Google is taking its popular site YouTube to NYC’s Guggenheim Museum.  The search company will set up shop in the Guggenheim’s main atrium with all sorts of TV and video displays promoting the finalists from a recent promotion they ran.

The exhibition, set for October, will showcase videos from as many as 20 finalists of YouTube Play, a contest for graphic artists and users of Googles GOOG video site. A celebrity jury that includes Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami and The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky will wade through about 200 videos whittled down from thousands submitted in July.

The goal of this initiative is to try to re-position YouTube as a site/service that can cater to a more upscale, arts driven clientele and move it beyond the perception that its content is, er, lowbrow.

Back in the day, Colonnade Row was a top address for the guilded age wealthy of NYC. However, in the infinite wisdom of other NYC real estate moves, John Wannamaker tore down five of the facades of this beautiful architectural landmark to put up one of his warehouses. And since that infamous decision, the fate of these ruins have remained a mystery. That is, unless you went to the Delbarton School in Morristown, NJ:

In the 1890s the Philadelphia dry goods magnate John Wanamaker, who had taken over the old A. T. Stewart store on Broadway and Eighth Street, acquired the southerly five houses of Colonnade Row. In 1902, or perhaps 1903, he demolished his properties.

Two decades later, Delbarton, the country house of the banker Luther Kountze in Morristown, N.J., came to be owned by a Benedictine monastery, St. Mary’s Abbey, which also operates the Delbarton School.

Generations of students wandered into the woods for nonacademic purposes, encountering a mysterious group of tumbled Corinthian capitals, column drums, wreaths and cornices that came to be known as the Lost City.

The archivist of Delbarton was always curious about these ruins in the forest behind the school, and it was a recent and amazingly simple Google search that solved the mystery.

In a chance encounter with a garden designer, Marta McDowell of Chatham, N.J., Father Benet mentioned his continuing quest. Within a day or two, he recalls, she had typed into Google the search string “wanamaker Corinthian demolition,” raising a March 2008 article in Period Homes magazine by the classical architect Thomas Gordon Smith on the surviving houses of Colonnade Row — with images that match exactly the pieces of Delbarton’s Lost City. Bingo.

As it happens Mr. Smith, a professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame, has for years been studying Colonnade Row, making measured drawings of the surviving houses and interiors. He used them as an inspiration in designing the 2007 Classical Galleries in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

When he learned of the Delbarton trove, he was in Morristown in a week, like an Egyptologist who has found out that there is another chamber in King Tut’s Tomb.

Doing a simple search on Google today yields a Flickr Photo Set from May of this year that also connects these dots, so while this mystery is profiled in the NY Times today, it’s really been in the public domain for about 4 months now.

Old Colonnade Row Photo courtesy Curator of Shit

As seen at the NYC Subway Museum in Brooklyn, NY

Posted via email from Stephen’s Posterous

The first NYC based showroom for Tesla Cars opened yesterday in a former art gallery in Chelsea. Those look like very cool cars. I look forward to taking a little jaunt up to Chelsea to check it out!

The mean streets of New York are going to show their softer side in the future. The Mayor’s office released a design manual for NY city streets, including visuals of how they may look “down the road”.   We are already seeing these sorts of changes in NYC with the recent additions of seating areas along Broadway in Mid Town, and the additions of bike lanes on 7th Avenue downtown.    While its great that NYC is beautifying its streets, this does once again chip away at the edgy, unique qualities of NYC and move it that much closer to it being a big mall.

Now I am hardly a NY baseball fan, and the thought of both NY baseball teams getting new stadiums and lots more revenue opportunities does not sit well with me, but these are some amazing photos of the construction of the two new baseball stadiums here in the NY metro area.

Citi Field – NY Mets
New Yankee Stadium – NY Yankees

Today is just a sad day. There is no other way to describe it. I was not going to write anything today. But watching all the tributes on TV really hit home.

Five years ago, I was sitting in a conference room at Lycos in Waltham, MA about to embark on a full day’s worth of mind-numbingly boring training on an irrelevant subject I can not for the life of me remember. Soon after the session started, the instructor came in and informed the class that the US was under attack. We all went into another conference room and watched the day unfold in stunning reality.

I did not want to be at work. I went home to be with my wife and my then 2 month old daughter Rebecca. I sat in front of the TV and just stared in stunned disbelief. The rest of the week and the rest of the year was just a blur, a surreal and sobering time.

To this day, it still so hard to comprehend. The images looked like they were from a bad terror movie. But they weren’t. I can not begin to imagine what it was like that day in Lower Manhattan. Five years later, I now work in Lower Manhattan, about 200 yards from the big hole in the ground that is “Ground Zero”. People I work with were there that day. I don’t mention it unless they bring it up. And even then, its awkward. I walk past “Ground Zero” every day as I go to and from work, and do my best not to dwell on what happened at that site. Because when I do, it is just too overwhelming. And I did not even lose a close relative, a close friend, or a loved one.

I don’t know what it was, what it is, like to lose a loved one in such a horrid manner. I don’t know what its like to have to rebuild your life after such loss. All I can do is provide my support and encouragement to those that were directly impacted by that day. Their strength is humbling.

One day, I hope soon, the idiot politicians will figure out what to build at that site, and maybe, just maybe, the collective “we” will be able to have some minor sense of symbolic closure.

Today is a sad day.

Seen outside a bar in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen/Clinton neighborhood today:

Fixed Income Special
8AM-4PM Pabst’s Blue Ribbon – $1.25

If you have to ask wether the deal was for cans or bottles, then you just don’t know… PBR at 8AM…now that’s dedication. I would have taken a photo but I was driving.

Found this on Diggnation…a Google Maps version of the New York City Subway system. You can plot out where is the closest subway stop to any address in NYC. Pretty slick!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Ellis Island with my co-workers as part of an afternoon away from the office. It was really interesting to visit Ellis Island and see all the island in its restored state. For a long time, Ellis Island was in disrepair until the state of NY took over and restored this very historic part of our country’s history.

 

Every day when I commute home from work, the bus I take drives past some apartments that overlook the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Under one of the apartment windows is a “John Kerry for President” banner. At first, it was a pretty basic cardboard banner. But recently, they upgraded to a nylon type banner. And it seems that this apartment owner has been talking to their neighbors as now other apartments have election paraphernalia in and outside of their windows (all Kerry supporters). If Mr. Kerry is funding this effort, I do have to say that it is pretty impressive banner positioning. He gets a captive audience as they battle traffic into the Holland Tunnel.

On August 3rd, I started my new job at American Express at the HQ in NYC. Being that we are situated in East Brunswick, NJ at present, this means that I am now commuting into NYC on a daily basis. Overall, the commute is not that bad mainly because Suburban Transit has bus service to downtown Manhattan, saving a good 20-30 minutes off my commute since I don’t have to deal with Port Authority, and the Subway.

And in these short few weeks, my iPod has already paid for itself. It is a lifesaver for the commute as I just plug into my tunes and I am on my way. The biggest problem now is just finding the time to load up more songs!!

If you build it, he will come.

I have also been able to crank through the book Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella (This is the book that the movie Field of Dreams is based on. If you are a fan of Field of Dreams, then I would highly recommend reading the book. Like any other book-to-movie story, the movie had to remove a ton of details and several characters that were pretty important to the original story). I am currently working on What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson. Not sure what books to take on next but I will figure that out in short order. Any suggestions?

The past few weeks have been amazingly crazy. The main reason for the craziness is that I was offered, and I accepted, a job at America Online. I will be working on their AOL Instant Messenger product as a Senior Product Manager, focusing primarily on rolling out additional consumer services and features to the AIM user base. The source of the craziness is not the job, but the fact that we will be moving to Northern Virginia, as the job is located at the AOL headquarters in Dulles, VA. In the end, the opportunity was just too interesting for me to pass by. It was also obvious that, even with the recent troubles from the AOL-Time Warner merger, AOL is just a great company that seems to really focus on their employees. Neither my wife nor I have ever lived south of New Jersey, so this is going to be quite a lifestyle change from what we are used to. I think it will be a good move for my family once the dust settles. I look forward to getting started with this new chapter in my career, and I am excited to explore the Washington DC and Northern VA area!