Crime Edition: The Scene at 153 Franklin Street, and The Final Scene of the Major Case Squad

The Scene: 153 Franklin Street, Tribeca

(Update: Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest on July 1, 2011 as new doubts surfaced about the credibility of his accuser. New York Times story.)

This block of Franklin Street in the Tribeca neighborhood is never this busy. But with the arrival of the former IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to reside at 153 Franklin under house arrest as he awaits trial on the charges of assaulting a maid at a midtown hotel, life on the cobble-stoned block has been bustling. Many of the photographers and reporters on the press stakeout in front of this remodeled three-story residence work for press affiliates in France, and they are eager to stay on top of the news of the affair that has shaken their national politics.

153 Franklin Street, Tribeca.

Sleepwalking with Lady Macbeth: The SLEEP NO MORE Experience

Somewhere deep into Sleep No More, a site-specific immersive theatrical production at The McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea, I came upon the sight of a well-dressed crooner lip-syncing Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" on the stage of a dimly lit and tattered cabaret. The atmosphere was so musty, so hot, and so itchy under the plastic plague doctor masks we were all wearing, I thought I might be forced to take off my clothes or simply pass out. At the end of the song, one made especially haunting in context of this personal mystery theater mashup of Macbeth and film noir, I made an escape through the dark space to the staircase in search of cooler air. My body vaguely remembered the location of the cold and damp room I had encountered earlier, somewhere back before the bar fight in the warehouse or that scene with the girl in the phone booth.

By then, I had abandoned any attempt to keep up with a conventional storyline from Macbeth, even after the sublime slow-motion choreography of the erotic banquet scene, in favor of improvisational explorations through this fantastical dreamscape of hotel rooms - part Hitchcock, part Kubrick, and part graphic adventure game. The mood-setting music, reminiscent of the great Bernard Hermann scores, filled every meticulously detailed space, shaping the suspense. As I made my way through a hallway of taxidermy specimens - this is the Macbeth world of nature gone awry, after all, I scared only myself as I caught a glimpse of the masked Venetian in the mirror. I eventually found the cool space I was looking for, the refreshingly clammy graveyard.

This is no ordinary experience, as you may have gathered, with no way easy to express in a conventional third person review. The immersive experience by the UK's Punchdrunk company members, with their exquisitely precise choreography and their site-specific fictional space of the hotel on W. 27th St, tricked out in such detail that I longed for a second visit, necessitates checking conventions at the door. The bearer of the ticket will be handed a card from a deck of cards, and when the number is called, perhaps after downing a quick drink at the bar, be handed a mask to wear for the duration. The Venetians of the 18th century wore masks on the streets for months, a way to protect personal identities and slip through fixed social boundaries. After a passage into darkness before the spaces unfold, the journey of some two hours duration is all your own. Sleep No More has become enough of a sensation that tickets have been hard to acquire, and the production has been held over multiple times.

Saturday Market Explorations: At the Waterfront in Williamsburg

Shopping for locally-grown produce or locally-made food in two boroughs is now easy on Saturdays and convenient, too, thanks to the L train. Brooklyn Flea, the borough's popular market institution, debuted its new "Smorgasburg" on the East River waterfront in Williamsburg this past Saturday, providing an immediately gratifying experience for dispensing with food prep altogether and dining on the spot. Start at Union Square in Manhattan to browse for greens, baked goods, and flowers at the bustling Greenmarket, and then take the L train at the square to the Bedford Avenue stop in Wiliamsburg for the Saturday food market and waterfront skyline. After exiting the subway, walk along North 7th St. toward the river.

intersection of North 7th St. and Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Every Saturday the Smorgasburg market will feature several greenmarket vendors in addition to prepared foods by local vendors and kitchen-related items. The views of Manhattan in the park provide one reason to go, but most people will hit the market to sample the ready-to-eat goods from favorites like Cemitas (Pueblan sandwiches), Brooklyn Oyster Party, BEP (banh mi and noodles), Porchetta (roast pork sandwiches), Asia Dog (hot dogs with Asian toppings), Landhaus (BLT's), and People's Pops (ice pops with favor twists), among others. From conversations, I gathered that many people from other parts of the city had traveled to the inaugural market. The weather was warm, and it was indeed crowded, so much so that a few Williamsburg neighbors were having difficulty finding anyone they knew there.

People's Pops at Brooklyn Flea's Smorgasburg;
in the background, new waterfront condominiums.

Pictures of Walks in the Rain: Grove Street, W. 12th, and in Chelsea

Grove Street: The rain has been with us on and off throughout the past week, but it's not kept everyone home, especially those of us who don't mind a walk down a good atmospheric street. Grove Street is one of those charming and relatively short Greenwich Village streets that seems to have attracted an almost unfair share of history and attention. St. Luke's Place is another.

Visitors to Greenwich Village often find their way to Grove Street, following in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac, Patricia Highsmith, James Baldwin, or Hart Crane, among the writers who briefly lived there. Many of the buildings date from the mid-19th century and earlier, including the storybook Grove Court, a group of Greek Revival houses originally built for the working classes. On June 8, 1809, American Revolution hero Thomas Paine died in the farmhouse where Marie's Crisis bar is now located. Jazz greats, including Charlie Parker, played at Arthur's Tavern next door.

I never mind taking blurry pictures when it's raining. Nor do I mind photo apps with unresolved multiple exposures, especially on streets with literary ghosts. Isn't it nice how overcast skies make the colors come alive?

Toward a Pedestrian New York: The Future of a City on Two Feet

The physical health benefits of walking have been firmly established. We know that walking is a safe form of exercise that increases overall fitness levels and doesn't require special clothes or elaborate equipment. Combined with controlled eating habits, a walking routine can help with weight loss, elevate good cholesterol and lower the bad kind. The idea of interval walking - alternating high speed bursts with slower strolls - has been touted by many fitness experts as a way to rev up metabolism and burn calories. Walking fast for several blocks does help the body warm up, and walking slow for a few blocks affords the occasion to look around and appreciate the scenes of the city. The good news is that almost all walking in New York is interval walking - running to beat the stop sign at the crosswalks, racing ahead to catch a train, and slowing down to look at store windows.

What's even more fascinating are the studies that show a link between walking and improved mental health. A study in California of women 65 and older found that mental decline was lower in those who walked 2.5 miles a day than in those who walked much less. A study in Virginia showed walking lowered the incidence of dementia. A British study of depressed patients found that walking 30 minutes a day worked faster than antidepressants.* A health provider in Minnesota now gives pedometers to patients screened for depression and anxiety disorders.

In terms of urban planning, it seems logical that a pedestrian-friendly city would elevate the mood of the city. The former mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, made waves in his city by equating the construction of friendly streets and public spaces with civic happiness.** So it is fair to ask - with the construction of more pedestrian plazas and pathways, a core strategy of the new urbanism, will perambulating New Yorkers be carried away with happiness?

Peter Minuit Plaza: Old New Amsterdam Gets a New Public Space

Peter Minuit (1580-1638), the director-general of New Netherland who in the summer of 1626 famously purchased the verdant island of Manhattan from Native Americans, now has an intermodal transportation hub in his name next to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Good for Minuit, pronounced like the French word for midnight. It's a spiffy place, this 1.3 acre Peter Minuit Plaza, with its New Amsterdam Plein and Pavilion, a gift from the Kingdom of the Netherlands on the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival in New York. At the ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday, May 12, a day of resplendent clear skies, officials extolled the new plaza as a particularly fine example of intergovernmental and interagency collaboration, in this case among the Battery Conservancy, NYC Department of Transportation, NY Parks, and the MTA.

Peter Minuit Plaza. The Battery.

The "plein," or outdoor public plaza, is surfaced with a handsome granite and quartz stone surface and surrounded by beds of seasonal flowers - tulips for now, appropriate for the old settlement. Those arriving by boat, train, bus, foot, or bike will find the space congenial for resting or chatting, perhaps swapping favorite stories or complaining about their journeys. In addition to the Staten Island Ferry, the R subway stops here, and the plaza is linked to the Battery Bikeway and pedestrian walkways. The curving steel canopy for the bus loop adds to the sense of dynamic movement at the plaza. The park's curvy zipper benches by WXY are particularly attractive and comfortable.

benches and seating area, Peter Minuit Plaza

The white pavilion, designed by Ben van Berkel of UNStudio Amsterdam, looks like a cross between a pinwheel and flower blossom, somewhat impermanent, as if it could spin too fast and blow away. For something probably less than the 24 dollars that Minuit paid for the island, commuters may purchase food and drinks at the pavilion's Merchants Market and then take their places at the chairs and tables in the adjoining seating area. The food service will be available every day, early morning till well into the night. The pavilion will also house the Alliance for Downtown's visitor information booth. At midnight each night, in honor of Minuit, the Pavilion will bask in a colorful light show.

A Fine Season for Public Art: Temporary Works in New York City

(top) Urs Fischer, UNTITLED BEAR/LAMP;
Rob Pruitt, THE ANDY MONUMENT;
(bottom) Steinunn Thorarinsdottir, BORDERS;
Will Ryman, THE ROSES

A giant yellow teddy bear with a desk lamp sits on the hallowed plaza of the Seagram Building, parked there temporarily by Christie's auction house. An equally large marble-dusted head of a child dominates the oval lawn of Madison Square Park. Having lasted through a long winter, the Roses on Park Avenue are coming near their end, just as the flowers around them are in full bloom.

At the northeast corner of Union Square, a chrome statue of Andy Warhol, mercifully not four stories tall, stands on a pedestal. Over at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza near the UN, more than a dozen figures, half in aluminum and half in cast iron, engage in a stand off. Meanwhile, as artist Ai Weiwei is detained in China, his first major sculpture project is unveiled in Grand Army Plaza. A fine season for temporary public art is underway in New York, with a few more works yet to be installed. Here's a list and a map to help locate them.

Several works make for a good self-guided art stroll. For example, the Festival of Ideas for the New City (May 4-8, 2011) rolled out - or should we say rolled down? - artwork by seventeen established artists on roll-down security shutters along the Bowery. “After Hours: Murals on the Bowery” from the Art Production Fund includes work by Judith Bernstein, Matthew Brannon, Ingrid Calame, Chris Dorland, Elmgreen & Dragset, Ellen Gallagher, Amy Granat, Mary Heilmann, Jacqueline Humphries, Deborah Kass, pulp, ink, Glenn Ligon, Adam McEwen, Barry McGee, Sterling Ruby, Gary Simmons, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Lawrence Weiner. These works, on display on the roller shutters when the respective businesses are closed, are located on the Bowery between Houston and Grand Streets. Most works will stay for two months; other may stay much longer.


View A Fine Season for Public Art: Temporary Works in New York City in a larger map

Many of these artworks listed below are sponsored by New York City Department of Parks & Recreation's Art in the Parks program in collaboration with other institutions. See the Parks website page for more information, including descriptions of these projects. Several of the artworks are more fully described on this website, with links to posts noted below. In addition, look for new permanent works by artists commissioned by the MTA Arts for Transit program and works on sidewalks and streetscapes by artists working with NYC DOT's Urban Art Program.

Sponsors of other works, such as the Public Art Fund and the Art Production Fund, are noted below with their respective projects.

This map and list includes only temporary, as opposed to permanent, artwork placed in public places in New York. Several good resources, including maps and apps, list and describe the significant permanent artworks in the city. A particularly extensive map and list, and available apps, may be found at CultureNOW: Museum Without Walls (website). For a self-guided walk to permanent artwork in Lower Manhattan, check out Walking Off the Big Apple's post here. Search the tag "public art" for additional posts on this website.

This map and list will be continuously updated as new projects are added to the list and older ones close.

Crowdsourcing the New City

Just two days into the new Festival of Ideas for the New City this past weekend (May 4-8, 2011), an ambitious multi-venue collaborative festival coordinated by the New Museum on the Bowery and designed to stimulate innovative urban ideas, the Guggenheim Museum invited cultural reporters uptown to hear about the BMW Guggenheim Lab, the institution's own contribution to crowdsourcing the new city. As the downtown New Museum festival got underway, with panel discussions and keynotes by architect Rem Koolhaas and virtual reality thinker Jaron Lanier, the BMW Guggenheim Lab introduced their idea for a new mobile laboratory, one conceptualized to investigate the urban experience by soliciting innovative ideas from the public.

Festival of Ideas for the New City, Street Fair, May 7, 2011. The Bowery.
The old city and the new city

For the first two-year cycle of the Guggenheim Lab, a mobile truck will set up shop from August 3 to October 16, 2011 at 33 East 1st Street between First and Second Avenues. The future location just happens to be across the street from where the Festival of New Ideas set up its Street Fair on Saturday, a place which we can now infer must be the optimal latitude and longitude for soliciting ideas about the urban experience (near Whole Foods on the Bowery, don't you know). The location of the New Museum's Festival and the choice of placement for the future Guggenheim Lab seemed not just coincidental but rather perplexing. It gets even more confusing, especially as the Festival and LAB were not working in tandem, at least consciously. For example, at the preview announcement at the Guggenheim Lab, I met a former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, Enrique Peñalosa, known for his innovative leadership, but he was not to be confused - to my embarrassment - with his successor, Antanas Mockus, who delivered the keynote at the Festival of Ideas on Friday night. Tell me how that is not weird.

Preservation and Its Discontents: The Word According to Rem Koolhaas

The celebrated architect, architectural theorist, and Harvard University professor Rem Koolhaas gave the keynote speech for the Festival of Ideas for the New City on Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning, he introduced the exhibit "Cronocaos" in a preview at the New Museum. The exhibit, by his architectural partnership OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) and his Rotterdam design studio AMO and first presented at the 2010 Venice Biennale, offers visual arguments, mostly ones of paradox and ambiguity, about the new regime of preservation. Building restrictions and regulations designed to preserve buildings or whole neighborhoods, a phenomenon that is worldwide, not only pose difficult choices for innovative designers but also may serve to corrupt memory itself by creating artificial historical environments. "If you preserve something," Koolhaas explained, "it becomes conserved and then something artificial."

"Cronocaos," an exhibit at 231 Bowery, the New Museum's new ground-floor space.

Presented in the New Museum's ground floor space at 231 Bowery, Cronocaos examines the growing trend that seeks to conserve the past but frequently ends up limiting choices for innovative design and creativity. The exhibit space is intentionally bifurcated, with the right side "preserved," with remnants of the old restaurant supply store it occupies, and the left side partially renovated. Such is the chaos that preservation places on the soul of a modernist. The documents and arguments on display, guided in order by directional arrows marked on the floor, take in a variety of concerns. The sheer fact of the growing worldwide preservationist impulse has diminished the role of the architect, illustrated here with one panel showing TIME magazines with pictures of architects on the cover. The last one was Philip Johnson in 1979. As Koolhaas discussed at the preview, this diminished public role of the architect in the age of preservation may help counteract those who often frequently call him and others of his stature a "starchitect."

architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas speaking at a preview of "Cronocaos," May 5, 2011

In Madison Square Park, Jaume Plensa's ECHO

A particularly strong season of public art in New York continues this week. CIRCLE OF ANIMALS/ZODIAC HEADS by detained Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei was unveiled yesterday at the Pulitzer Fountain near The Plaza, W. 59th St. and Fifth Avenue. Also this week, Mad. Sq. Art brings to Madison Square Park (between Fifth Ave. & Madison Ave. and from E. 23rd St. to E. 26th St.) the totemic spectacle of Spanish artist Jaume Plensa's ECHO, an impressive sleek marble-dusted girl's head situated at the center of the oval lawn of Madison Square Park. On this particularly brilliant spring day, many visitors to the park, especially young ones, played around the head like it was a Maypole. Others seemed to enjoy snapping photos of their friends with the 44-foot high sculpture.

Jaume Plensa, ECHO, Madison Square Park

ECHO marks the first public work in New York by the Barcelona-based artist. According to the Madison Square Park Conservancy, Plensa's sculpture is the largest monolithic work thus far presented by Mad. Sq. Art.

The sculpture depicts a particular young girl from the artist's neighborhood, but it's also universally inspired by the Greek mythology of Echo, the chatty girl who was spurned by Narcissus and then left with only the sound of her own voice. In the sculpture's depiction, her eyes are closed, and her mouth is shut, as if caught in a dream or moment of thought.

Jaume Plensa, ECHO, Madison Square Park. Facing the Flatiron Building (right).

As a site-specific monumental work, ECHO is surrounded by New York's own site-specific monolithic monuments - the Empire State Building to the north, the Flatiron to the south, and the Met Life Tower, the Appellate Division Courthouse, and the New York Life Building to the east. Sometimes, it takes a big head to compete with the likes of these mythic giants.

In Downtown Brooklyn, the Once and Future Fulton Street Mall

The recent modernization of the Fulton Street Mall is just one part of the changing landscape of downtown Brooklyn, but when considered as a part of a larger landscape, this busy thoroughfare is attracting more interest of businesses and developers. When Danny Meyer of Shake Shack sets his eyes upon a particular location, as he has here, the first Brooklyn location for the popular burger joint, then surely there's not a better measure in contemporary New York for impending neighborhood change.

Gateway to Fulton Street Mall at Adams St. The building to the left, the former home of Tony's Famous Pizzeria, will be the location for Brooklyn's first Shake Shack.

The Fulton Street Mall, stretching from Adams Street near Columbus Park and Brooklyn Borough Hall on the west to Flatbush Avenue on the east, has long been one of the top commercial destinations in New York, but several new residential developments have sprung up nearby, spurred in many cases by tax credits and other incentives. The mall functions not just in its own right as an unusual pedestrian and transit thoroughfare lined with stores, but considered geographically, the mall links Brooklyn Heights on the west with the BAM Cultural District area to the southeast. Watch what is happening in and around Fulton Street, and you'll see the changing face of old Brooklyn. Better yet, walk it.

A Walk from City Hall to the Seaport

This past Sunday, I walked to the New Amsterdam Market, the outdoor market of local food purveyors that occupies the space outside the old Fulton Fish Market, in order to pick up a few items for dinner and to look at whatever caught my fancy along the way. From City Hall through Broadway-Nassau to the East River, the narrow streets in this old section of the city seem to guard their old secrets. The new giant towers down here, including Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street and the rising 1 WTC, may push them into greater obscurity, literally and figuratively.

After starting my walk at the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway station, I paused for a minute to watch dancers outside City Hall Park. In the background, I took in the recent renovations of the ornate Beaux Arts building that was originally the Hall of Records (1899-1907), now known as Surrogate's Court (31 Chambers).

Continuing the walk through the Broadway-Nassau area, Nassau Street looked particularly antiquarian this past Sunday, especially with the street torn up. Except for the postwar glass office tower in the background, I could easily mistake my own photograph for a picture of the street from a hundred years ago.

Photo: One World Trade Center Rises, May 1, 2011

Image by Walking Off the Big Apple from 12:52 p.m. May 1, 2011. In the early afternoon on Sunday, I was walking to the South Street Seaport along Fulton Street when I turned around and saw the massive One World Trade Center, or 1 WTC as it's often known, under construction. I was surprised to see how wide and tall it looked from this perspective and how the unfinished building, having reached about 67 floors, dominated the street. At 1,776 feet, One World Trade Center will be the tallest building in the United States. It is scheduled to be completed in 2013.

Late on Sunday evening, President Obama announced that a small team of US forces had killed Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader who directed the 911 attacks, in his heavily fortified compound in Pakistan. Following the stunning announcement, over a thousand people gathered last night near the wide footprint of this building at Vesey St. and Church St. No one should ever underestimate the strength of the people of New York City.

Related: Lower Manhattan: The Changing Skyline and the Challenges of Community  (February 11, 2011)
A Walk from City Hall to the Seaport (May 3, 2011, with pictures of nearby sites from May 1).