Talk:List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan

Homeless photos

I got this year's Guide to New York City Landmarks for Christmas and have been walking (and bicycling) around town, photographing listed buildings. However, there seems to be a shortage of Wikiplaces to put them. Many NYCL are not NRHP, hence they don't fit in the NRHP tabular articles, and most don't have articles of their own. Would someone who understands tables like to split this article into five or more tabular ones similar to the NRHP Boro articles? Even better if there can be some sort of correlation between the National and City lists. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:01, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Just noticed this list-article and your comment. Definitely could help in terms of forming list-tables that work better. Closest examples in Wikipedia are probably Los Angeles and its LAHCMs (more numerous than List of RHPs in Los Angeles and Chicago and its List of Chicago Landmarks more numerous than List of RHPs in Chicago. What do u think about those. doncram (talk) 06:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Split and tabulate

Splendid. I see from your edit list that you're highly experienced with these matters. After a week without a direct answer here, I said a bit more on this subject in Wikipedia talk:Project_New_York_City#List of New York City Designated Landmarks with no better response. Meanwhile, I came to understand that my original problem of where to put pictures isn't really a problem; just insert the pix and they run down the side of the table, which shrinks away from them in a reasonably satisfactory manner.

NYC is divided into five Boros, of which Manhattan is the inner one, crammed full of historic sites/sights. Having seen your reply, I did the easy part, pulling the Outer Boros out of this oversized article and giving each its own article. Those articles need a bunch more work internally, but it's mostly filling in the forms. In a few hours I'll start installing in-links and out; not difficult for someone familiar with the geography and relevant articles. For the moment this LoNYCDL article is only Manhattan, and I think rather than use the same cut and paste method I'll covert it to List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan by a Move operation. Whatever; the question can stew in my mind all night unless someone else decides which method is better and does it.

Sounds fine and appropriate to do move operation that way. doncram (talk) 19:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm fond of the notion that this is a geographic topic, and that geographic sequencing should trump alphabetic, chronologic or any other kind. That's what I dislike about the Chicago example you cite above. The problem with my notion is that it makes the splitting more difficult. Every item must be correctly located east, south, or whatever, from whatever dividing line is drawn. But, I know the geography of this island well enough that a quick glance at a description will often give a right answer, and of course we can rely on sharp Wikieyes to catch my errors.

I did a lot of work also in dividing up the List of RHPs in NYC, following Dmadeo's beginning work including decision to divide New York County into 5 geographical chunks (which i think are: Above 110 St., 59-110, 14-59, below 14th, and smaller islands). It worked fine in that dividing process to just move most items to whichever geo-based article where we thought they belonged, then clean up later, switching some later to classify them correctly as needed. For that, it was extremely helpful to use the coordinates which showed locations on the accompanying Google maps. If there are coords available for the NYCDLs, that would be really great to bring those in sooner rather than later, but even if not the process can continue. Also more recently i divided up List of RHPs in Baltimore into 5 geo-based chunks, by the way, and there was some discussion related to Philadelphia and Baltimore, both, still showing at wt:NRHP. What is important is selecting a complete partition of the city, either using some official district system (as done in Baltimore) or some other clear enough system like Dmadeo chose. doncram (talk) 19:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I notice that for Los Angeles the NRHP article is the one that brings all sites into one great table, while the municipal one is the geographically subdivided one. Vice versa, approximately, from what we've currently got for Manhattan. Clearly there are grounds for arguing that the different schemes can serve different purposes, hence can be used for different articles that overlap and vive la difference. My preference is more for geographical subdivision for both the federal and the municipal articles, but I'm certainly open to contrary views. Occasionally I toy with the idea that instead of separate municipal and federal lists, we should consolidate. However, adjusting the tables to include items listed in the municipal system but not the federal one would make them unlike the NRHP Wiki tables in other places, so it's better to keep them separate.

In Los Angeles the local tables are very much like the federal ones including a slot for a picture. This I think is not such a good idea for New York. The majority of NYCDL either have a position in the federal tables, or have their own Wikpedia article where the pic belongs. Those items that don't, can have a pic somewhere along the right margin as at present, not precisely aligned but they don't need to be. Right now many photos appear in both the municipal and federal articles, but those can be cleared out as we snap more pix that would otherwise be homeless. Definitely the tables should include a place for neat little flags for items that belong also to the NRHP and NHL lists. Oof, got other things to do before I hit the streets of Manhattan, but I'll come back in the evening. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:10, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Fine to take the lead in format of table you prefer, with photos riding alongside as in the List of Chicago Landmarks. I actually think that makes a nice change in formatting, just for variety's sake, vs. the NRHP lists for NYC. Also, by the way, I could help come up with infobox that works for NYCDLs, either a new one or modifying the local1 infobox used in some articles for individual LAHCMs which are not also NRHPs. By the way, i think there is a need for a WikiProject that would support local designations and other non-NRHP historic sites world-wide; I mean to put up a proposal for that soon. What you're doing seems great so far. Cheers, doncram (talk) 19:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry; I intended to get back yesterday evening. Discussions of future major changes in articles are my last priority, after vandal patrol, insertion of pix, and other immediate actions. Real life has also intruded slightly. Tomorrow I must bring the bike to the shop to make it slower, and good weather will probably send me out taking pix of Upper East Side after that and maybe Astoria the next day. Hard to find time for serious Wikiness in warm weather. Springtime will bring much bicycling, and a Geocoding camera, making sort of a deadline for major editing.

Yeah, I see you're a real historic place maven; I'm just a geography nut for places within a lazy afternoon's round trip by bicycle, so we each have different strengths to contribute. So, that pretty much disqualifies me for saying how these things should be coordinated around the world. Certainly the US NRHP should be thoroughly regular. Similar municipal programs will differ officially, which might have a bearing on variations in Wikitreatment.

Yes, Manhattan's NRHP tabular articles are divided into four for the main island of Manhattan, and one for the little neighbor islands. I figure all the mainland articles are about twice as large as ideal, so the corresponding New York City Designated Landmarks articles should all divide the NRHP article territories in half, respectively at Canal Street, Fifth Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and 155th. For finer mincing we could divide Harlem at Fifth, separate Central Park from Upper West Side, divide Midtown at 34th, and divide Downtown at Broadway or Chambers or both, but to my mind that seems going too far. There are 12 official Community Boards of Manhattan approximately equal and rational, that are supposed to be used for all sorts of purposes, which is fairly close to my idea of having 8+1. The official Guide to New York City Landmarks has 19 maps, laid out specifically for this purpose. It can be purchased direcly here and through ordinary bookstores.

Geographic coordinates, universal for NRHP, seem scarce for NYCDL, so the first slice may suffer some inaccuracies, but I've got a copy of the Commission's 2009 Guide to New York City Landmarks with over a dozen maps for Manhattan, so it's all correctable especially after I take some Geocoded photographs. Funny thing, the Wikitables in the NRHP articles are designed for horizontal pictures, but many of my pix and others are vertical ones. Can't help it when it's a narrow church with tall steeple, for other cases sometimes I think I'm in a competition for picture space that will be won by height. Ah well, once we have a few different pix for each entry, we can be more picky about which ones go where. I love coordinates but in the NRHP tables they are visible and maybe it would be better to hide them behind the blue ball symbol.

So, y'want to get out your cleaver and start cutting up this giant table? Or does anyone think my idea of eight tabular articles is too many, too few, too much work, wrong boundaries, failing to take advantage of work already done by others, missing the point, or in some other way all wet? As I implied, my participation will be light at least until the weekend. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:03, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea of using the 12 Community Districts, because those are official districts of the city, and do not have to be named and defined and explained and defended. I suggest adding a CDs/neighborhood column to the tables and beginning to identify which is the CD for each entry. When enough are identified, then split out separate list-articles. Perhaps the CD's having most Landmarks get separate articles, and smaller CDs are left combined into one list-article. Anyhow i would identify the CDs on this list-article and see how many are in each, before deciding on split to implement. That would be a lot of work to do, but i don't see the need to rush to split, either. doncram (talk) 03:08, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

• As a resident, I disagee. We could use Police precincts as easily and still be incomprehensible to most readers. Community boards are *not* something most residents deal with. I also suspect it would not equitably split up the island's nrhp entries. I offer an extension of the current idea down below dm (talk) 19:43, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Districts

Chilly afternoon yesterday but I pedalled over Triboro Bridge, got chased off from trying to photograph its headquarters, met a cute young couple high over Hell Gate, bagged an Acela on Hell Gate Bridge and a Seastreak boat coming out from under it, and descended to snap Bohemian Hall, a Greek Cathedral, the terminal of the Astoria BMT Line, and a street clock on Steinway Street. At the former Paramount Studio the camera got so cold its batteries started failing, but the pic probably came out and I returned on Queensboro Bridge to warmth.

Yes, my idea to merely halve the NRHP Manhattan articles was a poor one. Community Boards are probably the best division. On the other hand the big advantage of the Guide to New York City Landmarks scheme is, I've got the book, so it would be easy for me. But, it's only the scheme adopted for the book; no telling what the future would hold while the CBs are stable. Anyway the list of maps with page numbers is as follows:

The Chelsea map only has six points and one district; Central Park has no points and about ten districts; the rest have a dozen to maybe thirty points each and up to half a dozen districts. Subtract the page numbers for a suggestion of how large the sections are, though some are larger because of pictures or lengthy discriptions of districts, or other considerations.

Oof, I don't see as easy a way to assign CBs correctly unless there's some way to overlay them on a map since, for example, about as many CBs straddle Fifth Avenue, the boundary of East and West numbered streets, as use it as a border. Without coordinates, hmm; probably it will be very slow going until we get coordinates. Anyway tonight's big job is to review my backlog of unprocessed pix for retouch and upload. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:38, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• No matter what scheme you come up with, you'll need to deal with the (in this case literal) edge cases, whether its 5th avenue or 14th st. Considering I dont know what community board I live in, I suspect even most residents would not be able to use that separation. The guidebooks would have the same problem. They're just making choices to simplify their lives, not yours. Why do you think the current NRHP tables for the city are 2x too big? Thanks dm (talk) 23:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, the only landmarks I can think of that straddle a major avenue are Grand Central Terminal and its associated MetLife and NYCRR buildings, and Washington Arch and I don't think any those are on boundaries of Community Boards of Manhattan, and they aren't on the book's map boundaries. Too bad we don't have a map for the CB article; just poor ones for CB1 and 7 having restricted uses. Even without a map the CBs look the way to go for our splitting. Generally I find that my antiquated hardware loads a tabular article about ten times quicker if it's about half the size of our Manhattan NRHP ones, but of course we can't go by my peculiarities. Yes, Community Districts are the way but I've taken ill and won't accomplish much that requres thinking this week. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:14, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It turns out, the majority don't overlap. I started by labelling all the entries we have for CB12 because as far as I see it's identical with Map 19, being north of 155 Street. Funny thing, the majority of the book entries for that district have no entry yet in the article. Certainly I won't add any until we've done the split. I did add a picture or two of items not in our list.

Some guidebook maps go into two CB, but none seem to sprawl into three. My own home CB04 contains several maps entire. I thought I lived less than a block from its eastern boundary but the boundary is actually almost half a mile away. CB01 and CB07 each neatly contains two maps. The messiest overlaps are in Midtown East, and even those are less confusing than could be. I hope to tackle the entry labelling at a map or two per day, or maybe as many as one CB per day until it's done or someone else joins in this activity. Pleae speak up now if my labelling method stinks; I'd hate to charge ahead in a wrong direction and only find out after it's a quarter done. Oh, here's my concordance or whatever you call such a thing:

I'm really disliking the idea of using the guidebook maps (I picked up the new version btw). The maps in the next version might be different. I guess we could separate by community board, but it's not something that even residents know very well. Kind of like going by police precinct, sure it's official, but ... If you think the current lists are too long, perhaps we just split them again...

• below 14th becomes below canal, canal to 14th It could be Houston too I guess
• 14th to 59th becomes 14th to 34th, 34th to 59th
• 59th to 110th becomes 59th to 110 West of Central Park and 59th to 110th East of Central Park
• Above 110th stays the same or splits on 125th.

I'm not using things like "Upper West Side" since its ambiguous. Thoughts? dm (talk) 19:36, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Maps in guidebook vs CB

• Overview map page 4
• 1 - Financial District, Battery Park - p5 - CB01
• 2 - Civic Center, Tribeca - p20 - CB01
• 3 - Soho, Little Italy - p38 - CB02
• 4 - Bowery, Chinatown, Lower East Side - p44 - CB03 & CB02
• 5 - West Village - p50 - CB02
• 4 - East Village - p59 - "4" is presumably a typo in the book - CB03 & CB02
• 7 - Chelsea - p70 - CB04
• 8 - Ladies' Mile, Gramercy Park - p73 CB05 & CB04
• 9 - Theater District - p89 - CB04
• 10 - Midtown East:Murray Hill, Tudor City - p97 - CBO5 & CB06
• 11 - Rockefeller Center East to Turtle Bay - p111 - CB05 & CB06
• 12 - Midtown West, 50th Street to 60th Street - p122 - CB04
• 13 - Upper West Side, South of 83rd Street - p131 - CB07
• Central Park - p133
• 14 - Upper West Side, North of 83d Street - p144 - CB07
• 15 - Upper East Side, South of 76th Street - p152 - CB08
• 16 - Upper East Side, 76th Street to 94th Street - p170 CB08
• 17 - Upper East Side and East Harlem, 94th Street to 106th Street - p185 -CB11 & CB08
• 18 - Morningside Heights, Harlem, Sugar Hill - p188 - CB09 & CB10
• 19 - Washingtone Heights, Inwood - p209 - CB12

Jim.henderson (talk) 19:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

So, I'm talking to two editors both starting with "d" and both much more experienced than me on the topic of historic sites. And one is a fellow local photographer who makes better pictures than me but not as many. I started with the position that we should simply resubdivide the NRHP subdivisions of Manhattan, mostly in halves, and was persuaded that using our own homemade divisions is a dumb idea and it's better to go with some sort of official divisions. The problem is, no official subdivisions of Manhattan are widely known, so none will make good article titles. Not school districts, sanitation districts, Community Boards or any others. It's not like London which has many "boroughs" or Tokyo where the big "Ku" areas are mostly subdivided into widely recognized official "Cho" districts. So, any subdivisions will have to be explained in the Manhattan article. They should be chosen to make good article names, if that's possible. Fitting it to the guidebook maps would make our editing easy but that's not a good enoug merit.

Well, let's take the half NRHP idea. Some, namely 14-59, 59-110, and 110-155 are very easy since we can add a E and W as in "LoNYCDL in Manhattan between East 14th and East 59th". South of 14, we can divide at Broadway, which adds "East of Broadway" to that name, and we can also break it at Houston or my preference would be Canal Street because both the CBs and the guidebook maps divide there. So, those names would only become moderately more complex than the Manhattan NRHP ones.

The CB divisions are in some cases, for example the single UWS CB and the two UES CB, just as simple, while in Midtown and Downtown the borders are a bit complex. On the other hand, using CBs in the article names certainly makes for shorter names, viz "LoNYCDL in Manhattan Community Board 4" for Chelsea-Clinton, instead of listing the border streets in the article name. CB-based article names will provide no help for Web searches, but it seems to me there aren't going to be any names that will help with that, so it's a dead issue.

So where am I? Undecided, but I hope I understand the issues at stake. Incidentally, if anyone can show up at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC in Brooklyn this Saturday, I'd love to give a few kicks in person to this topic or others. Maybe I can be persuaded to join a cabaal and settle it or maybe we'll get a fourth participant and a third or fourth proposal to give us headaches. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

• sounds like you understand it as well as I do. I'm not sure they're always better, but I have taken a lot of photos too, many of them are in the backlog which I havent bothered to upload yet since the articles werent created. Anyway, I might make the Met on Friday and the BK museum on Saturday. Not sure yet. dm (talk) 05:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Sounds like you both understand it perfectly well. I wrote out the following so i guess i will post it now, but i may not have anything further to say, later. I've read Dmadeo's comments dated 1 February in 2 places above, including specific suggestion to split the zones used already in the Manhattan NRHP lists. About using the Community Boards, it's feasible to create maps to upload to Commons and to use in these articles; several wp:NRHPers have been creating maps left and right, recently. Also, it's not a bad thing to use Community Boards which people don't know about much, in terms of they will then learn about them. At the same time as they learn about NRHPs and about NYC Landmarks, which they also don't know anything about. Your work will kind of publicize the official districts. Offhand, Community boards sounds like a more related type of official district than do police precincts, more worth publicizing perhaps. And, it is only NYC's NRHP list which is split by anything other than official districts; official neighborhoods/districts are used in Baltimore, Chicago, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Philly, Los Angeles, and Seattle's NRHP and similar lists. In some discussions, it has been noted that there are concentrations of NRHPs or other sites in some parts of the partitions, like in Central Philly and Central Baltimore and Downtown Syracuse; no official partition is likely to split up the historic sites into equal chunks. In some discussions leading to many of these, local wikipedians stated they were not aware of those neighborhood/district schemes, but then the official partitions turned out to work pretty well. For official districts, you can link to an article about each separate district, or you can link to an article about the official districts that has a subsection for each one, which is very useful. (Like, for CB 7, you can wikilink to an article about CB 7, and not have to define it in your own article.) Also, for official districts, you can identify them in a column (like is now done for the neighborhoods in Syracuse) OR you can use the districts to divide up the list-article, and you can also make list-articles that cover more than one of the districts, with the districts named in a column. With non-official districts that you cannot succinctly identify for use in a column, I think you can only use the partition for dividing up the list-article. All that said, i think it is okay if you come to a consensus to use the further split areas which are not official districts. I think it's a good idea to get input from other NYC wikipedians, though, at Meetups and/or at WikiProject NYC. Also, it would be good to work/ask for help in the Talk pages of articles like List of neighborhoods in Manhattan or List of neighborhoods in New York City or whatever may exist. Good luck and have fun and all that... :) doncram (talk) 05:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think this from the List of Manhattan neighborhoods page says it all. dm (talk) 05:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It's sure not like the Arrondissements of Paris, which are approximately the same size as our CB but residents all know their boundaries. Sorry; recovering more slowly than expected from a minor illness I haven't been doing anything with this. I'll also miss the Friday evening Wikimedia event in Museum of Modern Art for sure and probably the Saturday one at Brooklyn Museum as well. Anyway all CB got their own articles last year and Manhattan mostly got them the year before, so the Manhattan Landmark article, and the local Landmark articles when eventually they are made, needn't do a lot more than point at them for definition. If upon recovering health I decide my preference for using CB does not look like a fever induced fantasy, then that's the way I'll want to go. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

name of article, and top level list-article

Shouldn't this be titled "List of New York City Landmarks in Manhattan", rather than "List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan"? And likewise for the other borough lists. The commission is called the NYC Landmarks Commission, right? I also started an overall list of lists, at List of New York City Landmarks. If there is something i don't understand, perhaps that will have to be renamed to be consistent here, but currently i think it's the other way around. doncram (talk) 04:30, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Bright red color and use of color template

Hey, in some ways I like the bright red color that has been used for designating NYC Landmarks, but it is really rather bright. It's a bit hard to read through it, in Lincoln Building (1 Union Square, New York, New York) and other applications. There are guidelines on use of color in wikipedia (i think perhaps at wp:color) and I think the color choice might want to be revisited at some future date.

But, in the meantime, the color is being hard-coded into articles, such as putting "#ff0000" into the "designated_other1_color" field within NRHP infoboxes of sites like the Lincoln Building one (which is NRHP-listed and a NYC Landmark). I set up Template:NYCLcolor just now, and suggest henceforth putting in {{NYCLcolor}} instead. It just inserts "#ff0000", but that would allow for changing the color everywhere, later, if a choice is made. And it might be easier to remember than "ff0000" when editing articles.

There is also template:NYCL color with a space, which has not been used much (if at all), which has slightly different coding to apply the same color for a table cell, such as in this demonstration example:

	Name	Designation date
1	Ladies' Mile Historic District	May 2, 1989
2	Lincoln Building (1 Union Square)	July 12, 1988
3	Noho Historic District	June 29, 1999
4	St. Mark's Historic District	January 14, 1969

(In the example i use NRHP blue color for the Lincoln Building, to show it at its higher national-level designation, within a table of NYCLs.) So, while i am not advocating a color change now, could this template be used, going forward? I just think it is better editing practice. doncram (talk) 19:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm fine bringing the brightness down a notch, but I picked it because it was easy to remember (ha!) and was pretty close to the red apple color of the city. dm (talk) 01:19, 8 May 2009 (UTC)