PsychoBarn on the Roof of Metropolitan Museum of Art

There is a place in the Metropolitan Museum of art that works only on warm  months. The Rooftop Garden  on the 5th floor in the museum   is like a secret escape-  there is only one elevator to the  fifth floor ,  located  in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts galleries.  The Rooftop Garden provides a spectacular view of the city landscape. There are  benches  where  you  can  relax and enjoy  the open view and a bar stocked with cocktails, wine and sandwiches.

Every summer since 1998 the Rooftop Garden hosted a single-artist exhibition.  On April 19, museum   inaugurates the 2016 Roof Garden commission, a large-scale work by celebrated British artists Cornelia Parker. Parker is best known for her large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), first exhibited at the Chisenhale Gallery in East London.


Nearly 30 feet high,   Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) is fabricated from a deconstructed red barn and seems at first to be a genuine house, but is in fact a scaled-down structure consisting of two facades propped up from behind with scaffolding. Simultaneously authentic and illusory, the sculpture evokes the psychological associations embedded in architectural spaces. Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) is set atop The Met, high above Central Park—providing an unusual contrast to the Manhattan skyline. It will be on view to the public from April 19 through October 31, 2016.


Norman Bates' mansion from the movie 

The artist  combines two iconic aspects of American architecture — the image of a classic red barn, and the gloomy   Norman Bates' mansion from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film "Psycho".  The film "Psycho"    is based on Robert Bloch's novel, which was inspired by Ed Gein, the 1950s Wisconsin serial killer.
Psycho is   considered one of Hitchcock's best films . After Hitchcock's death in 1980, Universal Studios began producing follow-ups: three sequels, a remake, a television film spin-off, and a TV series.


The house on Colonial Street

Film was financed by Hitchcock himself, and filmed at Universal Studios on a tight budget.  Bates house was partly constructed from studio "stock units" and  a tower and front wall portion were borrowed from an existing house set on the backlot's Colonial Street.   "Psycho House"   was built as a two-walled exterior façade, as it would be filmed only from a vantage point within a 90 degree span. (...)

The Psycho house in Universal Studios

Since 1959, the Bates Mansion, better known as “the Psycho house,” has stood on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot.
Hitchcock, a great art lover, was influenced by the pieces he saw and the artists who created them.  There is a picture  House by the Railroad (1925)by   the great American realist painter, Edward Hopper.  You can see this picture here,  in New York, in the Museum of Modern Art.  Look at the picture- doesn't it look familiar?  Hitchcock openly acknowledged the influence of the painting on his design of the house.   Both are    Victorians with a tall main tower and small porch out front. There are differences, yes, but in the most basic sense, they are very similar.

House  by the rail road

 Both houses are lonely, eerily lonely. No one sits in the window of the Hopper house, no one sits on the porch: modern times have left the house alone and abandoned. In a similar way, the Bates House, located high on a hill, far away from everything, is also incredibly lonely.


I have the same feeling when I look at the house on the roof of the Metropolitan museum.  The house on  the roof is real and not real at the same time.
 Yet the project didn’t start out as an homage to the eerie building. Entranced by the city views from the rooftop, the Parker  wanted to put an architectural structure atop the museum, particularly an incongruous one. “My first idea was to have a real barn, take it down, and have a barn raising on the Met,” said Parker at the preview. “But then I realized how big they are.” When Parker subsequently visited at the Museum of Modern Art, she discovered that Hopper’s House by the Railroad served as Hitchcock’s inspiration for the Bates home.

 ‘I was very excited to find the original set from psycho was only two flats, all propped up from behind, like a stage set would be, and it was filmed from a particular angle so you only saw the house, side on,’ Parker says. ‘I’ve built the house in the same angle. I’ve tipped it into the corner, and then if you go around the back, you can see it’s all propped up and you realize it’s a façade. But I wanted it to be believable from this angle. So the roof garden becomes the garden of this house. So I like the idea of the private hedge around the met roof. And then hunkering in the corner is this sinister house.’

Vincent Van Gogh, his ear and Rockefeller Center

In 1888  Vincent Van Gogh had persuaded  his  fellow artist Paul Gauguin  to come live with him in Arles, France. But Gauguin had quickly grown tired of Van Gogh's unpredictable behavior, and  announced his decision to leave. After Paul left, Van Gogh, suffering from severe depression, cut off part of his own ear.  Heavily bleeding,  he  took the ear , wrapped it in newspaper,  pulled down the hat over his wound and went to a “maison de tolerance”, a brothel close to the house. There he asked for a girl named Rachel and gave her  the ear  saying “Guard this object carefully.”

He then went home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed, where he almost bled to death, before police, alerted by the prostitute, found him the next morning.   He was unconscious and immediately taken to the local hospital, where he asked to see his friend Gauguin when he woke up, but Gauguin refused to see him.
 This is the official version of the event. 


In 2009, two German art historians, Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, published a book  about Vincent Van Gogh.    According to their version of events, Gauguin and Van Gogh got into an argument. Van Gogh threw a wine glass at Gauguin who, defending himself, picked up a fencing sword and sliced off Van Gogh's ear.

 It is almost impossible now to find the truth. We only know that the artist later documented the event in a painting titled Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. 
Two years ago in 2014  a German museum has put on display a copy of Vincent van Gogh’s ear that was grown using some of the Dutch artist’s genetic material.

The Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe says artist Diemut Strebe   made the replica using living cells from Lieuwe van Gogh, the great-great-grandson of Vincent's brother Theo. The ear was made identical to Van Gogh's using computer imaging technology. In 2015 Nov 9, 2015  this living  copy of Vincent van Gogh's Ear made its New York debut  at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.

A living ear

"I'm not sure that everyone understands the full scientific and biological implications," Diemut Strebe   wrote. "The scientific approach is based on the Theseus's paradox by Plutarch… He asked if a ship would be the same ship if all its parts were replaced. This paradox is brought into a 21st-century context by using a living cell line (from Lieuwe van Gogh) in which we replaced (at least as a proof of principle) his natural DNA with historical and synthesized DNA."

This year  Van Gogh’s Ear has appeared on Fifth Avenue at the entrance to the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center between 49th and 50th Streets.   
The thirty-foot high, four-and-a-half ton pool and diving board,   by   Elmgreen & Dragset,  were actually handcrafted in Poland by a team of twenty.  It was then trucked to Belgium, where it was shipped by boat to New York City.

Elmgreen & Dragset are perhaps best known for placing a fully-constructed Prada storefront in the middle of nowhere, on a road 26 miles outside of Marfa, Texas.

Prada store

And in effect, the sheeny, "1950's California" pool is the deserted store's complement. "We often like to work in environments where we use a sort of displacement," Michael Elmgreen said. "If you put a Prada store in the desert it's something that is not belonging to the desert. A swimming pool is something that is certainly not belonging to Rockefeller plaza because it's busy, business-like and a more East Coast atmosphere."

Following its presentation at Rockefeller Center, the K11 Art Foundation will travel Van Gogh’s Ear to China.

Clock in Manhattan Sidewalk

Everybody knows   the   Diamond District  in New York - it is located on West 47th Street between Fifth and the Avenue of the Americas ( Sixth Avenue ) in midtown Manhattan. I wrote about Diamond district in my blog.  But a century ago a  heart of the city’s diamond, jewelry and watchmaker district  was in downtown, on Maiden Lane.
 “Within these stores,” wrote the Daily Graphic in 1876, “are diamonds as bright as the eyes of the ancient Dutch beauties.”

William Barthman has been a respected retailer of fine watches and jewelry in the Financial District since the end of nineteenth century.    In 1884    William Barthman, an apprentice jeweler from Hamburg, opened his own store at 174 Broadway, on the corner of Maiden Lane, after operating a smaller jewelry business out of a neighboring storefront for the prior ten years. 

The store, which until 1983 was still owned by descendents of the Barthman family, retains a family feel and has long enjoyed its’ claim as the oldest jewelry store in one location.  The store is renowned for its superior customer service, professionalism, and community relations.
William Barthman   serves as one of the city’s few authorized Rolex jewelers and are the only one found below 42nd Street in Manhattan, as well as the entire borough of Brooklyn.
If  you stay on the corner of Broadway    and   Maiden Lane and look under your feet   you can see the  clock embedded in the pavement.  The iconic outdoor  clock  was created  by William Barthman himself in 1896.

The clock which was designed by Mr. Barthman and store employee Frank Homm, took two years to create. Originally built as a mechanical three-window jump hour clock, it was officially installed in 1899.  Barthman considered  the clock  as a piece of advertising.
  Homm who maintained the clock died in 1932, no one knew how to keep the clock running accurately and on time.  Embarrassed, Barthman would cover it up with cardboard until 1940, when they replaced it with a traditional round clock. With a few modifications over the years, it’s what you see today.

In 1946, New York police estimated that 51,000 people stepped over the clock every day between 11am and 2pm. In the words of the Press in December 1899: “Sometimes two swift District telegraph messengers, who have stopped to match pennies in the shadow of the corner building, see the clock in the pavement with sudden twinges of conscience. It electrifies their feet and sends them flying on their errand.”

In 1966, the clock was refitted, and its face was updated.  In 1983, it was refurbished in collaboration with Cartier, after which Cartier’s name was added to the clock alongside William Barthman’s.  The survived the Depression, September 11th and most recently Hurricane Sandy!

The Met Breuer, unfinished

Met Breuer lobby

Marcel Breuer,  born in    Hungary,   architect and designer, is  one of the most-influential exponents of the International Style.  He is equally celebrated for his achievements in architecture and furniture. 

To escape persecution by the Nazis since he was of Jewish descent, Marcel Breuer went to Hungary in 1933 but went on to England in 1935  and, finally, to the US in 1937.


De Bijenkorf department
store in Rotterdam
 (Wikipedia photo)

Breuer moved to New York City in 1946. He    attracted numerous major commissions: the Sarah Lawrence College Theatre in Bronxville, New York,    De Bijenkorf department store in Rotterdam,  IBM  research center,  in  France.  



Met Breuer

The building for Whitney Museum of American Art  by Marcel Breuer in  New York City  was completed  in 1966.  Whitney museum several  years earlier     purchased a 13,000-square-foot lot at Madison and 75th Street, the site of an apartment building that had lost its financing.

Breuer  wrote in his notes on the project: “Its form and material should have identity and weight … in the midst of the dynamic jungle of our colorful city. It should transform the vitality of the street into the sincerity and profundity of art.”
 New Yorker wrote three weeks ago in its article :
 Whitney might not have existed at all if the Met had accepted Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s offer, in 1929, of five hundred works of American art, plus an endowment to sweeten the deal. But the Met declined the donation. When the building—the Whitney’s third home—first opened, in 1966, Marcel Breuer’s gloriously intransigent upside-down ziggurat, made of granite-clad concrete, proved controversial. One detractor dubbed it “the monster of Madison Avenue.” But Breuer had a clear vision, as he told a reporter at the time: “Outside, it is expression; inside, only proportion. It stands back and lets you see the pictures.”
Whitney now have a new  building located  between the High Line and the Hudson River. And Metropolitan Museum of Art  launch its first season of programming in the landmark building by Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York.


Albrecht Durer  Salvator Mundi, ca. 1505

The opening exhibition  at the Met Breuer is  Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, which  put side by side more recent pieces like Bruce Nauman sculptures and never-before-seen Twombly panels with over 550 years of historical art (including works by Titian, Leonardo da Vinci and Cézanne). It features historical works and contemporary pieces from the museum’s collection and numerous international loans. 

Leonardo’s exquisite drawing, Head of a Woman  is  loaned by the National Gallery in Parma, and Titian’s large, and violent, 1570s composition, Flaying of Marsyas have been rarely seen outside the Czech Republic.
Featuring 197 works dating from the Renaissance to the present, the galleries contain two kinds of objects: those that were, for whatever reason, left accidentally unfinished by the artist, and those that are finished works of art that adopt a deliberately unfinished style.

El Greco , "The vision  of Saint John" (1608-14)

“It is rare that an exhibition covering such a broad time span can trace a theme as intimate and essential to the creative process,” said Sheena Wagstaff, the Met’s chief curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, in a statement. “This sweep of art history throws into sharp focus the ongoing concern of artists about the ‘finishedness’ of their work—which, in the 20th century, they co-opt as a radical tool that changes our understanding of Modernism.”

Gustav Klimt, “Posthumous Portrait of
 Ria Munk III” (1917–18) 

Metropolitan museum wrote about the new building: The Met Breuer   provides additional space for the public to explore the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the global breadth and historical reach of The Met's unparalleled collection.


The new building opened  to the public on March 18, 2016.  The Met Breuer is closed on Monday, and  Metropolitan Museum on 5th avenue and cloisters are open. If you buy tickets at a museum ticket counter, pay what you wish.  Ticket includes same-day admission to The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Breuer, and The Met Cloisters.

Three years: Best of 2015

My blog is not a  toddler  anymore!  With my  blog third birthday, the “terrible twos” are officially over and the “magic years” of three and four begin!   My blog deserves three cheers because it is three years old.  Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray! Happy 3rd birthday!

Here in this post I put the pictures  and links to 12 posts that I published in 2014.  Read them if you missed them when these post were published.   If interested, tell me what you would like to read next  - New York have so many secrets!
  If you like to look at  2013 post per month  list   click here!
  If you like to look at  2014 post per month  list   click here!

2015

	Nikolas Roerich -the only painter who ever had a skyscraper in New York built for him. A planet was named for him. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929. He was an archaeologist, art historian, poet, peace activist, botanist, spiritual philosopher, mentor to Marc Chagall, political adviser, costume designer , women’s rights advocate and founder of a yoga society. He had had legions of admirers, including Einstein, Gandhi, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Some people thought that he was a KGB agent and a Russian spy.
	Life Underground and alligators in the sewers Located in the 14th Street and 8th Avenue station are over 100 little cast-bronze sculptures depicting life in NYC. The sculptures are located in unexpected places: under stairs or pillars, on railings, on benches and suppose to surprise commuters. Most of these bronze figures are no more than 8 inches tall.Life Underground is a permanent public artwork created by American sculptor Tom Otterness for New York Subway.
	The Hispanic Society of America Only in New York a cultural site of such significance can go mostly unnoticed - and not only not only by tourists, but by New Yorkers as well. This is really a hidden gem in Washington Heights. You'll very likely be alone viewing works by Goya, Velasquez, and El Greco as well as a stunning collection of Spanish earthenware from the 16th through the 19th centuries. And it is free!
	Rockfeller and  Cannibals The Metropolitan Museum’s Oceanic, or Pacific Islands, collection is one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. Nearly 1600 objects from the ''primitive'' cultures of Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas are on view in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. A book entitled "Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primative Art" by Carl Hoffman, published in March 2014 gives significant credence to the idea that Michael was killed and eaten by cannibals.
	Channel Garden, Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is the symbol of midtown Manhattan. A complex of 19 buildings and plazas, located between Fifth and Seventh Avenues and 48th and 51st Streets, Rockefeller Center was built to be a “city within a city.” A narrow promenade separates tow building in Rockefeller center - the British Empire Building and the Maison Française in the way the English Channel separates the two countries in whose honor the buildings were named. This promenade is named Channel Garden.
	Tiffany Everybody knows the name Tiffany. In the 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Tiffany's is mentioned twice in the song "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend". In the 1956's James Bond novel, Diamonds Are Forever, one of Bond's love interests is named Tiffany Case. The magic was born in New York in 1837 when Charles Lewis Tiffany and his friend John B. Young opened the store in Manhattan
	Belvedere castle, Central Park There are many mansions in New York city, but there is only one castle- Belvedere castle - a gothic structure in the middle of Central Park with a stone facade and turrets that’s meant to invoke the idea of a romantic Medieval villa. The castle was built as a folly without doors.In 1919 the United States Weather Bureau moved the Central Park Observatory to the castle
	Brooklyn Bridge It took more than a decade to build this bridge, it cost the life of its designer, and it was constantly criticized by skeptics who predicted the entire structure was going to collapse. When the bridge opened 132 years ago, on May 24, 1883 the world took notice and the entire United States celebrated.Brooklyn Bridge is the first bridge ever built between Brooklyn and Manhattan. At the time it was finished in May 1883, it was famous for being the biggest bridge in the world - stretching almost 1600 feet across the East River. Part 1  Part 2
	Conservatory Water in Central Park The pond now known as Conservatory Water was inspired by the Grand Bassin, model boat pond in Paris' Luxembourg Gardens.Conservatory Water in Central Park is very popular for boating in the spring and summer.Over the past 20+ years members of the Central Park Model Yacht Club have continued to compete every Saturday on Conservatory Water. But it is not necessary to be the member of a club to enjoy the boating! From April through October, children and boat enthusiasts can rent radio powered boats as well as uniquely constructed sailboats with large wind driven sails.
	Angel of the waters in Central park The gorgeous focal point of the Bethesda Terrace, the Bethesda Fountain is one of the largest fountains in New York, measuring twenty-six feet high by ninety-six feet wide.In 1864 sculptor Emma Stebbins received the commission for the sculpture in the middle of the fountain that would be the terrace's centerpiece. The sculpture was the only major sculpture commissioned for the park during its original design and construction
	The Alexander Hamilton Custom House The Alexander Hamilton US Custom House is located at the southern tip of Manhattan next to Battery Park, on the site of Fort Amsterdam. The seven story Customs House contains 450,000 square feet of space and sits on three city blocks. Starting from 1994 Museum of the American Indian occupies two floors of the house.The collection in the museum was assembled by George Heye during a 54-year period and includes more than 800,000 objects, as well as a photographic archive of 125,000 images. Part 1  Part 2
	World Financial Center - Brookfield Place Brookfield Place ( World Financial Center)complex was designed by César Pelli, an Argentine American architect. It was built between 1982 and 1988 at a cost of $60 million on landfill that was excavated during the building of the World Trade Center, as well as garbage, dirt and debris. It was heavily damaged on 9/11 -the collapse of the twin towers closed the Palm garden for a year. The atrium underwent a $50 million reconstruction.

Three years: Best of 2014

Three years ago on April 6,  2013 I started  my blog Big Apple Secrets. Every week during last three  years I had been publishing  at least two  posts a week. Last month about 1500 visitors  from New York and London, Paris and Madrid read my blog- thank you,  my dear readers!

Here in this post I put the pictures  and links to 12 posts that I published in 2014.  Read them if you missed them when these post were published.   If interested, tell me what you would like to read next  - New York have so many secrets!

  If you like to look at  2013 post per month  list   click here!
  If you like to look at  2015 post per month  list   click here!

2014

	Citigroup Center Citigroup Center is the 4th tallest in the city and 3rd tallest in Midtown. The building has a unique slopped roof and is one of the most recognizable skyscrapers on the New York City skyline. In June 1977 the problem in the construction was found and the secret job had been started to fix the problem. The crisis was kept hidden from the public for almost 20 years. It was publicized in a lengthy article in "The New Yorker" in 1995. Part 1  Part 2
	Russians on Park Avenue: Vyshinskiy and Khruschev. The famous state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's Moscow trials Vyshinskiy,died in this building. He was poisoned ( probably...). Fidel Castro met with Mr. Khrushchev ( Soviet Union) at this building in September 1960.The granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller save the building from demolation
	'Club 21':Richard Nixon, Elizabeth Taylor and Ernest Hemingway dined there   '21' is one of America’s most famous speakeasies from the Prohibition Era. Every President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt except for George W. Bush has dined at 21. JFK dined at '21' on the eve of his inauguration. The most famous feature of 21 is the line of 33 painted cast iron lawn jockey statues which adorns the balcony above the entrance
	San Remo - one of the most exclusive coops in Manhattan It is the first twin-towered building to rise in New York. Past and present residents of the building include Steven Spielberg, Donna Karan, Demi Moore, Dustin Hoffman, Bruce Willis.
.	American Venus - the first naked lady in Hollywood and a fountain near the Central park entrance Joseph Pulitzer, journalist and newspaper publisher left $50,000 for the fountain. Sculptor chose Audrey Munson for the model of Ponoma. Munson was the most famouse model in New York in the beginning of the 20th century. There are two sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for which Audrey Munson posed. She died when she was 104 almost forgotten.
	Manhattan Municipal Building Manhattan Municipal Building, east of City Hall Park and just north of the Manhattan entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, is among the largest government office buildings in the world. Manhattan Municipal Building The central triumphal arch was inspired by the Arch of Constantine in Rome, Italy. The building served as the one of the prototypes for seven Stalin-era skyscrapers(visotki) , known as Seven Sisters.
	The Statue of Liberty and its replicas  The Statue of Liberty, symbol of American freedom, is among the most recognized images worldwide. The statue was made by the French sculptor Bartholdi, in collaboration with Gustave Eiffel, who constructed Eiffel tower. The statue has been destroyed in more than 30 movies! The best way to see Liberty for free is by Staten Island Ferry. There are replicas of the statue in Germany, Norway, Spain, United Kingdom ,Argentina ,Brazil, China, Israel, Japan. And Brooklyn has our own statue of Liberty! Post 1   Post 2
	Bryant Park Every year, over 6 million people use the park, making it the most heavily used public area per acre in the world. The first park at this site opened in 1847 as Reservoir Square because of a man-made four acre lake “Croton Distributing Reservoir” .There is an open-air free reading room and a game room has with 40 tabletop games available daily for free. The park has a chess concession at the west end that offers chess boards and lessons. There is also a court for practitioners of Pétanque, the French game of boules. Post 1 Post 2  Post 3
	Zabar's If you are the fan of a smoked salmon- it's you place! Zabar's is of one of the most exotic gourmet food stores in New York. Its founder from Ukraine and his fife started Zabar's in 1934. Over 40,000 customers walk through Zabar’s doors every week, spending about $50 million a year on 800 varieties of cheeses, 400,000 pounds of coffee, nearly 300 different prepared foods made by a kitchen. Zabar's is rated NN 10 of 559 in shopping in New York city by Tripadvisor
	O.Henry and H.G.Wells wrote about it: Flatiron  Upon completion , it was one of the tallest buildings in the city. The New York Tribune called the new building "A stingy piece of pie ... the greatest inanimate troublemaker in New York", The New York Times called it a "monstrosity". Now it is an icon of New York City, the Flatiron Building is a popular spot for tourist photographs, making it "possibly one of the most photographed buildings in the world".
	The house that Tweed built: A symbol of municipal corruption The Courthouse was built between 1861 and 1881 and is the costliest public building that had yet been built in the United States. Its construction cost nearly twice as much as the purchase of Alaska in 1867. Tweed Courthouse is known as the greatest single thievery project of 'Boss Twed'.Today the building serves as the headquarters of the Department of Education. Tours of Tweed Courthouse are offered by reservation on select Fridays at 12:00 PM.
	Chelsea Market - a place not only for a foodie Chelsea Market, indoor market in a rustic building in Chelsea Manhattan, is ranked N6 of 584 shopping places in New York by Trip Advisor. It attracts over 6 million national and international visitors annually. Throughout the market, there are a lot of decidedly vintage looking fixtures, like the switch compressor, a strange looking light, a stone bench with a stone pillow or fountain constructed out of discarded drill bits and an exposed pipe. There is an eclectic mix of cuisines and foods in addition to some vintage/boutique shops there.

Three years: Best of 2013

Three years ago  it  was  sunny and warm .  Three years ago on April 6,  2013 I published not one but two first posts  in my blog Big Apple Secrets.

The first one was about one of the New York  nicknames -Gotham and the second  one - about Easter installation near Rockefeller center.

 Three years later there are more than 350 posts in my blog.   I'm never short of topics to write about  - New York is a remarkable city.

Every month more than  1000 people from different countries- United States  and Great Britain, Spain and Netherland,  Australia and France read my blog- thank you,  me dear readers!
 To celebrate the birthday of Big Apple Secrets  I  created  three separate posts  and every post has  a table with   picture, a short  summary and a link  to the  posts that I choose. So twelve  handpicked  posts for every year   - 2013,2014 and 2015.

Read my blog, and if interested, tell me what you would like to read next  - New York have so many secrets!

If you like to look at  2014 post per month  list   click here!
If you like to look at  2015 post per month  list   click here!

2 0 1 3

	The East River Ferry   If you ride the full length of the route as I did on early July morning - you can see The Freedom Tower rising in the south, United Nations building to the north. You'll pass under three bridges, each over 100 years old - Brooklyn bridge, Manhattan Bridge and Williamsburg Bridge. The views from the ferry are amazing! The price is $4 for a one way trip on weekday and soon will go down!
	The monument to the sailors near Columbus Circle The Maine Monument stands near Columbus Circle, on the northeast at the entrance to the Central Park and honors the 258 American sailors who died when the battleship Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. The vessel's explosion was a catalyst in bringing war between the United States and Spain. The real reasons of the explosion are still unknown..
	The Little Prince was writer in this building This charming building with blue trim, and over-flowing window boxes sits on East 52 just less than a half-block from 5th Avenue. There is a plaque on the building that says that several chapters of “The Little Prince” by Saint-Exupery were written in a studio on the second floor
	Ansonia coop, Upper West Side Ansonia is one of the most famous and maybe most unusual apartment buildings in new York. It is located on the intersection of Broadway and Amsterdam Ave, upper West Side. It is more the 100 years old and the history of it is fascinating – there was a farm on the roof, famous gay club and Plato’s Retreat, the sex club, in the basement.
	Old Speakeasy in the heart of Midtown Bills Gay Nineties, A New York Original Speakeasy is located in a 19th century townhouse, at 57 East 54th Street.The house on 57 East 54th Street was built in the 1850’ as a private house. There was a secret liquor room in the basement hidden behind the false brick wall.
	The oldest monument in New York  is  from   Egypt Cleopatra's Needle is the popular name for each of three ancient Egyptian obelisks re-erected in London, Paris, and New York City. Cleopatra’s Needle in New York is the oldest man-made object in Central Park. The obelisk is more than 3000 years old and was commissioned by Pharaoh Thutmosis III around 1450 BC in celebration of the 30th year of his reign. Part 1   Part  2
	The Oldest Apothecary in America C.O. Bigelow Apothecary at 414 6th Avenue is the oldest apothecary in America. The Bigelow archives told that Mark Twain ( he lived at 14 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village from 1900 to 1901) bought the toothpaste there. When Thomas Edison ( as featured in advertisements ) burned his finger on a prototype light bulb, he ran into the store for balm.
	Bowling Green park, the first official park in New York Manhattan's Bowling Green park, sitting at the very beginning of Broadway, is the first official park in New York. This park is the site of one of the most symbolic moment of the War of Independence. A gilded lead statue of King George III was erected here in 1770. On July 9, 1776, after the first public reading in New York State of the Declaration of Independence, this monument was toppled the crowd Part 1  Part 2
	Astors-Landlords of New York. John Jacob Astor came to America in 1763 from Germany and made a fortune in fur-goods trading. Every president of United States after 1931 was the guest of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Queen Elizabeth II, General Charles de Gaulle, Nikita Krushchev, David Ben-Gurion were among the gusts of the Hotel. John Jacob Astor IV, one of the wealthiest men in America and the member of a prominent Astor family built st.Regis hotel.  He was on Titanic. Read the story of Astors in  in my blog:  Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
	Temple Emanu-El Temple Emanu-El - the largest synagogue in the world. It can accommodate 2,500 worshipers - more than St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. It is on the site of demolished John Jacob Astor IV mega mansion on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 65th Street. The house was one of the grandest houses in New York at that time.
	Rockefeller Center Christmas tree It doesn't get much more "iconic NYC Christmas" than the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, towering above the ice rink below. The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is a world-wide symbol of the holidays in New York City. Official Christmas tree tradition at Rockefeller Center began in 1933. Usually the lighting is at the first days of December. Starting from 1986 the tree is always Norway spruce between 69 to 100 feet tall. The tallest tree was from Connecticut in 1999 and stood 100 feet tall.
	Balto the sled dog in Central Park There is a small statue of the dog in the Central Park, just west of East Drive and 67th Street. This is Balto, Jet black Siberian husky.The statue, a big favorite  of kids in the Park -  is on it’s place for more than 85 years.In the winter of 1925, Balto and other sled dogs and their drivers became national heroes when they successfully delivered a diphtheria serum to the isolated residents of the small city Nome, Alaska.