Hello, readers.

I’m working on an iPhone app to map New York’s best neon signs—a pocket digital guide that will show you where to find the best glow. It’s going to be really cool—you’ll be able to search for signs, click on thumbnails, and view a map of the signs closest to your current location, plus get more information about each sign including a photo (turn the photo sideways and you’ll see it big). And the best thing?  It’s gonna be free. But to distribute the app for free, I need to raise some money to get the help I need to put it together, so I’ve launched a Kickstarter project with all kinds of great swag, including Project Neon membership cards, beautiful photo prints, amazing posters, and more—so even if you don’t have an iPhone you can get your just reward for supporting Project Neon in this endeavor.

Regardless of whether you can support Project Neon with some $$, I would be much obliged if you would tell your friends, blog, reblog, tweet, Facebookize, and otherwise help me tell the world that something cool is going on. Thanks!  And super special bonus: there’s a free treat for iPhoners just for reading about the project (hint: look for a link near the end of the Kickstarter page).

Oh, and the deadline’s May 30th (yes, my birthday). If we don’t make the goal by then you don’t get charged, I don’t get any money, you don’t get any rewards, I have a very sad birthday, and the project doesn’t happen. So let’s go!

—Kirsten

PS:  A very big thank you to the wonderful people who have already backed the project.

Hello there. In case you missed it elsewhere, there are two Project Neon updates. First, a story I wrote about chasing neon was published today on Urban Omnibus. Second, the Project Neon blog is now live over on Tumblr. Every week I’ll visit another neon-ified establishment in New York City, and I’ll post a picture and a short story on the blog. Check out the Subscribe page for various means of keeping up to date.

I have approximately a million Catasterist posts waiting in the queue, but I’m also in the process of recovering from the pink eye. Gross, I know, right? So I’m going to bed early tonight, but I’ll be back soon with more architecture & design. Yup.

First let me explain the app: it includes an introductory essay, a list of New York City buildings, a corresponding list of architects, a list of galleries and shops where you can see art and design, and most importantly, a map interface, so you can see where the buildings or galleries/shops are located relative to your current position (you can also sort the lists by distance from your current location). Excellent! You can also save favorites and there are some walking-tour-type routes with topics like “Contemporary Curtain Walls” and “Unorthodox Modern,” as well as the ability to set up your own route, though I have to admit I haven’t yet figured out how that works—I guess I’ll have to find instructions on line.

Each building includes a small photo, the architect and date, address, nearest subway, and a brief history. Exactly the amount of information I want when I’m out in the world looking at architecture. I can get more in-depth when I’m back home researching.

All of that is pretty great. The only gripes I have is that the app itself is HUGE—just over 98 megabytes, while similar apps on my phone are closer to three or four. I also think the photos could have been better—they tend to be washed out and unimpressive as thumbnails, not very enticing for the intrepid explorer.

Those criticisms notwithstanding, though, the content is pretty great. A good mix of building types, and a good mix of famous and less well known structures, so even a long-time New Yorker like me can find plenty of new places to visit. And of course I love them for including the Candela Structures (and a link to our website!), so even at a relatively pricey (for iPhone apps) $4.99, I’m glad I bought it. There are also guides to Berlin and Milan, and if I ever find myself headed to either of those cities, I’ll definitely check those apps out, too. My only advice to Domus would be to find a way to minimize the size and to hire me to take photos for the next version.

I have a question for you: I’ve been thinking that the photos and information I’ve been gathering for Project Neon would make an excellent pocket field guide to New York City’s neon (and maybe even other cities in the future?), and that the best way to do that would be to make an iPhone (and maybe Droid?) app. If you want to hook me up with a book deal, that would be great, too, but I think an app would be fantastic since those of you with magic phones could carry it around with you and refer to it in the field (I would probably make an accompanying website with printable PDFs for those without magic phones).

The only hitch in the plan is that while my design skills are top-notch, my programming skills are rudimentary at best and by now probably totally rusted out. So I’d need to hire a programmer. Programmers, as you may be aware, cost money. But through the magic of Kickstarter I bet I could raise the necessary money by offering lovely prints of the best neon photos as premiums. Yes? Yes!

First, though, I need to get an idea of how much money  I’d need to raise. If any of you have the necessary skills or know someone who does, please speak up! You don’t have to sign on to actually do the programming now (though I’d love it if you did), just help me come up with some budget numbers. It would be great if this programmer had previous app-making experience, but if said person would be willing to charge less and count this as a learning/portfolio-building experience, that could work, too.

So please spread the word, and look for more updates soon!

(The photo below features one of my favorite neon arrows—which is saying something as there are a lot of great arrows in neondom—which is on the Bigelow Chemists sign in the West Village.)

Man with Russian accent smoking a cigar: Why are you so interested in this sign?

Me:  I love neon signs.

Man with Russian accent smoking a cigar (looking at me like I’m nuts): Oh. OK.

Me:  Also, it’s the 100th anniversary of neon signs.

Man with Russian accent smoking a cigar (breaking into a big grin): Oh! Happy birthday, neon!

It was a cold night and I was wearing work shoes instead of tromping around shoes, so the chill and a blister conspired to cut off my expedition after a couple of hours, but I managed to get a bunch of good photos of signs in the Upper East Side, Midtown, and Times Square. A mere sliver of the signs in NYC, and I haven’t even uploaded all the photos yet, but here are a few for you now. I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to hit up some of the other fantastic neon in the greater New York metropolitan area (suggestions gratefully accepted!)

Today I trekked up to Yonkers with Paul on another quest: exploring the abandoned Glenwood Power Plant. It was built in 1906 (along with a sister plant in the Bronx) by New York Central to provide power for the electrification of the train tracks (via the a new invention: the third rail) going into the new Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. It was designed by Minnesota-based architectural office Reed & Stern, who later collaborated with Warren & Wetmore on the design of Grand Central Station.

After only 30 years the railroad no longer needed to run its own power stations due to the increased capacity of regular power stations, and in 1936 the Glenwood Power Plant was sold to ConEd (the Bronx plant was demolished). By the 1960s the Glenwood plant couldn’t keep up with the capacity of newer plants (like the Indian Point nuclear power plant) and was decommissioned. It’s no longer owned by ConEd and is apparently for sale. There was talk recently of the plant being incorporated into fancy-pants condos, but as far as I can tell that plan has been scuttled.

[Paul's photos are over here.] What an amazing place. It’s pretty stripped down, of course, and there’s some graffiti and whatnot, but the building is still beautiful. The bones are strong  and enough details and relics remain to evoke its past life:

There are two big buildings, with the turbine hall (shown above) being the more dramatic. Accessing it involved crossing a rusty catwalk of a bridge (and I turned out to be a bit more afraid of heights than I remembered), though the biggest gaps had been helpfully planked over by past visitors. Emerging into the vast expanse of the main hall, well lit even on a cloudy day like today with huge, graceful windows, is impressive. The plant’s location on (and into) the edges of the Hudson River makes for some spectacular vistas, and from the roof you can see all the way to Manhattan. Windows are broken, metal is rusted, piles of junk litter the floors, and the building is silent and frozen in an advanced state of rigor mortis, but there’s still somehow the feeling of life with the play of light on walls, with the river outside, and with the evocation of so much past clamor and motion in that gigantic space.

Can you imagine a power plant today being built with so much lovely detail, with huge windows, or with such graceful proportions? I can’t. There are a few notable infrastructure projects from the recent past, but none in the league of the Glenwood Power Plant, and we are the poorer for it.

First up: two Candela updates. Nothing on the scale of last week’s fantastic news, but every little bit helps round out the story, no? Here are two small images from one of the 1964 World’s Fair Progress Reports, which were issued three times a year in the years leading up to the Fair’s opening, to document plans, ground-breakings, and other ‘Hey, look how fantastically everything is going!’ type news.

We were tipped off that the Queens Museum of Art’s gift shop had some copies of a Progress Report that included some info on the marina, so naturally we sped on over to have a look. A mere two-page spread with no substantial text, but happily, two pictures we haven’t seen before, both of early conceptual models by Peter Schladermundt.

(click on either image above to see it bigger)

The image on the left shows a conceptual model for the structures—probably from quite early in the design process, since it is significantly different than the final structures (a central structural support, and what looks to be only three legs touching down). On the right is a meeting in which Peter Schladermundt (second from right) presents a model to a project manager from his office, a representative of Owens-Corning, and the president of Marinas of the Future, Inc., the client. Both photos are tantalizing hints to the design process.

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In other Candela news, the Parks Department sign in front of the Candela Structures is no longer 100% inaccurate—entirely the reverse, as a matter of fact. We took matters into our own hands and updated the sign with a sticker (we’re going to monitor its weathering and modify our materials if needed) that gives credit to Peter Schladermundt, mentions the original glass walls, and gives the original number of pavilions at three. Wshew! So much better to have facts instead of fiction there.

We noticed that at least one other nearby sign (the signs are all over the huge Flushing Meadows Corona Park) has been replaced with a newer sign that includes the outline of the structueres and a label, but no background on either them or any of other points of interest throughout the park. The new signs are colorful, updated, and more accurate, but it’s a little sad they don’t give any information beyond the map itself, and it’s totally terrible that they use that dreadful font. Ick.

Today’s dispatch tells the story of an amazing detail in plain sight. I’m sure I’ve walked over this West Village spot and not registered it many times. I’ve probably even trod upon it, but I never looked down and wondered what it meant. Take a look:

Go over to Scouting New York to read the full post, and I highly suggest adding the blog to your regular rotation.

OK, time for me to get back to Hypothetical Development–my rendering is in the home stretch!

Do you know some good NYC neon I should include? Let me know so I don’t miss it! Comment below, or send me an email.

(For some reason I didn’t take great photos of my own collection, but here’s what it looked like before I straightened out the boards!)

• A really excellent site called Edible Geography (just added to my RSS feed) explores the rich overlap between food and place, including an entry about Pratt’s You Are Here show (on view in the Manhattan gallery until November 6) about mapping the psychogeography of New York City, including artist Liz Hickok’s awesome gelatin New York (San Francisco is shown below).

• A great interview by Paola Antonelli with Rob Walker in conjunction with an upcoming MoMA exhibit called ‘Talk to Me,’ about his relationship with objects. Below is an object from his Significant Objects project.

• Loft cabins by architect Terri Chiao elegantly and humorously separate out space from a large Bushwick loft. I love this and hope to steal it—I mean be inspired by it—some day.

• Louise Naunton Morgan has a new twist on pointillism—she is The Human Printer, and will draw pictures you send her with halftone dots, in CMYK, B&W, or spot color.  Pretty amazing.

• Did you know there were a half dozen Lustron homes in New Orleans?  I  had no idea. Here is one of them. Found at Regional Modernism, a repository of New Orleans Modernism info.

• New York City had to call in help to deal with all the post-tornado fallen trees. Responders included the Cherokee Hotshots, as documented in The New York Times.

That’s enough for one day. Happy reading!