2nd Day of OHNY

Sunday morning we departed for the Upper West Side to inspect a rooftop garden, called "Lotus Garden", open only during OHNY. On the top of a parking garage (left) we found a lush and peaceful oasis of perennials and trees - not your usual "community garden" with veggie beds and few decorative plants. There was a gold fish pond (below) and some seating space, around 20 plots are taken care of by different neighbors.

 By subway we got to lower Manhattan with Trinity Church (below) with its magnificent colored windows, and through Wall Street with its Stock Exchange (below) to Federal Hall. This National Monument is surrounded by scaffoldings for a long time (they say it'll be renovated one day), but it's open to the public and shows interesting historical exhibitions.

When the Constitution was ratified in 1788, New York remained the national capital. George Washington was inaugurated here as the  first President on April 30, 1789. When the capital moved to Philadelphia in 1790, the building housed city government. 1812 the building was demolished and a new one on the site, built as a Customs House, opened in 1842. In 1862, Customs moved to 55 Wall Street, and nowadays Federal Hall became the US Sub-Treasury.

Out to Brooklyn's Navy Yard next, not far away from the start of the Brooklyn Bridge: Kings County Distillery is located in the old military buildings. They were offering tours and tastings and we took part. Excellent whiskeys, mostly Bourbons!

The photo above shows murals in the Navy Yard area, nearby the distillery, the photo below was shot I took from the subway station "in the middle of nowhere", at Broadway Junction in East New York (Brooklyn). We went there to see another OHNY sight: The Noble Signs company with its museum of historic signage.

Back to the "city" (Manhattan) by train after this tour through the sign museum (and production site).

,,, and on we went to the Center of Book Arts, where they showed the printing and book designing process:

 

After a full day of sightseeing and spending a lot of time on trains since on weekends most express trains don't run because of construction work, we  had the great pleasure in the evening to attend an intimate house concert in our friends Mark & Beth' house (in their apartment, while we stay on 2nd and 3rd floor). House guests are always welcome when they arrange their concerts four times a year. "Barnaby Bright" was playing Americana music for around 45 people, highly professional, and, in the break, good food - smoked fish and pastrami - was served. It's been a delightful evening.