NEW YORK

Day 74/7 Sun Aug 15
Congregation Kneses Tifereth, Port Chester. A rectangular box with a round brick entrance lobby. Modern. Architectural Delight
ON McDonald’s in Port Chester 

Day 75/8 Sat Aug 16
NEW YORK CITY & LONG ISLAND
NEW YORK METROPOLITAN AREA (incl. Newark, Jersey City, etc.)
I parked in the meter parking (free on weekends) at Mamaroneck and took the train into Grand Central Station ($6.50 for seniors).
This was a massive walk about day in NYC. I started early and ended at 9 pm.
Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant. A relatively large restaurant outside the concourse. Not open on weekends.
The Algonquin Hotel Times Square. 1902. The lobby has many cartoons of Al HIrschfiled. The Roundtable of writers met here.
AKA Times Square Hotel. It has about 10 stories, and was once the tallest building in Manhattan. 5 star Hotel has Studios, One and Two Bedroom Apartments all appointed with modern furniture and featuring fully equipped gourmet kitchen, oversized marble bathroom, separate living and sleeping area, cable TV, complimentary Wi-Fi internet access and much more!
Bank of America Tower is a 55-story skyscraper with a height of 1,200 feet (370 m), the ninth-tallest building in New York City and the tenth-tallest building in the United States as of 2022. It has a seven-story base and a tower. Its facade is a curtain wall made of insulated glass panels. The tower has two spires: an architectural spire to the south, rising 1,200 feet, and a wind turbine to the north. It was the first commercial skyscraper in the U.S. specifically designed to attain a LEED) Platinum certification, but degraded to a “C” grade.
The facade of Henry Miller’s Theatre (now the Stephen Sondheim Theatre) is protected at the base of the tower. 

The XI (One High Line, formerly The XI and The Eleventh). A 5-story apartment building that is permanently closed. Yellow marble cladding next to a 33-story tower of similar stone that leans to the south and has a spiral character.
It is a pair of buildings in a complex that will include 247 condominiums, a 137-room Six Senses hotel, 90,000 square feet (8,400 m²) of retail space, art space, a spa and club.
HFZ Capital Group paid $870 million in 2015, one of the highest prices ever paid in Manhattan for a development site over $1,100 per buildable square foot, a record for a Manhattan condominium development. A consortium of lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock and SL Green, provided $1 billion in acquisition and predevelopment financing. In 2017, UK hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund provided a $1.25 billion senior mortgage to HFZ, one of the largest construction loans ever issued for a Manhattan project. The project also received $258 million from an EB-5 mezzanine loan, and HFZ committed $225 million of equity.^[8] Pegasus Capital Advisors, the owners of Six Sense, also invested $30 million of equity into the hotel portion of the project.
Prices ranged from $2.8 million for a one-bedroom to $25 million for a half-floor penthouse. Graeme Hart, the second-richest person in New Zealand, bought a five-bedroom, 5,783 square feet penthouse for $34 million. In 2023, a 6-bedroom unit in the building was sold for $52 million, making it one of the rarest apartments in Downtown Manhattan to have sold over $50 million.
There are two towers, a 34-story Western tower and a 25-story Eastern tower clad with travertine and connected by a double-height sky bridge. The West tower consists of 149 condos, while the East tower contains the Six Senses hotel and 87 condos beginning on the 11th floor.
At the base, the two towers separate from each other and the neighbouring buildings of Chelsea to maximize space and views on the lower floors. As they rise, the towers reorient towards the West to maximize the light afforded to each unit and views of the Hudson River. The twisting geometry at the corners of the towers also reduces the overall bulk of the buildings and creates additional separation between the towers.
Chelsea Market. A very long market with an industrial look with steel girders and a corrugated roof. No stalls, but most enclosed restaurants and knick-knack stores.
The Whitney Museum of American Art has eight floors, but only the top three have exhibits. Complete trash on the 8th floor (Christine Sun Kim), many avant-garde artists (Warhol, Rausenberg and others) on the 7th, and not great contemporary art and photography on the 6th. $35, $30 reduced and almost a complete waste of money. Nobody checked tickets, and I should have snuck in and opened by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1930.
Stonewall National Monument. In a small park, this is where the 1969 LGBT demonstration occurred against the oppression of the Stonewall Inn. Now a US Historical Site with rangers. One bench had plaster models of a lesbian couple and a gay couple. There is a monument to General Sheridan next to it and a small museum down the street.
Washington Square Arch. A great park with the arch on one side. A grand structure like the Arc de Triomphe, but smaller. Has the saying by G Washington, “LET US RAISE A STANDARD TO WHICH THE WISE AND FINE HONEST MEN CAN REPAIR. THE EVENT IS IN THE HAND OF GOD”. I talked to a woman selling buttons who said, “Our President is an Idiot.” Donald Trump could learn something from this.
Caffe Reggio. 1927. A tiny, very full and boisterous restaurant. Unusually, it had several large (and very dark) oil paintings on the walls.
New York City Fire Museum. In an ancient building, the featured exhibit is on Colonial firefighting in the American Revolution—a variety of pumps, steam and one chemical fire truck. $12, $10 reduced.
Urban Glass House. 10-story with large windows and metal frames. It was mostly empty, except for one side that was being renovated. Couldn’t enter. Not that attractive a building.
It is a condominium building completed in 2006 and Johnson’s final project, as he did not live to see construction finished. The name is a reference to Johnson’s earlier Glass House, although this bears little resemblance to the original.
The building saw a downturn in sales after the construction of a New York City Department of Sanitation garage across the street was announced in 2007. The building is primarily residential, with forty apartments. Amenities include bicycle storage and an in-house fitness facility. There is also ground-level retail and a restaurant, which belongs to Antonio Vendome, the original developer of the property.
American Numismatic Society. I find money museums boring, and this was one of them. Free
Tribeca Bridge. An older steel girder pedestrian bridge across West St. It appears to be set into the side of a building. It looks like it is not used much.
Winter Garden Atrium. In the Brookfield Mall, this is a high glass vaulted dome roof with tables and 16 palm trees. A grand tiered staircase is at the back. Very nice.
Woolworth Building is a 792-foot-tall (241 m) residential building and early skyscraper, was the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1929, and it remains one of the United States’ 100 tallest buildings as of 2024. It consists of a 30-story base topped by a 30-story tower. Its facade is mostly clad with architectural terracotta, though the lower portions are limestone, and it features thousands of windows. The ornate lobby contains various sculptures, mosaics, and architectural touches.
F. W. Woolworth, the founder of a brand of popular five-and-ten-cent stores, conceived the skyscraper as a headquarters for his company. Neo-Gothic style.

The building’s ceiling heights, ranging from 11 to 20 feet (3.4 to 6.1 m), make it the equivalent of an 80-story building. Above the 30th floor are setbacks on the north and south elevations. Though the structure is physically 60 stories tall, the 53rd floor is the top floor that can be occupied.
The building has an estimated 4,400, or 5,000 windows.
One World Trade Center (One WTC, also known as the Freedom Tower) is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. It 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 destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Construction began in 2006 and topped out in 2012. In 2013, the spire reached a total height of 1,776 feet (541 m). Its height in feet is the year when the United States Declaration of Independence was signed.
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, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub
The facade consists of stainless steel panels and blast-resistant glass.

From the 20th floor upwards, the square edges of the tower’s cubic base are chamfered back, shaping the building into eight tall isosceles triangles, or an elongated square antiprism. Near its middle, the tower forms a perfect octagon, and then culminates in a glass parapet, whose shape is a square oriented 45 degrees from the base—a 407.9-foot (124.3 m) sculpted mast containing the broadcasting antenna. At night, an intense beam of light is projected vertically from the spire and shines over 1,000 feet (300 m) above the tower.
It has 94 actual stories and 86 usable above-ground floors, 78 of which are for office purposes. The office floors begin at floor 20 and go up to floor 90. There is a sky lobby on floor 64. Above floor 90 are several mechanical floors, as well as restaurants and observation spaces on floors 100–103. Floor numbers 94 through 99 are skipped.
9/11 Memorial and Museum/Ground Zero. The museum is $36, reduced to $30. Tells the story we all know well with a few new facts for me. The two memorials are fabulous black granite square pools with waterfalls coming off all sides and dumping into a small square basin in the centre. Surrounded by metal boards listing all the people killed. About 100 Navy Seals appeared (all with no tops, camo swim trunks and large American flags) who had just swum the Hudson.
The World Trade Center Transportation Hub is a futuristic white oval construction with wings flaring out. 

Four World Trade Center houses the headquarters of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The original building was a nine-story structure destroyed during the September 11 attacks in 2001. Construction occurred between 2008 and 2013.
90 West Street. 1907. Now a 15-story apartment building, it was the premier office skyscraper for shipping and railways—art deco styling with gargoyles and griffins.
Trinity Church. Lovely church. Only the graveyard (with many ancient graves, including Hamilton) and the Chapel of All Saints were open, but we were let in through a side door to see the church.
Federal Hall Memorial. Federal Hall was the first Capitol building of the United States, serving as the meeting place of the First United States Congress and the site of George Washington’s first presidential inauguration. The Federal Hall National Memorial, a Greek Revival–style building, was completed in 1842. Made of Tuckahoe marble, it has a colonnade of Doric columns. 
In 1790, the United States’ capital moved to Philadelphia. Federal Hall served as the state assembly and courts, the United States Subtreasury, an Assay Office and a passport office, a branch of the Whitney Museum until 1984, and now two galleries about the Constitution of the United States and is operated by the NPS. Exhibits include George Washington’s Inauguration Gallery, Freedom of the Press, the imprisonment and trial of John Peter Zenger, and New York: An American Capital. Free.
Trump Building (40 Wall Street). 18 lower floors with a tower. An older building that looks like it is not used so much. Has the Pine Street School.
Fraunces Tavern (The Porterhouse at). Initially dating to 1762. The Chamber of Commerce was founded here in 1768. Washington gave his Farewell to officers here in 1783. The Sons of the Revolution originated here in 1883. It was completely restored in 1905-7 and has seven dining rooms.
Vietnam War Memorial. It has a wall of glass cubes etched with many quotes, a round pool, and 12 small monuments with the names of killed soldiers.
This was where I turned around to head back to Grand Central. It took me 1 1/2 hours. I walked through Chinatown and the Bowery. It was after five and all the museums on the way were closed (the Museum of the American Indian, the Eldridge Street Museum, the Museum of Comics and Cartoons,
Blue Condominium. Permanently closed. At 16 stories tall, it opened in 2007 with 32 condominium apartments and is clad in a blue panel and window curtain wall system.

The curtain wall system is composed of clear glass pieces, tinted blue vision glass pieces, and opaque spandrel panels in four shades of blue. Interior materials vary but include bamboo and stone flooring, white tiled bathrooms, white stone kitchen counters, and metal cabinets.
Katz’s Deli Restaurant. Dating to 1888, the oldest deli in New York City debuted as the small kosher Iceland Brothers deli before the Katz family got involved in 1903. Known for excellent American Jewish deli foods like corned beef, Katz’s has become a pilgrimage site for trying one of the city’s most iconic sandwiches, pastrami on rye.
The Cooper Union building is a private college on Cooper Square, founded in 1859 on a radical new model of American higher education based on Cooper’s belief that an education “equal to the best technology schools established. Should be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex, wealth or social status, and should be “open and free to all”. The college is divided into three schools: the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, the School of Art, and the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. It offered a full-tuition scholarship to every admitted student, a practice it discontinued in 2014. As of 2024, nearly half of its undergraduate students were attending on a tuition-free basis.

41 Cooper Square is a nine-story academic center that houses Cooper Union’s Albert Nerken School of Engineering, an exhibition gallery, auditorium and retail space on the ground level built between 2006 and 2009.

The building’s eighth-floor green roof houses a three-ton marble eagle sculpture. It has a LEED Platinum rating enclosed in an aluminum and glass curtain wall. Radiant heating and cooling ceiling panels, collect storm water, and a cogeneration plant.
McSorley’s Old Ale House is the oldest Irish saloon in New York City, opened in the mid-19th century. It was one of the last of the “Men Only” pubs, admitting women only after legally being forced to do so in 1970. The aged artwork, newspaper articles covering the walls, sawdust floors, and the Irish waiters and bartenders give McSorley’s an atmosphere reminiscent of “Olde New York”. No piece of memorabilia has been removed from the walls since 1910, along with Houdini’s handcuffs and wishbones hanging above the bar; supposedly, they were hung there by boys going off to World War I, to be removed when they returned, so the wishbones that are left are from those who never returned.
Two of McSorley’s mottos are “Be Good or Be Gone” and “We were here before you were born”. Before the 1970 ruling, the motto was “Good Ale, Raw Onions and No Ladies”; the raw onions can still be ordered as part of McSorley’s cheese platter.
Pete’s Tavern is a pub food restaurant and the oldest continuously operating restaurant and bar in New York City. The building that houses Pete’s was built in 1829. During prohibition, when selling alcohol was illegal, the bar continued to operate disguised as a flower shop. The present name dates to the purchase of the establishment by Peter D’Belles in 1926. 
Pete’s Tavern has appeared in numerous films and television programs, including Two for the Seesaw, Seinfeld, Ragtime, Endless Love, Law & Order, Nurse Jackie, Spin City, Sex and the City, Across the Sea of Time, The Guru, Blue Bloods, The Blacklist, and, more recently, Fleishman is in Trouble. It has also been used as a location for television commercials, such as Miller Lite ads with Ben Davidson and Tony Esposito, as well as print advertisements.
One Madison is a luxury residential condominium tower. The building, as constructed, has 51 residential units across 60 stories. Construction occurred from 2006 to 2013. At a height of 621 feet (189.3 m), One Madison is one of the slenderest buildings in the world, with a height-to-width ratio of 12:1.

Day 77/9 Sun Aug 17.
My second big walkabout day in NYC. Yesterday was south of Grand Central and today’s, north of Grand Central. There are no NM sites north of Central Park. I finished again at 9:30 pm. 
Waldorf Astoria Hotel. A very posh hotel dating from 1938. The lobby has very high ceilings, Roman art, black marble floors and a facade with intricate metal designs. 
St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. The best part is the side chapel with its marble columns and capitals. Interesting things were the dome with stalagtite (Islamic) styles, and a mosaic in the dome. The Ways of the Cross were mosaics. 
General Electric Building. It was completed in 1931 with a 50-floor, 640-foot-tall (200 m) stylized Gothic octagonal brick tower, with elaborate Art Deco decorations of lightning bolts showing the power of electricity. The tower is set back from the round-cornered base with elaborate masonry and architectural figural sculpture. The building was designed to blend with the low Byzantine dome of the adjacent St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue, with the same brick coloring and architectural terracotta decoration. The crown of the building, an example of Gothic tracery, is intended to represent electricity and radio waves.
GE had its headquarters at 570 Lexington Avenue between 1933 and 1974, and retained ownership until 1993, when the building was donated to Columbia University.
Lipstick Building is a 453-foot-tall (138 m) office building completed in 1986 and has 34 floors. The building’s nickname is derived from its shape and color, which resembles a tube of lipstick. The building is nearly elliptical with setbacks above the 19th and 27th stories, as well as a two-story granite penthouse. The structure is actually polygonal; both the base and the setback sections have over a hundred sides. The building stands on double-height columns at the base, and the facade is made of red Imperial granite and stainless steel.

Seagram Building. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe along with Philip Johnson, Ely Jacques Kahn, and Robert Allan Jacobs, the high-rise tower is 515 feet (157 m) tall with 38 stories. Completed in 1958, it served as the headquarters of the Seagram Company, a Canadian distiller. A glass curtain wall with vertical mullions of bronze and horizontal spandrels made of Muntz metal form the building’s exterior. On Park Avenue is a pink-granite public plaza with two fountains. The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA) purchased the building in 1979, and it remained Seagram’s headquarters until 2001. It is one of “New York’s most copied buildings”.

Lever House. Above the high lobby, is a gap and then a tower, all glass.
Central Synagogue Main Sanctuary is a Reform Jewish synagogue formed in 1898 through the merger of two 19th-century synagogues. The synagogue building was constructed from 1870 to 1872 became known as Central by 1918. The building has been renovated several times over the years. Designed in the Moorish Revival style, the facade is brownstone with light-stone trim and includes stained glass windows and a geometric rose window; it is topped by octagonal towers. The synagogue’s sanctuary—a two-level space, arranged similarly to a Gothic church contains a collection of Jewish artifacts.
731 Lexington is a mixed-use glass skyscraper that opened in 2004. It houses the headquarters of Bloomberg L.P. and as a result, is sometimes referred to informally as Bloomberg Tower. The building also houses retail outlets, restaurants, and 105 luxury condominiums. It is a 55-story building with a roof height of 806 ft (246 m), the 40th-tallest building in New York City with two towers constructed above a steel office and retail section, separated by a seven-story atrium. The courtyard has the New York Public Library Main Branch, and the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.
Bloomingdales is an American luxury department store chain founded in 1861 by Joseph Bloomingdale and Lyman Bloomingdale. It was acquired by Federated Department Stores in 1930, which purchased the Macy’s department store chain in 1994, when they became sister brands. As of 2024, the chain had a total of 32 owned department stores in the U.S. and 3 franchised stores in Dubai and Kuwait. Its headquarters and flagship store are located at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue in NYC.
550 Madison Avenue (Sony Tower, Sony Plaza, and AT&T Building) Has marble cladding with a large loop at the top. The entrance windows form a grand arch. Inside the lobby was a large glove suspended by large chains.
It is a postmodern–style skyscraper designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. It is a 647-foot-tall (197-meter), 37-story office tower with a facade made of pink granite. It was completed in 1984 as the headquarters of AT&T Corp. and later became the American headquarters of Sony.
432 Park Avenue is a residential skyscraper at 1,396-foot-tall (425.5 m) tower. A part of Billionaires’ Row, 432 Park Avenue has some of the most expensive residences in the city, with the median unit selling for tens of millions of dollars. At the time of its completion in 2015, 432 Park Avenue was the third-tallest building in the United States and the tallest residential building in the world. 432 Park Avenue has 84 numbered stories and a mezzanine above ground. The tower’s exterior is a lattice of poured-in-place concrete made from white Portland cement. The tower is segmented into 12-story blocks separated by open double-story mechanical spaces that allow wind gusts to pass through the building. It features 125 condominiums and amenities such as a private restaurant for residents. 
Bergdorf Goodman. A high-end department store with a men’s store on one side of the street opposite the woman’s section.
In the same block are many flagship stores all with different facades. One is a series of stacked trunks and suitcases.
The Plaza Hotel. The dining room has a huge stained glass ceiling, marble columns and capitals and is very posh.
Trump Tower. Not a NM site, I went inside just for curiosity.
53W53. With a height of 1,050 ft (320 m), 53 West 53 is the twelfth-tallest completed building in the city as of January 2025. It contains 77 stories; the highest story is numbered 87 and some floor numbers are skipped. The facade is set within a concrete diagrid that provides structural support for the building. The northern and southern facades slope inward to a set of five spires at different heights. The building is mixed-use, with MoMA gallery space and a private restaurant at the base. The residential portion of the tower contains 145 condominiums, amenities spaces on floors 12 through 16 and a lounge on floors 46 and 47. Completed in 2020, a majority of the units remained unsold at the building’s completion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Internova Travel Group Headquarters. A glass/black building with a silver accents. The home of Warner Brothers.
Carnegie Hall Tower. Completed in 1990, it is 757 feet (231 m) tall with 60 stories. Due to the presence of Carnegie Hall and the Russian Tea Room on adjacent sites, the tower is only 50 feet (15 m) wide on 57th Street, making it among the world’s most slender skyscrapers at its completion.
It has a red-and-orange brick facade and cast-concrete decorations, both inspired by the older structure. The tower rises above a six-story base, which contains a setback from 57th Street.
JW Marriott Hotel Essex House is a luxury hotel at the southern border of Central Park. Opened in 1931, the hotel is 44 stories tall and contains 426 Art Deco–style rooms and 101 suites, as well as 147 condominium residences. It features a distinctive red neon rooftop sign. Marriott Hotels bought it in 1969, who in 1984, sold it to Japan Air Lines. The hotel was renovated from 1990 to 1991, at a cost of over $75 million. The renovation work was complicated by the fact that Marriott had sold approximately 100 units in the hotel as condominiums. Their owners had to be paid to leave during renovations and the new guest rooms had to be constructed around the residential units, which were located randomly throughout the building.
Hearst Tower is the world headquarters of media conglomerate Hearst Communications, It consists of two sections, with a total height of 597 feet (182 m) and 46 stories. The six lowest stories form the Hearst Magazine Building completed in 1928. Above it is the Hearst Tower addition, designed by Norman Foster and finished in 2006.
The original structure is clad with stone and the tower section above has a glass-and-metal facade arranged as a diagonal grid, which doubles as its structural system.
Museum of Art and Design. Another disappointing museum. The two upper floors had an exhibit by Sara Woodfelt of dressed sculptures that was truly awful. I really enjoyed Jonathan Adler with his unique designs. That was it for $20, $16 reduced.
Lincoln Center.is a 16.3-acre (6.6-hectare) complex of buildings with thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 million visitors annually. It houses performing arts organizations including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Juilliard School. It was not possible to see any of the theatres unless attending a performance.
VIA 57 West is a residential building in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. Wow, don’t miss this. The pyramid shaped tower block or “tetrahedron” was designed by the Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).
From Manhattan, the 709-unit building resembles a distorted pyramid with a steeply sloped façade, rising 467 feet (142 m) toward the northeast. Across the river in Weehawken, New Jersey, the building’s sloped façade gives the appearance of an extra large sailing vessel making its way across the Hudson River. With its angular balconies around an integrated green plaza, the block connects with the waterfront and Hudson River Park. The northern façade of the building features a number of balconies skewed at a 45-degree angle.
This was a long walk out of the way with no public transport. I walked back to the metro near Lincoln Centre to get the metro north to avoid an hours walk. 

Cathedral of St. John the Divine is an unfinished building, with only two-thirds of the proposed building completed, due to several major stylistic changes, work interruptions, and unstable ground on the site. It began construction in 1892. After the opening of the crossing in 1909, the overall plan was changed to a Gothic Revival design. The completion of the nave was delayed until 1941 due to various funding shortfalls, and little progress has occurred since then. It is still the world’s fourth-largest church by area and either the largest or second-largest Anglican cathedral 601 feet long and a roof height of the nave is 177 feet (54 m).
I refused to pay the $15, $12 reduced fee as I could see all I wanted from the ticket booth. There are no pews in the church showing that it is not used as a church. It has huge multilobed columns and a vaulted rib arched ceiling.
I then walked across the north part of Central Park. The swimming pool had a huge line up as there weren’t enough life guards.
Museum of the City of New York. A very good museum with many unique exhibits: Port 1609-1898, World City 1898-2012, Graffiti, Songs and an incredible dollhouse. $23, $18 reduced.
As it was getting on in the afternoon, I elected to skip several museums all on the east side of Central Park (The Jewish M, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian, Neue Galerie, Frick Collection, Central Park Zoo, and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. I saw the Guggenheim in 2008), and head due east.
Ward’s Island Bridge. For a pedestrian bridge, this is huge with two large towers and huge steel girders.
I was then caught in a huge thunder and lightning rain storm. I had left my umbrella in the camper to save weight. I only got slightly wet as I crossed the street and ate at one of the many delicatessans that offer good food at a great price. 
Weill Cornell Medicine. Has high-arched windows producing great light inside.
Beekman Tower. Built in 1928, it is an brick art deco building that is now a hotel. There are restaurants and a 26th floor observation deck.
Knotted Gun. A nonviolence statue in the UN Plaza. It is a bronze sculpture by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd of an oversized Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver with its barrel tied in a knot. It was made after the murder of John Lennon, with whom Reuterswärd was acquainted. This sculpture was made 1984 and in 1988, the Luxembourg government bought and donated it to the United Nations.
Following the unveiling of the original sculpture, Reuterswärd did a range of replicas of Non Violence for places around the world, numbering about 30 sculptures. About half of these are in Sweden.
Since 1993, the sculpture has been the symbol of The Non-Violence Project (NVPF), a nonprofit organization that promotes social change through violence-prevention education programs. Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono and other celebrities have all created versions of it. In 2019, the NVPF worked with the Dalai Lama to make 150 small-scale Non-Violence sculptures from melted confiscated firearms.

After a huge day of walking (with one Metro ride), it was a short walk back to Grand Central and the train back to Mamaroneck. 
ON Marmaroneck train lot for the second night. 

Day 78/10 Mon Aug 18
Up early, I went to a Starbucks and mooched wifi to spend the entire day finishing this post (at 6 pm).
I the had a shower at the swimming pool and bought groceries at Aldi.
ON Aldi Parking lot 

Day 79/11 Tue Aug 19
My plan today was to try to see all of Long Island. When I finished seeing Coney Island, to follow the south shore was on freeways that said “cars only”. I presumed there were low tunnels and my 11′ high camper would be a problem. It was also a huge drive without needing to detour around the cars only highway – over 3 hours to get to Montauk Point Light, so I abandoned the plan and went to Staten Island over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
Queens Botanical Garden, Flushing. Mostly huge expances of grass with some mature trees, beds nearer the entrance. Free
New York State Pavilion. Constructed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, it was designed by the architects Philip Johnson and Richard Foster. The pavilion consists of three reinforced concrete-and-steel structures: the Tent of Tomorrow, observation towers, and Theaterama.
The Tent of Tomorrow is a elliptical structure measuring 250 by 350 feet across, with a cable suspension roof and a terrazzo highway map of New York state on its floor. There are three observation towers, the tallest of which is 226 feet (69 m) high. The Theaterama, a drum-shaped reinforced concrete structure, has housed the Queens Theatre performing arts center since 1989. 
It is owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks). It operated as a World’s Fair attraction for two years. NYC Parks took over the structures in 1967 and leased out the Theaterama as a performing-arts theater in 1969. The Tent of Tomorrow briefly served as a concert venue and roller rink in the 1970s, while the observation towers never reopened. After briefly reopening in the 1980s, the Tent of Tomorrow was abandoned through the 21st century. 
When I was there, the entire site was under renovation. The tent is easy to see but the map on the floor was not visible. The three observation platforms were surrounded by scaffolding and there was an active work crew. Free
Unisphere is a spherical stainless steel representation of the Earth designed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair and the theme symbol of the World’s Fair – “Peace Through Understanding” and “Man’s Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe”. The Unisphere became an unofficial symbol of Queens after the World’s Fair. In the 1970s, the Unisphere was not maintained and became visibly dirty; it was restored in the early 1990s.
The Unisphere measures 140 feet (43 m) high and 120 feet (37 m) in diameter. It sits atop a 20-foot-tall (6.1 m) tripod base with over 500 steel pieces representing the countries (there is a bas-relief nature to the pieces), as well as three steel rings representing the first artificial satellites orbiting Earth. Around the Unisphere is a reflecting pool measuring 310 feet (94 m) in diameter, surrounded by 48 pairs of fountainheads (the fountains weren’t operating and there was no water in the huge shallow pool. Free
Coney Island is a bunch of old amusement parks, only of interest to young children. There is a very wide wood boardwalk fronting the beach. Nathan’s hot dogs restaurant was next to the street that I used to access the beach.
Totonno’s, Coney Island. 
Coney Island Beach.
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. A huge double decked suspension bridge connecting the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn that spans the Narrows, that connects New York Harbor with Lower New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only fixed crossing of the Narrows. The double-deck bridge carries 13 lanes of Interstate 278: seven on the upper level and six on the lower level. It is named for Giovanni da Verrazzano, who in 1524 was the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River.
The bridge opened in 1964..
The bridge has a central span of 4,260 feet (1.30 km; 0.81 mi). Its central span was the longest of any suspension bridge in the world until the Humber Bridge was completed in 1981. The bridge has the 18th-longest main span in the world, as well as the longest in the Americas. It collects tolls in both directions.

Staten Island Range Lighthouse. Built in 1912, this lighthouse sits in a fairly posh neighborhood closely surrounded by houses. It has an octagonal stone base and white  brick body with a red cap. It is surrounded closely by a steel fence.

I didn’t see any of NEW YORK EAST.
Go to NEW JERSEY