The (relatively) new Staten Island Ferry Terminal is decorated with excerpts from Edna St. Vincent Millay's 1922 poem "Recuerdo" ("I remember" or "souvenir"). The views from the terminal and the…
On July 14, 2017, a sculpture of Clarence Darrow will be dedicated on the lawn of the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee. It will join a sculpture of William Jennings…
Third in a series of three posts giving the full text of the “Report on Nomenclature of the Gates of the Park,” 1862. The first post in the series includes background…
"The Lady Clare," by Alfred Lord Tennyson It was the time when lilies blow, And clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his…
Second in a series of several posts giving the full text of the “Report on Nomenclature of the Gates of the Park,” 1862. The first post in the series, which includes…
The facade of Robert Graves's Portland Building is graced by Raymond Kaskey's Portlandia. It's a huge sculpture in proportion to it site: just over three stories on a 15-story building. The…
First in a series; second is here, third is here. In 1898, Andrew Haswell Green was proclaimed "Father of Greater New York" for his efforts to see Manhattan consolidated with…
There's a lot to be said for a building as full of art as the Metropolitan Museum of Art: if you don't like one piece, you can shift your gaze…
The Kosciuszko Bridge, opened in 1939, carries I-278 (the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, or BQE) over Newtown Creek, which divides Brooklyn and Queens. The old bridge is being replaced with side-by-side cable-stay…
Learning about opera is a work in progress for me, and writing about things I don't fully understand gives me the heebie-jeebies. So take this post as a shared pleasure…