I’d first heard about the site on my outing to St. Paul’s Church in the Bronx. Frank, the lecturer at St. Paul’s that day, told me about the memorial, and gave me contact information for one Martin Maher, Brooklyn’s Chief of Staff for New York’s
Today the site is still very much a functioning tavern, as I discovered upon arriving last Thursday and being hustled through one dining hall and a whiskey bar by a staff member to reach a central elevator that would take me up to the museum. That night it was hosting
During his freshman year at Kansas State in 1972, he joined the Air Force ROTC and took the Air Force Officers Qualifying Test, which he nearly aced. Then during a physical exam his left eye failed him, and he was told he will never fly a jet—at least not
My friends Bex and Todd had shown interest in going to the park, so we decided to meet up there in the afternoon. It was a lovely day fit for a walk in a park. A little too lovely, really. It was unseasonably warm, in fact, something that played into
Two Sundays ago I trekked out to the Bronx to visit the Edgar Allen Poe Cottage. (Although Poe was better known for bouncing between Richmond and Baltimore, he spent several years living in New York City.) As our subway car emerged into the Bronx daylight, I forced my travel companions,
When I was in the fifth grade my class took a trip to a historical farm museum in Tifton, Ga., called Agrirama, a fully functioning re-creation of a Reconstruction-era sugar cane farm. There were historical re-enactors who split the class on gender lines, boys going to work in the barn
I got in touch with a couple of friends, Meghan (who accompanied me to Historic Richmond Town) and Christine, a Roadside Attractions newbie. I told them about my plans to visit the house and experience the “Enchanted Evening” with me. I may have even made a joke or two about
My trips to view historic sites, then, have taken me deep into Staten Island, just north of the Bronx, and this past weekend to Flushing in northeasternmost Queens, where the Quakers’ original Meeting House stands today. I called to confirm the house would be open and tours would be available.
There’s a little Dutch colonial village at the center of Staten Island called Historic Richmond Town. It was established in the 1690s following a wave of Dutch settlements in neighboring villages, of which Staten Island was home to many. Though the British had taken control of the former New
While researching my historic destinations, one place that came up in every conversation was the Merchant House Museum in Manhattan’s East Village. The home was built in 1832 and bought shortly thereafter by one Seabury Tredwell. Tredwell had a large merchant-class family (hence the house’s current name), two
I decided to visit the site last weekend because of an event commemorating the Battle of Pell’s Point, fought about a mile from the church on Oct. 18, 1776. It was a gorgeous day, and one of the first that truly felt like autumn here in New York. I
The weekend of Sept. 17 the Hamilton Grange was being rededicated to coincide with Constitution Day. I won’t condescend to tell you who Alexander Hamilton was or why he’s such a big deal for the United States; we all know him principally as the founder of the New
