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This week, for  my project photographing every neighborhood in New York City, I  visited Kips Bay in Manhattan, home to  Bellevue Hospital, the city institution that is synonymous with madness. For years, if you were a New Yorker suffering from delirium tremens, schizophrenic delusions, or nervous breakdowns, there was a very good chance you would end up in Bellevue, the “endpoint of an urban nightmare” in the city’s collective unconscious. Bellevue has been a “revolving door for legions of writers, artists, and musicians in various states of distress.”

Charles Mingus, Allen Ginsberg, Eugene O’Neill, and Sylvia Plath all spent time at Bellevue. William Burroughs went there after cutting off part of his pinky with poultry shears in an unsuccessful attempt to impress a man. Norman Mailer ended up there when he stabbed his wife after a long night celebrating his recently declared candidacy for mayor.

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Still, the hospital had some of the best doctors in the country and was responsible for an enormous number of medical innovations. Bellevue had the country’s first morgue, maternity ward, and nursing school. It had the country’s first ambulance corps, which consisted of a fleet of horse-drawn stage coaches equipped with stretchers, whiskey, bandages, a stomach pump, and a straitjacket for those of “a demonstrative disposition.”

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The hospital also had the country's first medical photography department, emergency service, and pathology department. It performed the first cesarean section and the first successful operation of the abdomen for a pistol shot. Less successful was its pioneering use of tobacco in the treatment of cholera. When doctors injected a vial of tobacco juice, warmed to 112 degrees, into the arm of an infected woman, things did not end well.  

The neighborhood was also the site of a major British invasion, once home to Bull’s Head Village -the city’s largest cattle market, and served as the launching point for the underground cross-country race that inspired three terrible Burt Reynolds films. 

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30th Street Studios, a recording studio in a converted church, was where some of the most important recordings of all time were captured including Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, Mingus’ Ah Um and Glenn Gould’s The Goldberg Variations.  The church was torn down in 1981.

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To see/hear more about Kips Bay or other neighborhoods in NYC, you can subscribe to (or just read) my newsletter here.

Okay, so here's the story.

I grew up in a small town in East Germany. Mühlhausen in Thuringia - you can google that if you want.

All my life, I only wanted one thing: to move away from there. There were no big sports clubs there, no city centre with cool clothes shops and so on. It just wasn't cool there.

Everyone just wanted to do their job. My parents always said: ‘You need a solid life.’

That was true, as I realised over time, but I still moved away when I was 18.

In 2012, I travelled to New York City – for the first time in my life. The world lay before me and nothing made me think of home – that's what I thought at the time.

Then I stood there. On the Brooklyn Bridge. It was more of a coincidence that made me look at the brass plaque. And there I read the name John A. Roebling.

Roebling, Roebling, Roebling – that was the name of my school, I thought.

I ran back to Manhattan as fast as I could and, without ordering a coffee, sat down in a corner of the Starbucks on Park Row - you had to know where you could get quick and cheap internet.

And then I read it: Johann August Röbling (his German spelling) - born in Mühlhausen / Thuringia in 1806 - was the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge.

That's how small this damn world can be. Since then, I have walked across the bridge many times and have fondly remembered my home.

Reddit first timer so I hope im doing this right - im looking for anyone that may remember a steakhouse located in Brooklyn in the 1960s that was owned by Jim McMullen and Merv Griffin - the building today is a bank. My father used to work at the restaurant and it would make his 79th birthday if I could get the name of it. Thank you for any leads!!

The first building to be erected on Fifth Avenue in New York was probably Henry Brevoort's (a successful farmer) mansion, which was built around 1834. At that time, Fifth Avenue was still an undeveloped and underdeveloped area, but it soon became a prestigious street for wealthy New York families. Henry Brevoort was a wealthy landowner and prominent figure in the city whose property was located at the intersection of today's Fifth Avenue and 9th Street.

In the 19th century, Fifth Avenue began its rise to become a famous boulevard with many villas and mansions built there by wealthy New Yorkers. The street soon became synonymous with wealth and elegance in Manhattan.

Ill be in nyc in a few days. Can someone recommend a history tour ?

Someone made an Arcgis site for Pittsburgh which has historical city maps and aerial photography in layers overlaid onto a modern satellite image. (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=63f24d1466f24695bf9dfc5bf6828126)

I was wondering if anyone knows of any similar resource for NYC/Manhattan? Based on Google searches I'm guessing not (except for the 1836 one) but thought I'd ask.