This week we indulged those of you in the Curbediverse, who, like us, have been drooling over the sites listed for the 2011 Open House New York weekend. (So much drooling it shut down the website.) To ease the pain, we offered one VIP OHNY Passport worth $150 to a reader who could make a case for a local site not included on this year's agenda. Your answers ranged from infrastructure (a shuttered trolley entrance) to private homes (ahem, Mayor Bloomberg), but what really got us was the intriguing bank-turned-private-home hulking over 190 Bowery. N.B.: We'll also be sending your bright ideas to the good folks at OHNY, so the real prize could very well appear on the 2012 schedule.
· Tours of the 2nd Avenue Subway construction, specifically the "muck conveyance systems" btw 69th-70th and/or 72nd-73rd, and how they work in conjunction with the tunnels underneath.
· This is an easy one. 190 Bowery should most definitely be on your list.
· I would love to see the Donald Judd studio/home in SoHo.
· How about the interior of a certain townhouse on 79th Street, complete with its mayoral animal prints?
· The inside of the base of Brooklyn Bridge (BK side!). It's a beautiful high vaulted space, truly unlike many NYC structures. It's one of those spaces that is a real hidden gem sitting in the wide open.
· Brooklyn Army Terminal. It's an amazing building with a lot of history that should have more public attention
· The newly-renovated National Academy Museum & School on Fifth Avenue. It's housed in an amazing Beaux Arts townhouse with redesigned public spaces for everyone to enjoy.
· The Brooklyn Navy Yard. I've been wanting to take a gander inside for ages. I signed up for a tour under OHNY's auspices several years ago, arrived when/where instructed, and was treated to a walk around the OUTSIDE. I felt, and continue to feel, cheated.
· The backstage of the Met Opera – from their lavish set design (where does it all go?!?) to their wardrobe rooms, to the catwalks. Sometimes they have live animals in their performance; where the eff to they keep those??
· The Novogratz home on West Street. It would be so interesting to actually be able to tour one of their homes and see how they decorated all 7 children's bedrooms, and most especially the basketball court!
· I don't know if it's even remotely feasible, but I'd love the chance to get inside the long-shuttered 59th St Bridge trolley entrance. It's on 2nd Ave between 60th and 59th St at a spot where you can't even walk to legally since pedestrians must cross to the west side of the street there now.
· What about the abandoned City Hall Subway Station? It would be amazing!
· The penthouse at One 7th Avenue South: the only full floor triangular residential building ever built in NYC.
And for good measure: "Rikers Island."
· Win a VIP Pass to This Weekend's Open House New York [Curbed]
· Open House New York [ohny.org]