Every week, Untapped New York brings you behind-the-scenes of New York City’s most famous sites and off-the-beaten-path locations to bring a new perspective of the city we know and love. From uncovering the secrets of Grand Central Terminal, to explore one of the oldest columbariums in the United States right here in Queens, discover all of the ways you can explore with us this week!
Photograph Courtesy of the Center for Architecture
See who will take home a Transportation + Infrastructure Design Excellence Award from the AIANY and ASLANY. These awards recognize exceptional design by AIA and ASLA members working in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The awards program is open to registered architects, landscape architects, and planners. Built and unbuilt projects will be reviewed for their innovative design approaches to transportation and infrastructure. AIANY + ASLANY will recognize projects that reflect a commitment to sustainability, community engagement, and civic architecture. You can attend this event for free if you are an Untapped New York Insider!
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Before exterior walls were co-opted by faux-graffiti marketing and street art tours flooded the borough, Brooklyn fostered distinctive waves of mural-making by activist artists working with everyday neighbors. Untapped New York Insiders are invited to go behind-the-scenes of Brooklyn’s mural movement, and explore how today’s artists are continuing to forge community cohesion and retain a sense of place amid gentrification as Robyne Walker Murphy, Executive Director of Groundswell, moderates a conversation with Janet Braun-Reinitz, muralist and author of On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City, Richard Green, Director of Crown Heights Youth Collective, and Joe Matunis, founder of El Puente’s Los Muralistas initiative. You can attend this event for free if you are an Untapped New York Insider!
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Explore City Hall Park as the birthplace of the NYC subway system, including elements of the famed, decommissioned City Hall Station you can see right in the park
Learn about the comically short route of the mythical “Subway before the Subway,” Alfred Ely Beach’s Pneumatic Transit System
See the architectural ghosts of the now nearly forgotten, and partially abandoned, Chambers Street station then nicknamed the “Grand Central of Downtown”
Use the 6 train as your own time machine as you ride through abandoned subway stations
Discover the remnants of Union Station as you learn about a hidden art installation thousands of riders walk by everyday
Discover the Brooklyn Bridge‘s secrets, including its old Cold War fall out shelter, the hidden champagne vaults, the bridge jumper survivor’s support group and so many others… *NOTE: we will not be going inside the shelter or vaults.*
See an abandoned park hidden in plain sight as you explore the perimeter of the Manhattan anchorages of the bridge
Uncover the hidden statue of the family of engineers who built the bridge
Locate the site of the nation’s first White House
Cross the bridge span, which offers one of the best vantage points in New York City
Go inside one of the oldest crematories in the United States with the President of the U.S. Columbarium Company at Fresh Pond Crematory, J.P. DiTroia. On this unique tour, Insiders will see how the family-run Middle Village location has evolved over the past 100+ years from a single crematory building in 1884, to a sprawling complex with 16,000 niches that house the remains of 40,000 people. The Neo-classical site has had many additions added to it over the decades and inside, each phase has a distinctive character. Guests will admired the marble, historic furniture and stained and painted-glass windows spread throughout the columbarium, as well as the fascinating niches filled with personal effects of those interred more than 100 years ago. Learn more and book your spot here!
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The story of Grand Central Terminal is that of New York City itself: the structure embodies the social, cultural, economic and technological evolution around it. It is one of great men, feuding architects, ingenuity, rejuvenation, secrets and surprises. On this tour, we will tell you these stories – about what once was, what could have been, and what can be; about the struggle to save and restore Grand Central as a preserved icon of the past, and of challenge to ensure that it serves New York’s future. We will show you what it was like in the booming age of the railroad, as a rundown embarrassment, and as a renovated jewel at the center of the city. Together, we will explore the interesting and unique spaces produced for and by it. Whether you pass through it every day on your morning commute or stroll through the Beaux Arts beauty for the first time, you are sure to leave having learned, seen, or experienced something new and extraordinary.
Take a ride through the living history of the world’s largest rapid transit system (in area) by weaving in and out of the past and present transit hubs of lower Manhattan. This unique tour is designed to give a comprehensive history of the NYC Subway system, from its groundbreaking in 1901 up through the creation of the three different proprietary lines which were unified into the system we know today. We’ll uncover information and learn about spaces even the most seasoned commuter might not know about.
This tour will stop in stations that are all open to the public. Using the 6 train as our own ten-car time machine, we will ride through and see three abandoned ghost stations that 4, 5, and 6 riders unknowingly pass through everyday: Worth Street and the famed City Hall Station. We will not stop inside these stations.
Nicole Saraniero is the Insider-in-Chief at Untapped New York, leading our Untapped New York Insiders membership program. Nicole graduated from Hofstra University with a Bachelor of Science in Televis
Photograph Courtesy of the Center for Architecture
