Aerial view of New York City in 1963
Inside the New York Public Library’s Last, Secret Apartments
When these libraries were built, about a century ago, they needed people to take care of them. Andrew Carnegie had given New York $5.2 million, worth well over $100 million today, to create a city-wide system of library branches, and these buildings, the Carnegie libraries, were heated by coal. Each had a custodian, who was tasked with keeping those fires burning and who lived in the library, often with his family. “The family mantra was: Don’t let that furnace go out,” one woman who grew up in a library told the New York Times.
But since the ‘70s and '80s, when the coal furnaces started being upgraded and library custodians began retiring, those apartments have been emptying out, and the idyll of living in a library has disappeared. Many of the apartments have vanished, too, absorbed, through renovations for more modern uses, back into the buildings. Today there are just 13 library apartments left in the New York Public Library system.
New York is increasingly a target of threats to security. In recognition of this threat, the New York Crossings Project will integrate emerging technologies into the security design of bridges and tunnels across the state, deploying additional personnel and equipment. At each crossing, and at structurally sensitive points on bridges and tunnels, advanced cameras and sensors will be installed to read license plates and test emerging facial recognition software and equipment. These technologies will be applied across airports and transit hubs – including the Penn-Farley Complex – to ultimately develop one system-wide plan.
maker faire nyc at the new york hall of science, 2016-10-01
@vintagegeekculture just reminded me of rad posts about the 1964 New York World’s Fair that Star Trek production artist Doug Drexler made a few years back on his, sadly now-defunct, blog:
From design influences to homages (even Iron Man 2′s was nice), the legacy of the 1964 World’s Fair in particular is a point of historical pride for me as a Queens transplant.
kreuzaderny