EC New York English Language School

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan in New York, New York, is a center for the collection, preservation, study, and display of contemporary hand-made objects in a variety of media, including: clay, glass, metal, fiber, and wood. It accommodates 300,000 visitors per year, however, touring exhibitions, outreach efforts, and off-site programs effectively double that audience.
The museum was founded in 1956 by philanthropist Aileen Osborn Webb, as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. In 1986, it relocated to 40 West 53rd Street and was renamed the American Craft Museum. In 2002 it changed its name again to the Museum of Arts and Design. In 2008, the museum moved to 2 Columbus Circle.
The new location, with more than 54,000 square feet (5,000 m2), more than tripled the size of the Museum’s former space. It includes: four floors of exhibition galleries for works by established and emerging artists; a 150-seat auditorium in which the museum plans to feature lectures, films, and performances; and a restaurant. It also includes a Center for the Study of Jewelry, and an Education Center that offers multi-media access to primary source material, hands-on classrooms for students, and three artists-in-residence studios.
However, the museum’s plans to radically alter the building’s original design by Edward Durell Stone touched off a preservation battle joined by Tom Wolfe, Chuck Close, Frank Stella, Robert A. M. Stern, Columbia art history department chairman Barry Bergdoll, New York Times architecture critics Herbert Muschamp and Nicolai Ouroussoff, urbanist scholar Witold Rybczynski, among others. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Ada Louise Huxtable, and others, however, supported the redevelopment of a long neglected site.
The museum’s new location was developed by Brad Cloepfil and his Portland, Oregon-based firm Allied Works Architecture. The redesigned building replaced the original white Vermont Marble with a glazed terra-cotta and glass facade. Its nacreous ceramic exterior is said to change color at different viewing angles.
Against Cloepfil’s wishes, the museum’s board and its director, Holly Hotchner, ordered that a band of windows be added to the building’s top floor. This added a horizontal strip which connected a pair of vertical bands to create the shape of a letter H. Another vertical band on the western side of the building, reads as an I. Of the addition to the word “HI” to his design, Cloepfil said that “he has never felt more violated in any way.”
The architecture critic for the LA Times, Christopher Hawthorne, wrote:
It’s as if Stone, his architecture muffled and disregarded by Cloepfil, MAD and the city of New York, managed to have the last word on the preservation controversy, popping up from beyond the grave to say hello. The fact that the word in question is unpretentious and loosely informal makes it deliciously Stone-like, and allows it to undermine the severity and cold perfectionism of Cloepfil’s exterior all the more.

An article in the New York Times acknowledged that when Holly Hotchner first became the director of the institution ten years ago “few people seemed to have heard of it.” Today the museum may be best known for “the bitter preservation battle arose over its purchase and planned renovation of 2 Columbus Circle, the 1964 ‘lollipop’ building near Central Park designed by Edward Durell Stone.” Ms. Hotchner said she “hopes it will become known for what it does, not where it is.”

As a musical language of communication, jazz is the first indigenous American style to affect music in the rest of the World.
From the beat of ragtime syncopation and driving brass bands to soaring gospel choirs mixed with field hollers and the deep down growl of the blues, jazz’s many roots are celebrated almost everywhere in the United States.
The city of New Orleans features prominently in early development of jazz. A port city with doors to the spicy sounds of the Caribbean and Mexico and a large, well-established black population, the Crescent City was ripe for the development of new music at the turn of the century. Brass bands marched in numerous parades and played to comfort families during funerals. Also, numerous society dances required skilled musical ensembles. New Orleans was home to great early clarinetists Johnny Dodds, Jimmy Noone and Sidney Bechet. One of the first great cornetist, Joe “King” Oliver and his leading student and future star, Louis Armstrong hailed from New Orleans along with other influential musicians including Jelly Roll Morton.
Chicago became the focal point for jazz in the early 1920s when New Orleans musicians found their way north after clubs in the Storyville area of New Orleans were closed. Jazz began to gain wider notice as recordings made in the Windy City sold throughout America. Chicago was a magnet for musicians in the Mid-West. Famous musicians who received acclaim for their work in Chicago wereEarl Hines, Johnny Dodds, Louis Armstrong and King Oliver.
New York City contributed to the richness of jazz in many ways. The first piano style to be incorporated into jazz was stride which developed from ragtime and was popular in New York. The city was also the center of the music publishing business. Also in New York, James Reese Europe experimented with a style of jazz that involved large orchestras. Many of his early recordings would be considered ragtime, though his later recordings in 1919 clearly show jazz improvisation.

In the 1920s, New York City had two pioneering orchestras that would eventually greatly affect jazz history. Fletcher Henderson put together a band that first appeared at the Cotton Club in New York in 1923. Henderson’s unit featured future jazz stars Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman but it wasn’t until Henderson brought Louis Armstrong from Chicago to play with his group that the band began to develop into a full-fledged jazz group which would help to usher in the swing era.
Duke Ellington moved to New York from Washington, DC in the early twenties and began to develop the skills as an arranger and composer which brought to him the great fame he enjoyed throughout his career.
Another transplanted New Orleans pioneer, Clarence Williams, had a hand in organizing many early jazz and blues recordings in New York. In the late twenties, the jazz center of the United States moved from Chicago to New York City as many musicians did also.
During the twenties and thirties there were many groups known as Territory Bands playing jazz in smaller United States cities. In the late twenties, Kansas City’s Bennie Moten Band acquired members of Walter Page’s Blue Devils which were formed in Oklahoma City. This group later evolved into the Count BasieOrchestra. Some other cities with burgeoning jazz scenes were St. Louis, Memphis and Detroit.

As jazz evolved, highly arranged dance music became the norm. When white musicians like Benny Goodman added black arrangements for their scores, jazz began to move into the Swing or Big Band period. Large black and white jazz bands toured the United States filling the radio airwaves with swing, a term which became synonymous with jazz. Great African American bands during the swing era were Jimmy Lunceford, Chick Webb, Mills Blue Rhythm and Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy. It was also a time when vocalists came to the forefront led by such favorites Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday

The Bronx Zoo is located in the Bronx borough of New York City, within Bronx Park. It is the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, comprising 265 acres (107 ha) of park lands and naturalistic habitats, through which the Bronx River flows.
Fordham University owned most of the land which became the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden. Fordham sold it to the City of New York for only $1,000 under the condition that the lands be used for a zoo and garden; this was in order to create a natural buffer between the university grounds and the urban expansion that was nearing. In the 1880s, New York State set aside the land for future development as parks. In 1895, New York State chartered the New York Zoological Society (later renamed to Wildlife Conservation Society) for the purpose of founding a zoo.
The zoo (originally called the Bronx Zoological Park and the Bronx Zoological Gardens) opened its doors to the public on November 8, 1899, featuring 843 animals in 22 exhibits. The first zoo director was William Temple Hornaday.[6] Heins & LaFarge designed the original permanent buildings as a series of Beaux-Arts pavilions grouped around the large circular sea lion pool. In 1934, the Rainey Memorial Gates, designed by noted sculptor Paul Manship, were dedicated as a memorial to noted big game hunter Paul James Rainey. The gates were listed on theNational Register of Historic Places in 1972.
In November 2006, the Zoo opened up brand-new eco-friendly restrooms outside the Bronx River Gate. According to the Clivus multrum company, which built the composting toilets chosen by the Zoo, these facilities will service 500,000 people and save 1,000,000 U.S. gallons (3,800,000 l) of water a year.
In March 2007, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Fordham University Graduate School of Education announced they would offer a joint program leading to a Master of Science degree in education and New York State initial teacher certification in adolescent science education (biology grades 7-12). The program began in 2008, and is the first joint degree program of its kind.

MoMA PS1 is one of the oldest and largest nonprofit contemporary art institutions in the United States. An exhibition space rather than a collecting institution, MoMA PS1 devotes its energy and resources to displaying the most experimental art in the world. A catalyst and an advocate for new ideas, discourses, and trends in contemporary art, MoMA PS1 actively pursues emerging artists, new genres, and adventurous new work by recognized artists in an effort to support innovation in contemporary art. MoMA PS1 achieves this mission by presenting its diverse program to a broad audience in a unique and welcoming environment in which visitors can discover and explore the work of contemporary artists. MoMA PS1 presents over 50 exhibitions each year, including artists’ retrospectives, site-specific installations, historical surveys, arts from across the United States and the world, and a full schedule of music and performance programming.

MoMA PS1 was founded in 1971 by Alanna Heiss as the Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc., an organization devoted to organizing exhibitions in underutilized and abandoned spaces across New York City. In 1976, it opened the first major exhibition in its permanent location in Long Island City, Queens, with the seminal Rooms exhibition. An invitation for artists to transform the building’s unique spaces, Rooms established the MoMA PS1 tradition of transforming the building’s spaces into site-specific art that continues today with long-term installations by James Turrell, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner, and others.

For the next twenty years, the building was used as studio, performance, and exhibition spaces, in support of artists from around the world. After a building-wide renovation, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1) reopened in 1997, confirming its position as the leading contemporary art center in New York. True to the building’s history and form, the renovation preserved much of the original architecture as well as most of its unique classroom-sized galleries.

In 2000, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center became an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art to extend the reach of both institutions, and combine MoMA PS1′s contemporary mission with MoMA’s strength as one of the greatest collecting museums of modern art. 2010 marks the completed merger of the two institutions and celebrates P.S.1′s new and exciting chapter as MoMA PS1.

A true artistic laboratory, MoMA PS1 aspires to maintain its diverse and innovative activities to continue to bring contemporary art to international audiences.

Before taking a trip to Greenwich Village, you might be interested in a little history to make it a more familiar and interesting visit.
When the Dutch began colonizing Manhattan Island in the 1600′s, The Village was a woodland area inhabited by deer, elk, phesants, wild turkeys, owls and other birds that still live there today. The Dutch West India Company started a few sucessful tobacco plantations right there in Manhattan, and an area in The Village became the best tobacco plantation in the new colony.
In 1733, after the British captured “New Amsterdam” (manhattan), British Commander Sir Peter Warren bought 300 acres of the Village Tobacco Plantaiton.  He and his family lived in a huge mansion overlooking the Hudson River, named Warren House, earlier named “Greenwich House”. The mansion is near Perry and W. 4th Street.  He planted an orchard and created farmlands that he called “Greenwich”. Greenwich House became a festive gathreing place for the neighborhood residents, and the countryside attracted wealthy families, who built large homes there to show off their social status.
During the smallpox and yellow fever epidemics in New York City in 1822, families moved north from the Battery to avoid the diseases, and settled in the area which eventually became Greenwich Village.  Schools, banks and shops were built and The Village became a vital link to New York City.  These historic, brick, Federal style buildings still line the streets.  The Washington Square (lower 5th Avenue) area became the place where wealthy merchants built their large townhouses.
By the end of the 1800′s, rich residents started to move uptown, and the residential buildings in the Village were neglected by absentee homeowners.  The rents dropped, which attracted the artists, radicals and rebels, who looked for a freer lifestyle, as Paris was famous for.  The Village began to attract the famous and the infamous – poets, artists, philosophers, opera singers, actors and actresses.
By WWI, the Village was known as the symbol of rebellion against traditional values.  During the 1890′s and early 1900′s, the Village waspopulated mostly by Italian, Irish, German immigrants.  The immigrants mixed with the Villagers, who considered them lower class foreigners. The Italian and Irish Catholics viewed the showgirls, poets and artists as having no morals.
In the meantime, these “Bohemians” turned their backs on the Church. The repressed immigrants were shocked to see Village types smoking openly in the streets, and viewed the concepts of free love and homosexuality as taboo subjects.  The radicals preached against making money just to make money, and spoke out publicly against bourgeois values and for women’s rights.
The Bohemians usually gathered in groups, and some lived in communes just to save money, but all of them were fiercely independent and highly individualistic.  Seventy percent of the Villagers did not attend church, and regarded the immigrants as ignorant and medieval. The immigrants considered the Villagers atheists and heathens.  Most immigrants ere catholic, and the Bohemians were mostly Protestant or Jewish.
You also had the immigrants fighting amongst themselves – Irish gangs fought with Italians over territory.  The more conventional immigrant classes viewed Villagers as naughty children who still deserved protection.  They were allowed to eat at the immigrants’ restaurants and drink at the Irish bars, and permitted their space.  Immigrant families were in bed by 9 or 10 p.m., while the Bohemians partied in the Villae all night – the same “live and let live” attitude is still part of the Greenwich Village of today.
In 1916, The Village became known as “Little Bohemia” – playwrights and artists gathered here in the rundown bars.  The Little Bohemia concept lasted through the 1960′s.  In the 50′s, Beat poets mixed with the new breed of intellectually-oriented rebel actors.  Fashion styles were set in Paris’s Left Bank (remember Audrey Hepburn’s black turtleneck, black pants and black flats).  The “Beatnik” lifestyle and fashion became popular.  The rreal “Beats” helped revive spirits after WWII, McCarthyism, fear of the A-Bomb and 50′s conformity and materialism.
The new counterculture in the 60′s began with the assassinations of JFK and  Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dylan, Baez, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison and others influenced the music, hung out and played at the clubs in The Village, all protesting the war and other offenses of America and the world.k  The counterculture continued into the 70′s, where the sexual revolution took place, giving bith to women’s, as well as gay liberation.
In the 80′s, the co-op’s popularity drove rents sky-high, sending the struggling artists and musicians elsewhere for reasonably priced apartments. The “Yuppies” began to move in, as well as the new immigrants – hardworking Israelis, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis and Koreans, who opened up new shops.  The Greeks, Italians and Irish who already lived in the Village, took all of it in stride.
Homelessness in the 80′s hit the village particularly hard, yet people felt sheltered by the famous tolerant attitudes of the Village community.  The artists, writers and actors who could not afford the high rents in the West side, moved to the East Village. In the 90′s, most of the color, style and culture shifted to the East Village. There are new rock clubs and oddball shops, used book stores, inexpensive thrift and second-hand stores, restaurants. 
The West Village is still a charming and historic neighborhood. It’s the heart of the historic district and is on the rebound, with funky new jazz clubs and espresso bars opening all the time. It is predicted that the rents will soon come down and “Little Bohemia” will return.
There are many famous and not-so-famous ghosts of actors, directors and waiters.  The most famous ghosts are said to be of Aaron Burr and Thomas Paine. Famous people have lived and played in The Village – Bob Dylan owned two houses: 92-94 MacDougal St., once he became famous – and had his first New York appearance at The Cafe Wha?. Jimi Hendrix also played the Bleecker Street strip, along with Janis Joplin, Jim Morison, Blondie, Talking Heads, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Buddy Holly, The Velvet Underground, Janis Ian, Frank Zappa, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Mamas and Papas, Simon Garfunkel and Madonna.

The New York High Line was constructed in 1930 to divide the urban traffic from commercial traffic, going through the city from 14th street, the Gansevoort Meat Packing district, to the 34th street /Penn Station. This track was not used a lot and, because of this, it was abandoned for many years.
In all of New York City there not many other places that are so original and suggestive. Looking on West you can see unexpected views of the Hudson River and on the East you can see the imponent Manhattan skyline.
The impression is that of flying mid air on the “urban surface.” It is a kind of “non-place” where you can feel the flux and the speed of the city that is in continuos trasformation.

The mile-and-a-half path of concrete planks will weave among plants and wildflowers like a curvilinear boardwalk meandering through a floating garden. Some entrances will emphasize a gradual ascent from the grit and congestion of the city’s streets to an oasis of pastoral calm. The 22-block stretch is to include the unexpected: an adjustable chair that can become a table or a chaise longue; a walkway flanked by a wetland with lily pads.
These details and others have been refined over the last several months by designers who plan to create an elevated public walkway out of the High Line, an abandoned railway that runs 30 feet above the city between 10th and 11th Avenues in Manhattan, from 34th Street to Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district. The most recent digital drawings and renderings, including a 20-foot-long architectural model, go on display at the Museum of Modern Art tomorrow.
“Landscape architecture and urban design are completely integrated,” said the show’s curator, Tina di Carlo, an assistant curator in the museum’s architecture and design department.
Construction of the project, designed by the New York-based architectural firms Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro, in cooperation with the city and the nonprofit group Friends of the High Line, is expected to begin by year’s end.
However innovative the design, the ultimate aesthetics and workaday experience of the High Line will hinge on how it relates to its surroundings, which are currently in flux. New construction is planned along the High Line, including several buildings that will intersect the railway. In addition, the Jets stadium and convention center, if built, could have a profound impact on the High Line’s views and crowds.
The design team has been focusing on the first phase of the High Line, the southernmost portion, from Gansevoort Street to 15th Street, deciding on elements like seating, security and access. “It’s answered a lot of the practical questions we’ve always had: how do you make it safe, and how do you get up there? At the same time, how do you keep it interesting?” said Robert Hammond, a founder of Friends of the High Line.
The designers are beginning to consider how the High Line will pass through or abut various new buildings, including a 15-story André Balazs hotel designed by Polshek Partnership at 13th Street; a building designed by Robert A. M. Stern between 17th Street and 18th Street, developed by Edison Properties; and a building designed by Frank Gehry, developed by Georgetown Partners between 18th Street and 19th Street.
“Yes, it poses technical and financial burdens on the hotel,” Mr. Balazs said. “But I think the goal is to embrace it. As difficult as it is, I think it’s really worth the challenge.”
Much of the designers’ work has been devoted to seeking a balance between preserving what one called “the romance of the ruin” – wild grasses growing up through the metal skeleton of rails and rivets – and creating a fresh green corridor for pedestrians. (The High Line is currently off limits.) “There is an ecosystem in place,” said Elizabeth Diller, one of the architects. “The moment you let people up there, that ecosystem will be destroyed. We have to find a way for humans and growth to coexist.”
James Corner, the founder and director of Field Operations, the project’s landscape architect, described the challenge as “how to maintain the magic of the High Line as a found landscape in the city, yet at the same time accommodate the numbers of people who want to stroll up there.” The concrete planking system is to cover about half of the High Line, a soft layer of vegetation the remainder. But these proportions are flexible; planks can be added to reduce the amount of greenery and vice versa.
“We’re trying to keep this as uncommercialized as possible,” said Ricardo Scofidio, another of the architects, “to keep it simple and natural and not to overwhelm it.”

Andrew Warhola, Jr. (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included Bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression “15 minutes of fame.” In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.
The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the “bellwether of the art market.” $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.
By the beginning of the 1960s, Warhol had become a very successful commercial illustrator. His detailed and elegant drawings for I. Miller shoes were particularly popular. They consisted mainly of “blotted ink” drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in much of his early art. Although many artists of this period worked in commercial art, most did so discreetly. Warhol was so successful, however, that his profile as an illustrator seemed to undermine his efforts to be taken seriously as an artist.
Pop art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the “Pope of Pop”, turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist’s palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists (such as Willem de Kooning). Warhol’s first pop art paintings were displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department Store Bronwit Teller’s window display. This was the same stage his Pop Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced. Eventually, Warhol pared his image vocabulary down to the icon itself – to brand names, celebrities, dollar signs – and removed all traces of the artist’s “hand” in the production of his paintings.
To him, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons were already being used by Lichtenstein, typography by Jasper Johns, and so on; Warhol wanted a distinguishing subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. It was the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup cans and Warhol’s dollar paintings. On 23 November 1961 Warhol wrote Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography, Pop, The Genius of Warhol, was payment for coming up with the idea of the soup cans as subject matter. For his first major exhibition Warhol painted his famous cans of Campbell’s Soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his life. The work sold for $10,000 at an auction on November 17, 1971, at Sotheby’s New York – a minimal amount for the artist whose paintings sell for over $6 million more recently.
He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the hand-made from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.
In 1979, Warhol was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 4 race version of the then elite supercar BMW M1 for the fourth installment in the BMW Art Car Project. Unlike the three artists before him, Warhol declined the use of a small scale practice model, instead opting to immediately paint directly onto the full scale automobile. It was indicated that Warhol spent only a total of 23 minutes to paint the entire car.
The unifying element in Warhol’s work is his deadpan Keatonesque style – artistically and personally affectless. This was mirrored by Warhol’s own demeanor, as he often played “dumb” to the media, and refused to explain his work. The artist was famous for having said that all you need to know about him and his works is already there, “Just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”

Boston, first incorporated as a town in 1630, and as a city in 1822, is one of America’s oldest cities, with a rich economic and social history. What began as a homesteading community eventually evolved into a center for social and political change. Boston has since become the economic and cultural hub of New England.
The history of Boston plays a central role in the American history. In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded the city, which quickly became the political, commercial, financial, religious, and educational center of the New England region. The American Revolution erupted in Boston, as the British retaliated harshly for the Boston Tea Party and the patriots fought back. They besieged the British in the city, with a famous battle at Bunker Hill and won theSiege of Boston, forcing the British to retreat. However, the British blockade of the port seriously damaged the economy, and the population fell by two thirds in the 1770s. The city recovered after 1800, becoming the transportation hub for the New England region with its network of railroads, and even more important, the intellectual, educational and medical center of the nation. Along with New York, Boston was the financial center of the United States in the 19th century, and was especially important in funding railroads nationwide. In the Civil War era, it was the base for many anti-slavery activities. In the 19th century the city was dominated by an elite known as the Boston Brahmins. They faced the political challenge coming from waves of Catholic immigrants. The Irish Catholics, typified by the Kennedy Family, wrested the political control of the city by 1900. The industrial foundation of the region, financed by Boston, reached its peak around 1950; thereafter thousands of textile mills and other factories were closed down. By the 21st century the city’s economy had recovered and was centered on world-famous education, medicine, and high technology—notably biotechnology, while the many surrounding towns became highly attractive residential suburbs.
The Freedom Trail is a 4 km (2.5 mile) long path through downtown Boston that passes 16 of the city’s historic landmarks. It starts at the visitor information center in Boston Common where you can pick up a map and brochures. Many of the sights along the red-painted line are free of charge.
The Freedom Trail starts at the Boston Common as this was the area where the British Forces were encamped during the occupation from 1775 to 1776. While walking towards the Massachusetts State House, you’ll pass the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, the first stop of another Boston Trail, the Black Heritage Trail, which connects historical sites linked to the history of African Americans in Boston.
the Massachusetts State House, Shortly after the revolution, the State House was built by Charles Bullfinch as the new center of state governance. Today, the building still serves as the seat of the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The next stop on the Freedom Trail, Park Street Church, is known for its involvement in political, social and humanitarian issues. In 1829, William Lloyd Garrison gave a speech from the church’s pulpit condemning slavery. He was the first to do so in public.

Right next to Park Street Church is the Old Granary Burial Ground, named after the granary that once stood on the site of the church. Some of Boston’s most famous revolutionaries were buried here, including John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine (all three signed the Declaration of Independence) as well as Paul Revere and victims of the Boston Massacre.
Following the red line of the Freedom Trail on Tremont Street leads to another burial ground, the oldest in the city. The only burying ground in Boston for 30 years, it is the resting place of some of Boston’s historical figures, including John Winthrop, Massachusetts’ first Governor and William Dawes, one of the three riders who alerted Minutemen of the arrival of the British army.
The burying ground is located near King’s Chapel, a granite building completed in 1754. It replaced an original wooden chapel, dating back to 1688. The chapel’s pulpit, built in 1717, is one of the country’s oldest.
The trail now turns down School street, where a mosaic on the sidewalk commemorates the site of the First Public School. As the name suggests, this was the site of the country’s first public school, established in 1635. Benjamin Franklin attended classes in this school before he dropped out. His statue can be found nearby in front of the Old City Hall.
The Old Corner Bookstore Building This brick landmark building at the corner of School Street and Washington Street stands on a plot once owned by Mary Hutchinson, a religious reformer who was expelled from Massachusetts in 1638 for heresy. Built in 1718, the Bookstore Building was long home to a publishing house and later a bookstore.
Just south of the Old Corner Bookstore Building, on Washington Street, stands the Old South Meeting House. The building had the largest capacity for town meetings in colonial Boston, often used by patriots who encouraged crowds to revolt against British taxation. One of these meetings, on December 16, 1773, led to the ‘Boston Tea Party’, which sparked the Revolutionary War.
The Freedom Trail line now leads back north towards theOld State House, the seat of the British Colonial government from its construction in 1713 until the end of the American Revolution in 1776. After the revolution the building was used as the Commonwealth’s State House until 1798, when they moved into the new (and current) State House.

The square in front of the Old State House is the site of the Boston Massacre, where on March 5, 1770, British troops opened fire on colonists who had been taunting them throwing rocks and hurling insults. Five colonists were killed that day in what proved to be one of the catalytic events leading to the American Revolution.
The next stop on the Freedom Trail is Faneuil Hall, a building known as the ‘Cradle of Liberty’. While Faneuil Hall’s first floor was Boston’s main market place, the second floor served as a meeting place. Samuel Adams was one of the patriots who gathered here, trying to convince fellow colonists to unite and fight against British oppression. A statue of Samuel Adams stands in front of Faneuil Hall.
The Paul Revere House is the house where Paul Revere lived, when he made his famous ‘midnight ride’ to warn minutemen in Lexington of the impending arrival of British troops. Revere, a silversmith, bought the house in 1770. Originally built in 1680 it is now the oldest house in downtown Boston.
close to that there is the Old North Church, On April 18, 1775, Robert Newman, sexton of the Old North Church, hung lanterns in the tower of the church, signaling to Paul Revere that British troops arrived by sea. Hence Revere knew he could best warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the arriving British troops by riding over land.
Boston’s second oldest burying ground after King’s Chapel’s is the next stop on the Freedom Trail. Many of the early colonials are buried here as well as many slaves and freedmen. Robert Newman, the sexton who helped Paul Revere by hanging lanterns in the Old North Church tower, is also buried here.
The Freedom Trail now leads across the Charlestown Bridge towards Charlestown’s Navy Yard. This was one of the country’s first shipyards, set up to create a naval force which up to that point had been no match for the British. The U.S.S. Constitution, built in 1797 and the oldest warship of the U.S. Navy, is moored here. Possibly the most famous vessel in the U.S., it won no less than 42 battles while it lost none and was never captured by the enemy.
The last stop on the Freedom Trail is the Bunker Hill Monument, a granite obelisk commemorating the battle of June 17, 1775 between the British and colonial forces. The battle was won by the British but they were forced out by George Washington’s troops nine months later. Dedicated in 1843, the monument was the tallest in the U.S. until the Washington Monument was built in 1885.

The Tour starts at EATALY nyc and its going to touch every single aspect of the italian product that they have and the way it suppose to be presented and eated.
“the concept of espresso” shows whats behind haveing an espresso coffe; “the universe of pasta” starting from the hand made pasta and arriving at the industrial pasta labels;
“affettati, salumi e mozzarella” the typical express italian meal; “important foods” like meat and fish and the different aspect of it.

THE EATALY’S MANIFESTO:

-WE ARE IN LOVE WITH FOOD.
We love high quality in food and drink. We love the stories about it, the people who produce it, the places it comes from.
-FOOD UNITES US ALL.
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Once considered the shining jewel in the British Empire’s crown, India can today be easily deemed as the huge, 60-carat diamond in the World’s flavored cuisine ring. The large variety of dishes, appetizers, snacks, side dishes and desserts have found numerous fans on an international scale, as Indian restaurants spread at an incredible rate, with an enormous success in every possible culture and in every possible corner of the World. Combining all tastes possible, the Indian cuisine is bound to satisfy spice-lovers, “salty” people and persons with a sweet tooth alike (although the latter will feel right at home, since India is a “sweet” country).
Some say that the Indian cuisine is almost as diverse as the entire European cuisine, because of the four different main regional styles: the North Indian cuisine (the regions Benaras, Kashmir, Mughlai, Punjab and Rajasthan), the South Indian cuisine (regions Andhra, Kannada, Kerala and Tamil), East Indian cuisine (regions Assamese and Bengali) and Western Indian cuisine (regions Gujarat, Maharashtrian and Malwani). The northern part of India is mostly rural, although it contains large cities such as Delphi or Calcutta, thus its cuisine is more agricultural than anything, wheat being a primary constituent of this region’s dishes. Southern regions however tend to be more exotic, more spicy in their dishes and rice is a constant ingredient in their food. To give the taste of their main dishes, North Indians use onions and coriander whilst southerners use a more exotic coconut base for their dishes.
The history of Indian food tells us that during the reign of the British Empire in India (the British Raj), the local cuisine was considered by the Europeans closely to what Gods taught of ambrosia: a delightful, heavenly and delicate dish. Many times, we ask how the Indian cuisine grew to be so popular, so diverse and so delightful. In truth, the question is quite dim…from a population of one billion people, is it really that hard to believe some of them are great cooks?…
But let’s take a closer look at what Indian dishes and snacks have to offer, providing a history of Indian food and a few related legends alongside. Ready your taste buds, because it’s going to be one juicy ride!
The history of Indian food and especially of Indian appetizers is closely related to the country’s culture and traditions. The Indian cuisine is as diverse as the Indian people and it has a large (and extremely rich) selection of appetizers, hors d’oeuvres, and snacks. Besides being extremely tasty and actually stimulating your appetite rather than diminishing it like some other cuisines’ appetizers, these fast snacks are also quite low in fat, since they are based on a number of spices and herbs, such as ginger, cinnamon, garlic, cloves, asafetida, aniseed or coriander, rather that the fat appetizers you’ll find mostly anywhere else in the World.
The majority of Indian appetizers and snacks are based on potatoes, combined with different spices. The Alu Ki Tikki for example, which is one of the oldest snacks recorded by the history of Indian food, is made out of mashed potatoes coriander and onions. Another snack greatly enjoyed by the British during the Raj period, the Samosa appetizer, made out of steamed potatoes, peas and vegetables, is one of the many Indian recipes that was passed on from ancient times.
Although most appetizers and snacks usually follow the same ingredients for each particular recipe, it should be noted that authentic Indian dishes can never be limited to a strict formula, since they differ from household to household. For example if you go to the North, in Punjab for instance and try out a Dahi Barra yogurt and fritter appetizer, it will definitely taste and even look slightly different than a similar Dahi Barra appetizer dish in Southern India’s Tamil region.
Because of this, when the British armies set foot in India, their cooks were dazzled by the sheer number of variations of the same dish. One legend stands out of the crowd from the history of Indian food, namely that of the British cook William Harold. William was quite an experienced chef, working for a rather successful restaurant in central London, when he was sent to India to help the war effort with his meals. Because his dishes were so delightfully well done, he was promoted to be the personal cook of a high ranking officer in the British Empire’s Army. One day, the officer ordered William to get the recipe for a local dish he ate and thoroughly enjoyed that day, named by the locals Bhel Puri, in order to mass-cook it for the troops.
Because there were very few written recipes in India back then (locals were passing on their cuisine with each generation, usually orally) William started walking from home to home, knocking from door to door, in order to find the recipe for the Bhel Puri, which, even today, is quite a complicated appetizer. With every house he went to, he got another recipe, another kind of spice to put on top of the potatoes and rice (seemingly the only ingredients that remained constant in the dish) and another kind of oil to use.
After a long day of inquiries in which the poor cook was unable to find a stable recipe for the wonderful snack, he returned to the barracks, beaten and amazed by the variety of semi-recipes he managed to pile up. Seeing that he is back, the officer asked if he could serve the first portion of Bhel Puri that night, but William told him he couldn’t get any real recipe in his hands and ironically stated that “we’ll have to stick to French fries again tonight, Sir!”. Legend says that the officer, berserk with fury, took out his handgun and shot the cook dead, causing a mutiny amongst the barrack’s soldiers, who were both fed up with the officer’s cruel and disrespectful ways and in love with William’s heavenly cooking. That’s how a small bowl of Bhel Puri (or should I say the lack of it) shook an entire British barracks and caused a long night in the Court Martial offices…
All legends aside, we now know an approximate recipe to the Bhel Puri (somehow thanks to poor William too). The tasty Indian snack is made out of crispy puris, puffed rice, Indian sevs, chilli powder, potatoes, red onion, chat masala, coriander and lemon or mango juice. It comes in two dish “versions”, spicy or sweet. The spicy chutney includes garlic cloves, mint leaves, salt and green chilies, while the sweet chutney’s ingredients are cumin seeds, jaggery, sugar, tamarind pulp and boiled dates pulp.
Indian cuisine is known throughout the entire World as a sweet cuisine and this tag doesn’t come along without some extremely solid arguments. How else would you call a country’s cuisine if almost half its dishes are either sweets or desserts? Actually, Indian sweets have not only made Indian food famous throughout history, but they have been acquired and accommodated to European and North American dishes, finding great success in fancy “Baltic” restaurants through-out England, France, the United States or Spain.
The Rasgulla for example, one of the most popular relished sweetmeats in India, originating from the Eastern part of the country, has an interesting modern history. This dish produced by the boiling of small pops of casein in sugar syrup has become emblematic of the quintessentially effeminate stuff of ridicule of the Bengali people. This sweet dessert can be found in almost all Eastern Indian households, while global malls sell it like there’s no tomorrow.
Another Indian dessert that blends with the Hindu culture is the Payasam (or Kheer as it is called by the Hindi). This dessert has been an essential dish throughout the history of India, being usually found at ceremonies, feasts and celebrations. In Southern India, ancient traditions tell that a wedding is not fully blessed if Payasam is not served at the wedding feast, this tradition being kept alive with each generation, still being practiced by newly wedded couples, mostly in the southern regions, from where the tradition started in the first place.
The best and most popular Payasam dishes are found in the temples of Guruvayoor and Ambalappuzha. In the Ambalappuzha temple, Payasam is served as part of a tradition, based on an ancient legend. The legend states that Lord Krishna (the eight avatar of Vishnu, playing a major role in the Hindu religion) took the form of an old sage and challenged the great king who ruled over that region to a game of chess. Being a true chess player and a master of the mind game’s tricks, the king gladly accepted the sage’s invitation. Asking what the sage wanted in case he wins the game, the king remained bedazzled by the sage’s request: an amount of rice grains for each square of the chess board, each pile having double the number of grains than the previous pile. So the first square would have only one grain of rice, the second would have 2 grains, the third would have 4 grains, the fourth would have 8 rice grains and so on, each pile growing at a geometrical progression from the past pile of rice grains. Hearing this request, the king was shocked that the sage wanted only what he taught were a few piles of grain, when he could have betted for his whole kingdom or the immense riches that he held.
Naturally the king lost, (because playing chess against a God is not that easy, mind you) so he started placing grain piles on each square, starting with only one grain. He soon realized that the sage’s demand was not entirely what he thought of, when the number reached one million grains of rice by the 20th square. By the 40th or so square, the entire kingdom’s rice reserve was depleted and when he got to the last square he calculated that he would have to pay the sage 18,447,744 trillions of tons of rice, which he could have never paid off. The sage then revealed his true form, that of Lord Krishna, and said that the debt does not have to be paid immediately, but the king will have to serve Payasam freely in the temple of Ambalappuzha, to pilgrims, homeless or whoever comes there for peace of mind and prayer or for those seeking shelter. This is how the Payasam became famous, integrating in the Hindu culture. The tradition of freely serving Payasam in Ambalappuzha still lives today and pilgrims all over India have an easier ride knowing that a hot bowl of the sweet dessert awaits them at the end of their journey.
Western India also does a great job on satisfying the sweet tooth of its inhabitants, with one of the most delicious desserts you will be able to find throughout the history of Indian food: the Shrikhand. The Shrikhand is a creamy dessert made out of strained yogurt, from which all water is drained off, leaving the thick yogurt cream by itself. Adding exotic dry fruits like mangos only enhances the Shrikhand’s delightful taste to newer limits. This great dessert is one of Western India’s most popular traditional dishes, since it has ancient roots in the Indian cuisine. Comparisons of this dessert to the Indian people have stated that Indians are a people who like to extract the best of things from everything, leaving everything else behind, their true and hospitable nature being a result of the fact that they dry out every spiritual detail that has no substance or meaning.
Other important traditional Indian sweets and desserts, famous throughout the history of Indian food, include the following: Gulab Jamun (a popular Indian dessert made out of fried milk balls in sweet syrup), Mysore Pak (a delicious dessert made out of ghee, sugar and chick pea flour), Halwa (or Halva in modern English spelling; made out of semolina and sugar, the Halwa is one of the most popular Indian desserts that have spread in every corner of the World), the Kulfi (often referred to as Indian ice cream, the Kulfi is made out of boiled milk and a wide variety of mango, kesar or cardamom flavors), the Jalebi (a common sweet dish from North India, the Jalebi is basically a pretzel-shaped fried batter, which is soaked in syrup) and the Jangiri (the South Indian look-alike of the North Indian Jalebi).