StephenSchwarz

Jersey City

Maps of Gravesend Brooklyn

Gravesend Brooklyn dates back to 1645.

It was founded by a woman, Lady Deborah Moody, who left England due to religious persecution.

The street grid of the original village still exists as an aberration in the neighborhood surrounding the intersection of Gravesend Neck Road and McDonald Ave in Brooklyn.

From the wikipedia entry: "The town Lady Moody established was one of the earliest planned communities in America. It consisted of a perfect square surrounded by a 20-foot-high wooden palisade. "

Here is a wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravesend,_Brooklyn

Marie W.

Brooklyn, NY

A piece of Manhattan schist

The geology that built the skyscrapers.

Marie W.

Brooklyn, NY

Frank Ohara's, Lunch Poems, 1964, open to the poem, “A STEP AWAY FROM THEM.”

A STEP AWAY FROM THEM

It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell' attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.

A poem about the pleasures of looking around. And our lunch hour.

Marie Warsh

Brooklyn, NY

The Greensward Plan, the original proposal for Central Park, by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, 1858.

New York would be an unimaginably different place without Central Park.

J. Adam Huggins

Toronto, ON, Canada

NYC Manhole Cover

I think that a manhole cover would be a great entry, as it tells the history of how important subways have been to the development of NYC, how manhole covers connect above ground with underground, the productivity of above with the infrastructure below. Also, how NYC has been made by immigrants who built the subways, as well as people outside NYC; the story of the production of the covers in India is a great example of how goods that were once produced in the US have been outsourced as has much labor in the city: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20071126_MANHOLES_FEATURE/index.html

elizabeth S. Titus

upper West Side/CPW

The New Yorker cover (March 29, 1976) “View of the World from 9th Avenue," by Saul Steinberg

OK, OK, we've go to admit it -- this is one of how we New Yorkers view the rest of the world!!!

elizabeth S. Titus

upper West Side/CPW

First edition of Edith Wharton's New York Stories

No one has chronicled the life of New York City's upper class at the turn of the century in the Gilded Age than Edith Wharton, one of the American literary greats. Set in Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park, and later Fifth Avenue, her stories provide a picture of our great city at a particular point in time, yet remain relevant today.

Patricia Long

Long Island City

Playbill
Ticker Tape
Statue of Liberty

Playbill - As a symbol of the New York theatre - playwrights, actors, Tin Pan Alley composers, et al, and their importance to the creative life of the city.
Ticker Tape - Not only is it a symbol of the New York Stock Exchange, it also has been used by New Yorkers to commemorate the major (positive) historical events of the 20th century - ie Lindbergh's first Atlantic flight, the end of world wars, etc.
Lady Liberty - as the ultimate symbol of the importance of all immigrants to our city.

Joe

Bayside

The NYC public school schoolyard -

Who would've ever thought that a cement covered area could've been so many things for baby boomers: sports arena ( baseball, football, basketball, handball, punchball,etc. , aerobic exercise gym ((jumprope, hopscotch), battlefield for gangs, meeting place or lab for experiments in sex and drinking, and sometimes just a meeting place for young people who wanted to share ideas about music, sports and life.

T. Scott Lilly

Brooklyn

Alexander Phimister Proctor’s sculpture Stalking Panther

Captures beautiful, noble, wild, historical, Prospect Park.

Ivan H.

Manhattan

The old Penn Station Eagles.

The eagles are a remnant of older days and magnificent places; architectural gems that have been criminally destroyed; of one of New York City's least-finest hours after tearing down Penn Station for the new complex; of the fragments that now lay scattered about the Eastern US, only 3 of the original 22 in the city; and of the hope that one day past wrongs may be corrected. They are majestic objects that unlock one specific story, that all New Yorkers should know about.

Richard Storm

Hell's Kitchen

A program from the original 1927 production of Show Boat. (The attached image is from the sheet music folio, but I'm sure there is an actual program in existence.)

The musical comedy has been one of the most recognizable and specific products of New York City and one of its most vivid representations, particularly as so many Broadway musicals and performers (and just the idea of the Broadway musical) were transmitted all over the country and the world in Hollywood films, and it remains a magnet for visitors to this city to this day. Show Boat was the first true book musical (as distinct from the revue and operetta), blazing the trail for Rodgers & Hammerstein and so many others, tells a homegrown American story, and incorporates black music as well as issues of race and historical change. It was originally produced by Florenz Ziegfield, a true New York City original, and seems a great symbol of the importance and centrality of the musical comedy in the history of New York City.

Andrea Bass

Upper West Side

Henry Hudson Statue in NYC Park in Riverdale

Henry Hudson statue: Henry Hudson was really the first European to discover and communicate the potential of NYC as a center of commerce because of its waterways.

Andrea Bass

Upper West Side

Statue of Liberty

Henry Hudson Statue in the NYC park at Kappock St and Indepence Ave in Riverdale

Empire State Building

MOMA

Central Park and its street life in its 4 corners, especially the SE (by the Plaza)

all the bridges and tunnels

Henry Hudson statue: Henry Hudson was really the first European to discover and communicate the potential of NYC as a center of commerce because of its waterways.

T. Scott Lilly

Brooklyn

Al Hirschfeld drawing of the Gershwin Brothers

It captures Hirschfeld, Broadway, Sardis, Hirschfeld, George and Ira all in one museum worthy piece.

John DS

New Jersey

A iile of 60 Dutch guilders
or
whatever trinkets we think Peter Minuit used for the purchase of the isle of Manhattan

Can we talk about the history of New York City without talking about the cost of real estate? 'specially the original purchase price.

Fran Beallor

Upper West Side, Manhattan

A Phone Booth

Today most of us have cell phones, but in days past, the only way to make a call was to find a phone booth, and there were so many around. How perfectly representative of our great city, which is among other things a communication hub for much of the world!

The phone booth speaks to a bygone, more trusting age. A generous time, when we could be sheltered in the safety of the booth, unlike the things that pass for phone booths now, little mini-half-shelters with their broken phones dangling. It was a time when we didn't have to worry about what might happen inside the booth, when children could look at a phone booth and dream of seeing superman emerge, cape flying!

They appear regularly in movies like Rain Man, Phone Booth, Anchorman, Superman andThe Matrix.

I am including a photo of one of the last four remaining outdoor, free-standing phone booths in Manhattan, which happens to sit on my corner, the South West corner of West 101st Street and West End Avenue. A little bit of history right outside my door.

Mike

yorktown, ny

A Cobble Stone

A simple give/take representation of the importance of the city's ports and trade throughout its entire history, its importance to our people, being a central hub of culture, business, finance, arts, politics, etc through all that passed welcomed and unwelcomed through nyc.

barbara baruch

brooklyn

NY subway token.

One token allowed us to travel to all of New York City.

M.T.Fenster

Manhattan

The Siamese Standpipe Connection.

Once again, the ubiquity and variety of the object (see photo). Also, an advantage is it can be found on site at our 10 NYC Objects Museum not necessitating special funds for acquisition of the object.