Private Passage, a giant bottle in Hudson River Park

Hudson River Park is the  largest park created in Manhattan since Central Park. It is located along Manhattan's West Side on the shore of the Hudson River and Park stretches five miles from Battery Park in Lower Manhattan to 59th Street.
 At the very north end of the park there is a  Clinton Cove, a 2.3-acre green park .  It was named after   Dewitt Clinton who  was the sixth Governor of New York  and served as a United States Senator.    Former US Army fort and America's first immigration processing center  Castle Clinton in Battery Park was name after  Dewitt Clinton. 

"The Clinton Cove portion of Hudson River Park represents the next great step towards the completion of a beautiful five-mile stretch of recreational space that is already being enjoyed by thousands of New Yorkers each day, " said     Mayor Bloomberg in 2005 on the opening ceremony,  " I would like to thank the Hudson River Park Trust for their leadership and commitment to a project that has become a model for what can be achieved along our City's waterfront."


Clinton Cove park  includes a big green lawn for picnicking, a boathouse holdings canoes and kayaks and more, and more, including a giant bottle known as Private Passage.
Created by artist Malcolm Cochran, Private Passage is a distinctive sculpture consisting of a 30’ x 8’6” wine bottle resting on its side, within which is a representation of an interior stateroom from the ocean liner, Queen Mary.

RMS Queen Mary is a retired ocean liner that sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean  for the Cunard Line . She  was built in 1935   and featured two indoor swimming pools, beauty salons, libraries, and children's nurseries for all three classes, a music studio and lecture hall, telephone connectivity to anywhere in the world, outdoor paddle tennis courts, and dog kennels.
This was the first ocean liner to be equipped with her own Jewish prayer room.
The exterior of the bottle is fabricated of bronze and zinc with a traditional green patina.  
Portholes from the top shine light inside on sunny days. On overcast days and at night, electric lights, which are part of the cabins furnishings, illuminate the interior room.  It truly feels like a discovered time capsule. The interior was built using sheet metal and other materials that would give it a monochromatic look, representing black and white film from a 1930s magazine advertisement.

Beresford coop, Upper West Side

Emery Roth, the prolific New York City architect, designed many distinctive buildings in the 1920s and ’30s.  Roth was born to a Jewish innkeeper in Hungary, one of eight children. When Roth was just a boy his father  and his family plunged into  poverty.     In 1884, when Roth was 13  he boarded a steamer for America .  Roth  survived by shining shoes and working odd jobs. Later he became a  skilled draftsman and was hired to design façades for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.  It was   Chicago  where  Roth met Richard Morris Hunt, known as the “dean of American architects.” In Roth moved to New York and jointed   join Hunt’s studio, which counted wealthy New York families like the Vanderbilts and the Astors as clients. In 1898, he struck out on his own, buying a small architectural firm for $1,000.
Architect Emery Roth’s two most ambitious projects, the Beresford and the San Remo, both on Central Park West, were built during an economic meltdown.
Facing Central Park and just steps away from the American Museum of Natural History, The Beresford is one of the world’s most exclusive and celebrated fully serviced residential buildings.
 In September 1929, a few weeks before the stock market crash, a three-towered apartment building in late Italian Renaissance style opened on the corner of Central Park West and 81st Street.  Beresford   takes its name from the Hotel Beresford, which had occupied the site since 1889. The Beresford  sits twenty-two stories tall  with three illuminated towers, two main facades and three separate entrances.

The 175 apartments are large, with ceiling heights ranging from 10 feet on the lower floors to 12 feet on the upper, terraced floors. Many were designed as duplexes and most have  fireplaces. The Beresford was one of the first in the city to have glass-door showers with multiple shower heads and some bedrooms are as large as 18 by 28 feet.
The Beresford  had its ups and downs. According to "Luxury Apartment Houses of Manhattan," the building had a hard time dealing with the effects of the Great Depression. In 1940, it was sold in tandem with the San Remo Apartments for a total of $25,000 over the mortgages for the two buildings. In 1962, the Beresford became a co-op.
The building has been called home by comedians (Jerry Seinfeld), athletes (John McEnroe), musicians (Diana Ross) and of course, good old-fashioned rich people.  Today, the Beresford is home to moguls and superstars.


Big Bling in Madison Square Park

Madison Square Park is one of the oldest parks in New York.   Named for President James Madison in 1814, Madison Square was formally opened as a public park on May 10, 1847. This public space was a highly desirable address when it opened.    Today, Madison Square Park is a green jewel in the midst of the city. The Madison Square Park Conservancy is dedicated to keeping Madison Square Park a bright, beautiful and lively public park.

Madison Square Park Conservancy also runs the park’s popular public art program.

Since 2004, the Mad. Sq. Art Program has been partnering with acclaimed, visionary artists to realize outdoor work on a monumental scale, work that complements and enhances the environment. These projects are free to the public and have made Madison Square Park a world-renowned cultural destination.
 Last spring  Big Bling, a forty-foot high, temporary multi-tier structure  by the acclaimed American artist Martin Puryear was installed in the middle of the lawn.

Esplanade in Batter Park City
Martin Puryear was born in Washington, DC, in 1941. In his youth, he studied crafts and learned how to build guitars, furniture, and canoes through practical training and instruction.  Puryear’s objects and public installations—in wood, stone, tar, wire, and various metals—are a marriage of minimalist logic with traditional ways of making. In both 1979 and 1981, and again in 1989, his work was included in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York  presented   in  2007-2008 a major exhibition of the sculpture of Martin Puryear.  The retrospective  featured  approximately forty-five sculptures.
New York already  has a  permanent  outdoor sculpture by the artist. Two tall stainless steel columns create a symbolic portal at the river’s edge in Battery Park  on the  Esplanade in Batter Park City, just north of North Cove.  One of the   columns is   airy and open and made of wire mesh; the other solid and angular. 


Big Bling  is the   largest temporary outdoor sculpture Puryear has created.  Big Bling is part animal form, part abstract sculpture, and part intellectual meditation.   "Bling",  a slang term for flashy jewelry and accessories, is rooted in  urban youth, hip-hop and rap culture of the 1990s.
The sculpture is  on view in Madison Square Park through April 2nd, 2017.  Following New York, Big Bling will travel for installation in Philadelphia.





Chinese New Year Parade 2017

Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival in China, is the most important traditional holiday in China.The date is different each year on the Gregorian (internationally-used) calendar, but is always between January 21th and February 20th. The Chinese lunar calendar is not strictly a lunar calendar; it is actually a lunisolar calendar with lunar months anchored in place by points in the solar year. Normally, the celebration  starts from the New Year's Eve and  lasts for around 15 days until the middle of the first month.

Before the celebration, people will normally completely clean the house and display traditional New Year decorations.

Though it is not a national public holiday, Chinese New Year is celebrated grandly in United State, especially among Chinese communities. The new year marks the beginning of the spring, the rebirth of the Earth. The Chinese words for New Year means “spring festival.”



Chinese New Year 2017 begins a year of the Rooster. People born in a Rooster year are usually hardworking, resourceful, courageous, and talented. There are lots of ways to celebrate the Year of the Rooster in NYC, which has the largest Chinese population of any city outside of Asia.

The Chinatown New Year's parade, which today often includes Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, and other community groups as well, is an American invention — with beauty pageants, floats, marching bands, dignitaries in convertibles — rather than an Asian import.

According to The Chinese Cultural Center in San Francisco, the first parade was held in San Francisco in 1953, hosted by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
More than 6,000 people  marched  in  2017 parade  , which  started at Mott Street and promenaded through practically every street in   New York City  Chinatown.

Senator Chuck Schumer marched in the Chinese New Year Day Parade in New York City.