35 Outdoor Art Installations in NYC Not to Miss August 2015

July 30, 2015, 8:00 am

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Slide the City will arrive to Summer Streets this month. Photo via Slide City website

This Summer we’ve had a plethora of exciting art installations in all five boroughs. Playful, colorful, interactive, life-like, thoughtful and thought-provoking. We’ve been treated to art in public spaces and parks that have never had art before. Here’s what’s new in August, along with other installations in the city that are still up this month:

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8 NYC Locations of the “Pawn Shops with a Conscience” Founded by Gilded Age Barons

August 10, 2015, 8:00 am

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The Provident Loan Society, in former location of 19th Ward Bank at 180 East 72nd Street. Original photo via Library of Congress.

Pawn shops have long been known to take advantage of a community’s poor and desperate, even with an attempt to rebrand the businesses as upscale “loan offices” to the more well-off in the early 20th century. On the opposite end of the spectrum was the Provident Loan Society, a non-profit pawn shop founded in 1894 with money from the city’s most influential, including Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and August Belmont. The architecture of the Provident Loan Society that remains today, deemed by Christopher Gray in his New York Times Streetscapes column “the best-looking pawnshops ever,” reflects a concerted operational strategy to provide access to all New Yorkers in need.

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Today in NYC History: That Famous Kiss on VJ Day in Times Square, August 14, 1945

August 14, 2015, 9:30 am

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The Kiss. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/Pix Inc./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Today, August 14th, is the anniversary of VJ Day (or Victory Over Japan Day) in 1945 when Alfred Eisenstaedt captured the iconic photograph of the kiss between sailor and nurse in Times Square. The photograph, entitled The Kiss, has been the subject of much debate, across a wind range of topics.

Was it staged? Eisenstaedt himself gives two rather different accounts of how it happened. Who are the people in the photograph? Over a dozen people have claimed to be the sailor or the nurse. Even Eisenstaedt thought he had found her, a woman by the name of Edith Shain, but the claim was debunked by a 2012 book which claimed Shain was too short. Shain.The sailor is identified with a bit more certainty, through photographic analysis, to be George Mendonça. Mendonça identified the nurse as a woman by the name of Greta Friedman, who also came forward as the nurse.

What time did it take place? As reported in Wired, a physicist and his colleagues have determined the precise time over the course of a four year study: 5:51 pm they believe.

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Street Artists FAILE Bring Painted Wooden Canopy to Times Square

August 18, 2015, 9:30 am

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Brooklyn-based street artists FAILE (the duo Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller), have brought a new piece Wishing On You to Times Square, part of the Times Square Arts program. More than just a temporary street art piece, this installation located between 42nd and 43rd Street, is a real thinking piece–a deliberate juxtaposition of traditional architecture and modern iconography. As the artists describe, “Wishing On You is an interactive installation that speaks through the district’s graphic language and invites visitors to explore the contemporary ideas of ritual, myth-making and worship in the commercial mecca that is Times Square.”

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The Top 10 NYC Fall Rooftops Curated by the Roof Explorer

August 27, 2015, 8:00 am

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Photo via The Wythe Hotel

Summer, and therefore “roof season” has blasted past, and although the weather remains great long past Labor Day weekend, just when it cools off enough to really enjoy the evenings, many of the rooftop bars close. But many don’t! So while you may not have exhausted our list of best off-the-beaten path rooftops for summer yet, we recently asked Leslie Adatto, author of the book Roof Explorer’s Guide: 101 New York City Rooftops, the first-ever guide to public access rooftops, to share with us her top 10 for fall.

1. Brooklyn Crab in Red Hook

Brooklyn Crab, photo via Brit & Co.

Brooklyn Crab has great views and great food, and when it’s a bit cooler out, they just roll down the clear plastic “windows.” You can take the Ikea ferry over there so it’s a fabulous day out.

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12 Outdoor Art Installations Not To Miss in NYC This Month (September 2015)

August 28, 2015, 6:00 am

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It’s almost September and we’ve completely refreshed our monthly picks for the best outdoor art installations with all new selections. While many of our selections from summer will still be live, these are new ones to discover during your explorations of New York City.

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Mapping the 5 Pieces of the Berlin Wall in NYC

October 7, 2015, 6:00 am

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Photo via Smithsonian.com

The Berlin Wall…in New York City? You heard that right. And there’s not just one piece, but five. In the early 1980s, artist Thierry Noir began painting the surfaces on the west side of the Berlin Wall, close to his apartment. In an effort to make the wall seem less menacing, other artists joined in, covering various sections of the wall with painted figures and graffiti. The 14-foot tall wall became a huge canvas, giving voice to artists from around the world, and a popular tourist destination.

The dismantling of the Wall was completed in 1991, with more than 40,000 wall sections recycled into building materials used for German reconstruction projects. However a few hundred sections were preserved, sold, auctioned off or given away. Five of these sections are here in New York City.

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French Guys Infiltrate NYC’s Public Spaces and Sidewalks with Beds and Tables

October 12, 2015, 8:30 am

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Times Square overnight. Photo via boijeot.renauld

It’s a testament to New York City that when you find an art installation featuring a couple guys, two beds, and awesome wooden furniture, it doesn’t seem too far outside the realm of possibility as an official space public intervention. But, the French team from Boijeot Renauld is doing this on the fly, after taking over public spaces all over Europe and now New York City. We spotted them at Columbus Circle on Saturday morning, shortly before they got kicked out by police (but not before they managed to camp out overnight). This morning, they were in Times Square, and their first day was just near Columbia (perhaps en homage to Emma Sulkowicz’ Carry That Weight mattress thesis?).

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A Hello Kitty Cafe Truck is Coming to NYC’s Times Square This Weekend

October 21, 2015, 10:55 am

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After this summer’s Hello Kitty Time Capsule in Midtown, comes the mobile Hello Kitty Cafe. The popular Sanrio cat we will be featured in food form in Times Square on October 25th and 26th: Hello Kitty macarons and petit fours, red bow tie decorated donuts, hot drinks served in Hello Kitty mugs. The truck is a partnership between Sanrio and the cafe’s managing partners based in California, a test run of sorts before a brick and mortar shop opens in the sunshine state.

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The Secret Floors of NYC’s Marriott Marquis Hotel: Real or Urban Myth?

November 2, 2015, 6:00 am

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New York City’s Marriott Marquis Hotel uses smart elevators with a view of its open atrium. Image via KPBS. 

The 48-story Marriott Marquis hotel is a notable beacon in Times Square, on a site that was once the home of the Astor Theatre, Helen Hayes Theatre and a few others. While we previously covered its early implementation of smart elevators, the website 6sqft recently shared about the rumor of its secret 55th floor.

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Gulliver’s Gate, a Miniature World of NYC and Other Cities is Coming to Times Square

November 18, 2015, 9:00 am

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‘Tis the season for miniature creations in New York City apparently – beyond the annual train show at the New York Botanical Garden and in Grand Central Terminal, the $8.5 million Astolat Dollhouse currently in Columbus Circle’s Time Warner Center, and in 2017 there will be “the largest, most intricate, most technologically advanced” miniature display on the ground floor of the former New York Times building in Times Square. As reported by Crain’s New York, the man who built Mini Israel in Jerusalem hopes to build “Gulliver’s Gate,” a $30 million tourist attraction that will include 300+ mini buildings and 1,000 model trains. These 3D printed miniatures will include landmarks likeGrand Central Terminal, Times Square, and other places around the world. If the rendering is accurate, there’s even the Calatrava train station at World Trade Center which has not opened yet.

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Top 10 Balloon Mishaps at Macy’s NYC Thanksgiving Day Parade

November 23, 2015, 4:00 am

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A deflated Kermit the Frog at the 1991 Thanksgiving Day Parade. Image via deseretnews.com

With less than a week before Thanksgiving, many are eagerly anticipating what kinds of diverse floats and balloons the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will feature. While these larger-than-life balloons of our favorite characters have been a Thanksgiving tradition for 89 years, there have been quite a few shocking, incidents that occurred at past parades. While we’re not expecting anything to happen this week, it was a fun project to research vintage photographs and learn about various safety measures that resulted from the accidents.

From plane crashes to deflations, read about these crazy mishaps (and hope that none happen this year).

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Film Locations: Amazon’s Man in the High Castle Reimagines U.S. Under Nazi and Japanese Rule

November 24, 2015, 6:00 am

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The new Amazon show, Man in the High Castle is (loosely) based on the 1962 book by Philip P. Dick that reimagines the United States if the Allied forces had lost the war. The East Coast to the Rocky Mountains, known as the “Greater Nazi Reich” is ruled by the Nazi regime. The Japanese Pacific States in the west is ruled by the Japanese, with a thin Neutral Zone in the center of the country serving as a buffer between the two. The show takes place across the country, with two home bases – New York City and San Francisco, and traces the lives of two main characters – Juliana Crain and Joe Blake, two characters from opposite sides of the country who meet in Canon City in the neural zone.

A lot of the show’s establishing shots are edited with CGI, put on top of familiar places, the city of Seattle served as some stand-ins for both New York City and Paris, while interiors are clearly done on sets. We’ll focus first on locations set in and near New York City, then move to San Francisco and other locations.

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The Artist Who Captured Early 20th Century NYC: 15 Sketches by Vernon Howe Bailey

December 7, 2015, 7:00 am

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Herald Square “In 1900.” The Romance of the Store (1922)

As New York was reinventing itself from a Victorian city of rowhouses and horse-drawn carriages to a metropolis of skyscrapers, automobiles, and subways in the early years of the twentieth century, artist Vernon Howe Bailey (1874-1953) documented the city’s transition in his detailed drawings.

Bailey was one of the most popular American illustrators of the early 1900s, widely published in newspapers, magazines, and books. He even had his own series of short films, “Vernon Howe Bailey’s Sketch Book,” during the silent movie era shown in theaters across the country.

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The Ghosts of Newspapers Past: 15 Former Locations of NYC Newspaper Headquarters

December 14, 2015, 7:00 am

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With New York’s newspaper industry ever changing, over the years many papers have started, merged, and closed.  And while Gotham’s newspaper graveyard is full of fallen titles, there are still many ghosts of the City’s newspaper past which exist today.

Some of these vestiges of past papers are conspicuous, others are hiding in plain sight, and a few can be found only if one knows where to look.

While New York’s most famous example of newspaper place-making is Times Square, many of the lost newspapers have also left their mark long after the final edition rolled off the presses.

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New Waterford Crystals Added To NYC New Year’s Eve Ball

December 29, 2015, 8:00 am

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Workers installing crystals on the 2016 New Year’s Eve Ball. Image via Todd Maisel/Daily News 

The New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square is just around the corner. In preparation for this, yesterday, workers installed new, sparkling, Waterford crystals into the New Year’s Eve Ball, as reported by several news sources. These crystals replaced 288 of the 2,688 crystals already on the ball.

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The Top 10 Secrets of the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball Drop in NYC

December 30, 2015, 7:34 am

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It’s that time of year again: the flashing New Year’s Eve ball waiting to descend from One Times Square, upbeat performances from celebrities, vibrantly colored confetti, and huge excited crowds standing for hours anticipating the new year. Every year, millions of people watch the 12-foot wide, 11,875 pound ball drop 141 feet in Times Square, either in person or on television. However, many don’t know how this worldwide famous event came about. So just in time for the new year, here are our favorite secrets of the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square.

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24 Wrong-Sized Objects (And Animals) In NYC Over the Years

January 22, 2016, 6:00 am

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Over the years, especially recently, New Yorkers might have noticed some odd structures and art installations popping up along the streets of New York City. These objects have ranged from giant rats and buttons to feathers, bagels, different kinds of animals and tiny replicas. Though some no longer exist, we thought it would be fun to highlight some of the abnormally large or small objects that have sprung up. Thus, here’s a list of some objects that have appeared throughout New York City with the wrong dimensions, some of which might surprise you if you’ve never run into them.

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18 NYC Art Installations and Urbanism Exhibits Not to Miss in February 2016

January 28, 2016, 6:00 am

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Thomas Friedman’s ‘Looking Up’ on Park Avenue

In New York City, the month of February will usher in thoughtful exhibits and installations, both indoor and outdoor, highlighting the way we live and work. Technology and the digital arts have arrived with a full-force of exhibits, translating our inner hard-drives into colorful patterns of our everyday web-lives. They are joined by a view of the spaces we live and work in, from our urban boxes to our loft-like live/work spaces.

The Guggenheim Museum will walk hand-in-hand with Times Square Arts and The Public Art Fund to show us How To Work Better.  Life as seen through our artistic endeavors can shine a light on global issues that touch us all and it can present in images conditions in other parts of our world, both past and present. In the end, we are all Looking Up at the same sky, even if not from Park Avenue.

Without further ado, 18 exhibits to check out in February:

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10 Most Blinged Out Signage in NYC’s Times Square

February 15, 2016, 8:00 am

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Garish billboards are a common sight in Times Square. Image via Wikipedia.

Whether you’re a local or visitor, you are bound to have stepped foot in Times Square at least once. Located within the “Special Midtown District,” Times Square has its own set of zoning rules. In fact, the garish billboards that have became the hallmark of Times Square are not a coincidence, but planned down to the smallest detail from the minimum surface area of light on street frontages, where signage must face, to the mandatory level of brightness for illuminated displays. With more than 360,000 pedestrians passing through Times Square everyday, it is no wonder many stores have joined in the competition and add a little extra to their usual signage displayed elsewhere.

Here are the 10 most “blinged out” signage that passersby won’t miss even if they try to:

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