Undiscovered New York: Roosevelt Island

by Jeremy Kressmann on

The average visitor to New York has already seen Roosevelt Island. Or rather, they’ve seen it from a distance. You know that crazy island sitting in the middle of the East River across from Midtown? The one with the tram ride that lets you use your public transit card? Everyone knows it’s there, but not nearly as many make the effort to go for a visit. You know what? Let them miss out. A five-minute ride in an alpine-style gondola to arrive at one of the city’s least-trafficked destinations, boasting spooky abandoned hospitals, lush walking trails, quirky architecture and million-dollar views of Manhattan.

Ironically, from the 1820’s until the 1950’s most people on Roosevelt Island weren’t there for the scenery: they were trying desperately to get away. After the Blackwells sold their private island to the city in 1828, it was renamed Welfare Island and given a very different purpose as home to the city’s most notorious prisons, insane asylums and smallpox hospitals. Welfare Island was for many years a forbidden and isolated place, with a reputation that kept the curious at bay.

Want to learn more about this strange island’s history? Ready to leave your assumptions behind? Join Undiscovered New York as we investigate Roosevelt Island. Click below for what we found.The Tram Ride
Visiting Roosevelt Island doesn’t require any special boat trips. To get there, all you need is a New York City metrocard. By far the most popular way to travel is the Roosevelt Island Tramway. You can pick up the tramway at 59th Street and Second Avenue, with trips leaving every 15 minutes or so.

As the Swiss-engineered gondolas briskly lift you hundreds of feet above Midtown Manhattan, you’ll be treated to bird’s eye views of the 59th Street Bridge, the East River and the Manhattan skyline. Just 5 minutes or so later and you’re back on the ground, ready to explore Roosevelt Island. Afraid of heights? Travelers can also take the F Train to the Roosevelt Island stop.

Exploring the Smallpox Hospital
Get off the Tramway and head South towards Roosevelt Island’s premier attraction, the ruins of the 19th Century Smallpox hospital. This Gothic Revival hospital was first constructed in the 1850’s to help quarantine patients suffering from this particularly contagious diseases. More than 150 years later, the stone structure lays in ruins, empty windows whistling with the ghosts of lonely river breezes. A short walk away is the island’s empty southern tip offering visitors unbroken views of nearby Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens along the East River. This proverbial waterway, always the butt of New Yorker jokes, never looked so grand.

The Blackwell House and Octagon
Head back North the way you came. As you walk, make sure to enjoy the picturesque views of Manhattan’s UN Headquarters and Chrysler Building towering above you just across the river. We’re heading towards The Octagon, a famous architectural landmark on the Island’s northern edge. Take your time – this walk will take you about 20-30 minutes, bringing you through the island’s center.

About 15 minutes north is the Blackwell House, a remnant of the Island’s history as a private farm. Built in the late 1700’s, it is the oldest surviving structure on the island. The structure predates Roosevelt Island’s purchase by the city and its conversion to a large welfare complex of prisons and hospitals.

Finally as you continue your stroll, you’ll come to The Octagon, another of the Island’s most famous structures. Like many of the buildings on Roosevelt Island, this intriguing landmark started life as the entrance to a lunatic asylum opened in the 1840’s. Today you’d have to be crazy to turn down one of the building’s luxury residences, as it’s been turned into upscale condominiums. How times change.

Everglades to be put back on U.N. endangered list?

by Kraig Becker on

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is meeting with a task force charged with overseeing the restoration of the Florida Everglades this week. He intends to tell them that the Obama administration will ask the United Nations World Heritage Committee to put the national park back on its endangered list when the committee meet in Spain this week.

Two years ago, in what has been viewed as a controversial decision, the Bush administration requested that the U.N. remove the Everglades from the list. At the time, the Department of the Interior defended the decision by citing progress being made in protecting the region and the species that lived there, despite the fact that the restoration program had failed to meet milestones, and was billions over budget.

The current administration believes restoring the Everglades National Park to the list of endangered places will send a strong signal to environmentalists that they are committed to the protecting the environment. If restored to the list, the park will join the Galapagos Islands, the Old City of Jerusalem and Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley as the other World Heritage Sites considered to be in danger. The Everglades were originally added to the list back in 1993 when the area was damaged by Hurricane Andrew and the effects of prolonged exposure to water pollution became known.

Despite the issues effecting the park, the Everglades remains a popular tourist destination. There are more than 156 miles of canoe/kayak and hiking trails, with 47 designated campsites, inside the 2500 square miles of subtropical forest that define the parks boundaries. The Park Service reports that over one million visitors experience the Everglades each year.

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UNESCO adds sites to World Heritage list, and drops one too

by Sean McLachlan on

The UNESCO World Heritage List has just gotten a lot longer. Officials meeting for the 33rd session of the World Heritage Committee have added more than two dozen sites of great cultural, historical, or natural value to the list, and they’re considering more.

Among the new entries are an aqueduct in Britain, a stately home in Belgium, and a sacred Buddhist mountain dotted with monasteries in China.

Two lesser-visited countries got sites onto the list. The ruins of Loropéni in Burkina Faso, a massive thousand-year-old fort that guarded the Saharan gold trade, was added, as well as Cape Verde’s Cidade Velha, a 15th century Portuguese colony that was the first major station for the transatlantic slave trade. Cidade Velha includes a fort, ruins of houses, and a grand cathedral, the slave traders being devout Christians.

There have been some losers too. Several sites have been moved to the endangered list, and the Germany’s Dresden Elbe river valley was dropped from the list entirely after “developers” put a four-lane highway through it. Ironically, the old city of Dresden was Germany’s most historic city, but was leveled by Allied bombing during World War Two. The nearby historic landscape dotted with castles and palaces escaped damage, but now the Germans have destroyed that themselves. Nice going, guys.

UNESCO’s website is posting up-to-date information on new additions and changes.

Trivia questions: What does UNESCO stand for? And what World Heritage site is pictured above? Click “Read More” to find out.

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1. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

2. That Chomsi Stupa, Mount Phu Shi, Luang Prabang, Laos. This center for Buddhist learning contains a giant gold statue of the Buddha and was a religious center for the first capital of Laos when it was built in 1804. It was designated a World Heritage Site in 1995.

Undiscovered New York: King of Corona Park

by Jeremy Kressmann on

It’s good to be the king. All the world lies before your gaze, waiting to be discovered. You entertain visitors from far-away lands. Someone is ready with refreshments whenever you desire. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Then we suggest on your next trip to New York, you stop in Queens, home to an area little-known to tourists called Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Corona Park is staring New York visitors in the face every time they visit, yet most don’t even know it. Ever been to Shea Stadium or to the National Tennis Center for the U.S. Open? Corona Park is literally across the street. Caught a flight at LaGuardia Airport? Those crazy looking towers you saw on the highway are part of Corona Park.

Yet this little known attraction is jam-packed with enough crazy monuments, open green space and hidden Summer fun to ensure the royal treatment for just about any visitor. This is an area, after all, that’s been home to two World’s Fairs: one in 1939-40 and another in 1964-65. Did we also mention it was the temporary home for the United Nations from 1946 to 1950? AND it has two museums and its own zoo? To top it all off, Corona Park is increasingly an area that’s home to a diverse patchwork of immigrant communities, each showcasing its own unique culinary pride – who could forget to mention the self-proclaimed “King” of Lemon Ice?

Have you ever wanted to feel like king for the day? This week is your chance. Come along as Undiscovered New York takes you inside the amazing ruins, interesting museums and lush greenery of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
New York State Pavillion and Unisphere
Two giant landmarks dominate visitors’ view of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park: the New York Pavillion and The Unisphere, both remnants of the 1964-65 World’s Fair. It was one of the largest World Fairs ever organized, boasting an early version of Disney’s famous “It’s a Small World” ride, a showcase of Michelangelo’s Pieta on loan from Italy, and a life-sized robotic Abraham Lincoln among its exhibits.

Though the exhibits have long since packed up and been moved back to Italy and Orlando, you can still get a sense of the site’s greatness and scale. The giant Unisphere rises 140 above the park, still a popular meeting place for park explorers and local skateboarders. Looming nearby is the ominous New York State Pavillion. The modernist structure was designed as a showpiece of local culture, including a huge mosaic map of the state of New York, three observation towers and a theater called “The Circarama,” showing a 360 degree film. Today the entire structure sits decayed and rusting, a lonely ghost of a future that never came to pass. Haunting and beautiful.

Museums, Zoos and Halls of Science
Flushing Meadows-Corona Park isn’t just a place to dig up the glories of the past. It’s also the site of some great Queens-based culture. Onsite at the park are great local institutions like the Queens Museum of Art. The museum, which was the temporary home of the United Nations from 1946-50, houses works of art by Salvador Dali as well as an amazing Panorama of the City of New York composed of over 890,000 scale-size buildings.

If you have any kids, make sure to stop by the New York Hall of Science. In addition to two huge rockets donated by the U.S. Space program, the museum contains around 400 hands on exhibits focusing on physics, chemistry and biology. After all that if you’re still looking for things to do, check out the Queens Zoo featuring a collection of animals native to North America and a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller.

The Lemon Ice King of Corona
Word has spread far and wide of Queens’ reputation for delicious, unique food. In addition to an amazing selection of delicacies from across South America, Corona Park also boasts an establishment better known as the Lemon Ice King of Corona. The famed Benfaremo Family, who started their local business more than 60 years ago, churns out the most refreshing Italian Ices this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Each paper cup is scooped full of one of the Lemon Ice King’s 30 plus flavors, each made with real pieces of fruit. It’s a refreshing treat to finish any hot summer day, one that is best enjoyed on a bench in the nearby park watching old gentlemen hurl Bocce on the local court. It’s exactly the kind of unique New York experience you’ll find in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park – a wealth of options fit for a king.

U.N. Predicts Substantial Drop in International Tourism for 2009

by Kraig Becker on

The United Nations has released a report indicating that they expect global tourism to decline in 2009 thanks to deteriorating economic conditions according to this story at MSNBC.

Overall, the international tourism market is expected drop as much as two to five percent, with Europe taking the biggest hit of all. But the highly diversified economies there are likely to weather the storm far better than smaller countries that are more dependent on tourism to fuel their own economy.

In 2008, international travel actually rose by two percent, but the second half the year saw a steep decline as the global economic crisis spread. That growth is in sharp contrast to the previous four year when growth averaged more than seven percent.

Still, Talib Rifai, the Secretary General for the U.N.’s World Tourism Organization, says that this is not a crisis for the tourism industry per se, but instead reflects the general economic trends from around the world. He says that the interest in travel is still very strong, but those who would generally be taking an international vacation are electing to save their money or take trips closer to home.

For those still intending to travel abroad however, this means travel deals should be abundent throughout the year, and likely into 2010 as well. A competitive travel market is a boon for travelers, so take advantage of the deals while you can.