Walking Off the Big Apple

Great buildings are not just well-designed and functional. They make us feel something. They become indelible presences in our personal memories and in our shared history, the sites of important maters big and small. 25 Great Buildings in New York City The following list of 25 great NYC buildings should not veer too much from expectations. Most of them would rank high on a list of popular tourist attractions in the city. Three of the buildings are part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art - the main building on 5th Avenue, the Met Breuer (former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, now in a new building also on the list), and The Cloisters. Some buildings made this list, by and large, for the activity that goes on inside. Great buildings stand as symbols of the times in which they were built and convey lessons to the present. We have lost great buildings, too, and we miss them. When a favorite building or place is altered in any way, renovated or remodeled or left to dec

What is that tall flat silver metal object that has suddenly appeared near my subway stop? It wasn't there last week, was it? A WalkNYC kiosk on Broadway in Inwood, facing north It looks like that black monolith in the movie 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), the one that appears at the dawn of time prompting primates to learn how to use tools, that was "deliberately buried" in the lunar crater, and last and awesomely, at the foot of HAL-survivor Dave Bowman's bed while he's orbiting Jupiter.  Waiting for the BxM1 bus in Inwood, a few neighbors approached the new thing timidly and studied it for signs, as maybe it would impart similar evolutionary lessons. This monolith-shaped kiosk appears to have a walking map. And another one, slightly different, appears on the other side, too. Ah, that's for the other direction. Indeed, the monolith is less extraterrestrial sign than signage from the city. The kiosk is one of many erected by the NYC Department of T