Julia Vitullo-Martin

A Culinary Guide to Brooklyn’s Innovative Food Companies

With its many celebrated restaurants and food festivals, Brooklyn can stake a serious claim to being New York City’s food center. Though the borough touts esteemed restaurants like Peter Luger Steak House and Chez Ma Tante, a number of innovative…

Will the Landmarked 132-Year-Old West Park Presbyterian Church Be Demolished?

It’s possible that one of Manhattan’s most beautiful landmarked churches will soon be razed to the ground and replaced with a 19-story glass tower. Commanding an important corner on the Upper West Side, West Park Presbyterian Church opened in 1890,…

At the Frick Madison, a Daring New Program Juxtaposes Old Masters and Queer Art

It’s a shock, as it’s intended to be: Where Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Sir Thomas More, serene in his velvet robes, once stood, there is now Jenna Gribbon’s painting of a half-undressed, long-haired person of ambiguous gender, stylish…

New York’s Endangered Subways

My friend and I had left the theatre on 42nd Street around 11 p.m. on a recent beautiful night. We walked peaceably to catch our usual #1 train at Times Square—the station where a young woman, Michelle Go, had been pushed to her death in front of a…

Apocalypse Now: Can Eric Adams End the Helicopter Onslaught?

Twitter Central Park, from doors-off helicopter flight (photo: Julia Vitullo-Martin, the author) Thanksgiving! “One of NYC’s most beloved days of the year,” announces notorious doors-off helicopter company, FLYNYON, advertising its $489 seats over…

Banksy Takes on NYC: Genius or Vandal?

From the 'Genius or Vandal' exhibit on Banksy (photo: Julia Vitullo-Martin) Like many of Banksy’s drawings, Fever’s “Banksy: Genius or Vandal?” is a title that hits its subject square on the head. This exhibit, which is well worth seeing, should hit…

See Harlem Recreated in Colorful Set of Merry Wives in Shakespeare in the Park

In the nearly six decades since producer Joe Papp dragooned Parks Commissioner Robert Moses and New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner into allowing an annual theatrical production of Shakespeare in Central Park, The Public Theater had never missed a season…

A Guide to NYC’s Future “Little Paris”

As New York City’s French residents — some 60,000 strong — get ready to celebrate Bastille Day on July 14, a small but intense coterie of downtown New Yorkers is pushing for the designation of a new neighborhood, “Little Paris.” The heart of their…

The View from Above and Below: Get the Helis Out of Our Commons

Helicopter in flight (photo: Julia Vitullo-Martin) Like many of my neighbors on the Upper West Side I profoundly dislike and resent the tour helicopters that seem to unceasingly harass us on beautiful days, lining up equidistantly over the Hudson…

Will We Love the Frick Madison as We Loved the Frick?

The Frick Collection‘s move from its opulent house on 70th Street to the Met Breuer Building, up five blocks on Madison Avenue may go down as one of the oddest pairings in art history. It nonetheless makes sense. After all, while the Frick mansion…

Save Our Waterfronts from Our Open Skies: New York & New Jersey

Twitter Manhattan from a helicopter (photo: Julia Vitullo-Martin, the author) “I care passionately about our waterfront,” says Hoboken City Council Member Phil Cohen. “It’s the jewel of Hoboken, directly across from the Empire State Building. We…

Can the Manhattan Borough President Stop the Chop?

Twitter Helicoptering over the city (photo: Julia Vitullo-Martin) Thanks to an onslaught of out-of-town tourist helicopters and small planes flying over New York landmarks, a quiet weekend day in Central Park or Governors Island or the Brooklyn…

New York City's Noisy, Dangerous, Open Skies

Twitter FlyNYON open door flight (photo: Michelle Young, Untapped New York) For New Yorkers living below the flight paths of what helicopter companies consider to be photogenic or interesting neighborhoods, Labor Day weekend was sheer hell. And,…

‘Covid Powers’ Wreck My Neighborhood

New York For many years I’ve lived in paradise—the Upper West Side. We have convivial neighbors, beautiful buildings, great subways, excellent theater and dance, fine libraries and bookstores, wonderful restaurants, pleasant markets. There were…

Sirens and Suffering: Rethinking the Soundtrack of the Coronavirus Crisis

Twitter Sirens and the city (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office) A beautiful, clear April evening in Manhattan. No traffic, which is down 84% overall in the city, says StreetLight. Out of nowhere a screeching siren pierces the air. Many…

New York’s Wrongly Open Skies

Twitter helicopters in Manhattan (photo: Julia Vitullo-Martin) Helicopter crashes in the skies of New York City — two in 2019 —temporarily bring renewed attention to the odd situation by which hundreds of vehicles weighing up to 12,000 pounds each…

The Top 15 Secrets of The Frick Collection in NYC

15. The Attempted Assassination of Frick Was the “first terrorist act in America.” Frick Art Reference Library Archives Or so said the radical anarchist, Andrew Berkman, who shot him. An implacable opponent of labor unions, Frick provoked a major…

The Top 15 Secrets of The Frick Collection in NYC

Or so wrote historian Hilary Ballon in her monograph, Mr. Frick’s Palace. Far from being the conservative and staid mansion many of us see, The Frick is subversive, “purposively estranged from the urban form of Fifth Avenue.” This is a “New York…

The Top 15 Secrets of The Frick Collection in NYC

Like many another native New Yorker, Stan Lee, founder of Marvel Comics, walked by the Frick Mansion as a youngster, peering through the magnificent iron fence to the fantasy palace beyond. Little wonder then but he decided that the Frick was the…

The Top 15 Secrets of The Frick Collection in NYC

The country’s most successful early 20th century model, Audrey Marie Munson, posed for the Frick pediment, which was sculpted by Sherry Edmundson Fry and carved into stone by Attilio Piccirilli. Said to have a perfect form, Munson was known as…