Category: Uncategorized

This was the first time I visited Riverside Park and the first time I’ve been to Tavern on the Green (though I’ve heard about this place before). Riverside Park is a scenic waterfront public park located in the Upper West Side of New York City. It was first established in 1872 by land condemnation and was developed with Riverside Drive. Riverside Park consists of more than 330 acres of parkland from 59^th to 155^th Street. This park is the home to more than 25 monuments, plaques, and statues reflecting U.S. History.

Riverside Park is the home to numerous monuments and statues. One of the monuments that stood out to me was Grant’s Tomb, which holds the remains of national war hero and former president, Ulysses Grant. Grant’s memorial was chosen to be placed at 122^nd street and Riverside Drive, the site once suggested by George Washington as a possible location for the U.S. Capital. Grant’s Tomb incorporates elements from the tomb of Napoleon, the tomb of the Roman emperor Hadrian, and the Tomb of Kind Mausolus at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Grant’s tomb acts as both a city landmark and a national monument.

Another monument that stood out to me at Riverside Park was the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial. This memorial remembers the six million Jewish men, women and children killed under Nazi rule and is dedicated specifically to the people of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 who resisted and fought back rather than be sent to the Nazi death camps. There is a plaque placed in the circular plaza of the memorial that reads “This is the site for the American Memorial to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Battle, April-May 1943, and to the 6,000,000 Jews of Europe martyred to the cause of human liberty”. Underneath the cornerstone is a scroll describing the defense of the Warsaw Ghetto stating, “this monument set up in New York is the name of the people of the United States of America stands as a memorial of the unparalleled horror committed by the fiendish inhumanity of the Nazi leaders of the German people during the years 1939 to 1945 in destroying six million Jews, one third of the whole Jewish people”. This monument was significant to me because it reminded me of my visit to the Holocaust Museum a few years ago. To this day, it still baffles a mind that our human race was capable of such cruel inhumanity, and just how vicious our actions can be. The power of our political leaders and propaganda truly influence our society as a whole and this memorial serves as a reminder that we must not repeat something like this in our history.

I actually visited Tavern on the Green on a different day due to the rain, so I decided to bring my mom along with me on my adventure. Tavern on the Green is a popular restaurant located in Central Park. It originated as a sheep fold that was later transformed to a restaurant that proudly served locals, presidents, royalty, artists and actors. This restaurant is most well known for being featured or mentioned in numerous films from Wall Street in 1987 to New York, I Love You in 2008. My mother was most fascinated by the restaurant’s gift shop and even grabbed an overpriced T-shirt on the way out.

Riverside Park and Tavern on the Green definitely serves as a cultural landscape. Riverside Park is the home to much American history, it almost portrays a timeline of the United States. From the Civil War, to the memorial of Ulysses Grant, to the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, it acts as a historical retelling of past events. It reflects on how America has evolved from the past to the present. It represents the struggles and obstacles we had overcome to be where we are today.

This is my first visit to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, and honestly my initial thought was “why is the entrance fee so high?”. It wasn’t until I began to venture around the museum that I realized how culturally valuable every artifact was. The Morgan Library and Museum is located on Madison Avenue, just a short walk from Grand Central and Penn Station. Composed by a complex of buildings, the Morgan Museum actually originated as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Mr. Morgan’s library was built between 1902 and 1906, adjacent to his home in New York. The library consisted of three rooms representing America’s Age of Elegance in an Italian Renaissance styled palazzo. Eleven years after Pierpont’s death, in 1924, his son J.P. Morgan Jr. gifted his father’s dream library into a public institution. In 1928, the Annex building was erected, replacing Pierpont Morgan’s residence. Then later in 1988, J.P. Morgan Jr’s (aka Jack) former residence was also added to the complex. The largest expansion in the Morgan history was completed in 2006 by architect Renzo Piano. Piano added 75,000 square feet to the campus, increasing the exhibition space by more than fifty percent and implemented various visitor amenities, including a new performance hall, a new café and a new restaurant, a shop, a new reading room and collections storage. J.P. Morgan Jr.’s generosity constituted as one of the most momentous cultural gifts in U.S. history.

J.P. Morgan’s Library portrayed his admiration and respect he held for his religion and the arts. The sixteenth-century tapestry over the mantelpiece depicts avarice, one of the seven deadly sins, personified by the mythological King Midas. The ceiling is covered in signs of the zodiac; the arrangement of the signs in his library’s ceiling carry a hidden meaning related to key events in his personal life. There are also portraits from Socrates and Michelangelo, identifying the library as a place for the preservation of art and ideas. In the East room of Morgan’s library, you will find a plethora of medieval illuminated manuscripts, rare printed books, and handwritten manuscripts of composers from the Renaissance to the present day. One item that stood out to me most was Morgan’s copy of a Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1455. Gutenberg’s Bible took away the tedious process of copying books by hand and paved the way for an innovated new technology to exchange art and ideas in all spheres of human endeavor.

Renzo Piano’s renovation in 2006 has definitely enhanced my impression of J.P. Morgan and the Morgan Library and Museum. In Morgan’s early years, he strived off international affairs, funneling capital from Europe to America’s emerging economy. As a banker, he stopped a major public panic in 1907 by rallying bankers to supply liquidity to shore up the endangered economy. This led to the establishment of a National Monetary Commission and eventually to the founding of the Federal Reserve. As a collector, he amassed in a full range of artistic and human achievement in Western civilization. Morgan’s exquisite library portrays his appreciation for human achievement in the arts. He is a believer in the value of expressive thinking. From his collection of art, to his ability to think outside the box as a banker, Morgan was a supporter a visionary man. Piano’s renovation to the Morgan Library and Museum just further enhanced the museum, making it more enjoyable to the public perfectly representing J.P. Morgan; an innovational and skillful man.

This is my second visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My first visit was as a freshmen in college for ART 1011 Art History I. I remember visiting specifically for the Egyptian and Greek exhibitions for this class. One of the most standout artwork was the “Venus of Willendorf” clay doll that was on display for a limited time period.

The”Met” is the largest art museum in the United States. With 6,953,927 visitors to its three locations in 2018, it was the third most visited art museum in the world. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen different departments. The main building is located at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which by area is one of the world’s largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan (Inwood, west of Dyckman) contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe. On March 18, 2016, the museum opened its third location the Met Breuer museum along Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side, which features the museum’s modern and contemporary art programs. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 for the purposes of opening a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. The Fifth Avenue building opened on February 20, 1872, at 681 Fifth Avenue.

After negotiations with the City of New York in 1871, the Met was granted the land between the East Park Drive, Fifth Avenue, and the 79th and 85th Street in Central Park. A red brick and stone “mausoleum” was designed by American architect Calvert Vaux and his partner Jacob Wrey Mould. Vaux’s ambitious building was not well received. The building’s High Victorian Gothic style being considered already “outdated” prior to completion, and the president of the Met considered the project “a mistake”. Within 20 years, a new architectural plan for “fixing” the Vaux building was already being executed. Since that time, many additions have been made, including the distinctive Beaux-Arts(French style) Fifth Avenue facade, Great Hall, and Grand Stairway. These were designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, but completed by his son, Richard Howland Hunt in 1902 after his father’s death. The architectural sculpture on the facade is by Karl Bitter. The wings that completed the Fifth Avenue facade in the 1910s were designed by the McKim, Mead & White firm. The modernistic glass sides and rear of the museum are the work of Roche Dinkeloo. Kevin Roche has been the architect for the master plan and expansion of the museum for the past 42 years. He is responsible for designing all of its new wings and renovations including but not limited to the American Wing, Greek and Roman Court, and recently opened Islamic Wing. The Met measures almost 1⁄4-mile (400 m) long and with more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2) of floor space, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building. The museum building is a total of over 20 structures, most of which are not visible from the exterior. The City of New York owns the museum building and contributes utilities, heat, and some of the cost of guardianship. The Charles Engelhard Court of the American Wing features the facade of the Branch Bank of the United States, a Wall Street bank that was facing demolition in 1913.

In my personal views, I assess The Met as both a cultural and obviously an architectural landscape. The artworks from around the world contributes to the cultural part, while the long history of work the museum went through to get to its current state is amazing! I focused on the architect of the museum in this visit due to its history. Prior to doing my own research, I did not know the largest art museum was right here in New York City, and that it was the third most visited museum in the WORLD. This blows my mind as I pass by it frequently as I stroll by Central Park. It also makes me regret to not visiting it more often, as the price of admission went from pay what you wish to set prices.

The last time I visited the MoMa I wasn’t legally able to drink nor purchase cigarettes! It was a field trip in my teen years during highschool for an art history class, so my memory of the exhibitions and the museum itself was very vague. The MoMa is located in midtown Manhattan, right below the beginning of Central Park, and several blocks away from Radio City Music Hall & The St. Patrick Cathedral. The museum was closed for renovation from June 15th to October 21st 2019. Upon its completion of $450 million of renovation, the MoMa fully opened to the public on October 21st 2019. MoMA has added 47,000 square feet of gallery space, bringing the museum’s total art-filled space to 175,000 square feet spread across six floors. The expansion has allowed for even more of the museum’s collection of nearly 200,000 works to be displayed. They stated that the goal of this renovation is to “help expand the collection and display of work by women artists, Latinx artists, Black artists, Asian artists, and other artists from marginalized communities.”

Upon reaching the MoMa, one of the new and most surprising additions that came out of the renovation is that MoMA now offers a free art space on the first floor, open to the public. Two exhibitions are currently on view, “Energy” and a solo exhibition from painter Michael Armitage. They kept all the classic art works fro 1880s-1940s on the 5th floor of the museum.  Some examples would be Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”, and “The Olive Trees”, Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”, and Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” are all on display on the same floor.

In my views, the renovation of the museum was a successful one. The art space expanded even with its limited space available. The free exhibition on the ground floor will definitely help attract larger crowds, and with a new flagship store, dining options (The Modern, Terrace Cafe, and Cafe 2), and expanded hours, there are even more ways to make the most of your visit. With the addition of the interactive “The Paula and James Crown Creativity Lab”, which is a new and experimental space to explore ideas, questions, and art processes that arise from our collection and exhibitions. You can drop in anytime to participate in lively conversations, engage with artists, make art, reflect and relax, and find suggestions for exploring the Museum. Overall I will assess MoMa’s new architectural identity as both a cultural and architectural landscape.

This is my first visit to the Queens Museum of Art Panorama of New York City. The Queens Museum of Art is located in flushing meadows, Corona Park in Queens. The museum itself was founded in 1972, however the pavilion was designed by architect Aymar Embury II for the 1939 World’s Fair. It was then renovated in 1964 by architect Daniel Chait, and used again for the 1964 World’s Fair. The museum itself screams contemporary and featured “technological” aesthetics and colors. The major color of white is shown throughout the exterior and interior of the museum with large “bay windows” for you to see from the inside out and vice versa. It reminds me of a millionaire’s private mansion. The location itself also had a very calm environment to it, as it was located inside a huge park, and next to the Queens Zoo, New York Hall of Science, and the Queen’s theater. I lingered around after our visit to explored the nearby attractions as well.

Now the focus of the trip was the exhibition “Panorama of the City of New York”. When you think of panorama, you quickly associate this with a photograph or picture, however this panorama was a model of New York City. The size of the model was SHOCKING! My mind was not prepared on how big and detailed the model was. The model itself took up a whole room for its exhibition. It also showed a view of the whole city from day to night via an airplane departing and arriving from LaGuardia Airport. I like how the exhibition relates to Robert Moses and the book that we are currently reading. Robert Moses commissioned this exhibition for the 1964 World’s Fair and it really opens up your eyes on his perception of city planning. They say seeing is believing, and this exhibition helped me put his words into a visual presentation. I personally have never been on a helicopter tour around New York City, so an aerial view of the WHOLE city in detailed model form was an eye opener. In the spring of 2009, the Museum launched its Adopt-a-Building program. It was aimed to help improve the future of the model while simultaneously bringing it up to date. For as little as $100, real estate on the Panorama can be “purchased,” with property owners receiving a deed in exchange for their donation. Hundreds have commemorated first date locations, elementary schools, first homes, and parents’ businesses by adopting a building. Its like playing real life Monopoly with the model. The “donations” also helped on a larger scale by having installations of new buildings on the Panorama, which includes: Citi Field, Yankee Stadium, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, and 27 buildings in Battery Park City.

In my personal views, this visit was both a cultural & architectural landscape. It helps a lot that we visit the Museum of the City of New York and viewed the film “Timescapes” before this field trip. It reflects on how and why certain parts of the city is constructed the way it is now. Its architectural on how the city grid is constructed the way it was, how Robert Moses favored expressways over public transit, and how the major bridges connected the cultures of the “working class” into certain parts of the city for work. The museum itself and the panorama of the city of New York serves the interest of the public. Its an educational piece for all, and does not benefit any particular or elite groups.

My first time visiting the NYC Transit Museum was more than 5 years ago, as I led a class of 2nd & 3rd graders on their summer field trip. The exhibits on display haven’t changed much besides position placements. The museum itself is actually located in the decommissioned Court Street subway station in Downtown Brooklyn. My favorite exhibits throughout the whole museum is the fare collections and the antique older models of subways and rail cars. The interior designs, cushioned seats, and different types of subways such as at the “Money Train” were eye openers on how the designs and ad placements have evolved over time.

Our next stop was a short walk to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Being born and raised in Brooklyn, this was NEVER the type of atmosphere you will expect in this neighborhood. Brooklyn Bridge Park is a public space filled with parks, waterfront beach, recreational areas for BBQs & sports, and many “artisan” restaurants. Stretching for 1.3 miles from Brooklyn Heights Promenade to DUMBO, it reinvented itself into what it is today; a major tourist attraction and tons of international investments into the neighborhood. Before Brooklyn Bridge Park is what it is today, it used to be an empty and out of commission piers, from Brooklyn Piers 1-6. Driving from Brooklyn into the city, you will ALWAYS pass by this view of emptiness and desolation on the BQE. In recent days, you will find roof top bars, wedding photos being taken, and pop up pool parties in this area, a complete drastic change from what it was before.

The last and final stop on this long walking trip was a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. Personally, I have rode my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge countless times before Citi Bike was even a thing! It is also another major tourist attraction, as you see tourists stopping by at every rest stop along the bridge to take gorgeous pictures of the city skyline in the background, as well as a beautiful view of the Statue of Liberty. Since our visit to the Museum of the City of New York, and the viewing of “Timescapes”, I have came to admired what the Brooklyn Bridge was constructed for. The Brooklyn Bridge was build to connect the workforce from where they slept(Brooklyn), to where they have to go to work everyday (Downtown Manhattan).

In my personal views, this visit was both a cultural landscape and an architectural landscape. It is cultural as it connects the old (abandoned piers & the Brooklyn Bridge) with the new. Why waste such a nice waterfront location when you can develop it into the booming neighborhood it is now!? The development of this area reminds me in a very similar way on how industry city (Located in Sunset Park, Brooklyn) is “up-and-coming”. I believe the whole Brooklyn Bridge Park serves the interests of the public as it opened many public spaces to the surrounding communities. It also serves the interest of a few elite group. A prime example would be the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. Before the development of Brooklyn Bridge Park and Barclay Center, Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn was considered the lower class. It was dirty, packed, and full of little mom and pop shops. But ever since the city focused their development into the neighborhood, tons of money have been ushered in. The previous majority stake holder of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team have moved into Brooklyn Bridge Park and constructed a training facility for its team members at a condominium right by the soccer field in pier 5. He was also a frequent customer of Fornino, a roof top pizza parlor/bar located at pier 6. This help bolstered the new neighborhood into a much more expensive investment than it already was planned to be.

This is my first time ever at the Skyscraper Museum (I didn’t even know this existed!), and my third time visiting the World Trade Center site and memorial.  The Skyscraper Museum was located at the edge of Battery Park, a more expensive and upscale neighborhood with its towering commercial & condominium buildings overlooking the trendy Jersey City, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street & the Charging Bull, and ferry services to both Ellis and Governors Island. It is also steps away from the World Trade Center Memorial. The Museum is located in a building once again build along the curve of the road following the Hudson River. The size of the museum was small, but had very informative and visually captivating exhibitions. The way the Museum and its exhibitions are set up makes you feel like you are in a Skyscraper. There are many mini models of NYC Skyscrapers as well as development plans with focuses on high-rise buildings as “products of technology, objects of design, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence”. There was also this reflective metal flooring tiles that makes it feel like I’m inside an elevator going up and down a NYC skyscraper.

The highlight of the trip was the World Trade Center Site. It was a fairly good day, and there was an abundance number of tourist, as well as many white collar employees having their lunch break at the WTC memorial site. The memorial is located at the World Trade Center Site, the former location of the Twin Towers that were destroyed during the September 11 attacks. A fun fact about the memorial is that, its not only dedicated to the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, but also commemorating the 1993 WTC bombing, which killed 6 people. The memorial itself is two large square holes deep into the ground, with repeating water flowing down all four sides like a waterfall. The names of the fallen are carved into the outer walls of the memorial.  The waterfalls are intended to mute the sounds of the city, making the site a contemplative sanctuary. There are also over 400 white oak trees that were planted throughout the memorial to further enhance the site’s reflective nature.

In my personal views, this visit was definitely a cultural landscape. A cultural landscape is defined as “cultural properties that represent the combined works of nature and of man”. Two 1-acre (4,000 m²) pools with the largest man-made waterfalls in the United States comprise the footprints of the Twin Towers, symbolizing the loss of life and the physical void left by the attacks. The memorial serves the interests of the public. It is a symbol for us to never forget what happened, and that we New Yorkers can overcome this and rebuild. There is also a callery pear tree recovered from the rubble at the World Trade Center site in October 2001 was later called the “Survivor Tree”. When the 8-foot tall tree was recovered, it was badly burned and had one living branch. The tree had been planted during the 1970s near buildings four and five, in the vicinity of Church Street. Memorial president Joe Daniels described it as “a key element of the memorial plaza’s landscape”. 

This is my first time visiting and even hearing about the Museum of the City of New York. The first thing that caught my attention was the location of the Museum. Located in East Harlem, Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio as it was called during my days of growing up (in contrast to “SpaHa” due to gentrification), I was quite surprised to find a Museum about New York in this neighborhood. As we make our 10 minute walk through East Harlem, underneath the Metro North, and through the government housing apartments, we arrive at the Musem of the City of New York. The museum is facing the upper east side of Central Park, and the main entrance have a university main campus building vibe with its white color and large pillars. Upon entering, the main attraction was definitely the Nathalie Pierrepont comfort staircase. With its abstract hanging lights, it creates a very comforting and homey experience. Our first exhibit was the film “Timescapes”, located in the basement level of the museum. Timescapes is a short documentary that explores how New York City grew from a settlement of a few hundred Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans into the metropolis we know today, and features animated maps and archival photographs, prints, and paintings from the Museum’s collections. Now expanded and updated, the film’s final chapter captures the astonishing , if sometimes challenging transformations the city has experienced in the first decades of the 21st century. WOW! That was my reaction after viewing the documentary. It was very informative and detailed in such a short duration. It depicts on how certain neighborhoods got their names, and how the city developed into what it is today. New York City started around FiDi, which is how many major civilizations start off, by being close to a body of water. The documentary also shows how developers started to plan the city blocks and grid like streets many years ago, with only 100k population, but with a plan to fit a million people in the city. It also shows how certain areas of Manhattan are unchanged and are developed into what they are nowadays. The broadway area was always an entertainment district, 5th avenue is the shopping district, LES (Lowe East Side) is the working class immigrants that came in abundance from overseas, Wall Street got its name because there was an actual wall that was built by the Dutch back in the day, seaport area was the trading district as it imported and exported goods from all over the world. The film also showed the hard times New York City was under, with the events of the Bronx fires, and 9/11.

Located on the top floor of the Museum, there is an exhibit called “Cycling in the City”. It features a physical stationary Citi Bike, which then transmits your actions on a virtual bike on a screen on your biking journey around New York City. The exhibition also features more than a dozen vintage bikes, a virtual reality cycling video game, and plenty of neat artifacts, including early cycling “costumes” worn by female riders and the badges once required to pass through Central Park. And there is a much appreciated focus on the activist battles waged by past cyclists, and often forgotten victories like the bike messenger uprising of 1987, in which thousands of delivery cyclists protested and successfully sued Mayor Ed Koch for attempting to ban bikes in Midtown during business hours. Nowadays, we are just so used to bike lanes throughout all of Manhattan and even areas of Queens and Brooklyn sprouting up overnight, that we forgot how dangerous it used to be for bikers and the history of cyclists in New York City.

In my personal views, this visit was definitely a cultural landscape. A cultural landscape is defined as “cultural properties that represent the combined works of nature and of man”. The nature of New York City, with its calm body of water (Hudson River) which opens up to a larger body of water up north, and the natural island of Manhattan, combined with the work of early settlers in New York (New Amsterdam), is defined as a cultural landscape. Although it required architectural insights and overviews, everything was influenced by the cultures of a variety of New Yorkers. I believe that these properties serves the interests of the public. Born and raised in New York, I know the city have a long history, but I never cared for nor question why some things are the way they are now. This visit helped me open my eyes more on the development and cultural impact New York City have.

This is my first time visiting the Whitney Museum, and definitely not my first on the high line. The first thing that caught my attention was the design and details of the Whitney Museum. Located on the west side highway, it “fits” into the other contemporary buildings that are build along the highway. Buildings that are located on the west side highway are build along the curves of the highway, usually with abundance of big glass windows. The Whitney Museum is a tall building, with 8 floors of exhibition, including a basement level for bag & coat check. Some artworks that caught my eye were: Kanye West portraits, Muhammed Ali, and the observatory deck.  The top floor includes a small cafe with an entry to the outer deck overlooking lower Manhattan, the Meatpacking District, and the High Line Park. The museum is located right at the beginning entrance of the High Line Park. The High Line Park is an old railway system turned public space. It was used to transport meats right into the warehouses of lower Manhattan. Our final destination was the Vessel located at the end of High Line Park, located at the newly developed Hudson Yards. This is my first time visiting The Vessel, designed by Thomas Heatherwick. This structure had a very alien-like style to its design, as it grows wider the higher it gets. With its reflective gold metal material, it definitely reminds me of a spaceship.

In my personal views, this visit was more of an architectural landscape. All the buildings along the High Line were similar in their heights (very tall), large and abundance windows, and a minimal yet futuristic designs to them. I believe that these properties serves the interests of both the public and a few elite particular group. Before the High Line Park development, the only things around the Meatpacking District was the famous Budakan & Morimoto restaurants. The only other recreational area was Chelsea Piers. The High Line Park, and other public spaces developed along the lower west side highway were created with the purpose to serve the public. However, the Vessel was created as a “landmark” or something to attract tourists and crowds towards the newly developed Hudson Yards in order to maintain sales for the new shops that opened up.