Lecture Series Provides Access to Hidden NY
Free to the public, tours visit unusual places such the city’s first subway station and McKim, Mead & White’s premiere skyscraper.
by Meaghan O'Neill -- Interior Design, 11/1/2006
Once each month through February 2007, Access Restricted, an innovative, free “nomadic” lecture series will take participants on tours through Manhattan’s rarely visited, often prohibited spaces—the city’s first subway station, the first U.S. custom house, the Tombs. Led by docents who double as artists, writers, DJs, and architects, the tours offer peeks into various hidden gems around the city.
The first tour, led by urban archaeologist Julia Solis, kicks off tonight, November 1, at the abandoned City Hall Subway Station. Guests will board a charted subway car to see the original glass tiles and chandeliers of the now-defunct station.
On November 29, Access Restricted will meet again, this time led by Andrea Geyer, former Lower Manhattan Cultural Council resident-artist. Geyer will talk about the infamous municipal power-monger and crook, William Marcy “Boss” Tweed at the Tweed Courthouse. Across the street and atop the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, Geyer’s gang will have an opportunity to gaze across at Adolph Weinman's 20-foot-high "Civic Fame" copper sculpture—New York’s largest. Then it’s on to McKim, Mead & White’s first skyscraper, the Municipal Building, atop which “Civic Fame” takes in one of the most commanding views in all of New York.
In January (date to be announced), a talk will be held in a grand, early 20th century international shipping tariff collector’s room. The following month, a discussion on the topic of research will be held in the municipal archives—where more than 30,000 boxes are kept on file—with an artist, an archivist, and a DJ.
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