Search Results for: 84 New York Ave

July 1, 2015

Average Sales Price in Manhattan Hits Record High of $1.8M

The second-quarter market report from Douglas Elliman is fresh off the presses, and it shows that Manhattan sales have never been more expensive, averaging $1.87 million for all apartments, which is an 11.4 percent jump from this time last year. New developments averaged $2,011 per square foot, which is the first time ever prices have exceeded the $2,000 per square foot mark. Other records set during this quarter are for median co-op sale price ($795,000, up 9.7 percent from last year) and average price for luxury apartments ($8.2 million, up 12.8 percent from last year).
More from the report here
June 26, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Patty Dolan Shares Stories of Running the Hampton Jitney for 16 Years

Memorial Day might be the unofficial start of summer, but the end of June marks a distinct shift in the city. With temperatures climbing, school finally out, and July 4th a week away, New Yorkers are ready to beat the heat by heading east. For many, that means booking a seat on Hampton Jitney, where they can enjoy the Long Island Expressway in style. Since 1974, Hampton Jitney has been a pioneer in Manhattan-to-East-End transportation. What began with one van has blossomed into a major transportation operation, and the company relies heavily on its experienced employees like Patty Dolan to keep service running smoothly. Patty has worked at Hampton Jitney for 16 years. She has held various positions, and in her own words, has done everything but drive and fix the buses. Today, Patty serves as both a reservations manager and dispatcher, which has turned her into a multitasking problem solver extraordinaire. In time for Hampton Jitney's peak season, we spoke with Patty to find out how she helps keep the wheels turning, as well as to pick up a few travel tips.
Read the full interview here
June 23, 2015

General Lee Avenue and Other Markers Pay Tribute to Brooklyn’s Confederate Past

We've all seen the news this week regarding the debate over Confederate flags in the South following the tragedy in Charleston. But a fascinating article today from Business Insider reminds us that the issue isn't necessarily limited to the southern states. In fact, there's an homage to the Confederacy right here in Brooklyn, and it goes largely unnoticed. General Lee Avenue is a half-mile street that runs through Fort Hamilton, the city's last remaining active-duty military base, and is named for Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee, who was the base's engineer before he left for the south. Additionally, there's a plaque marking the home where Lee lived from 1841 to 1846.
Find out more here
June 15, 2015

New Rendering Reveals What Rafael Viñoly’s 125 Greenwich FiDi Tower Will Look Like

It's been a while since we've heard anything on Rafael Viñoly's tower slated to rise in the Financial District, but it looks like the starchitect's next supertall is inching closer to a full reveal. Ground was broken at the building's 125 Greenwich Street site about four months ago, and now this newly uncovered rendering via NY Yimby gives us a much better idea of its height, its look, and how it fits in with the downtown skyline. Previous renderings had shown a stark, tall and slim rectangle—very much a glass version of Viñoly's 432 Park—while this new and sweeping depiction highlights a structure that will taper slightly as it rises, and feature a stacked crown of what appear to be residences and sky-high terraces.
Find out more here
June 4, 2015

Art Nerd New York’s Top Event Picks for the Week, 6/4-6/10

Kim Gordon, the unstoppable, inspirational Jane-of-all-trades leads the week with the opening of her latest fine art exhibition—as if playing in two bands and penning a best-selling memoir were not enough already. Novice art collectors can have their day at Cotton Candy for their very popular annual Tiny Trifecta, where all works by renowned artists are just $100. And being thrifty is in the air with the Museum Mile Festival which is offering free admission to nine museums along 5th Avenue. But if art isn't your thing, there's still lots more to do: get cultured with a French flick in Washington Square Park, or schooled at Lost Lectures as it returns to a secret, former ship-building warehouse somewhere in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
All the best events here
May 11, 2015

The World Mapped as Pop Art; How the Park Avenue Tulips Get Planted

Take a photo tour of the Croton Water Plant, which is expected to treat about 290 million gallons of water a day. [Gothamist] Roy Lichtenstein meets cartography… check out these graphic world maps that were inspired by the iconic pop artist. [CityLab] “You agree to go to Smorgasburg, then spend the entire afternoon complaining about the crowds.” […]

April 23, 2015

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Take a Tour Inside the Brand New Whitney Museum!

May 1st will mark a new era for the Whitney when its brand new home along the High Line swings its doors open to the public for the first time. A project that has been decades in the making, the $422 million structure designed by Renzo Piano is a game changer for a museum that had long outgrown its Upper East Side space. Boasting a whopping 220,000 square feet of column-free spaces, this glass and steel behemoth is a dynamic assemblage of shapes and angles, and perfectly outfitted to host the Whitney Museum's 22,000 works and then some. Though the museum won't officially open for another few days, this morning 6sqft joined a trove of celebrants at the pre-opening preview of the new High Line-hugging masterpiece. Take an exclusive photo tour with us inside ahead.
All the photos here
April 23, 2015

Art Nerd New York’s Top Event Picks for the Week, 4/23-4/28

In a city where hundreds of interesting happenings occur each week, it can be hard to pick and choose your way to a fulfilling life. Art Nerd‘s philosophy is a combination of observation, participation, education and of course a party to create the ultimate well-rounded week. Jump ahead for ArtNerd founder Lori Zimmer’s top picks for 6sqft readers, beginning tonight! Spring means another week of great events, kicking off with one of my own at the fabulous historic Roger Smith Hotel. This week, spend 12 hours celebrating philosophy, shop the best in home design for a cause, enjoy the authentic Lower East Side, or let art save your soul at the Rubin Museum. You can also celebrate spring Japanese style at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, take a selfie at Rockefeller Center, or school yourself at the Guggenheim.
All the best events here
April 23, 2015

Architectural Saviors: NYC Landmarks Saved from Destruction

Yesterday we rounded up some of the most heinous crimes committed against architecture in New York City, but today we're taking a look at the sunnier side of things. Our list of architectural saviors includes sites saved from the wrecking ball, as well as those that have remained intact and been adaptively reused. And with city-wide preservationists celebrating this year's 50th anniversary of the landmarks law, what better time to take a look back?
View our list of architectural saviors
April 21, 2015

First Look at MCNY’s New Exhibit ‘Saving Place: Fifty Years of New York City Landmarks’

Last night we attended the Museum of the City of New York's symposium, "Redefining Preservation for the 21st Century," which explored the challenges and the opportunities of the preservation movement today and in the future. The event included such distinguished speakers as New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, starchitect Robert A.M. Stern, preservation guru Roberta Gratz, and president of the Real Estate Board of New York Steven Spinola (needless to say, it was quite the lively discussion), and it kicked off the opening of the museum's exciting new exhibit "Saving Place: Fifty Years of New York City Landmarks," which marks the 50th anniversary of the landmarks law in NYC. As part of the symposium we got a first look at the exhibit, which opens to the public today.
Check out Saving Place here
April 14, 2015

How Would a Minimum Wage Hike Change the Way New Yorkers Spend Money?

Today, the Daily News reports that increasing the minimum wage to $15/hour would add $10 billion annually to city paychecks and increase earnings for almost 1.5 million people, according to an analysis by City Comptroller Scott Stringer. Says the paper, "The typical family getting the boost would spend $1,100 to $1,800 more a year on housing, and up to $600 on groceries, $400 on entertainment, and $300 eating out, Stringer predicted." How would this increase in spending compare to a given family's financial patterns before the minimum wage hike? The Washington Post has used newly released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to analyze where the poor and rich spend really spend their money. Looking at four categories (housing, transportation, food, and pensions/life insurance) and three classes (low, middle, and high), the results are mainly as to be expected. The rich spend more all around, but as a percentage of their total income, they spend less; the middle class spends the most on transportation; and basically all Americans have similar spending patterns when it comes to groceries. But the big difference between the upper and lower classes is saving. "For every dollar they spend at the grocery store, the poorest households save 12 cents, while the wealthy sock away $3.07 in pensions and life insurance."
What does this mean? See the infographics here
April 10, 2015

REVEALED: SL Green to Build Another Times Square Spectacular at 719 Seventh Avenue

Here's our first look at what commercial heavyweights SL Green have in mind for a small Times Square corner at 719 Seventh Avenue and West 48th Street. Building permits filed earlier this month call for a four-story, 9,000 square-foot retail building designed by TPG Architecture. Demolition permits were filed back in December and the doomed three-story structure is already shrouded in construction netting and scaffolding. The site also shares its Seventh Avenue block-front with Witkoff's upcoming 40-story Marriott Edition Hotel that will flash one of the largest LED displays in the city.
Find out more on the project here
April 7, 2015

Donald Trump’s New Luxury Golf Course Opens atop a Former Bronx Dump

Grab your golf clubs and head northward because Donald Trump's brand new luxury golf course is open for business. After decades of delays and cost overruns, The Donald has finally made the city's dream of a public golf course in the Bronx a reality. Called the Trump Gold Links at Ferry Point, the 7,400-yard course has been constructed atop a one-time landfill. And though its former use is anything but five-star, you wouldn't guess it by the admission price—Trump is charging nearly three times as much to use his greens as other city courses.
Find out more here
April 3, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Meet the Human Behind The Dogist, Elias Weiss Friedman

Elias Weiss Friedman has devoted himself to photographing everyday New Yorkers. His subjects are diverse, come in all shapes and sizes, and they also happen to be dogs. In a city that is estimated to have 600,000 dogs, it's only fitting that Elias developed The Dogist, a photo-documentary series capturing New York's four-legged friends. His work highlights the canines that bring so much character to the city, yet rarely get the recognition they deserve. As a photographer, blogger, and "dog humanitarian," Elias is committed to introducing the Big Apple's dogs to the world. We recently caught up with Elias to find out how The Dogist came to be, and to find out what it takes for a pup to grab his attention.
Our interview with The Dogist here
April 3, 2015

Mad for Modern: NYC Homes That Are Cooler Than Don Draper’s Park Avenue Pad

We admit it: We’re a bit obsessed with mid-20th century modern design–its architecturally and socially advanced concepts so often result in a perfect mix of aesthetic appeal and livability. Sometimes met with suspicion and derision in its earlier days, modernist architecture has endured the test of time and is having an enormous resurgence in popularity and appreciation. How else could you explain fans' obsession with the award-winning and pitch-perfect mid-mod sets on Matthew Weiner’s “Mad Men.” It’s often said that the best ideas in home design are the ones that make the home a great place to live; the origins of modernist design had that idea at their heart. We've rounded up a few of the city’s mid-century architectural treasures and a handful of homes that embody modernist style.
More on the 'Mad Men'sets and NYC's Mid-Century Modern gems this way
March 27, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Gil Shapiro of Urban Archaeology Re-Imagines Beautiful Old Things

Native New Yorker Gil Shapiro founded Urban Archaeology in the early 1970s, when the salvaging movement was just catching on. With a collector’s–and creator's–eye and an entrepreneurial spirit, he began re-imagining architectural remnants as treasured additions to the home environment. This month the company has been preparing for an auction taking place on March 27th and 28th, handled by Guernsey’s auction house, when nearly 1,000 of their long-treasured pieces of history will be sold to prepare for a move to a new location. First opened in Soho in 1978, the store's early customers–including Andy Warhol and other denizens of what was undisputedly the epicenter of the art world–adored the unique and time-treasured aspects of Shapiro's restored architectural salvage pieces, yet they would always find ways they wished they could customize their favorite items. Finding that he excelled at bringing a fresh perspective to pieces of historical and architectural importance, he started reproducing individual pieces as well as creating new lines of bath fixtures and lighting, many of which originated in places like the Plaza Hotel, New York’s Yale Club and the St. Regis Hotel.
Read our interview with Gil here
March 27, 2015

New Renderings Revealed for Tadao Ando’s ‘Glass Jewel Box’ Condo in Nolita

Over the summer we got a couple of teaser renderings for Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando's forthcoming Nolita condo at 152 Elizabeth Street. But now the Times has released the entire batch of starchitecture porn, including a full building shot and interior details. Ando's first-ever standalone building in New York is a seven-story condominium with just seven units, and its design is completely representative of his signature style. Described as a "glass jewel box" by the Times, it's made of in-situ concrete, galvanized steel and glass, combining to create a simplistic, modern esthetic that blends with the area's industrial character. The Japanese self-taught starchitect wanted to create "a space which no one has created before with a very common material which anyone is familiar with and has access to. Concrete can be made anywhere on earth."
Pricing info and renderings this way
March 23, 2015

INTERVIEW: Melinda Hunt Memorializes the Unclaimed New Yorkers Buried on Hart Island

Since 1980, inmates at Rikers Island have buried 62,000 unclaimed and unidentified New Yorkers in mass graves on Hart Island, a small, mile-long piece of land to the east of the Bronx that is the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world, holding over one million bodies. Before its current use, the island served many uses, including a prison, psychiatric institution, tuberculosis sanatorium, and a boys' reformatory. The Department of Corrections gained control of the land in 1968, and it has been closed to the public ever since. That's all changing, though, thanks to artist Melinda Hunt, who created the Hart Island Project, an interactive online memorial that provides access to information about the burials on Hart Island and tools for storytelling so that no one is omitted from history. The site's Traveling Cloud Museum lets users look up information on their loved ones and share their personal memories. Last year, Melinda led the introduction of legislation that would give control of the cemetery to the Department of Parks and Recreation so that New Yorkers can freely visit the island and its graves. And coming up this Labor Day weekend, Emmylou Harris will sing at the gated entrance to the dock, calling attention to the Hart Island Project's efforts. We chatted with Melinda about her passion for Hart Island, how the Project has evolved, and what we can expect in the near future.
Read our interview with Melinda Hunt here
March 18, 2015

Construction Update: COOKFOX’s 855 Sixth Avenue Tops Off, Ties for City’s ‘Shortest Skyscraper’

In the shadow of the Empire State Building, the concrete frame of 855 Sixth Avenue has quietly risen to its full 500-foot height. Spanning the full western blockfront of Sixth Avenue between West 30th and 31st Streets, the 41-story mixed-use tower, designed by COOKFOX Architects and co-developed by the Durst Organization and Fetner Properties, is poised to bring 190,000 square feet of commercial space and 375 rentals to the southern fringe of Herald Square later this year. While unremarkable in design and imperceptible in the city's skyline, the building's small claim to fame may be that its 152-meter (slightly under 500 feet) height is sometimes regarded as the benchmark figure for defining a skyscraper. Therefore, statistically, 855 Sixth could be considered the shortest skyscraper in New York. Huzzah!
More details ahead
March 16, 2015

Looking Back at the Gansevoort Pumping Station, the Building the New Whitney Museum Replaced

As we all await the opening of the new building of the Whitney Museum for American Art in May, it might be interesting to see what's underneath it—or was. There's an old saying, "To create, you must first destroy," and so long as it doesn't specify how much of one and how good the other, the statement generally slips by without challenge. So it was with the Whitney's new site along the High Line in the Meatpacking District. There wasn't a lot that needed to be destroyed. There was, however, this little building, the Gansevoort Pumping Station, a small, classically inspired edifice with arches separated by pilasters. It was designed by Michael and Mitchell Bernstein, brothers who were widely known for turn of the twentieth-century tenements. Designed in 1906 and completed in 1908, it was built as a pumphouse for high-pressure fire service by the City of New York and later served as one of the area's quintessential meat markets.
Read the entire history of the site here
March 13, 2015

Did the Seagram Building Ruin Modern Office Towers?; Remembering Postmodernist Architect Michael Graves

Hate your soulless office tower? Maybe you should blame the Seagram Building. [Fast Co. Design] Attend a lecture tonight to learn about the history and renovation of High Bridge, the oldest standing bridge in NYC. [NYC H2O] Michael Graves, postmodernist architect who designed towers and teakettles, dies at 80. [NYT] There’s some passive aggressive blog feuding […]

February 25, 2015

The Only Two Living Things in NYC to Have Been Landmarked Are Trees

Last week we looked at the city's oldest and tallest tree in Alley Pond, Queens, which got us thinking about one of the questions at the Preservation Trivia night we recently attended. What are the only two living things in NYC to have ever been landmarked? We'll admit, we were stumped. We guessed Peter Stuyvesant's pear tree and the World Trade Center Survivor Tree, which were both wrong. But they are trees: the Weeping Beech Tree in Flushing, Queens and the Magnolia Grandiflora in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. And to make it even more exclusive, only the latter still survives; the Beech Tree died and was cut down in 1999.
Find out the history of how these landmarks came to be
February 20, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Min Liao of Whole Foods on Ditching Take-Out and Cooking Fresh at Home

For many, Whole Foods still automatically means "Whole Paycheck," but Min Liao is set on changing our thinking that fresh, organic food and fine dining are reserved for just a few. Min is the Culinary Center director at the Whole Foods Market (WFM) on Bowery and the brains behind the school's incredible course offering where menus range from handmade pasta dishes to "Les Essentiels-Chocolate" and whipping up eggs the way the Israelis do. The center is a delight designed specifically for the average New Yorker, focusing on growing culinary confidence, even in a small kitchen that might not have all the right tools. And best of all? The classes are inexpensive and often cost no more than $50. (There are even free ones!) We recently caught up with Min to find out how she got into the business of food and to find out what makes the WFM Culinary Center different from other cooking schools in the city. Keep reading for our interview ahead, and if you want to give a class a try, enter our latest giveaway. Min and her team are hosting a "Dumplings of the World" private cooking class for eight 6sqft readers at the center (enter here).
Let's get cookin' with Min here