Head outside for an invigorating walking tour this holiday season. Take in the last of John Kriskiewicz’s “Architecture of Aspiration” walking tours on Christmas Eve, and consider Tony Robins’ Christmas morning tour of Rockefeller Center — repeated on Sunday, December 27. Take (or send) your holiday guests on MAS Tuesday Downtown and Wednesday Grand Central Terminal tours — we’ll have two tour leaders at Grand Central Terminal between Christmas and the New Year.

Also, don’t forget to welcome in the New Year with Jack Eichenbaum’s tour of Flushing’s Koreatown on New Year’s Day. Happy Holidays! Continue Reading>>

Even lifelong New Yorkers are unaware of one of the city’s best kept secrets — the tennis courts above Grand Central Terminal. This monumental station was designed by Associated Architects, Reed & Stem and Warren & Wetmore in 1901, and when construction was completed in 1913, a large attic space was left unoccupied directly above Vanderbilt Hall (the waiting room at the entrance on the 42nd Street side). If and how this attic was used before the 1930s is a bit of a mystery, though there is an unsubstantiated rumor that it served as a ballroom for some time.

In 1939, television studio equipment for the Columbia Broadcasting System was installed in this space. Within just nine years, these facilities were expanded and upgraded as an integral part of the plan to transform CBS into a nationwide network. The first episodes of “What’s My Line?” and Edward R. Murrow’s news program “See It Now,” including the groundbreaking series on Senator Joseph McCarthy, were broadcast from this space. It has been reported that CBS gave up the studio owing to the rumble of the trains below. Continue Reading>>