Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for new york
Guardhouse of the Great Lakes
By Linda Tancs
During its heyday, Old Fort Niagara controlled access to the Great Lakes. It was a strategic stronghold during the colonial wars. Over its more than 300 year history, the site has been controlled by France, Britain and the United States. The French established the first post here, Fort Conti, in 1679, followed later by an elaborate, permanent fortification known as the “French Castle.” Britain gained control of Fort Niagara in 1759 during the French & Indian War and held the post throughout the American Revolution. They were forced, by treaty, to yield it to the United States in 1796 and, after recapturing it in a later conflict, ceded it to the United States a second time in 1815 at the end of the War of 1812. An original flag from that war is displayed in the Visitor Center, where you’ll find introductory exhibits filled with original artifacts and an award-winning, 16-minute orientation film. From May to October the Discover Niagara shuttle operates from Niagara Falls to the fort, connecting to over 12 destination sites along the way. The fort is open year round.
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America’s Canal Heritage
By Linda Tancs
The Erie Canal is America’s most famous man-made waterway. Built between 1817 and 1825, the original Erie Canal traversed 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo. It was the longest artificial waterway and the greatest public works project in North America. It transformed not only engineering but also travel: in 1825 the journey from Albany to Buffalo took two weeks by stagecoach; the canal shortened the journey to five days. It carried more westbound immigrants than any other trans-Appalachian canal, infusing the nation with diversity. Due to its significance, Congress established the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor in 2000. The corridor stretches 524 miles across the full expanse of upstate New York, from Buffalo to Albany and north along the Champlain Canal to Whitehall. Along the way you’ll find museums, four national parks, 34 national historic landmarks, historic canal sites and vessels, a 100-mile mural trail and more than 200 canal communities to explore.
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Clear Comfort in Staten Island
By Linda Tancs
Alice Austen was one of the first women photographers in the U.S. to work outside the confines of a studio, a pioneer in the field of photojournalism. Her home in Staten Island, New York, was built in 1690 as a one-room Dutch farmhouse. Known as Clear Comfort, she lived there from the 1860s until 1945. Now a National Historic Landmark popularly known as Alice Austen House, it’s a house museum offering interpretation of her photographs, life and historic home. In celebration of International Women’s Day today, admission to the museum is free.
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A History of Immigration in Manhattan
By Linda Tancs
One of America’s foremost immigrant neighborhoods is Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in particular 97 Orchard Street. Built in 1863, this tenement apartment building was home to nearly 7,000 working-class immigrants. This ordinary building from which dreams were built forms the Tenement Museum. Accessible only via guided tours, visitors meander through restored apartments that recreate immigrant life in the 19th and 20th centuries. A testament to the lure of the American Dream, in 1992 the museum opened its first apartment, the 1878 home of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family. Since then, six more apartments have been restored, like the home of the Moores, Irish immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard in 1869. Tours start and end at 103 Orchard, site of the museum’s flagship visitors’ center.
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Racing in New York
By Linda Tancs
The history of automobile racing in New York State goes back to 1896 when six cars competed in the state’s first auto race, covering the distance round-trip between New York City and Irvington-on-Hudson. The sport’s vast history in the state (and elsewhere) is recalled at Saratoga Automobile Museum in the heart of historic Saratoga Springs, New York. The facility is equally as interesting as the exhibition of automobiles and automotive artifacts—it occupies the restored and renovated Saratoga Bottling Plant, a beautiful neo-classic structure built in 1934. The museum is prized for its public programs designed for both car enthusiasts and lifelong learners, including children’s programming featuring hands-on restoration projects.
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Longest Suspension Bridge in the Americas
By Linda Tancs
Connecting Brooklyn with Staten Island, New York’s Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the Americas. Now over 50 years old, the gateway bridges the Narrows, the mile-wide channel at the entrance to New York Harbor. Its span reaches four-fifths of a mile (making it the 11th longest in the world), punctuated by two towers 70 stories tall and four cables spun with enough steel wire to reach halfway to the moon. The bridge is named for 16th century Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European to discover New York and Narragansett bays. Eagle eyes will notice the discrepancy in spelling between the bridge and its namesake (the explorer’s surname being spelled with two Z’s). This typo persists since the bridge’s inception, allegedly resulting from an error in the building contract.
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Twenty-Five Years of Holiday Magic
By Linda Tancs
The Holiday Train Show® in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at New York Botanical Garden is celebrating 25 years of its stunning exhibition of G-scale locomotives (the largest model train available) winding through replicas of New York landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge, Statue of Liberty and Rockefeller Center. The recent exhibition expansion features more trains, an all-new Queensboro bridge and a finale featuring a whimsical tribute to iconic Coney Island. Each landmark is re-created with bark, leaves and other natural materials in exacting detail. The show runs through January 16, 2017. Advance ticket purchases are recommended.
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A Sacred Space in Manhattan
By Linda Tancs
From about the 1690s until 1794, enslaved Africans were buried in a cemetery in present-day Lower Manhattan, running from Chambers Street at Broadway to Foley Square. Long forgotten after years of landfill and development, the sacred space was rediscovered in 1991 upon the construction of a federal office building. The excavated remains were reinterred in seven burial mounds at the African Burial Ground National Monument. Located on a parcel of land surrounded by federal buildings just north of City Hall on 290 Broadway, the monument’s most poignant reminder of slavery’s ominous past is an imposing granite building called the Ancestral Chamber, tapered to mimic the cramped quarters of the slave ships that would bring Africans on their perilous transatlantic journey to America. A narrow opening in its roof reveals to visitors just a glimpse of sky.
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The Little Church Around the Corner
By Linda Tancs
Known officially as the Church of the Transfiguration, the picturesque Episcopal church at 1 East 29th Street in New York City is better known by locals and tourists as “The Little Church Around the Corner.” The nickname dates back to 1870, when Joseph Jefferson (famous for his portrayal of Rip Van Winkle on stage) had requested a funeral at another church for his fellow actor and friend, George Holland. The priest refused, subscribing to a common belief of the time that actors lived loose lives and were unworthy of Christian burial, and suggested that “the little church around the corner” might be more hospitable. And so it was. To this day the church maintains close ties to the theater community. Made of brick and timber, this architectural gem is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the city’s landmarked properties.
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Home on the Grange
By Linda Tancs
Founding father Alexander Hamilton named his New York home “The Grange” to acknowledge his Scottish ancestry. Born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Hamilton became a pivotal aide to George Washington as well as the first Secretary of the Treasury and was instrumental in creating the U.S. Constitution. Hamilton commissioned architect John McComb Jr. to design a Federal-style country home on a 32-acre estate in upper Manhattan. Completed in 1802, Hamilton was only able to enjoy Hamilton Grange for two years. On July 11, 1804, he was fatally wounded in a duel with his personal and political rival, Vice President Aaron Burr. Believed to be the only home Alexander Hamilton ever owned, its period rooms are best viewed with a ranger-guided tour.
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