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		OHNY '04

		OHNY '05



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Your webmaster didn't attend Open House New York this year. Things came up, as they sometimes will. So, I charged my acolytes (OK, I asked them nicely) to attend in my place, bring their cameras and fire when ready. I thank Amy Langfield of NewYorkology

and Steve Garza of the "Smugmug Community" for their efforts this year and as you'll see, their work was stellar. Amy contributed notes to her photos (this page) while I supply them for Steve's, on the next page after the link at bottom.

The fourth annual Open House New York, held on October 7 & 8 2006, turned out to be the biggest thus far – with 180 sites open during the two days, drawing an estimated crowd in excess of 80,000.

The weather was better this year than last, and organizers benefited from a massive promotion campaign from the New York Times. The paper also helped with some of the podcasts, which are currently still available on the OHNY website.

Unfortunately, the website itself is quite a sprawling mess. Practically impossible to navigate especially as sites and programs dropped off at the last minute, locations were changed or hours were fixed. Hopefully next year’s is set up so that it’s easier to figure out in advance what’s open when.

Mary Whalen



	I started out Saturday (Oct. 7, 2006) at the Mary A. Whalen, docked at the Red Hook Container Port for the OHNY weekend. Built in 1938 and originally christened the S.T. Kiddoo, the ship delivered fuel along the Atlantic Coast until 1993. In 1995 she was brought to the Erie Basin in Red Hook and used as a dock and office. Rusting and headed for the scrap yard, Portside NY stepped in with the plan to turn it into a floating museum. --Amy


	During the OHNY tour, Carolina Salguero (of Portside New York) said they’ve impatiently been waiting for the ship’s turn to get her repairs. The wait had been due to both a lack of shipyards and bad weather. The work will likely be done at the Staten Island ship yards, she said during the tour. Eventually the ship would have a home further out in Red Hook, just before the last turn on Columbia Street between the old grain silo and the NYPD impound yard. Nearby is where the Waterfront Museum was docked before it found a permanent home over by the Fairway Market at the end of Conover Street. (The Waterfront Museum, housed in the Lehigh Valley Railroad Barge #79, built in 1914, is the only floating wooden covered barge of its kind.) --Amy Portside New York on the Mary Whalen NewYorkology boards the Mary Whalen

Inside Federal Hall


	Federal Hall (Wall and Nassau Streets), shuttered for a long stretch of post-9/11 renovations from the foundations up, made its grand reopening on OHNY weekend. Besides the fact that the building houses the Bible that Washington used when he took the oath of office at that location on Wall Street, the historical displays are rather weak at this point. Federal Hall is again open to the public on weekdays only. It’s free, but there’s airport-style security to pass through. The gift shop and book store wasn’t yet ready to reopen. --Amy


	Alas, the Federal Hall that now stands across from the New York Stock Exchange isn’t the original building. The current structure was built in 1842 as a Greek Revival-style Customs House. As of 1862, it was serving as a federal sub-treasury. Its vaults, still in place with their massive doors open, held the nation’s gold and silver until the Federal Reserve Bank opened in 1920, according to the National Park Service. --Amy (Left: former gold and silver vault door; right: gold-leafed door detail)

Russian Orthodox Cathedral


	We also stopped by the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection, located at 59 E. 2nd Street.
We didn’t have much time here as we actually arrived after they were supposed to be done with OHNY events for the day. But according to the cathedral’s website, the structure was designed by architect Josiah Cady and built in 1867 to serve as the Olivet Memorial church. It was purchased to become the Orthodox Cathedral after the Soviet government successfully sued to gain control of the St. Nicholas Cathedral on E.96th Street, which had been built with Tsarist funds. The cathedral is also the home of the Prosopon School of Iconography, whose students are creating icons for the cathedral’s altar. --Amy

New York City Marble Cemetery


At the The New York City Marble Cemetery (on East 2nd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues and not to be confused with the New York Marble Cemetery, which can be entered from 2nd Avenue north of East 2nd) we got to wander around among the stones indicating the underground vaults.


Plenty of dogs roamed, making the space feel much more like a park than a cemetery.

The New York City Marble Cemetery is now 175 years old (as of 2006) and is open to the public twice a year – in the fall for OHNY and in the spring at the end of April or early May. The NYC Marble Cemetery was the second non-sectarian burial ground in NYC opened to the public. President James Monroe was buried there after he died July 4, 1831 but was later moved to Richmond, Virginia. --Amy (Monroe's Vice President, Daniel D. Tompkins, is buried at St, Mark's in the bowery, a few blocks north at 2nd Avenue and East 10th Street. Tompkins lived in a small town he founded in Staten Island, Tompkinsville.)

	Of the stones and monuments in the cemetery, I was most taken by the remains of a marker above the marker for Noah Brown. Broken, it just said “War Of.”

The Octagon

What is today known as "The Octagon" is in fact the remnant of Blackwells' Island's first lunatic asylum, designed by Alexander Jackson Davis and first constructed in 1839 and opened in 1841. It is just south of the park at the island's northern tip. The Octagon has been restored with a new dome, designed to look like the one it acquired after a renovation in 1879, as part of a new high-end, high rise development named for it.


Only the octagonal-shaped structure under the dome is original to the 19th-Century asylum. The centerpiece is the interior spiral staircase, seen from the top floor...


...and the bottom. photos: Martin Langfield


When your webmaster first saw the Octagon in August 1999 its tower, made of gneiss, had been abandoned since 1954 and had suffered the destruction of two fires. I would never had predicted it would become the centerpiece of what is arguably Roosevelt Island's finest residential development. Gotta play MegaMillions twice weekly!