My earlier post on the hidden subway station in New York was very popular, so I decided to do another expanded version of secret locations for your interest. I found nycgo.com and think you will like it:
- New Yorkers love to think they know everything about their city—where to find the best street-meat cart, how to avoid paying full price at museums, what route to take to skip traffic down Broadway. But New York City can reveal new treasures to even its most grizzled veterans. Beyond the city where we work, eat, play and commute every day lies a hidden New York: mysterious, forgotten, abandoned or just overlooked. We’ve compiled a list of New York City’s coolest secret spots, ones you’re not likely to read about in any guidebooks. You’ll just have to get out there and discover them for yourself. —Anna Balkrishna
- Another underground masterpiece is even more secretive: The Underbelly Project is a clandestine “gallery” consisting of street art installed on the walls of an abandoned subway station, the whereabouts of which had been unknown to everyone but the artists and the attendees of the gallery’s one and only open night (which happened over the summer of 2010). Though rumors have circulated that the station is above the G train’s Broadway stop in Williamsburg, don’t try to see for yourself—not only is it dark and dangerous, but it is also illegal; there have been at least 20 arrests of trespassers trying to visit the space. —Erin O’Hara
Photo: Alex Lopez
Whispering Gallery in Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal has many secrets (just for starters: Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his own underground passageway that led to the Waldorf=Astoria hotel), but the Whispering Gallery is its most romantic. This unmarked archway, located in front of the Oyster Bar & Restaurant, possesses a mystifying acoustic property: when two people stand at diagonal arches and whisper, they can hear each other’s voices “telegraphed” from across the way. According to rumor, jazz legend Charles Mingus liked to play under the arches. Today, though, the Whispering Gallery is more popular for murmured marriage proposals. Just don’t confess anything that you don’t want strangers to overhear! —AB
Photo: Timothy Vogel (via Flickr)
Rooftop Gardens at Rockefeller Center
Some of the most beautiful gardens in New York are hidden—hundreds of feet above the ground. Rockefeller Center maintains five spectacular roof gardens originally designed by English landscaper Ralph Hancock between 1933 and 1936. The gardens have been closed since 1938, but three can be spied from the Top of the Rock observation deck. And there’s a chance you’ve seen at least one close up: the garden atop the British Empire Building appears in a scene from the 2002 filmSpider-Man. —AB
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Photo: Michael Bodycomb
Bowling Alley at the Frick Collection
The Frick Collection, a mansion on the Upper East Side formerly owned by 19th-century industrialist Henry Clay Frick, is an architectural beauty in its own right. But did you know that the building also contains an underground bowling alley? Commissioned by Frick in 1914, the antique alley is a real tycoon’s playground, with mahogany-paneled walls, immaculate pine-and-maple lanes and a custom-made set of balls that remain in working order. After Frick’s death in 1919, the bowling alley was abandoned (except briefly, when it served as a library storage space in the 1920s). The Frick Collection restored the alley to its former glory in 1997 but keeps it under tight lock and key. —AB
Photo: Alex Lopez
Berlin Wall Remnants in Paley Park
Nestled in a small Midtown plaza at 520 Madison Avenue is an unexpected piece of history. Five sections of the Berlin Wall, in total measuring 12 feet high and 20 feet long, have been on display here since 1990. The wall’s western-facing side is covered with dazzling work by German artists Thierry Noir and Kiddy Citny. The eastern side, meanwhile, remains a blank slab of concrete—a reminder of the oppressive political regime in the former East Germany. At first glance, this artifact appears to be just another public mural; it goes largely unnoticed by the office workers who sit in the park on their lunch break.—AB
Photo: Alex Lopez
Cemetery Behind the Bowery Hotel
Bowery Hotel guests who gaze through the lobby’s back window often admire the tranquil green lawn located behind the building. But few realize that they’re actually glimpsing a hidden cemetery. (Part of the confusion: the deceased are interred in underground marble vaults marked by plaques, not tombstones.) Founded in 1830, the New York Marble Cemetery, located in what is now the East Village, is the City’s oldest nondenominational public burial ground—and also one of the hardest to find. The cemetery gate is located at the end of a narrow alley leading from Second Avenue; it’s unlocked to visitors only for a few hours on the fourth Sunday of each month from April to October. —AB
Photo: Kaitlyn Tikkun (via Flickr)
Staten Island Boat Graveyard
One of the spookiest places in town is the Staten Island Boat Graveyard. Located far from the urban bustle in Rossville, Staten Island, this swampy patch of the Arthur Kill Road waterway is the final resting place for dozens of rusting, decomposing and abandoned boats of all sizes. The rotting ship hulls, protruding from the watery depths, are oddly majestic and beautiful (but also kind of gross; we recommend wearing long pants, not shorts, and sturdy shoes if you go). The gravesite can be found via a makeshift path off Arthur Kill Road near Rossville Avenue, about 13 miles by bike or car from the ferry terminal. It’s a truly forgotten corner of the City. —AB
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Photo: Malcolm Brown
Old Atlantic Avenue Subway Tunnel
For more than a century, the lost Atlantic Avenue subway tunnel in Brooklyn was a thing of legend: The New York Times printed a story about tunnel-dwelling pirates in 1893, and sci-fi author H.P. Lovecraft portrayed it as a vampire den in a 1927 short story. The tunnel’s actual history is not so fanciful but still interesting: Cornelius Vanderbilt built it in 1844 to reroute Long Island Rail Road trains that were accidentally mowing down pedestrians. The tunnel was abandoned in 1861 and only rediscovered in 1980. (A steam engine is reputedly still buried somewhere inside.) At one point, New Yorkers and visitors could see the tunnel for themselves, but tours of the underground space are no longer available. —AB
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Photo: Alex Lopez
Saint Augustine’s Episcopal Church Slave Galleries
Within the simple walls of Saint Augustine’s Episcopal Church on the Lower East Side lies an unlikely reminder of racial segregation in New York. Cramped staircases lead to two concealed rooms, located behind the balcony, where African-American worshippers could hear church services without being seen. The rooms were informally known as the “slave gallery,” even though slavery was outlawed in New York by the time they were built in 1828. Fugitive 19th-century politician Boss Tweed reportedly hid in the gallery to attend his mother’s funeral. Ignored and branded for decades as a shameful part of Saint Augustine’s past, the space was recently restored and opened to the public in 2009. —AB
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Photo: John Marshall Mantel
Cold War Bomb Shelter in the Brooklyn Bridge
In 2006, City inspectors stumbled upon a hidden chamber inside theBrooklyn Bridge, located just under the bridge’s Lower Manhattan entrance ramp. The room was stockpiled with decades-old military provisions for surviving a nuclear bomb attack: blankets, medicine, water containers and around 352,000 crackers. Supply boxes stamped with the dates 1957 and 1962 indicate that the bunker was used during the height of the Cold War, then later sealed up and forgotten. For security reasons, City officials have kept the exact location of the chamber a secret—most of the 150,000 pedestrians who cross the bridge each day have no idea that it even exists. —ABAnd that’s not the only secret space inside the belly of the bridge; located within its base, a series of vast rooms known as the Brooklyn Anchorage was used for music and theater performances, readings and art exhibitions for nearly 20 years. Each of the eight impressive rooms has brick walls and a 50-foot-high ceiling. The space was closed for business after 9/11 for security reasons and, unfortunately, will not be open again anytime soon. —EO
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Photo: Mira John (via Flickr)
Tunnels Under Columbia
Below Columbia University‘s Morningside Heights campus, a series of underground tunnels connects various school buildings. Tunnels below Buell Hall are just a few feet wide and are thought to date back to the insane asylum that once sat in its place, while the tunnels below Pupin Hall were a meeting place for scientists during the beginning stages of the Manhattan Project. While not entirely off-limits—students and faculty are technically permitted to use some of the tunnels to travel between buildings—security for the forbidden tunnels has increased in recent years in response to rogue tunnel explorers. Still, Columbia’s tunnels are everything a City secret aspires to be: dark, difficult to find and brimming with history. —EO
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Photo: Sony Stark (via Flickr)
Pomander Walk
Twenty-seven buildings resembling Tudor homes with colorful doors, shutters and timber frames grace this gated street that’s tucked away on the Upper West Side, nearly completely out of view to passersby. Originally conceived as a temporary property that was to be knocked down and replaced with a hotel, Pomander Walk—which is modeled after an old London street and the set of a stage play, both of the same name—earned landmark status in 1982. Surrounded by buildings that tower hundreds of feet above its rooftops, this pedestrian-only lane of residences is a peaceful respite from the people and cars that hustle and bustle past its wrought-iron gates every day, unaware of the sanctuary within. You can’t access the hidden haven unless you have a key or know someone who does, but the picturesque spot is still worth a peek through the gate. —EO
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Photo: Curious Expeditions (via Flickr)
Pneumatic Tubes
Pneumatic tubes are a lingering ghost of New York’s past. Once upon a time, they were used to shuttle mail (and, on one occasion in the late 19th century, a cat—don’t worry, it survived) around the City and often across the Brooklyn Bridge. Nowadays they’re scarce, but you can still see them in action if you know where to look. At the New York Public Library, slips of paper bearing book requests are still shot via tube seven floors down to the stacks, where the desired book is found and sent up on a Ferris wheel–type apparatus. Meanwhile, Roosevelt Island, a small residential isle between Manhattan and Queens in the East River, uses extra-large pneumatic tubes to transport all of its garbage directly from buildings to the transfer facility, where it’s automatically separated and compacted for pickup. —EO
Michael Bradley - Time Traveler 