2/2/13 – Greenwich Village

Up early today in order to travel downtown with our iPad fully charged to do Terry’s Tour of Greenwich Village (for details go tohttp://travelwithterrynyc.blogspot.com/2012/03/walking-tour-of-greenwich-village.html) . It was -7 degrees so we started quickly from the corner of Macdougal and W8th and Peter was not happy when he discovered one has to touch the iPad with a finger that is not covered by a glove to make it work – he! he!

Macdougal Street was named after a wealthy Scot called Mc Dougall who was a Major General fighting for the revolutionaries and the founding President of the Bank of New York. As you might tell by the mis-spelling of his name here, he never really made it in NY society. But this street did. On the corner was the bar where Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg first met in 1964.

A few steps south is the Bon Soir Cabaret where Barbra Streisand and Woody Allen first performed.

The nearby 1890s factory building had a controversial architectural history and the adjacent Macdougal Alley is another picturesque melting spot.

Artists like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Jackson Pollock have made their homes and studios in these delightful stables and gardens from the 1830s. Now these quaint little residences, that originally housed the horses that serviced the patrician homes in the neighbourhood, go for $5.5 million each, that’s if they ever come up for sale at all. But I want to know the name of the guy who built a huge square apartment block in the middle of these delightful mews in the 1950s because we had to go around the block to see the rest of it.

On the other side of the ugly apartment block was Washington Mews. Paul Manship (who created the golden Prometheus statue that overlooks the Rockefeller Centre ice rink) and Donald Deskey (who designed the interiors of the Radio City Music Hall) lived here and the original cobblestones are still adding their character and charm to this beautiful spot.

Originally this area was all a marsh where slaves and yellow fever victims were buried, later it became a duelling ground and an execution place and then, in 1850, a military parade ground called Washington Square. The Square is now chiefly famous as the centre of campus life for New York University and as the official terminus of 5^th Avenue (at the place where Washington’s Memorial Arch now stands). On the northern border of Washington Square built on Randall’s farm is one of the country’s finest examples of 19^th century Greek revival row houses.

And most importantly around the corner, we stopped for breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien.

The Square and all the surrounding area is now the main campus of New York University (est 1831 it had more than 15,000 enrolled students in 2012) and the University’s purple banners are everywhere, including on the building that was originally home to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. This was the infamous deathtrap in which 146 garment workers were incinerated or jumped to their deaths on March 25, 1911. The fire was one of the worst industrial accidents in US history and led to legislation improving working conditions and spurred the growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union and workers’ and womens’ rights

And speaking of women’s rights, it is interesting to note that across the Park from the old Triangle Shirtwaist building right next to the Washington Square Hotel is the former residence of Eleanor Roosevelt. She lived here after the death of FDR while she worked on the development of the United Nations.

At 137 Macdougal Street was the home of the Liberal Club (1913 – 1919) and the Heterodoxy Club (a radical feminist organization) and at 133 Provincetown Playhouse (Bette Davis’ NY stage debut).

At 129 was ‘Eve’s Hangout’ where Eve Addam’s ‘Queen of the Third Sex’ owned a teahouse and speakeasy from 1925 – 1926 where “men were admitted but not welcome”!

The Washington Square Hotel is chiefly famous because it has, at various times, hosted Ernst Hemingway (in 1914), Dylan Thomas (in 1950), Bob Dylan (1960), Nora Jones, Joan Baez, Bo Diddley, Bill Cosby and the B52s. The restaurant at 147 Madougal is where Paul Robeson, Marlon Brando, Ertha Kitt and Henry Millar were regular customers and the famous chess movie ‘Searching for Bobby Fisher’ was filmed near the adjacent NY Law School.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to Macdougal Street we were frozen solid, so we paused the tour for another day and took a cab up to Broadway to warm up over hot chocolate sundaes at the New York City Center before taking our seats for the matinee performance of ‘Fiorello’, a 1960s hit musical about ‘that little wap in the big hat’ – the legendary 1930s Senator and three time Mayor of NYC, Fiorello H. La Guardia. 

Each year as part of their ‘Encores Series’ the New York City Center selects a once famous Broadway musical to be revived and performed in their magnificent and now (as of 2011) fully restored building (once a masonic hall and original home of the Met Orchestra). Once the cast is selected they have two weeks to rehearse and often the performances have minimal costume and sets. The orchestra is regularly on stage and the actors frequently bring their scripts on stage with them. It all makes for lots of fun especially when the audience is invited, as we were, to meet the original creators, cast and crew for a Q&A session after the performance.

This happy experience was complete when I was seated next to Joe and Barbara McDonnell and after a short chat, I introduced them to Peter. Barbara then said, and I quote, “Look Joe – these people are Australian!” Luckily we felt confident enough not to respond with a high degree of sarcasm or break into quotes from ‘Crocodile Dundee’ or ‘Mad Max’.

We finished the night with a great dinner - Moules and Frites for Peter and Duck for Wendy with a 1998 Saint Emilion at Restaurant Jean Claude on Sullivan St. Then it was home by cab as the snow started to fall.

 

 



1/2/13 – Day 4 Metropolitan Museum of Art Infusion Week

The Mayor of NYC in the 1970s and 1980s, Edward I. Koch died today. He was described in the NY Times this morning as “the vortex of the maelstrom that was his term in office.” And as “a feisty slippery egoist could not be pinned down by questioners and who could out talk anybody in the authentic voice of NY; as opinionated as a Flatbush cabby, as loud as the scrums on 42nds street, as pugnacious as a west side reform Democrat mother”. Does that mean they liked him or not?

 

As usual we started today at the gym. After that it was off to the Met for the fourth day running and today we chose to investigate the American wing. Peter and I were keen to see what Americans think it is important to show their people and the rest of the world about their journey from settlement through the War of Independence to today and we were not disappointed with their choices.



1738 – 1815 was a time of portraiture inherited from the English and the good work from home grown boys such as John Singelton Copley impressed. The work then moved through the battles for independence and Washington’s personal journey from fame on the battlefield to his struggle to appropriately transform his behaviour to exhibit the grace that should come with being a world leader. Interestingly, as the first President of the USA, he wanted to be known as ‘Your Excellency’ but luckily Ben Franklin told him to cool it and settle for ‘Mr President’! 

Crossing the Delaware



1800 – 1850 saw a shift away from portraiture and a move towards great landscapes like Albert Bierstadt’s ‘Rocky Mountains, Landers Peak’ and Frederic Edwin Church’s ‘Heart of the Andes’. Interesting that Emanuel Leutze’s ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ – an iconic painting that at the time was, and ever since has been, an iconic rallying point for emerging American nationalism – should contain so many factual errors.



Rocky Mountains - Landers Peak

Apparently they didn’t travel right to left, there was no ice in the river and they certainly didn’t carry cannons and horses across the river in their little boats on Christmas Day when the British enemy was caught of guard celebrating this most holy of days. Still,despite all these inaccuracies, and even though it was painted by a German in Germany it has found its way into the hearts of the American people (and into the ‘encyclopaedic’ collection of the Met) … and I love it!

 

Heart of the Andes



After the American Civil War (1861 – 1865) people preferred to see normal life rather than the reality of war and its aftermath. So art reflected not only the urban life that came with the golden age of railways and the emergence of ‘big cities’ but also the important themes of big animals like the bison and the ‘Red Indians’ (in that order according to the display) that faced the eventual extinction that came with the ‘white’ man’s progress across the nation to the promised wealth of the gold mines in California.  

 

Tiffany Vase 1893

1860 – 1900 saw a huge increase in the number of people with considerable personal wealth and so there was a resurgence of portraiture to record for posterity these important people, their children and, in keeping with well-established European traditions often their mistresses. Men like Whistler and John Singer Sargent did particularly well and even some women artists like Mary Cassatt (the first American woman invited to exhibit at the Louvre albeit for indoor scenes showing domestic life involving sewing, taking tea and tending to children) were receiving patronage. Other American impressionists such as Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri were emerging and their paintings on display in the gallery were simply delightful.

 

Tiffany



In the first decade of the new (20^th) century the first mass produced car had been released to the market (the Model ‘T’ Ford at only $345), Orville Wright was getting his plane thing up and running and despite disastrous conclusion to the Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912 more American people were to travelling to Europe to see the sights. They develop a passion for collecting art especially in the aftermath of WWI when Europe was in turmoil and great pieces of art were there for the taking.

Tiffany

Luckily the wealthy in America in this era were not all gangsters like Tom and Daisy Buchanan or Al Capone (whose income in the 1920s was reputed to be over at 100 million dollars a year) and some collected art for the enjoyment education of those in the future. I pay tribute to the vision of those like Henry Clay Frick, J. Pierpont Morgan, Louisine and Henry O. Havemeyer in New York; J. Paul Getty, Norton Simon, Arabella and Henry E. Huntington in Los Angeles; Andrew W. Mellon in Washington, D.C. and Claribel and Etta Cone in Baltimore who were keen, like the wealthy before them, to collect nice things to show off to their friends.  

Tiffany Ware - inlaid ivory and enamel

  

Windows from the Coonley Play House by F.L Wright

31/1/13 – Day 3 Metropolitan Museum of Art Infusion Week

Today we tackled European paintings up to the 18^th century. We could easily spend our entire time here at the Met. According to Wikipedia, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the United States with more than two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. There is also a much smaller second location at "The Cloisters" in Upper Manhattan that features medieval art.

Represented in the Met’s permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopaedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armour from around the world.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872 and has gradually expanded over the years. As of today it occupies more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2).

Too bad the shift in education today is towards maths and science at the expense of the arts!

These flowers are supplied fresh each week from the Lila Wallace Foundation - nice idea! 

30/1/13 – Day 2 Metropolitan Museum of Art Infusion Week

Read ‘Perth Now’ this morning to catch up on the news from back home and I have a message for the editors – “get your act together”. Are you deliberately trying to scare people off living in Perth – the whole page was filled with horror stories; decapitated heads on Rottnest, murders, abductions, shark sightings, road toll horror stories, tales of partygoers being attacked and … Troy Buswell!  Oh hang on it was like that before we left…..I just hope Tony Mundine doesn’t win – that would truly be a disaster story! But why must the Perth news always be so ugly – are we really interested in this stuff – is this really what we want people to know about our lovely city? From where I’m sitting here in NYC I wouldn’t come all that way to visit a city like the one depicted in the pages of Perth Now. I can get enough stuff like that right here in New York.     

Did a stretch class at the gym today and then had lunch at ‘Nectar of 82’ a fancy ‘diner’ on the corner of 82^nd and Madison – pumpkin soup and Caesar salad hit the spot. BTW would someone please send me some soup spoons...it appears that the US has failed to catch up with the convention that soup is consumed with a soup spoon and not a dessert spoon. And don’t even ask what happened when I asked for one today…..you would think waiters in a restaurant on Madison Avenue would know what I was talking about.

Unfortunately he just looked at me and nodded uncomprehendingly before eventually asking me what language I was speaking. He was genuinely taken aback when I claimed it was English!  As you can imagine Peter was by now in fits of laughter. I wish he had videoed it – we could have won some money on Australia’s (and America’s) Funniest Home Video Show(s). To quote Winston Churchill … a classic example of ‘two people separated by a common language’.

Once I recovered my dignity and the waiter had received his very small tip for failing to find a soup spoon, we went on to the Met for Part 2 of the Director’s Tour Highlights – this time we visited snippets of Ancient China, Pre Columbian Gold, Oceania, Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia and the Impressionists – quite a ‘dolly mixture’ if you’re old enough to know what I mean!

PDS bought some FL Wright’s window design cufflinks from the Met shop to go with his blue pin stripe suit, gold tie and braces – he is now quite the NYC ‘dandy’.

29/1/13 – Haircut Day and Day 1 Metropolitan Museum of Art

Oohhh I woke feeling lucky today … so I took the plunge and went for a haircut. I picked a local salon that looked ok and didn’t charge too much – prices here for a style cut are ridiculous and rumour has it that if you don’t tip big the next time your hair gets chopped!! My stylist was a nice girl from Queens with big hair and a voice ‘Nanny (Fran) Fine’ (much affected by chewing gum). Thankfully she who did a great job! 

Went to the gym and then on to the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and did the introductory Director’s Tour Part 1 Highlights of Egypt, Medieval Europe and Renaissance France. It provided an interesting mix of displays and great commentary. I was thinking I could use the Met for interior design ideas for our flat – Peter’s worried ‘cause I was liking the Louis XIV décor. Could be worse sweetheart – you could be getting a sarcophagus!!!

After dinner there was no NCIS on TV so I read the New York Times (it is delivered daily to my iPad!) and learned about Mayor Bloomberg’s record 1.1 billion donation over the years to Johns Hopkins University where he studied. Apparently he wasn’t a great student at school and was grateful (very grateful it appears) for the chance they took in admitting him when his scores weren’t that good but although he showed promise.

In exchange the Medical School there has kept him up to date with current public health research and innovation and it looks like his policies banning smoking in public places like parks and doorways, and laws that enforce the publishing of food components on all packaged food (eg fast foods vendors and deli purchases rather than just supermarket stuff) is paying off. Just look at me all cultured and everything – must be the new hair!

28/1/13 – Corn Starch

Arose at a respectable time (ie just before 12 noon) and set off for the Gym. I spent the rest of the day doing errands and food shopping. I am trying, not too successfully, to readjust to the ‘do your own shopping and cooking’ routine. It is something I will have to learn to do again during my time over here because when I get home I will not be in the Wesley BH any longer!

I have a hypothesis on why so many Americans are overweight….corn starch….this stuff is everywhere…. it is in sweet foods, savoury foods, medicines and packaging not to mention biofuels….must look into this more and see how it affects our health. My cab driver the other day was telling me that the whole centre of the USA is filled with ‘Mormons and cornfields’!  So all that income from corn starch might explain why Nebraska will shortly be getting an NFL team … all those College Cornhuskers have to have somewhere to go!

27/1/13 – “Follow The Compass Not The Clock”

Decided to have a down day today so I slept in and contemplated a new life motto. With inspiration from Cameron before he left, and after much deliberation and soul searching, I decided on “follow the compass not the clock”. Now to live up to it!

I am ashamed to report that the first thing I did to achieve my newly conceived vision of Nirvana was to clean the flat! That took most of the day, which was an appalling waste of time because, although cold, it was blue skies and sunshine outside all day today.

Meanwhile, Peter cycled around Randall and Ward Islands and his account of his adventures is listed below.

Peter’s Randall’s Island Adventure

‘The weather today (Sunday) was a replica of yesterday, cold but clear with blue skies and sunshine and views for miles in all directions … but we had chores to do … so we decided to stay in for most of the day. However by 3pm I had had enough of being confined indoors … so I took off on my bike to explore the Triborough Bridge and Randall’s Island.

 The Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (formerly the Triborough Bridge) dominates all the views of the East River that we can see from our apartment. It is actually rather more than just a bridge. It is a complex of three bridges, a viaduct, and 14 miles of approach roads that together connect three of New York’s five boroughs (Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx). Think of it as a giant ‘Y’. The Manhattan branch of the ‘Y’ is the Harlem River Lift Bridge, which links to the Harlem River Drive, the FDR Drive, and 125th Street, Harlem's commercial and cultural centre.

The other arm of the ‘Y’ is constituted by the Bronx Crossing. This bridge leads motorists to points north via the Bruckner and Deegan expressways and, more locally, to the neighbourhoods of the South Bronx and the Port Morris Industrial Area.

The bottom of the ‘Y’, and the longest of the three spans of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, is the East River Suspension Bridge to Queens. It connects with the Grand Central Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and also to Astoria's residential areas, restaurants, and shops.

The three branches of the ‘Y’ all meet on Randall's Island, where an interchange and two toll plazas sort out traffic flowing in 12 directions and provide access to the island itself.

In addition to the RFK Bridge(s) complex the Amtrak railroad viaduct approach to the Hell Gate Bridge also passes over Randall’s island. The viaduct allows trains to get from Queens to the South Bronx. When it opened in 1916 the Hell Gate rail bridge was the longest steel arch bridge in the world.

In addition to its role as ‘host’ of the Hell Gate rail bridge and RFK Bridge, Randall’s Island is also home to the New York City Fire Department's training academy, an NYC DEP Wastewater Treatment Plant, homeless shelters, the Manhattan Psychiatric Centre and other public facilities. The majority of the island, however, is city parkland, much of it given over to public use as baseball diamonds, rugby and soccer fields.

My self-imposed mission for the afternoon was to cycle around the island and take some pictures of the bridges and other facilities on the island. As it turned out there was a lot more to see and take in than I had anticipated. For a start I discovered that Randall’s Island is not actually one single separate island at all!

In 1855, the City of New York acquired what were then three separate land masses in the East River between Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx: Randall's Island, named after its previous owner Jonathan Randal; Ward's Island, named after Jasper and Bartholomew Ward and a marsh called Sunken Meadows. Over the years, debris from construction projects filled in the space between the three islands so that today there is (to all intents and purposes) just one big island.

Randall’s Island is one of New York’s most accessible islands. Traffic can reach it off the several Triborough bridge exits and pedestrians can access it from the East 103rd Street footbridge in Manhattan, the Triborough Bridge entrance on East 125th Street in Manhattan and Astoria Boulevard in Queens.

 

As you will have gathered from the foregoing discussion, the most notable facility on the island is the RFK (Triborough) Bridge. The bridge was built between October 1929 and July 1936 but plans for connecting Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx had been around for a long time prior to that.

In fact they were first announced by Edward A. Byrne, chief engineer of the New York City Department of Plant and Structures, way back in 1916. But although its construction had long been recommended by City officials, the Triborough Bridge did not receive any funding until 1925, when the city appropriated money for surveys, test borings and structural plans. It took another four years for the actual project to finally get the go ahead and then, in a stroke of exquisitely bad timing, construction began on Black Friday in 1929.

By the end of that year the Triborough bridge's outlook, along with those of most other big infrastructure projects, began to look bleak. The city called in Othmar Ammann, the famously efficient designer of the George Washington bridge (and many other landmark bridge projects) to help simplify (and reduce the cost of) the project. Ammann collapsed the original two-deck roadway into one, requiring lighter towers, and thus, lighter piers.

These revisions saved $10 million on the towers alone, but even such huge cost savings would not have been enough to save the project itself if FDR and his New Deal had not come along.

The formidable team of Fiorello LaGuardia and Robert Moses were able to attract New Deal money to resurrect the project in the early 1930s and the bridge was finally opened to traffic on July 11, 1936. 

The total cost of the bridge was more than $60 million, greater even than that of the Hoover Dam. It was one of the largest public works projects of the Great Depression. The American Society of Civil Engineers designated the Triborough Bridge Project as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1986.

[Trivia Note: During the Cold War, a sign on the bridge informed travellers, "In event of attack, drive off bridge", New York Times columnist William Safire wrote in 2008 that "the somewhat macabre sign must have drawn a wry smile from millions of motorists."]

On November 19, 2008, pursuant to a request made by the Kennedy family, the Triborough Bridge was officially renamed after Robert F. Kennedy, who served New York as a senator, 40 years after his assassination.

But the RFK Bridge is not the only important feature on Randall's Island. The island also functions as a major recreational and cultural facility for the people of New York. The Randall’s Island Park Alliance was founded in 1992 as a public-private partnership to develop Randall's Island Park.

RIPA works with the City and with local communities to provide an innovative and exciting destination through a wide range of sports venues, cultural

events and environmental exploration. RIPA's signature sports facility on Randall's Island, Icahn Stadium, was opened on April 23, 2005. The Stadium, a world-class track & field facility, is capable of hosting local, regional and national events.

On May 31, 2008, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt broke the world record for the men's 100-meter dash at the stadium during the Fourth Annual Reebok Grand Prix with a "lightning" speed time of 9.72 seconds. 

In May 2010, RIPA and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation completed the construction of a further 60 athletic fields on the island to support a greater variety of sports, including football, lacrosse, field hockey, and rugby amongst the sports already played at the Park, plus soccer, baseball and softball.

As a a result Randall's Island Park now has the most athletic fields of any New York City park.

The island currently also has almost 5 miles of waterfront pathways and a greenway under the Amtrak Hell Gate Viaduct, which will offer cyclists a connection to the South Bronx Greenway, is scheduled to be completed by late 2013.  A newly renovated Randall's Island Golf Centre opened in 2008.

The new 25-acre (100,000 m2) $500,000 renovation will have a two-tier indoor/outdoor, 82-stall driving range, 320 yards (290 m) of landing area, a 36-hole mini-golf course, grass tees, a short game area with sand bunker, PGA instructors, and 9 batting cages.

The Randall's Island Tennis Centre opened in July, 2009. It features 20 courts, 10 har-tru and 10 rubberized hard (5 indoor), along with a cafe, pro shop, fitness facilities and locker rooms. From May–October, 10 courts are reserved for NYC Parks Tennis Permit holders during the daylight hours.

In the winter, all 15 outdoor courts are bubbled for use by club members. The Tennis Centre is also the home to the New York Sportimes of World Team Tennis and the John McEnroe Tennis Academy.

Other regular outdoors programming at Randall's Island includes visits by Cirque du Soleil, a summer concert series (which has consisted of concerts such as Electric Zoo Festival, Dave Matthews Band and Governors Ball), and art exhibits (such as The Frieze Art Fair, and FLOW.11 & FLOW.12), as well as wetland, nature and gardening programs conducted by RIPA. Additional programming includes Run the River 5K, which takes place each October. As part of RIPA’s improvements on the island, two natural environments, a salt marsh and a freshwater wetland, have been established. Through the process of excavating over 20,000 cubic yards (15,000 m3) of debris, installing clean sand, and planting native marsh grasses, 4 acres (16,000 m2) of salt marsh has been created surrounding the Little Hell Gate Inlet on the western edge of the Island. Just across from the salt marsh, 4 acres (16,000 m2) of freshwater wetlands were also restored. After the removal of almost 15,000 cubic yards (11,000 m3) of debris and fill, the freshwater wetland site was planted with native herbaceous, shrub, and tree species, such as switchgrass, aster, dogwood, and oak. The restoration projects play a crucial role in an innovative Park-wide filtration system that collects storm water from the adjacent sports fields, pathways and paved areas and channels it through the Wetlands, where the new plants naturally filter pollutants before reaching the East River and the Long Island Sound. In a further boost to the island’s ‘green’ credentials the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation recently approved a $1 million contract with Natural Currents Energy Services to build a hybrid renewable energy park on the island.  The park will combine solar, wind, and tidal energy and is expected to produce 200 kW of energy to power the island's facilities. The project will include a solar-powered marine research and information kiosk open to visitors of the island, expected to be completed in September 2013. I spent 3 hours cycling around the island, by which time it was getting dark and really cold, so I decided to head for home. On the way back I stopped briefly at a lovely little park on the corner of East 88^th Street and East End Ave to examine the colonial era Gracie Mansion. In 1799, a rosperous New York merchant named Archibald Gracie built a country house overlooking a bend in the East River, five miles north of the City. Financial failure forced Gracie to sell his house to Joseph Foulke in 1823, and in 1857, the house came into the possession of Noah Wheaton. The City of New York acquired the estate in 1896, incorporating its 11 acres of grounds into the newly-formed Carl Schurz Park. After decades of use as a concession stand and restrooms for the park, Gracie Mansion was restored and became the first home of the Museum of the City of New York until the late 1930’s. When the Museum moved to a larger building, Gracie Mansion became a historic house museum run by the Parks Department. Parks Commissioner Robert Moses convinced City authorities to designate it as the official residence of the Mayor, and in 1942, Fiorello H. La Guardia moved in. The house was enlarged in 1966 with the addition of the Susan E. Wagner Wing, which includes a grand ballroom and two intimate reception rooms. The Gracie Mansion Conservancy was established in 1981. It is a private not-for-profit corporation established to preserve, maintain and enhance Gracie Mansion - one of the oldest surviving wood structures in Manhattan and a member of The Historic House Trust. The Conservancy's mission is to raise funds to restore the historic structure and acquire furnishings that illustrate the rich history of New York; improve the surrounding landscape and gardens; and provide educational services, including publications and tours and under its guidance, the first major restoration was undertaken between 1981 and 1984.  In 2002, the interior and exterior were again restored, and the house was transformed into the "People's House" with increased accessibility to the public and to City agencies. It has also been used to accommodate visiting officials and dignitaries, such as former guests First Lady Rosalynn Carter and President Nelson Mandela. The house may only be used for official city business. Only visiting public officials and the mayor's family may reside with the mayor at the mansion, even for a single overnight stay. As a result, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was unable to have his then-girlfriend live with him (because they were not married), because it would have violated using a taxpayer-funded home for a private citizen. Giuliani was forced to relocate. Likewise, current mayor Michael Bloomberg, has never resided at Gracie Mansion, although he uses it for meetings and events and has used the Mansion as a place for official visitors to stay while in the city. At the beginning of Bloomberg's term he initiated a major restoration of the mansion, funded by an anonymous donor, suspected of being the billionaire mayor himself.