Untapped New York

Rediscover your city.

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Canstruction, the annual food charity and design competition, returned to Brookfield Place. The 100,000 unopened cans of food, used to create life-size sculptures, will be donated to City Harvest for distribution to about 500 soup kitchens and food pantries across New York City. Twenty-six teams of the city’s top architecture and engineering design firms and the students they mentor spend months planning and designing their entries, and all of them arrive at Brookfield Place for an overnight installation of the entire exhibit. The exhibit is free and open to the public, however, visitors are encouraged to participate by bringing a high-quality, non-perishable can of food to be donated along with the cans used in the competition. Winners are chosen by a team of judges, but be sure to cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award, and check out the related events! http://ift.tt/2f9lyXG

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Tonight at 7:30pm Untapped Cities and the Museum of the City of New York will present A Public Summit for The Future of Penn Station at Cooper Union’s Great Hall. The panel discussion and public forum will go beyond the conceptual renderings and plans for a new Penn Station. Some of New York City’s leading urban visionaries, architects and planners will discuss how to move forward from the current challenging circumstances of Penn Station and then open the event up to an audience Q&A. Since the announcement of intentions to rebuild Penn Station in the early 2000s, there has been little opportunity for public dialogue on the pending future of the station. The speakers and panelists will be Susan Chin, President of the Design Trust for Public Space; Robert Eisenstat, Chief Architect at the Port Authority of NY & NJ; Gina Pollara, President of the Municipal Arts Society; John Schettino, Designer of The New York Penn Station Atlas; Tom Wright, President of Regional Plan Association. Introductory remarks will be given by Michelle Young, Founder of Untapped Cities and Adjunct Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Whitney W. Donhauser, Ronay Menschel Director and President, Museum of the City of New York. The event will be moderated by Jose Martinez, Transit Reporter for NY1. Join us! Link in Bio for tickets! http://ift.tt/2eVBJdH

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We’re here at Astor Place taking in the re-installation of the Astor Place cube after a long, delayed restoration. Just a week ago, the NYC Department of Design and Construction was still being vague telling us: “A new date has not been scheduled for the return of the Alamo cube, but we will advise as soon as this information is available”. But today, the cube arrived on a flatbed truck from New Jersey, where it was being restored. It’s been two years, and New Yorkers are understandably excited! http://ift.tt/2ekdEwi

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An all-seeing Trump Zoltar machine was spotted on street corners around New York City from a mosque in Queens, and a Mexican restaurant in Greenpoint, to the sidewalks in front of the Trump Tower in Midtown, the New York Times building and NewsCorp. It is emblazoned with the title “All-Seeing Trump,” and the tagline “SEES EVERYTHING, KNOWS NOTHING!” The undefined-yellow haired Trump Zoltar says such Trump platitudes like, “I’m going to be the most popular President, EVER. And everybody loves me.” He predicts what the “dishonest lying media” will say about him in the future, of course, since it’s a fortune telling machine. He brags that he builds the “best deportation trains” which run on “green energy, salsa verde.” He’ll use a “huge investment into modern high speed rail – very advanced, very fast…to deport 11 million illegal Mexicans.” He will replace Obamacare with “I don’t care.” There are more than 30 messages total, voiced by comedian Anthony Atamanuik, who has been portraying Trump in comedy skits with the Upright Citizens Brigade. (📸 by Tech Insider) http://ift.tt/2dXGbsp

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On an unseasonably warm October day, we headed to Lot Radio – an independent radio station spinning out of a reclaimed shipping container in an empty lot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The music streams 24 hours a day online, and can be heard through speakers on the lot itself. The pebble-filled lot is surrounded by a fence, but is activated through a counter coffee kiosk on one end of the container, where you can buy drinks and pastries. Then, you can sit on the chairs and tables (or lounge in a hammock), in the lot. It’s a wonderful little spot, in a spot that still feels like the Williamsburg and Greenpoint of ten years ago – when forgotten patches of the urban landscape were reappropriated for purely community and creative reasons. We hope it sticks around. http://ift.tt/2e6DbHO

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New York City has had some terrible nautical disasters but the giant octopus attack that sank the Staten Island Steam Ferry, the Cornelius G. Kolff, in 1963 is not one of them... Yet, there is a monument to it (sometimes) in the Battery in Lower Manhattan and a website that chronicles the history of the event which includes news clippings and even a documentary. The Staten Island Ferry Memorial Museum and monument is part of an elaborate and hilarious hoax undertaken by artist Joseph Reginella, a Staten Island resident. As the story goes, on November 2nd, 1963, the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Staten Island Ferry sailed its usual route from St. George Ferry terminal to Whitehall terminal in lower Manhattan. Over 400 people were on board at the ungodly hour of 4 am, “but they would never reach their destination,” an official sounding documentary voice says on voiceover. Read the full, hilarious, story on Untapped Cities (link in bio) http://ift.tt/2dRP7vr

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This morning, the New York Public Library reopened two historic rooms at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street, Bryant Park after two years of renovation – the Rose Reading Room and the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room. The efforts began after a 16 pound plaster rosette fell from the Rose Reading Room’s ceiling, 52 feet up, overnight in the May of 2014. A thorough inspection then took place and although it was determined the ceilings were structural sound, the library decided to undertake an extensive renovation regardless. The Rose Reading Room first opened in 1911, with the rest of the Stephen A. Shwarzman Building. It is 78 feet wide by 297 feet long, nearly the length of a football field. The renovation of both rooms, “spared no expense,” said the President of the New York Public Library this morning at the ribbon cutting ceremony. Not only was the fallen rosette repaired, all 900 plaster elements in both rooms were reinforced with steel cables. The chandeliers of the Reading Room were also restored and installed with LED lights. It is truly gorgeous and now open to the public, go check it out! More photos on http://ift.tt/1qh12p7 (link in bio) http://ift.tt/2d3Hjcl

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An average person sees about a million colors. Maureen Seaberg has a rare genetic gift and can see as many as 100 million... We went on a walk with her and she told us about the secrets colors of NYC that only her can see. Seaberg admits that she doesn’t see the variety in manufactured goods as she does in the natural world. “There was recently a sunset in New York where the pink so pink and champagne but never blended to peach. Existed simultaneously. I started to name this colors so I have a record of what I think doesn’t show up. For me, the invisible colors are in nature. Just look around us. When a gray pigeon has an iridescent shade to his head I really notice it.” To Maureen, “the blue of police cars, that medium blue is actually really lovely. You may not notice when they are speeding by, but I was looking at one parked recently and I thought whoever chose that shade, good job!” To her, even the city’s brownstones are multicolored. “Brown does not do it justice. There are a few things going on in that brown, I wouldn’t call it plain brown. And speaking of New York colors, the Brooklyn Bridge is gorgeous variegated masonry too, not just gray.” Read Maureen's full story by our contributor Laurie Shapiro on Untapped Cities (link in bio). Photo via Flickr by Anthony Quintano http://ift.tt/2dmnFeT

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Next time you go to the Brooklyn Kings Theater, take a close look at the furniture as it may be the most overlooked secret of this Loew’s Wonder Theater! When the theater closed in 1977, the lobby furniture was given to one of its long-time managers, Dorothy Solomon Panzica, who brought the pieces to her summer home in Corning, New York. In 2013, at 100 years old, Panzica heard that the theater was going to be restored. She decided to donate the furniture back, whereupon the pieces underwent a $75,000 – $80,000 restoration. Among the pieces include a console table made in Paris by André Lemoine, furniture maker to the court of Napoleon III. There are also Louis XVI-style chairs, incredibly ornate chairs worthy of a throne, and a lounge sofa. The management of the Kings Theatre made the decision to allow the furniture to be used, rather than roped off like in a museum. You can find the pieces in the lobby, in the VIP room, and scattered throughout the theater. We have a few tickets left for our Behind the Scenes Tour of the Kings Theater, organized in partnership with NYCEDC, which will take place tomorrow Thursday 9/29 at 6:30pm. We will uncover many more of the Theater’s secrets… join us! Link in bio for tickets http://ift.tt/2cL8rg8

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Do you want to cut the line at Open House New York Weekend this year? Well, we partnered with them and are giving away a VIP Weekend passport which will allow its holder and a guest to cut the line in as many as 150 participating sites that do not require reservations, including 70 Pine, the New York State Pavilion, City Hall, Jefferson Market Library, just to name a few! To enter the giveaway, simply follow the link in Bio! Open House New York Weekend opens the doors of New York's most important buildings, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve New York. http://ift.tt/2dlknHY

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Do you want to cut the line at Open House New York Weekend this year? Well, we partnered with them and are giving away a VIP Weekend passport which will allow its holder and a guest to cut the line in as many as 150 participating sites that do not require reservations, including 70 Pine, the New York State Pavilion, City Hall, Jefferson Market Library, just to name a few! To enter the giveaway, simply follow the link in Bio! Open House New York Weekend opens the doors of New York's most important buildings, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve New York. http://ift.tt/2ddnHQy

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This adorable little book train is the latest addition to the New York Public Library Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Bryant Park! It’s intended to deliver research materials from the Milstein Research Stacks–now with a capacity of four million volumes–to the first floor and the Rose Reading Room which is about to complete a comprehensive restoration. This little book train has a total of 24 cars which can carry 30 pounds each. They’re multi-directional, and can move “seamlessly and automatically transition from horizontal to vertical motion,” the library’s press release states. The train will run on 950 feet of horizontal and vertical track at 75 feet per minute. This comes out to five minutes between the stacks and the Rose Reading Room. The tracks run through eleven levels of the library, are electrically powered and monitored by sensors. The whole project cost $2.6 million. Isn’t it super cute? Full article and train in motion on UntappedCities.com, link in bio. (📸 by Jonathan Blanc / NYPL) http://ift.tt/2dcj7mu

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Tonight we are listening to Tom Rinaldi, author the book "New York Neon" tells us the fascinating stories behind West Village Vintage Neon Signs! http://ift.tt/2cS0Qx2

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Did you know there used to be foot long oysters in the Gowanus Canal? Or that many whales have appeared in the canal? Join us this Sunday from 3pm to 4:30pm for a unique walking tour and discover the canal's history and secrets! This tour will be lead by Joseph Alexiou, author of the book “Gowns: Brooklyn’s curious canal”. The Gowanus Canal is one of Brooklyn's hottest neighborhoods, attracting artists, residents, and visitors to its banks. It is also one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country. This tour of the Secrets of the Gowanus Canal and its environs will explore the history of this curious thoroughfare, and explain how real estate speculation and 19th century entrepreneurs transformed the once naturally-occurring creek and salt marsh into a stinking cesspool and toxic dump. Link in bio for tickets! http://ift.tt/2cHR1AD

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#DinerenBlanc #NYC! http://ift.tt/2cS7j8F

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It's the #NYC #DinerenBlanc at the downtown waterfront! A pop up white dinner in its 6th year. More photos on untappedcities.com! http://ift.tt/2cAHFYq

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The iconic Empire Diner in Chelsea will reopen in November! Today, Empire Diner, located on the corner of 22nd St. and 10th Avenue, is one of the last free-standing diner spaces left in Manhattan. And their numbers are declining – last year we saw the closure of the Market Diner in Hell’s Kitchen to prepare for demolition and redevelopment. Aside from new hours (it will now stay open until 2am) and brighter, more “friendly” decor, not much will change when the new Empire Diner returns with John DeLucie as chef. Expect the same outdoor seating and another iteration of the classic all-American diner menu. DeLucie also tells us that because the exterior is a landmark, there will be no changes to the outside structure of the Empire Diner. We are thrilled by that news, are you as well? http://ift.tt/2coeQez