increasingly enlightened

Founded in 1825, Bnai Jeshurun was the second synagogue founded in New York. 

Just like our ClockTower, the synagogue for the Congregation B’Nai Jeshurun is listed on the National Historic Register.

Designed by a celebrated theatre architect, the building at 257 West 88th in Manhattan was completed in 1917.

Once a day sunlight covers exactly half as it brightens the facade.

Come over from the dark side!

http://www.bj.org/

I told you I was sick

At 4,000 burials a year, (almost 11 everyday) Saint Raymond’s cemetery in the Throgs Neck section is one of our nations busiest.

It was founded in 1845, forty years before the ClockTower, on 180 pristine acres. Over 350,000 people are buried here now, including Typhoid Mary.

I took a spin through the other day. This is the only Roman Catholic cemetery in the Bronx. In 1962 plots cost $200. Today gravesites start at about $4,500.

St. Ray wasn’t some local guy, Saint Raymond of Penyafort was a 12th century Catalan-Spanish saint.

At St. Raymonds you can go in-ground, in-crypt or mausoleum, and there are special niches for cremation remains and even a “Garden of Innocents” for stillborn infants and young babies.

A portion was set aside in 1964 for local Roman Catholic clergy. That’s the WhiteStone Bridge in the background.

Jazz singer Billy Holiday was interred here in 1959.

 And you thought NYC housing was crowded.

http://straymondparish.org/cemetery.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E4D71F3DF930A35752C0A9669D8B63

vagabondish.com

the best in life takes time

next Tuesday, February 14th

starting Thursday easy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bossa_nova

oh my darling, tell me when.

hot tip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welded_sculpture

http://clocktowertenants.com/2010/10/same-basic-skillset-of-videogamers.html

betcha didn’t know

The Shake Shack got its start in 2004 in Madison Square Park. It was an immediate success. This branch is the one closest to us, on east 86th Street in Manhattan.

They are all part of restauranteur Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, that includes other famous places like Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke, The Modern and two canteens at the Museum of Modern Art.

But did you know there’s a Shake Shack in Westport Connecticut? Washington DC? Miami Florida? Sarasota Springs, New York? And the Middle East?

What?

The Middle East?

Yes.

There is a Shack Shack in Dubai, in the Mall of the Emirates, and also in Kuwait City, The Avenues.

Check it out:

http://shakeshack.com/> Locations > Middle East

seventeen minutes ago

I-I-I...I’m so in

Apollo Theatre, January 19, 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Theater

family is forever

The St. John Parish Hall of St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church on West 30th Street in Chelsea is a contemporary of our 1886 ClockTower.

Located at 213 West 30th, it was built as housing for young men and was opened April 7, 1893.

Those intervening seven years marked a migration from the pure Romanesque of the building we call home to a more Gothic-influenced style seen here in the dormer woodwork...

...and also hints of the coming Neo Classic era that introduced sandstone detail inserts whereas our detailing is in the earlier terracotta.

And the arches now are pointed, whereas our arches are round.

Still, the red-brick similarities are unmistakable, like 2nd cousins raised in different boroughs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John_the_Baptist's_Church_(Manhattan)#