 cost of a regular .com, which causes some .nyc domains to go for as much as $40 on sites like GoDaddy. This has resulted in a mere 78,000 .nyc extensions purchased since the websites launched in September 2014, bringing in only $2 million in revenue for the city.
So what's the deal?

August 29, 2016

QUIZ: What NYC suburb should you move to?

When 6sqft recently looked at a study pertaining to why millennials are leaving cities, we learned that to this generation, factors such as safety, education and health are more important than fashion, food and nightlife. Though it may sound surprising, it points to a shift in urbanites deciding to relocate to the surrounding areas in search of this quality of life. For members of this generation, or anyone else hoping to jump on the suburbanization train, a new site called PicketFencer asks a series of simple questions to determine which of 600 suburbs within commuting distance to NYC will be best suited.
Learn more about how it works

City Living

New York before the invention of air conditioning

Above: Children turn a Lower East Side excavation site into a pool using water from a fire hydrant. 1936. Image via Bowery Boys

August 24, 2016

New York before the invention of air conditioning

By Cait Etherington

Last week, temperatures in New York City peaked in the mid 90s but with the humidity index, afternoon to early evening temperatures felt more like 105 to 113 degrees. The combined temperature and humidity index prompted an “excessive heat warning” for the city and sent most residents indoors to take refuge in air conditioned homes and workplaces. For those less fortunate, the city opened designated cooling centers. Under such dire conditions, it’s natural to wonder, what was summer like before the invention of air conditioning?
READ MORE

August 23, 2016

MAP: Know where the city is spraying for mosquitoes and where there’s potential for West Nile

Thankfully, the city has found no mosquitoes carrying Zika, however, as of August 11, they've found 141 mosquito traps with the West Nile virus. If this makes you worry about every itchy bite you've gotten, this handy (albeit stomach-turning) map series may ease some anxiety. The Department of Health has created the Protecting NYC From Mosquitoes maps that show where and how many pests have been trapped on average each week, and what species they are, as well as the locations of catch basins, backpack larvaciding, helicopter and truck spraying, and standing water violations.
READ MORE

City Living

August 22, 2016

Reimagining Streit’s Matzo Factory on the Lower East Side: Two perspectives

The closing of Streit’s Matzo Factory last year was difficult for many long-time Lower East Siders to stomach. The factory was a near century-old institution that represented a bygone era untouched by gentrification. Unsurprisingly as a result, the condos designed to rise on the storied site have come under the scrutiny since their debut. But those grievances reveal just one side of the story. […]

August 22, 2016

How safe is NYC water? An expert weighs in