Prospect Park: The Restoration of Music Island
Prospect Park has changed since Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux designed it in 1866, but the Prospect Park Alliance along with the City of New York have partnered up to restore the original...
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Coney Island’s Parachute Jump from…Prospect Park?! Did you know you can see Coney Island from Prospect Park? You can, and much more besides, from a spot hidden in plain site 177 feet above sea level...
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Daily What?! There’s a Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park with 2000 Gravestones
The secluded 10-acre Quaker cemetery in Prospect Park. Source: New York Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. In Prospect Park, off of Center Drive, there are two thousand gravestones...
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History of NYC Streets: The Victorian Mansions of Church Avenue in Prospect...
The Church Avenue signpost marks Prospect Park South as a historic district. Image via Jim Henderson. Brooklyn’s Church Avenue not only has an interesting backstory regarding its titular church––it...
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History of Streets: The Birth of Eastern Parkway and the Evolution of Grand...
On the left is Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza and the right is Paris’ Champs-Élysées The question of green space is not a contemporary one. New York has been struggling with it for more than 150 years. By...
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Poetic Tribute to Fallen Tree in Prospect Park, A Stop on our Google Glass...
Photo by Instagrammer jeremyz As you may have read, we’re doing a crowdsourced scavenger hunt on Sunday using our Google Glass. You can participate by submitting location suggestions via comment below...
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Daily What?! A Playground for Children Made of Sandy Damaged Trees in...
Photo by gigi_nyc during the Untapped Cities-Google Glass Scavenger Hunt There may be the poetic dedication to a fallen tree near the entrance to Prospect Park, but earlier this month an entire...
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The Best of the Untapped Cities Photo Pool: Brooklyn Bridge, Prospect Park,...
These are our picks for this week’s Best of Untapped Cites Photo Pool. Remember to hashtag your pictures with #untappedcitie to have your photos featured! Keep an eye on what everyone is snapping by...
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7 of NYC’s Last Surviving Old-Fashioned Vintage Phone Booths
The New York Public Library’s semi-famous row of old phone booths in the basement With the imminent demise of New York City’s pay phones in 2014, it seems miraculous that the wooden phone booths of...
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Superlatives in NYC: Oldest Building, Smallest Park, Oldest Subway, Tallest...
New York City is chock full of superlatives. “Best” pizza and tallest building (in the United States) are just some of the first that come to mind. But there are tons of quirky and surprising ones like...
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NYC’s Shortest-Lived Buildings: Grand Central Station, Crystal Palace, Folk...
Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s Mansion at 742-748 Fifth Avenue (between 57th and 58th Streets) Recently, we rounded up New York City’s architectural superlatives, ranging from narrowest building to...
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4 Bike Routes for Intrepid NYC Cyclists and History Buffs
It’s summertime which means it’s time to make maximum use of your bike or your Citibike membership. Here, we’ve put together four bike routes for cyclists who are looking to discover some history along...
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The 10 Creepiest Places in NYC (Friday the 13th Edition)
In addition to it being Friday the 13th, it’ll be a full moon above the clouds (a combination that won’t happen again until 2098!). We’ve pulled together some of the creepiest in New York City in honor...
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Daily What?! There is an Actual Japanese House in Flatbush-Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
A Postcard of the Japanese house ca. 1915. The house has since been re-painted red-orange with teal beams. Image via Museum of the City of New York, via Old Images of New York Urban legend tells that...
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Food Foraging Tours with the “Wildman” Steve Brill in Prospect Park, Brooklyn
We’ve eaten in parks before but eating with “Wildman” Steve Brill is a slightly different experience. The self-titled “Wildman” leads foraging tours of New York area parks, part of his mission to...
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6 Sustainable Urban Agriculture Spots in NYC: VertiCulture, Brooklyn Grange,...
Brooklyn Grange at the Navy Yard. Image via Brooklyn Grange Farm The United Nations predicts that by 2015, 88.3% of the population of the United States will live in urban areas. And we’ll still need...
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8 Monumental Arches of NYC: Washington Square Park, Grand Army Plaza,...
New York City has historically looked to Europe for architectural inspiration, particularly in the Beaux-Arts and City Beautiful eras. The penchant for monumental arches has its roots in the great...
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Unframed-An Exhibit by Street Artist JR at Abandoned Ellis Island Hospitals...
Untapped Cities visits the south side hospital complex on Ellis Island, the site of Unframed, a large-scale photography installation by Parisian street artist JR.
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A Look Inside Manhattan’s Masonic Hall: Grand Lodge of New York [Photos]
We didn't want to commit to joining the Freemasons, so to learn about these mysterious men, we took a tour of the Masonic Hall and the Grand Lodge of New York.
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NYC Film Locations for Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick
The Lower East Side was transformed into 1900 NYC. Photo by Mary Cybulski/Cinemax When Steven Soderbergh retired from directing movies last year he announced that “movies don’t matter anymore.” Fans of...
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