1071 FIFTH AV, THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

Today, The Grandma has been visiting the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, one of the most incredible art museums.

Meanwhile, The Newtons have been preparing their Cambridge Exam. They have studied the Object Pronouns.

More info: Object Pronouns

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City.

It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. 

The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, Hilla von Rebay. It adopted its current name in 1952, three years after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim.

In 1959, the museum moved from rented space to its current building, a landmark work of 20th-century architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The cylindrical building, wider at the top than at the bottom, was conceived as a temple of the spirit.

Its unique ramp gallery extends up from ground level in a long, continuous spiral along the outer edges of the building to end just under the ceiling skylight. The building underwent extensive expansion and renovations in 1992 when an adjoining tower was built, and from 2005 to 2008.

The museum's collection has grown over eight decades and is founded upon several important private collections, beginning with that of Solomon R. Guggenheim. The collection is shared with sister museums in Bilbao, Basque Country and elsewhere.

In 2013, nearly 1.2 million people visited the museum, and it hosted the most popular exhibition in New York City.

More information: The Guggenheim Museum

Solomon R. Guggenheim, a member of a wealthy mining family, had been collecting works of the old masters since the 1890s. In 1926, he met artist Hilla von Rebay, who introduced him to European avant-garde art, in particular abstract art that she felt had a spiritual and utopian aspect (non-objective art).

Guggenheim completely changed his collecting strategy, turning to the work of Wassily Kandinsky, among others. He began to display his collection to the public at his apartment in the Plaza Hotel in New York City. As the collection grew, he established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in 1937, to foster the appreciation of modern art.

On August 14, 1990, the museum and its interior were separately designated as New York City Landmarks. The museum was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 19, 2005, and was registered as a National Historic Landmark on October 6, 2008.

In July 2019, the Guggenheim was among eight properties by Wright placed on the World Heritage List under the title The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

More information: Classic New York History

All day long I add up columns of figures
and make everything balanced.
I come home. I sit down.
I look at a Kandinsky and it's wonderful.

Solomon R. Guggenheim

TRIBECA, TRIANGLE BELOW CANAL STREET & FESTIVAL

Today, The Grandma has visited one of the most expensive neighbourhoods of New York City, Tribeca. She has wanted to know more about the Tribeca Film Festival and its activities.

Meanwhile, The Newtons have been preparing their Cambridge Exam. They have studied the Future Simple.

More info: Future Simple

Tribeca, originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of Triangle Below Canal Street.

The triangle (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Street, West Street, Broadway, and Chambers Street. By the 2010s, a common marketing tactic was to extend Tribeca's southern boundary to either Vesey or Murray streets to increase the appeal of property listings.

The neighborhood began as farmland, then was a residential neighbourhood in the early 19th century, before becoming a mercantile area centered on produce, dry goods, and textiles, and then transitioning to artists and then actors, models, entrepreneurs and other celebrities.

The neighbourhood is home to the Tribeca Film Festival, which was created in response to the September 11 attacks, to reinvigorate the neighbourhood and downtown after the destruction caused by the terrorist attacks.

Tribeca is part of Manhattan Community District 1, and its primary ZIP Codes are 10007 and 10013. It is patrolled by the 1st Precinct of the New York City Police Department.

Tribeca is one of a number of neighbourhoods in New York City whose names are syllabic abbreviations or acronyms, including SoHo (South of Houston Street), NoHo (North of Houston Street), Nolita (North of Little Italy), NoMad (North of Madison Square), DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), and BoCoCa, the last of which is actually a collection of neighborhoods (Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens).

The name was coined in the early 1970s and originally applied to the area bounded by Broadway and Canal, Lispenard, and Church Streets. which appears to be a triangle on city planning maps. 

Residents of this area formed the TriBeCa Artists' Co-op in filing legal documents connected to a 1973 zoning dispute. According to a local historian, the name was misconstrued by a newspaper reporter as applying to a much larger area, which is how it came to be the name of the current neighborhood.

More information: Tribeca Citizen

The area now known as Tribeca, or TriBeCa, was farmed by Dutch settlers to New Amsterdam, prominently Roeleff Jansen (who obtained the land patent, called Dominie's Brouwery, from Wouter van Twiller in 1636) and his wife Anneke Jans who later married Everardus Bogardus. The land stayed with the family until 1670 when the deed was signed over to Col. Francis Lovelace.

In 1674 the Dutch took possession of the area until the English reclaimed the land a year later. In 1674, representing the Duke of York, Governor Andros took possession of the land.

Tribeca was later part of the large tract of land given to Trinity Church by Queen Anne in 1705.

In 1807, the church built St. John's Chapel on Varick Street and then laid out St. John's Park, bounded by Laight Street, Varick Street, Ericsson Place, and Hudson Street. The church also built Hudson Square, a development of brick houses which surrounded the park, which would become the model for Gramercy Park. The area was among the first residential neighbourhoods developed in New York City beyond the city's colonial boundaries, and remained primarily residential until the 1840s.

Several streets in the area are named after Anthony Lispenard Bleecker and the Lispenard family. Beach Street was created in the late 18th century and was the first street on or adjacent to the farm of Anthony Lispenard Bleecker, which was just south of what is now Canal Street; the name of the street is a corruption of the name of Paul Bache, a son-in-law of Anthony Lispenard. Lispenard Street in Tribeca is named for the Lispenard family, and Bleecker Street in NoHo was named for Anthony Lispenard Bleecker.

By the early 21st century, Tribeca became one of Manhattan's most fashionable and desirable neighborhoods, well known for its celebrity residents. Its streets teem with art galleries, boutique shops, restaurants, and bars.

The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. Tribeca was founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in 2002 to spur the economic and cultural revitalization of lower Manhattan following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Until 2021, the festival was known as the Tribeca Film Festival.

Each year the festival hosts over 600 screenings with approximately 150,000 attendees, and awards independent artists in 23 juried competitive categories.

More information: Tribeca Film

Some people say,
"New York's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."
I say that about other places.

Robert De Niro

JOURNALISM, THE NEW YORK TIMES VS. NEW YORK POST

Today, The Grandma has visited The New York Times headquarters in New York City. 

It has been an interesting visit to talk about modern journalism, fake news and free spech.

Some Newtons are still is New York City. Fati, Fatima, Raquel and Yamina continue preparing their Cambridge Exam and today they have studied Demonstratives.

More information: Demonstratives

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership.

It was founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, and was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The Times has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national newspaper of record. It is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S.

The paper is owned by The New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded.

A. G. Sulzberger and his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. -the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, respectively- are the fifth and fourth generations of the family to head the paper.

Since the mid-1970s, The New York Times has expanded its layout and organization, adding special weekly sections on various topics supplementing the regular news, editorials, sports, and features.

Since 2008, the Times has been organized into the following sections: News, Editorials/Opinions-Columns/Op-Ed, New York (metropolitan), Business, Sports, Arts, Science, Styles, Home, Travel, and other features.

On Sundays, the Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review (formerly the Week in Review), The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

The New York Times was founded as the New-York Daily Times on September 18, 1851. Founded by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones, the Times was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. Early investors in the company included Edwin B. Morgan, Christopher Morgan, and Edward B. Wesley.

The New York Times switched to a digital production process sometime before 1980, but only began preserving the resulting digital text that year.

In 1983, the Times sold the electronic rights to its articles to LexisNexis. As the online distribution of news increased in the 1990s, the Times decided not to renew the deal and in 1994 the newspaper regained electronic rights to its articles.

On January 22, 1996, NYTimes.com began publishing.

The New York Times has had one slogan. Since 1896, the newspaper's slogan has been All the News That's Fit to Print.

More information: The New York Times

The New York Post (NY Post) is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City.  

The Post also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.

It was established in 1801 by Federalist and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, and became a respected broadsheet in the 19th century under the name New York Evening Post. Its most famous 19th-century editor was William Cullen Bryant.

In the mid-20th century, the paper was owned by Dorothy Schiff, a devoted liberal, who developed its tabloid format. In 1976, Rupert Murdoch bought the Post for US$30.5 million. Since 1993, the Post has been owned by Murdoch's News Corp. Its distribution ranked 4th in the US in 2019.

The Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton with about US$10,000, equivalent to $162,860 in 2021, from a group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the New-York Evening Post, a broadsheet. Hamilton's co-investors included other New York members of the Federalist Party, such as Robert Troup and Oliver Wolcott, who were dismayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson as U.S. president and the rise in popularity of the Democratic-Republican Party.

The meeting at which Hamilton first recruited investors for the new paper took place in Archibald Gracie's then-country weekend villa that is now Gracie Mansion. Hamilton chose William Coleman as his first editor.

The most famous 19th-century Evening Post editor was the poet and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant. So well respected was the Evening Post under Bryant's editorship, it received praise from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in 1864.

In 1996, the New York Post launched an Internet version of the paper.

More information: New York Post 

 'The New York Times' is inherent in what we are,
but not worn as 'what we are';
it's important and crucial to all of us,
but not something that was drilled in,
in any specific ways.

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.

GEORGE GERSHWIN, JAZZ & POPULAR SONGS COMPOSER

Today, The Grandma & The Newtons have been listening to some music. They have chosen George Gershwin the American pianist and composer who was born in New York City in 1898.

Before this, they have been studying Present Simple and Adverbs of Manner.

Some members of the family are going to return to Sant Boi de Llobregat while other are going to continue in New York City preparing their next Cambridge Exam.

More information: Present Simple

More information: Adverbs of Manner

George Gershwin (September 26, 1898-July 11, 1937) was an American pianist and composer, whose compositions spanned both popular and classical genres.

Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the songs Swanee (1919) and Fascinating Rhythm (1924), the jazz standards Embraceable You (1928) and I Got Rhythm (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the hit Summertime.

George was born on September 26, 1898, in the Snediker Avenue apartment in Brooklyn. His birth certificate identifies him as Jacob Gershwine, with the surname pronounced 'Gersh-vin' in the Russian and Yiddish immigrant community. Gershwin was of Russian-Jewish ancestry. 

He was named after his grandfather, and, contrary to the American practice, had no middle name. He soon became known as George, and changed the spelling of his surname to Gershwin around the time he became a professional musician; other family members followed suit.

After Ira and George, another boy, Arthur Gershwin (1900-1981), and a girl, Frances Gershwin (1906–1999), were born into the family.

Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva.

He moved to Paris, intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style; Maurice Ravel voiced similar objections when Gershwin inquired on studying with him.

He subsequently composed An American in Paris, returned to New York City and wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, it came to be considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century and an American cultural classic.

Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores. He died in 1937 of a brain tumor. His compositions have been adapted for use in film and television, with several becoming jazz standards recorded and covered in many variations.

Gershwin was influenced by French composers of the early twentieth century. In turn Maurice Ravel was impressed with Gershwin's abilities, commenting, Personally I find jazz most interesting: the rhythms, the way the melodies are handled, the melodies themselves. I have heard of George Gershwin's works and I find them intriguing.

The orchestrations in Gershwin's symphonic works often seem similar to those of Ravel; likewise, Ravel's two piano concertos evince an influence of Gershwin.

More information: Gershwin

True music must repeat the thought
and inspirations of the people and the time.

George Gershwin

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, DESTRUCTION & REBUILDING

Today, The Grandma has visited One World Trade Center, the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

One World Trade Center (also known as One World Trade, One WTC, and formerly Freedom Tower) is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

One WTC is the tallest building in the United States, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the seventh-tallest in the world. The supertall structure has the same name as the North Tower of the original World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The new skyscraper stands on the northwest corner of the 6.5 ha World Trade Center site, on the site of the original 6 World Trade Center. It is bounded by West Street to the west, Vesey Street to the north, Fulton Street to the south, and Washington Street to the east.

The building's architect is David Childs, whose firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) also designed the Burj Khalifa and the Willis Tower. The construction of below-ground utility relocations, footings, and foundations for the new building began on April 27, 2006.

One World Trade Center became the tallest structure in New York City on April 30, 2012, when it surpassed the height of the Empire State Building. The tower's steel structure was topped out on August 30, 2012. 

More information: WTC

On May 10, 2013, the final component of the skyscraper's spire was installed, making the building, including its spire, reach a total height of 541 m. Its height in feet is a deliberate reference to the year when the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. The building opened on November 3, 2014; the One World Observatory opened on May 29, 2015.

On March 26, 2009, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) confirmed that the building would be officially known by its legal name of One World Trade Center, rather than its colloquial name of Freedom Tower. The building has 94 stories, with the top floor numbered 104.

The new World Trade Center complex will eventually include five high-rise office buildings built along Greenwich Street, as well as the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, located just south of One World Trade Center where the original Twin Towers stood. The construction of the new building is part of an effort to memorialize and rebuild following the destruction of the original World Trade Center complex.

The construction of the World Trade Center, of which the Twin Towers (One and Two World Trade Center) were the centerpieces, was conceived as an urban renewal project and spearheaded by David Rockefeller. The project was intended to help revitalize Lower Manhattan.

The project was planned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which hired architect Minoru Yamasaki. He came up with the idea of building twin towers. After extensive negotiations, the New Jersey and New York State governments, which supervise the Port Authority, consented to the construction of the World Trade Center at the Radio Row site, located in the lower-west area of Manhattan.

To satisfy the New Jersey government, the Port Authority agreed to buy the bankrupt Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (renamed to Port Authority Trans-Hudson), which transported commuters from New Jersey to Lower Manhattan.

More information: 911 Memorial

 We live in downtown Manhattan and we have pretty big windows
that looked right at the World Trade Center.
I was home along with Kai and we watched it all happen.
I was holding him in my arms and we were looking out
the window when the second plane hit.

Jennifer Connelly

FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK, AN IRISH IMMIGRATION STORY

Today, The Newtons & The Grandma have been listening to some music. They have chosen Fairytale of New York, a song written by The Pogues.

 

Before this, they have been studying Present Continuous.

More information: Present Continuous

Fairytale of New York is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan and recorded by their London-based band The Pogues, featuring singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl on vocals.

The song is an Irish folk-style ballad and was written as a duet, with The Pogues' singer MacGowan taking the role of the male character and MacColl the female character. It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on The Pogues' 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God.

Originally begun in 1985, the song had a troubled two-year development history, undergoing rewrites and aborted attempts at recording, and losing its original female vocalist along the way, before finally being completed in August 1987.

Although the single has never been the UK Christmas number one, being kept at number two on its original release in 1987 by the Pet Shop Boys' cover of Always on My Mind, it has proved enduringly popular with both music critics and the public: to date the song has reached the UK Top 20 on 18 separate occasions since its original release in 1987, including every year at Christmas since 2005.

As of September 2017, it had sold 1.2 million copies in the UK, with an additional 249,626 streaming equivalent sales, for a total of 1.5 million combined sales.

In December 2020, the song was certified quadruple platinum in the UK for 2.4 million combined sales.

More information: Pogues

In the UK, Fairytale of New York is the most-played Christmas song of the 21st century. It is frequently cited as the best Christmas song of all time in various television, radio and magazine related polls in the UK and Ireland, including the UK television special on ITV in December 2012 where it was voted The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.

The song follows an Irish immigrant's Christmas Eve reverie about holidays past while sleeping off a binge in a New York City drunk tank. When an inebriated old man also in the cell sings a passage from the Irish ballad The Rare Old Mountain Dew, the narrator (MacGowan) begins to dream of a former lover.

The remainder of the song (which may be an internal monologue) takes the form of a call and response between the couple, their youthful hopes crushed by alcoholism and drug addiction, as they reminisce and bicker on Christmas Eve. The lyrics Sinatra was swinging and cars big as bars seem to place the song in the late 1940s, although the music video clearly depicts a contemporary 1980s New York.

The video for the song was directed by Peter Dougherty and filmed in New York during a bitterly cold week in November 1987.

The video opens with MacGowan sitting at a piano as if playing the song's opening refrain: however, as MacGowan could not actually play the instrument, the close-up shot featured the hands of the band's pianist Fearnley wearing MacGowan's rings on his fingers. Fearnley later said that he found the experience humiliating but accepted the idea that it looked better in the video to show MacGowan seated at the piano.

More information: Twitter-The Pogues

Part of the video was filmed inside a real police station on the Lower East Side. Actor Matt Dillon plays a police officer who arrests MacGowan and takes him to the cells. Dillon recalled that he had been afraid to handle MacGowan roughly, and had to be encouraged by Dougherty and MacGowan to use force.

MacGowan and the rest of the band were drinking throughout the shoot, and the police became concerned about their increasingly rowdy behaviour in the cells. Dillon, who was sober, had to intervene and reassure the police that there would be no problems.

The chorus of the song includes the line The boys of the NYPD choir still singing Galway Bay. In reality, the NYPD (New York City Police Department) does not have a choir, the closest thing being the NYPD Pipes and Drums who are featured in the video for the song.

The NYPD Pipes and Drums did not know Galway Bay and so sang a song that all of them knew the words to -the Mickey Mouse March, the theme tune for The Mickey Mouse Club television series.

The footage was then slowed down and shown in brief sections to disguise the fact the Pipes and Drums were singing a different song. Murray recalled that the Pipes and Drums had been drinking on the coach that brought them to the video shoot, and by the time they arrived they were more drunk than the band, refusing to work unless they were supplied with more alcohol.

More information: Shane MacGowan

 The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing Galway Bay
And the bells are ringing out
For Christmas day.

The Pogues

THE CHRYSLER BUILDING, ART DECO IN MANHATTAN

Today, The Newtons & The Grandma have visited the Chrysler Building, an Art Deco skyscraper on  the East Side of Manhattan, and one of the most popular icons of New York City. Before arriving, they have been studying The Superlative and Present Simple.

The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper in the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the East Side of Manhattan, New York City, at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

At 319 m, it is the tallest brick building in the world with a steel framework, and was the world's tallest building for 11 months after its completion in 1930.

As of 2019, the Chrysler is the 11th-tallest building in the city, tied with The New York Times Building.

More information: The Superlative

More information: Adverbs of Frequency

Originally a project of real estate developer and former New York State Senator William H. Reynolds, the building was constructed by Walter Chrysler, the head of the Chrysler Corporation. The construction of the Chrysler Building, an early skyscraper, was characterized by a competition with 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building to become the world's tallest building.

Although the Chrysler Building was built and designed specifically for the car manufacturer, the corporation did not pay for its construction and never owned it; Walter Chrysler decided to fund the entire cost personally so his children could inherit it. An annex was completed in 1952, and the building was sold by the Chrysler family the next year, with numerous subsequent owners.

More information: Chrysler Building

When the Chrysler Building opened, there were mixed reviews of the building's design, ranging from views of it as inane and unoriginal to the idea that it was modernist and iconic. Perceptions of the building have slowly evolved into its now being seen as a paragon of the Art Deco architectural style; and in 2007, it was ranked ninth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects.

The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1978, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The land was donated to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1902. The site is roughly a trapezoid with a 61 m frontage on Lexington Avenue; a 51 m frontage on 42nd Street; and a 62 m frontage on 43rd Street.

The site bordered the old Boston Post Road, which predated, and ran aslant of, the Manhattan street grid established by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. As a result, the east side of the building's base is similarly aslant.

The Grand Hyatt New York hotel and the Graybar Building are across Lexington Avenue, while the Socony-Mobil Building is across 42nd Street.

In addition, the Chanin Building is to the southwest, diagonally across Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. National Historic Landmark in 1976.

The Chrysler Building was designed by William Van Alen in the Art Deco style and is named for one of its original tenants, automotive executive Walter Chrysler.

More information: Classic New York History

It is constructed of a steel frame infilled with masonry, with areas of decorative metal cladding. The structure contains 3,862 exterior windows. Approximately fifty metal ornaments protrude at the building's corners on five floors reminiscent of gargoyles on Gothic cathedrals.

The 31st-floor contains gargoyles as well as replicas of the 1929 Chrysler radiator caps, and the 61st-floor is adorned with eagles as a nod to America's national bird.

In the mid-1920s, New York's metropolitan area surpassed London's as the world's most populous metropolitan area and its population exceeded ten million by the early 1930s.

The era was characterized by profound social and technological changes. Consumer goods such as radio, cinema, and the automobile became widespread.

In 1927, Walter Chrysler's automotive company, the Chrysler Corporation, became the third-largest car manufacturer in the United States, behind Ford and General Motors. The following year, Chrysler was named Time magazine's Person of the Year.

The economic boom of the 1920s and speculation in the real estate market fostered a wave of new skyscraper projects in New York City.

The Chrysler Building was built as part of an ongoing building boom that resulted in the city having the world's tallest building from 1908 to 1974.

More information: Town and Country

I like to build things. I like to do things.

Walter Chrysler