what about the plastic animals?

Morningside Park Mystery Marker

Happy Spring!  Or should I say Happy Summer?

Today I've got a mystery.  There is a marker with a metal arrow embedded in it in Morningside Park at the bottom of the grand staircase at 116th St.  There's enough metal in the marker to throw off my phone's compass.  The bottom photo is more accurate - the arrow is pointing westward.  Why is the marker there and why is it pointing toward the west?

To confuse matters, there's a similar marker a few hundred feet to the south that has an arrow pointing in a different direction.  I would show you a picture of that marker but this is not a professional blog where I think deeply about these sorts of things before putting them online.

A quick Google search reminds me that I wrote about yet another nearby marker six years ago. 

Yellow Flower Update

The daffodils and whatever that tree is with the yellow flowers are blooming in Morningside Park.  Bunches of daffodils have been blooming here and there in the park for a couple of months now.  Yesterday was the first time I saw a whole grove of them in bloom.

One Year of Morningside Park

If you follow my Flickr account you may have noticed that I've been taking photos of the same spot, where the upper trail crosses the 120th street steps, in Morningside Park for some time.  I just passed the one year mark so it's time to look at the annual cycle.

At the beginning I didn't have a plan and I missed almost the entire month of April (and the green up of vegetation), but eventually I settled for taking a picture every 7-10 days.  Sometimes the photos were taken more frequently to catch things like the recent snow melt.  Almost all the pictures were taken around 7:45 a.m. when I was walking to the shuttle.

If you watch the slide show, or if you want to take your time pondering the individual photos, you'll see lots of white, brown and green, rain, fog, a few people walking, one person sleeping, the damage after Hurricane Irene and following the October snow.  Enjoy!

Grand Central Terminal

Too much going on this evening so, here, take a look at Grand Central Terminal.

Christmas Break

I don't have a good Christmassy photo to share this year so the colorful lights at One World Trade Center will have to do.  Time to take a few days off.  Happy Holidays everybody!

Morningside Park Stairs: 1889 and 2011

This past August Harlem Bespoke featured an 1889 photo of Morningside Park's 116th St. stairs.  The photo is a cyanotype in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York.  A week after the photo appeared on Harlem Bespoke I put up a leaf-obscured view of the stairs.  I took another picture this morning with far fewer leaves, but still lots of branches, present.

Construction on the park began in 1883.  The park was still several years from completion when the photo was taken in 1889.  The Carl Schurz monument was added at the top of the stairs in 1913 (Andrew Carnegie was there!).   The apartment houses under construction on Morningside Avenue are still there today.

Tuesday Afternoon At The Lake

Nice day for a walk in Central Park!

Lost Our Lease

I was in the West Village yesterday afternoon when I saw this writing going on in the sky.  It was  part of a work of art called "The Sky Is The Limit/NYC" by Kim Beck.  The air was so dry and the subsidence so great that I suspect the skywriting disappeared a lot quicker than the artist wanted it to.

I took a bunch of photos so I could make an animated gif.  That image is after the jump so readers don't have a seizure here.

Turtles in Morningside Park

One thing I've noticed this summer is that there are an awful lot of turtles in the Morningside Park pond.   The Columbia Spectator ran a story about them today.  If the sun is out there will be dozens warming themselves on the rocks and dozens more swimming around.  All four of the turtles above are red-eared sliders which, as the article notes, are not native to New York so they, or their ancestors, were pets released into the pond.  The rock in the bottom photo is the "prominent rock" mentioned in the story.  It is usually more prominent but we had a lot of rain on Friday (the photos were taken on Sunday).

Inside the Hamilton Grange

After a three-year restoration Hamilton Grange opened to the public today!

From the 1880s until June 2008 Alexander Hamilton's house, Hamilton Grange, sat here on Convent Ave.  In June 2008 the house hovered above Convent Ave for a couple of weeks until it was moved down hill and around the corner to St. Nicholas Park.

The basement of the building includes a gift shop and a display on the life and work of Alexander Hamilton.  Period drawing and dining rooms and a study are on the first floor, as are a couple of displays and a short video of how the house was moved.

Alexander and Eliza Hamilton paid a visit.  Given how long they've been dead that was quite a surprise.