Citi Field

By Ari | Published: 22 Mar 2012

Citi Field is a stadium located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in the New York City borough of Queens. Completed in 2009, it is the home baseball park of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets. Citi Field was built as a replacement for the adjacent Shea Stadium, which opened in 1964 next to the site of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. Citi Field was designed by Populous (formerly HOK Sport), and is named after Citigroup, a New York financial services company which purchased the naming rights. The $850 million baseball park was funded by the sale of New York City municipal bonds which are to be repaid by the Mets plus interest. The payments will offset property taxes for the lifetime of the park.

 

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Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village

By Ari | Published: 14 Mar 2012

Stuyvesant Town—Peter Cooper Village is a large private residential development on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, and one of the most iconic of the post-World War II private housing communities. Stuyvesant Town, known to its residents as “Stuy Town”, was named after Peter Stuyvesant, the last Director-General of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, whose farm occupied the site in the seventeenth century. Peter Cooper Village is named after the 19th century industrialist, inventor and philanthropist Peter Cooper, who founded Cooper Union. The complex, which was planned beginning in 1942 and opened its first building in 1947, replaced the Gas House district of gas storage tanks. 

The complex is a sprawling collection of red brick apartment buildings stretching from First Avenue to Avenue C, between 14th and 23rd Streets. It covers about 80 acres of land, a portion of which is utilized for playgrounds and parkland. The development located between 14th and 20th Streets, Stuyvesant Town, has 8,757 apartments in 35 residential buildings and with its sister development, Peter Cooper Village – located between 20th and 23rd Streets – the complex has a combined 56 residential buildings, 11,250 apartments, and over 25,000 residents.

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The Verrazano- Narrows Bridge

By Ari | Published: 7 Mar 2012

The naming of the Verrazano- Narrows Bridge was controversial. It was first proposed in 1951 by the Italian Historical Society of America, when the bridge was in the planning stage. After Robert Moses turned down the initial proposal, the society undertook a public relations campaign to re-establish the reputation of the largely forgotten Giovanni da Verrazzano and to promote the idea of naming the bridge for him. The campaign was largely the effort of Society director John N. LaCorte, who in 1954 successfully lobbied New York Governor W. Averell Harriman to proclaim April 17 (the anniversary of Verrazzano’s arrival in the harbor) as Verrazzano Day.  The manager of the authority, backed by Moses, said the name was too long and that he had never heard of Verrazzano.

The society later succeeded in lobbying to get a bill introduced in the New York State Assembly that would name the bridge for the explorer. After the introduction of the bill, the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce joined the society in promoting the name. The bill was signed into law in 1960 by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Although the controversy seemed settled, the naming issue rose again in the last year of construction after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A petition to name the bridge for Kennedy received thousands of signatures. In response, LaCorte contacted United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the president’s brother, who told LaCorte that he would make sure the bridge would not be named for his brother (Idlewild Airport, New York’s major international airport, was renamed after Kennedy instead)

Even so, the official name was widely ignored by local news outlets at the time of the dedication. Some radio announcers and newspapers omitted any reference to Verrazano, referring to the bridge as the Narrows Bridge, or the Brooklyn-Staten Island Bridge. The society continued its lobbying efforts to promote the name in the following years until the name became firmly established. Today, it is often referred to as just “the Verrazano.”

 

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Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge

By Ari | Published: 28 Feb 2012

Ah… more vertical lift bridges. Here we have the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge- formerly known as the Marine Parkway Bridge. The GHMB is a vertical lift bridge that crosses Rockaway Inlet and connects Rockaway Peninsula to the Marine Park neighborhood in Brooklyn.  It opened in 1937, has four lanes devoted to vehicular traffic and is accessible for pedestrians. (And photographers).

In 1978, the bridge was renamed for Gil Hodges, the former first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Hodges kept a residence in Brooklyn after his team moved to LA. He also played for the New York Mets at the end of his career, and managed the Mets from 1968 until his death in 1972, including victory in the 1969 World Series.

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