Cityscape

Curbed
best of new york

Best of New York 2021

 Reintroducing a 36-year-old New York magazine franchise. By The Editors
  1. Be Safe Out There, Junior Bankers Walking and subwaying are maybe dangerous!
    By Caroline Spivack
  2. Concrete Doesn’t Have to Be an Ecological Nightmare New technologies may drastically reduce its huge carbon footprint.
    By Justin Davidson
  3. New York City Nurses Can’t Take It Much Longer “There are times … when our staff is half of what it should be.”
    By Caroline Spivack
  4. Why Is Montague Street Perpetually Drab? There’s little beyond deli muffins for the celebrity moms of Brooklyn Heights.
    By Lysandra Ohrstrom
  5. 30 Hours With American Christmas, New York’s Go-To Holiday Decorator The frantic race to drape the city in wreaths and lights before Thanksgiving weekend.
    By Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey
  6. This Is the Beginning of Gowanus’s New Skyline An expansive rezoning passed today has developers ready to build, build, build.
    By Caroline Spivack
  7. There’s Only One Church Shelter That’s Reopened This Winter Dozens of other faith-based shelters remain closed.
    By Luke Cregan
  8. This Andrew Yang Administration Is Really Coming Together Wait, who won?
    By Choire Sicha
  9. Emmanuel Olunkwa Wants to Redesign New York City Windows The new editor of PIN-UP answers Curbed’s “21 Questions.”
    By Diana Budds
  10. More People Are Moving to New York Now Than Before the Pandemic And many people who left last year are coming back too.
    By Caroline Spivack
  11. As a New Arena Opens in New York, the Steinbrenner Stadium Strategy Is Finished The opening of UBS Arena on Long Island marks the end of a longtime New York sports phenomenon: teams threatening to leave town.
    By Joe DeLessio
  12. The First Sex Toy Ads on the Subway Are Predictably Tame And it took a lawsuit and three years of legal wrangling to even get this campaign approved.
    By Caroline Spivack
  13. A Particularly Eccentric Upper West Side Apartment Building The Master was built as a shrine to theosophist Nicholas Roerich. It has aged strangely.
    By Matthew Sedacca
  14. A Billionaire-vs.-Millionaire Penthouse Battle On the Upper West Side, Bill Ackman wants to build a remarkable glass house. But his neighbors have stones.
    By Kim Velsey
  15. Perfecting the New York Street We consulted architects and planners to create an achievable, replicable plan — one suited to a city embracing its public spaces as never before.
    By Justin Davidson
  16. Ben Kallos Really Didn’t Want the Blood Center Redevelopment But the City Council is voting for it anyway.
    By Caroline Spivack
  17. The Look Book Goes to Disco Tehran About 1,000 people showed up for the Iran-inspired club night and fund-raiser’s final party before it heads out on a tour of Europe and South America.
    By Louis Cheslaw and Daniel Varghese
  18. An Afternoon in Harlem With the Wheelie Guys Eric Adams has promised to crack down on dirt bikes, but riders say they aren’t going anywhere.
    By Paula Aceves
  19. The Standard Hotel Could Be Facing Foreclosure All that nightlife doesn’t necessarily fill the rooms.
    By Kim Velsey
  20. Walking the Streets, Looking for a Long-Lost Madam The historian Debby Applegate knows where all the best disreputables once hung out.
    By Christopher Bonanos
  21. Michelle Wu Can Be America’s First Actual Climate Mayor Boston’s new chief executive is a bus-riding mom who wants to make transit free.
    By Alissa Walker
  22. Desperate Office Landlords Are Offering Double Commissions to Brokers And it’s working, kind of.
    By Kim Velsey
  23. Zero Bond Is Eric Adams’s Headquarters Now Literally anything could happen under this nightlife mayor.
    By Choire Sicha
  24. Meet the Enthusiastic Eric Adams Voters of Crown Heights “He honestly changed my life.”
    By Caroline Spivack
  25. We Staked Out Eric Adams’s House in Brooklyn And he came home. Twice!
    By Kevin T. Dugan
  26. A Very ‘What Is New York’ Halloween The quirky Instagram account documented killer clown bus drivers, paddle-boarding witches, and more.
    By Caroline Spivack
  27. How to Ride Bus Greg Kelly shows us it’s not that easy!
    By Choire Sicha
  28. ‘Being Silica’ Looks Hard at the Environmental Cost of Supertall Views Andrés Jaque’s installation at Rockefeller Center explores the material common to ultraclear glass and fracked natural gas.
    By Whitney Mallett
  29. A Skyscraper Built Mostly by Black Firms Is Still Not a Civil-Rights Achievement The project designed by David Adjaye is notable, just not in the ways it claims.
    By Adrienne Brown
  30. Yes, Build the Windowless, Bathroomless Dorm in My Backyard Sure, let the dilettante billionaire have a crack at it.
    By Choire Sicha
  31. ‘People Are Coming in Crying. A Lot of Them.’ Pharmacists on the somber mood at vaccine sites on the eve of the city mandate.
    By Caroline Spivack
  32. The Single Sentence That Could Upend the Environmental Fight in New York The constitutional amendment on the ballot could protect the state’s air and water. Eventually.
    By Caroline Spivack
  33. The Observation-Deck Wars Are Here Edge, at Hudson Yards, offers a tethered outdoor climb 1,200 feet above the street — for $185.
    By Kim Velsey
  34. A History of Canal Street, in 7 Objects Shanzhai Lyric is interested in places that elude the public record.
    By Diana Budds
  35. Eric Adams Won’t Stop Talking About His Rat Bucket As mayor, he wants to take his favorite trapping device citywide.
    By Willy Blackmore
  36. The Look Book Goes to a South Slope Open House Seventy-plus interested buyers came to check out the $1.7 million three-bedroom, three-bath duplex.
    By Louis Cheslaw and Daniel Varghese
  37. A Visit to (Nearly) the Top of the Supertall Brooklyn Tower The developer and architect of the building, once known as 9 DeKalb, take me up, up, up in the construction elevator.
    By Ian Volner
  38. There Are 30,000 Basement Apartments the City Doesn’t Know About More than 5,000 are in East New York.
    By Caroline Spivack
  39. The Nation’s Best High-School Debaters The Bronx Science Speech & Debate Team’s varsity captains are helping defend its No. 1 title.
    By Jackson McHenry
  40. Thomas Heatherwick’s High Line Condos Are Just One Idea About Windows, Repeated The building is formally inventive but it’s not clear there’s much more there.
    By Eva Hagberg
  41. Billie Tsien Wants Someone to Go Eat a PB&J in the Middle of Hudson Yards The Obama Center architect answers Curbed’s 21 Questions.
    By Diana Budds
  42. How the Young Lords Brought the Revolution to Drug Treatment The acupuncture-based detox the civil-rights group developed is still used today.
    By Valeria Ricciulli
  43. Farewell to the Half Bean, Tribeca’s Best Unfinished Landmark The artist’s mini “Cloud Gate” is nearly complete — so go see it before it’s done.
    By Sophie Haigney
  44. The Medallion Crisis Is So Bad That Taxi Drivers Are on a Hunger Strike Cabbies say the city’s relief plan doesn’t do enough.
    By Valeria Ricciulli
  45. The Observation Deck at One Vanderbilt Is a Ridiculous Place “Surely there’s a better way than assaulting them with lights and mirrors.”
    By Justin Davidson
  46. Only One City Agency Is Fully Vaccinated And fewer than 100 people work there.
    By Caroline Spivack
  47. A Lenape Tribe Finally Wrests Its Sacred Site Back From Developers Fighting back the latest threat to the Ramapough people.
    By Saki Knafo
  48. Have You Heard About This Green Bench? How a 300-pound steel skateboarding legend bounced all around and ended up in Tompkins Square Park.
    By Willy Blackmore
  49. Should Landlords Be Required to Pay for Your Internet? A new bill promises to not pass the cost on to renters.
    By Caroline Spivack
  50. Move Over, Fake Vaxx Card — Here Comes an Anti-Vaxx Business Directory A new website is crowdsourcing businesses that are flouting the mandate — and New York has the most.
    By Caroline Spivack
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