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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities

Category / New York

November 21, 2018

The Asylum That Gave Lou Reed Electroshock Therapy Is Also an Unforgettable Art Museum

“Excuse me!” says a man by a snowed-in dumpster. “Excuse me,” he continues, in a teleprompted tone, “Where are you, excuse me, goodnight!” It’s 2pm at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. I tell him I’m lost, and pull out a map of the 300 acres where he is a patient, and where I’m late…

November 13, 2018

Manhattan’s Secret Shoppable Loft

It wasn’t until the end of my stay in New York that I realised I’d been living in an entirely shoppable dream apartment. The enviable furniture and covetable design accents might be hiding the price tags, but the decorating ideas are on the house. The Witness Apartment is a unique New York City loft that sheds its skin…

November 9, 2018

All Aboard the International Express, New York City

You can go to Paris for beauty school, and the Philippines for lunch. You can find your dream Diwali dress and a 200lb Ganesh statue on one block, then put your feet up at one of the best Chinese food emporiums in the world. The glory of New York has always been its diversity, but…

November 8, 2018

A Secret Archive in New York City that Saved Tiffany Lamps from Extinction

Whose job is it to safeguard one of the most hated designs in decorative history? In the case of the Tiffany lamp, it fell to a New York City orthodontist and immigrant from Austria who happened to be furniture shopping in Greenwich Village in 1935 when his wife spotted a “strange, old-fashioned lamp”. Dr. Egon Neustadt and…

November 6, 2018

Three NYC Bookshops That Will Steal Your Heart

New York City has no shortage of vast bookstores where you can easily spend an hour peacefully browsing the endless shelves and genres, but what I’m looking for is a bookshop that makes my heart ache a little; one that makes me want to swap lives with the bookseller and live inside their world. So…

November 2, 2018

Unlocking the Secrets of Vinegar Hill, New York

How can you escape from the New York City grind on an MTA card budget? Make a break for Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill, the sleepy neighbourhood that’s managed to safeguard its 400-year-old, cobblestone streets from the clutches of big development. It’s on small but hallowed ground, bound together by a tight-knit community whose homes look like…

October 25, 2018

Edgar Allan Poe’s Cottage Is Just Sitting There in the Bronx

Finding it there seems improbable. Absurd, even. Yet, on a sunny day in Sector G of the Bronx, amidst cheap Thai massage parlours and “99¢ Only” stores, stands the final home of the king of American macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. That the house stands after 221 years is a miracle alone. It’s been a quiet…

October 24, 2018

The Night We Found ‘Sleepy Hollow’s’ Jack ‘O Lantern City

Every October in the woods not far from Sleepy Hollow, and yes, it’s a real place, jack ‘o lanterns spring up from the ground to form a whirling carousel and a herd of dinosaurs; a complete circus train a towering bridge — all made entirely of 7,000 hand-carved pumpkins. For locals, it’s just another year…

September 13, 2018

Missing Paris in New York

If you happen to be a Parisian, like our new US editor Francky (hey, it’s me), who suddenly found herself plopped down in the Big Apple with a case of culture shock, you might be yearning for a cheat sheet of sorts — a means to finding a little bit of Paris in New York.…

September 12, 2018

Digging for Treasure (and Love) in New York City

Their’s is a love of strange and beautiful proportion. The kind measured in porcelain, peanut-sized dolls, and antiqued oysters as big as your face. “It’s hard to imagine a time when we’d stop digging,” says Belle, back-lit by a wall of technicolour glass bottles, “I mean it’s addictive. And when you have someone who gets…