Time flies: Google launched Maps 10 years ago. To celebrate, the company hooked us up with information about some New York City “insider destinations” that even long-time New York City residents might not know about.
Don’t live in the city? Don’t worry. Live vicariously by scoping each destination on Maps.
In Paley Park On Madison Avenue, five slabs from the former Berlin wall are decorated by artists Thierry Noir and Kiddy Citny. The eastern side remains blanks.
Where: Paley Park
Unassuming on a block of brownstones hides the MTA’s undercover Brooklyn brownstone, a secret emergency subway exit is used to ventilate subway lines.
Where: 58 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn
Crimson Beech, the only house in New York City designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, wasn’t fully completed before he died.
Where: 48 Manor Ct, Staten Island
In Soho, you’ll find the “Subway Map Floating on a NY Sidewalk,” a piece by Francoise Schein created with brass lines and lights. It represents the relationship between the rights of man and underground trains.
Where: 110 Greene Street
In 1927, Boston patriarch Joseph Patrick Kennedy moved his family from Massachusetts to Riverdale, a nice neighborhood in the Bronx. John Kennedy, the future US president, attended Riverdale Country School from 5th through 7th grade.
Where: 5040 Independence Ave, Bronx
The Green-Wood cemetery was founded in 1838 and was once a tourist attraction that rivaled Niagara Falls. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Boss Tweed, and Leonard Bernstein are all buried there.
Where: 500 25th Street, Brooklyn
You’ll find the “literary lighthouse” under George Washington Bridge, made famous by the 1942 children’s book “The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.”
Where: Fort Washington Park
The Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House is the oldest structure in New York — built way back in 1652. It is the oldest “Dutch saltbox frame house” in America.
Where: 5911 Ditmas Ave, Brooklyn
You can still visit the apartment featured in “The Odd Couple” — a television show about two divorced men living together in New York City.
Where: 1049 Park Avenue
Plymouth Church was a stop on the Underground Railroad, the network of people who helped slaves escape to the North. People called it “Grand Depot,” and slaves may have hidden in the church’s tunnel-like basement.
Where: 80 Hicks Street, Brooklyn
The speakeasy where Oscar Wilde used to throw ’em back has been a haunt for artists and literary figures since 1870, when it was called the Hotel Griffou. Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Thomas A. Janvier drank there too.
Where: West 9th Street
The birthplace of rap
Where: 1520 Sedgwick Ave, Bronx
“This is the spot where DJ Kool Herc is credited with helping to start hip-hop and rap music at a house show on August 11, 1973.”
Alphabet City’s “Squatter’s Paradise”
Where: 155 Avenue C
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Alphabet City was a prime area for squatters after landlords left the old buildings. “C-Squat is one of the dozen remaining houses left on the Lower East Side and was historically one of the most anarchic. The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Spaces marks the front.”
