It’s been a busy year for us here at Untapped. We’ve added new, behind-the-scenes tours, updated our site and explored hidden places across New York City. Now that 2018 is drawing near, we thought we’d take a look back at the most popular articles in the past year.
From our must-visit neighborhood guides to our features about abandoned places, here’s a peek at all that we’ve explored in 2017:
1. Behind-the-Scenes Hard Hat Tour of the Abandoned Ellis Island Hospital
This past spring, we launched our tour of the abandoned Ellis Island Hospital complex, which has gone on to become one of our most popular events. Now, thanks to our partnership with Save Ellis Island, we bring Untapped readers behind-the-scenes every week for this unique exploration, where visitors have the opportunity to visit the facility’s contagious disease wards, its autopsy rooms and other places usually closed to the public.
While Ellis Island has become one of New York City’s top tourist attractions, drawing over two million visitors per year, the 22-building South Side hospital complex is hidden in plain sight, just to the left of disembarking passengers headed towards the Great Hall. Once the standard for United States medical care (and later transformed to the FBI headquarters when the island served as a detention center), it has been left to decay for nearly 60 years. Looking at its desolate, skeletal frame now, it’s difficult to imagine its backstory as one of the largest public health undertakings in American history. If you haven’t already joined us for the tour, get a unique peek inside by booking your tickets below:
Behind-the-Scenes Hard Hat Tour of the Abandoned Ellis Island Hospital
Check out all of our Behind the Scenes Tours.
2. Yayoi Kusama’s Hallucinatory Infinity Mirrors Rooms Return to NYC
Earlier this year, the David Zwirner gallery presented two major concurrent exhibitions of recent works by Yayoi Kusama across three gallery spaces in New York: Festival of Life at 525 and 533 West 19th Street in Chelsea and Infinity Nets on 34 East 69th Street on the Upper East Side.
In addition to sixty-six paintings from Kusama’s My Eternal Soul series, the exhibition featureed new large-scale flower sculptures, a polka-dotted environment, new Infinity Nets paintings, and two Infinity Mirror Rooms in the Chelsea locations. See what all the hype was about.
3. 10 Things Not to Miss at the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy
New York’s City’s largest festival, The Feast of San Gennaro, took place from September 14th to September 24, 2017. This year marked the festival’s 91st anniversary since it began in 1926, when groups of Italian immigrants settled in what is now known as New York City’s “Little Italy.”
See some of the highlights of the event, which brought together more than one-million people from around the world to participate in parades, religious processions, musicals performances and more.
4. 2017 NYC Dîner en Blanc Pop Up White Party Returns to Lincoln Center
The 2017 edition of New York City Dîner en Blanc, the pop-up white dinner for thousands that originated in Paris, took Lincoln Center by storm. Although this was the second time the dinner has been on the plaza of Lincoln Center (the first took place in 2012), this year the location was host to 5000 guests, 2000 more than the first.
The additional guests, along with the dance floor, were in Damrosch Park, the 2.6 acre city park just next to the Metropolitan Opera House. With over 45,000 people on the wait list, the New York City Diner en Blanc is always one of the hot tickets of the summer and we were lucky enough to attend.
5. Brooklyn Photographer Creates Whimsical Images of NYC
Brooklyn-based photographer, Brian Goldfarb, brought a dash of whimsy to a city built upon grey concrete and industrial skyscrapers. We recently came across his surreal images (h/t Laughing Squid), which depict various places in New York City through an imaginative filter.
One particularly unique location is inside the Freedom Tunnel, the Amtrak tunnel beneath Riverside Park, a popular urban exploration spot. See more of his photos here.
6. 8 Secrets of NYC’s St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church & Shrine at the World Trade Center
Rendering of the new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Shrine at the World Trade Center, designed by Santiago Calatrava
Sixteen years have passed since the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, which caused the loss of almost 3,000 lives. The City of New York has since taken initiative — aiming to restore and rebuild what had been destroyed by rebuilding some of the city’s greatest monuments and redeveloping the area. One of the buildings destroyed that day was the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.
A shrine being built in its honor at a nearby location is expected to be complete by the spring of 2018. Here’s a look back at the history and secrets of St. Nicholas Church and the latest photographs of the construction of the new shrine.
7. The Top 12 Secrets of the Rockaways in Queens, NYC
Fort Tilden on the Rockaways.
The Rockaways in Queens is an idyllic oceanside escape from the grind of the city, a diverse collection of towns and complexes, and a haunted, distant otherworld with countless mysteries waiting to be explored.
Located at the juncture between Brooklyn‘s Marine Park and Queens’ Inwood, the peninsula was originally inhabited by Lenape Indians, and was sold to the Dutch in 1639. In the early 20th century, a railroad opened the Rockaways to the rest of New York City, and around then Manhattanites flocked to the Rockaway Peninsula in great numbers. They were seeking a beachfront escape, and they found it at the Rockaways’ many seaside hotels. In the mid-20th century, partly thanks to the efforts of Robert Moses which led to improved transportation, it became a more residential area.
Today, Rockaway remains a beachfront destination and a thriving residential area, and now you can even take the New York City Ferry there! Certain parts have also attracted the adventurous, becoming destinations for exploration. It has also borne the brunt of many natural disasters, especially Hurricane Sandy. This turmoil and change has left the Rockaways with more than a few secrets hidden along its shores, forests, and towns.
8. NYC Film Locations for Iron Fist on Netflix
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
The new Marvel series, Iron Fist, debuted on Netflix in March. The story focuses around billionaire heir, Danny Rand, who was presumed dead for 15 years, and his attempt to regain control of his father’s company and defeat sinister forces that have infiltrated the city and Rand Corporations.
Some of the places in the series might seem familiar. We’ve chronicled the New York City film locations in our guide here.
9. Top 10 Secrets of Astoria Park in Queens, NYC
Image courtesy NYC Parks and Recreation
As one of the largest green spaces in Queens, Astoria Park is a scenic getaway located in New York City’s most diverse borough. Sitting along the East River, the 59.96-acre recreational space offers access to outdoor tennis courts, playgrounds and multiple trails, in addition to “shoreline signs and sounds” that make it a popular a destination year-round.
Beyond its attractions, however, it also harbors some interesting secrets, from its ties to the Olympics to its lost stream. Read more here.
10. The Top 10 Secrets of Marine Park, Brooklyn
Located in South Brooklyn along Jamaica Bay, Marine Park is a neighborhood full of history and secrets dating back to the Native American era though the Dutch, Colonial, Civil War and the present. The quiet residential area has a suburban feel in some areas, punctuated by commercial stretches, with access to a wild, natural waterfront.
From a shop frozen in time to an Underground Railroad connection, check out its many secrets here.
11. 8 Disappearing Districts And Neighborhoods of NYC
Marc Gordon, AIA, LEED®AP BD+C Partner, is a practicing architect in New York, where he’s a partner at the firm Spacesmith. A lifelong student of New York history, he’s an enthusiastic believer that the city’s past holds lessons for us all today. On weekends and in other snippets of free time, Marc traverses the boroughs exploring hidden history and seeking stories that he hopes will illuminate New York’s architectural heritage, inspire an appreciation for the richness of urban life, and give voice to the metropolis he calls home. He’s shared this piece with Untapped Cities readers:
There has been plenty of talk recently about the gentrification of New York. This is a dynamic city and it is often said that the only constant in New York is change. In the last 20 years, New York has transformed at an astonishing rate, and parts of the city are hardly recognizable from the gritty urban decline of the 1970’s and 80’s and subsequent turnaround in the 90’s. However, along with the positive aspects of economic growth come the negative side effects of rampant over development and loss of character that makes our city unique.
One aspect of recent developments includes the disintegration of many distinct commercial districts specializing in a particular service or type of business. Here are few that you may still be able to find and few that are gone forever.
12. 10 Abandoned Resorts from The Borscht Belt, America’s Jewish Vacationland in Catskills, New York
The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland by Marisa Scheinfeld.
The Borscht Belt Resort, located in the Catskills in New York, was once a major vacation destination from the 1920s to the 1960s. Looking for respite from city life, New Yorkers would head to Borscht Belt to sunbathe, swim, dance, and dine during the summer months, and the resort soon became known as a Jewish vacationland. By the 1980s, however, the once-bustling resort, home to numerous hotels, bungalows, tennis courts, and swimming pools, became desolate as New Yorkers began to favor different destinations. People lost interest in Borscht Belt for a number of reasons, namely because of the airline industry boom, as the possibility of exotic getaways lessened their desire to return to the Catskills for vacation.
Photographer Marisa Scheinfeld’s book The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland takes advantage of the availability of the abandoned resorts and looks at the remains of the Borscht Belt. Noted also in this book is the resort’s importance in American Jewish history, as for many Jewish New Yorkers Borscht Belt served as a haven when they were banned from many of the city’s hotels in the 1920s. Here’s a look at 10 abandoned resorts from the area.
13. 10 of Cleveland’s Most Notable and Quirky Architectural Sites
Just an hour flight time from New York City, Cleveland is in the midst of an art-fueled urban renaissance, building upon its long architectural and cultural heritage, while embracing the small scale industries, creative culinary scene, and high tech companies that are driving the new economy. Cleveland is after all a city built by the likes of the Rockefellers — but also with a long manufacturing and industrial history. For those seeking to revel in what Brooklyn is losing, Cleveland is transforming long fallow zones into dynamic places to live and work from the community up.
From the stunning to quirky, here are ten sites not to miss on a visit to Cleveland.
14. NYC and Brooklyn Film Locations for Homeland Season 6
Carrie Mathison in her new office in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in Season 6 of Homeland. Photo Jo Jo Whilden/SHOWTIME
Season six of Homeland, which debuted early this year, takes a significant departure from previous seasons — it’s set in New York City, and largely in Brooklyn. Not only timely (the storyline involves a President-elect who is holed up in a luxury hotel), the location was also built around star and executive producer Claire — who wanted some time in her home town with her 4-year-old son and husband, actor Hugh Dancy. But the show weaves in actual terrorist events in New York City from the past, as you’ll see below, as a setting for the story.
Here are the notable locations we’ve caught in the season.
15. 20 Must Visit Places in Washington Heights, NYC: An Untapped Cities Guide
This year, we also launched our must-visit neighborhood guides, written by contributors who are residents of the places we cover. Our guide to Washington Heights was written by Untapped Cities guide, Alan Cohen.
“Upstate” Manhattan has a decided residential feel, and it also contains many gems for any lover of things New York. If you’d like to visit the oldest house in Manhattan, see the best views in any park in the City, enjoy great food and drinks, all for one subway fare, then you must visit the Heights.
Next, check out 10 Alternative NYC New Year’s Eve Events to Ring in 2018 and