Going Coastal

First Talking Heads; now a singing building. That was the prospect for the former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on Monday, when state officials disclosed plans for him to transform a landmark Lower Manhattan building into a huge musical instrument, (more…)

You have to pity any architect who appears before the landmarks committee of the Upper East Side’s community board. Packed with amateur preservationists, it is notoriously adverse to anything new. (more…)

After two years of extremely heated debate that included references to ecology, history, geography, and the politics of selling or buying mass-produced cupcakes, the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn voted at the end of last month to discontinue the sale of bottled water. It comes to about 670 gallons of water per week. (more…)

It’s the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge this month and the city is rolling out a nearly week-long celebration through Memorial Day that might cost as much as the $15.5 million spent to build the bridge between 1880 and 1883. (more…)

IKEA, the world’s leading home furnishings retailer, today announced that it has finalized the details for the full offering of transit options available to IKEA Brooklyn customers when the store opens on Wednesday, June 18, 2008.  (more…)

Working Harbor Day is coming up on Sunday 18 May from 10 AM to 6 PM at the South Street Seaport Museum’s Pier 16. (more…)

PUNGENTLY sulfurous waters burble up from the ground alongside a concrete 1970s hospital building in Clifton Springs, N.Y., (more…)

For all the drama of the coup d’escort that brought down Eliot Spitzer and delivered David A. Paterson into the governor’s office, any shifts of power in the state since then have been as noiseless as a fog. (more…)

For nearly two decades some patrons of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s old first-floor restaurant liked to perch at the bar so they could take in the lustrous splendors of its big Art Deco mural. (more…)

Six weeks after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority selected Tishman Speyer Properties to build a vast complex of office towers, apartment buildings and parks over the railyards on the West Side of Manhattan, the deal has fallen apart. (more…)

They may not have as swanky an address as their East Side counterparts, (more…)

When Olafur Eliasson’s NYC Waterfalls start roaring on the East River and New York Harbor this June, cruises like Circle Line will be bringing passengers so close to the spray they’ll need to stock ponchos on board. (more…)

In anticipation of John McCain’s trip to our hometown, the Democratic Party has released this cute map outlining the areas where he has failed to provide for the city’s infrastructure. (Via the Albany Project) (more…)

For 34 years, the Beach Channel High School crew team has rowed on city waters. There is plenty of water around the five boroughs, but getting one’s oars into it can take lots of work. (more…)

Seven weeks before their grand opening, employees in Red Hook, Brooklyn’s IKEA are busy reading directions and assembling furniture. (more…)

It’s happened again, this time in Houston. A Sunday March 30th report in the Houston Chronicle detailed yet another set of mercury tests done on bluefin tuna found in local sushi restaurants. The story promised to expose levels that exceed the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) action levels. But it told only half the tale and omitted key facts. (more…)

Photographs by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Add comment May 5, 2008