Happy December!

Best wishes for the Holidays!

Check out my curated list of New York City cultural and historical event this month, many of them under-the-radar. Of course this month is filled with traditional holiday-themed events including markets and tree-lightings. In addition to my newsletter items don't forget the enchanting Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (pictured above) and sit back and relax and stream the Ken Burns documentary series of the American Revolution on PBS. I was floored by several art exhibits: "Native Visions Reimagined in Glass" at the Museum of the American Indian, Rashid Johnson at The Guggenheim, and the new Studio Museum in Harlem. Highly recommended is the annual Jazz Nativity on the Upper West Side (scroll down).

This is the monthly newsletter of Hank Orenstein, real estate broker at the Corcoran Group, professional NYC tour guide, and organizer of the successful Meetup group with over 10,000 members, "Exploring NYC History and Neighborhoods." Also president of Owning New York LLC, which offers real estate and lifestyle tours of NYC neighborhoods for people seeking to make a move.

Contact me for a consultation for all your real estate needs and a personalized analysis of the market.

Scroll to the end for NYC Real Estate News and a Holiday Tipping Guide

Check out my schedule of public walking tours here:

Capturing Brooklyn’s Gilded Age

Thursday, December 4

6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

Center for Brooklyn History

128 Pierrpont Street

(free)

Brooklyn Heights

The Gilded Age is often remembered for its mansions and millionaires — J. P. Morgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt. Our collective imagination, reinforced by popular portrayals like HBO’s The Gilded Age, lingers in those ornate ballrooms and formal portraits. But photographer George Bradford Brainerd captured a vastly different side of that era: street vendors, dockworkers, and ordinary Brooklynites, who lived a far grittier existence in a city on the cusp of change.

Join authors Erik Hesselberg (Candid New York: The Pioneering Photography of George Bradford Brainerd) and Esther Crain (The Gilded Age in New York) as they show Brainerd’s remarkable work and discuss the Brooklyn he captured on the brink of modernity. The book can be ordered online or purchased at bookstores.

Mini-Global Mashup Festival: Flying Horses/Sonic Threads

Friday, December 5 

6pm - 10pm



Flushing Town Hall (A Smithsonian Affiliate)

137-35 Northern Blvd.

Flying Horses/Sonic Threads is Flushing Town Halls's Mini-Global Mashup Festival, to experience sounds exchanged along the Silk Road, an ancient trade route that crossed Asiatic and North African landscapes. Along with textiles and ceramics, rhythmic patterns, the sounds of lutes, zithers, and fiddles also spread along the Silk Road. 

Bringing artists from China, India, Iran, Palestine, Syria, and Turkmenistan together, Flying Horses/Sonic Threads will amplify the sonic and historical connections that cross these regions and cultures.  

Curated by the celebrated tabla musician Roshni Samlal, Flying Horses/Sonic Threads will feature three short performance sets before all the artists come together on stage for a collaborative, global jam session.



Starscape Lightshow at Genesis House (Free)

40A 10th Avenue (Meatpacking District)

Through January 12

The installation is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 11am-7pm.

STARSCAPE, an immersive installation designed with the award-winning creative director of the ERAS tour, Ethan Tobman and inspired by the constellations that connect the New York and Seoul night skies.Genesis House and Ethan Tobman partner to create STARSCAPE, an immersive installation inspired by Dongji, the Korean celebration of the Winter Solstice. Explore the wonders of the cosmos on the longest night of the year told by the sights and sounds of light. A cinematic journey full of wonder, warmth, and human connection awaits.

Crafts at the Cathedral

December 5-7th

Cathedral of St. John the Divine

1047 Amsterdam Avenue @ West 112th Street

Visit the world's largest Gothic cathedral for the 27th Annual Crafts at the Cathedral, a juried fine craft show taking place December 5-7, 2025, produced by Rose Squared Art Shows in partnership with the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. This highly anticipated event directly supports the Cathedral’s community initiatives while providing artists an extraordinary venue to showcase their work.



Set within the breathtaking nave of the cathedral, this show offers an unparalleled setting. Towering columns, stunning stained-glass windows, and Vermont slate floors create a striking backdrop for fine craft. Located in Morningside Heights just south of Columbia University and surrounded by cultural institutions, the Cathedral is a top tourist destination, drawing thousands of visitors—especially during the holiday season.

Park Avenue Annual Tree Lighting

Sunday, December 7

6:30 p.m at Brick Church

1140 Park Avenue @ 91st St.

The tradition of lighting trees on Park Avenue began in 1945 when several Park Avenue families wanted a special way to honor those men and women who had died in World War II. Today the illuminated trees – which appear on the malls between 54th and 97th Streets – remain a symbol of peace and a reminder of the sacrifices made to attain it.

In the early days, the cost of the Tree Lighting was underwritten by a few families but now this sparkling display is made possible each year by contributions The Fund for Park Avenue receives from the community.

Museum of Chinese in America Performs – "Where Voices Linger

Reflections on Loving v. Virginia"

Friday December 12, 2025, 6:30 pm  8:00 pm

215 Centre Street

In conjunction with the special exhibition happa.me, the Museum of Chinese in America is proud to present a hybrid program that examines the enduring legacy of Loving v. Virginia and its impact on interracial relationships in the United States. This 1967 landmark Supreme Court case struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage. The evening will open with a presentation of Where Voices Linger, a short play that reflects on the complexities of forbidden love and the pursuit of truth. A panel discussion, led by Ken Tanabe, founder of Loving Day, will follow, offering historical insight, personal perspectives, and contemporary reflections on the landmark case and its resonance today.

Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens

The Gotham Center for New York City History

(Free) Online event

Monday, December 15 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Once wetlands, Queens today is a crowded cityscape of dense urban neighborhoods and suburban sprawl. The largest of New York City’s five boroughs by area, it has a larger population than every American city except Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City itself. It possesses the most culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse population in the United States and possibly the world. This is the story of Queens, “the world’s borough,” and how it transformed, in less than one hundred years, from an agricultural hinterland to a vital urban corridor.

New York Transit Museum is rolling out subway cars from the 1930s for its annual vintage train rides — all you need is your fare. A few things to know about this year’s offerings:

• The rides will run every Sunday in December from 10am to 5pm,
• The train will depart from 2 Av–Houston Street on the uptown F line and 96 Street–2nd Avenue on the Q line.

See these historic trains up close and experience them just as New Yorkers did decades ago. Sit on original seats, grip old handholds and leather straps, read vintage advertisements, and immerse yourself in the rhythms of another era. Part of the fun is that both train staff and riders dress up in vintage fashion, and you may encounter an old-school jazz band.

Annual Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden

Through January 10 (all ages)



The popular Holiday Train Nights at the New York Botanical Garden have returned, offering a unique opportunity to see the famous model trains after dark inside the beautiful Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.



More than 25 incredible model trains and trolleys will be moving through nearly 200 twinkling replicas of NYC landmarks, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. Plus, guests can enjoy festive sweet and savory bites. Secure your spot to enjoy this enchanting experience.

This European-style Christmas market is hiding in an 104-year-old Midtown church—famous for its Swedish crafts, saffron buns, and cozy café.

the Church of Sweden on 48th Street, is a holiday haven scented with cardamom, lined with Swedish crafts, and brimming with irresistible treats. It’s the kind of secret spot that makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into a Nordic Christmas dream right in the heart of Midtown.



Be sure to check out the café area in the back.

Jazz in Harlem at Historic Venue

Monday Nights 7pm - 11pm

Wednesday Nights 9pn - midnight

Suggested admission $10, BYOB

New Amsterdam Musical Association, 107 W 130th Street

Founded in 1904, NAMA (New Amsterdam Musical Association), is the oldest African-American musical organization in the United States. It was founded at the time that the American Federation of Musicians Local 310 did not admit minority musicians. Taking matters in their own hands, NAMA became the first black music union thus allowing black musicians to perform in and around New York City!

Originating in London, The Gingerbread City® is an annual exhibition celebrating the creativity of architects and designers, using gingerbread, icing, and candies to explore playful ideas in architecture and urban design. Now in its ninth year, each installment features a themed challenge that addresses current city planning issues through this sweet medium—perfect for the holiday season.

Something New: A Christmas Carousel

Through January 6th, 10am - 10pm

Greeley Square - 33rd Street and Broadway

A magical new addition has arrived in Midtown: a new double-decker carousel. Follow the music, climb aboard, and take a whirl on the Christmas Carousel at 33rd and Broadway in Greeley Square! This double-decker ride is making its way to New York City for the first time ever this holiday season, so don’t wait to hop aboard. 

Find the Christmas Carousel just steps away from Herald Square Park and the Macy's Holiday Square shops. From atop the two-story carousel, enjoy 360-degree views of holiday lights and cheer all the way up Broadway.  

NYC’s largest Kwanzaa festival returns for its 18th year—a week-long celebration of African heritage and culture.

The festival is presented with the Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation,a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization with a mission to enlighten, uplift and immerse the community at large in all things artful of Africa – in full – in America. The Foundation provides a broad range of arts & cultural services that comprise two primary programs, the Asase Yaa School of the Arts and the Asase Yaa African American Dance Theater. Under the auspices of the School of the Arts, they also sponsor an annual Children’s Arts Camp, and have a thriving Arts Outreach educational program that services public and private schools throughout New York’s five boroughs including Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens. It’s one of the few Black-owned and run African cultural arts organizations in Brooklyn.

Celebrate Kwanzaa with the Harlem Opera Theater

Saturday, December 27 at 3:00pm

Church of the Intercession

550 West 155th Street @ Broadway

You are invited to hear the voices of the Harlem Opera Theater present opera and music in this Kwanzaa celebration and its seven principles: Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Creativity, Purpose, Faith and Cooperative Economics.

While the paintings of Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) have become icons of Impressionism, his drawings, watercolors, and pastels are far less widely known. In fact, drawing remained central to his artistic practice even as his interests and ambitions changed over the course of a long career. This exhibition explores the ways in which Renoir used paper to test ideas, plan compositions, and interpret both landscape and the human figure.

Thematic sections will cover the full span of the artist’s career, ranging from academic studies he made as a student, to on-the-spot impressions of contemporary urban and rural life, to finished, formal portraits, to intimate sketches of friends and family completed late in life. In-depth case studies of favored themes and preparatory work for landmark canvases will further illuminate Renoir’s practice of drawing.

Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Finnish Artist Helene Schjerfbeck

The Metropolitan Museum

Through April 5th

Beloved in Nordic countries for her highly original style, Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is relatively unknown to the rest of the world. Overcoming immense personal struggles and working in a remote location for decades, she produced a powerful body of work through sheer force of will. This exhibition affirms her rightful place in the story of modern art.

Following Schjerfbeck’s journey from art school in Paris to her final days in Sweden, the exhibition illustrates her shift from traditional and realistic subjects to a simplified, spare style. In the early 1900s, using her mother and neighbors as models, she painted abstractly, paring down her subjects in form and color and developing a bold, new language.

This is the first exhibition to showcase the work of the artist in a major United States museum. Featuring nearly 60 works—including generous loans from the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, other Finnish museums, and private collections in Finland and Sweden—Seeing Silence illuminates Schjerfbeck as a valuable voice of modernism.

(courtesy of the Met Museum).

People of all faiths, jazz fans and those new to it, young and old, return year after year. The joy, love and camaraderie inherent in the show radiates throughout the audience. The show, which often features world-class musicians, was written and arranged by singer-songwriter Anne Phillips at the suggestion of the late John Garcia Gensel, “The Jazz Pastor” of St. Peter’s Church.

The original music, written by Ms. Phillips, Bob Kindred and Dave and Iola Brubeck is combined with well-known carols. The soundtrack recording features the late CBS journalist Charles Kuralt as host and jazz greats Lionel Hampton, Dave Brubeck and Tito Puente.

The show plays annually in New York and cities across the country.

The Sea Shanty Sessions

Snug Harbor Cultural Center

Sunday, December 21

2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.

1000 Richmond Terrace, Bldg. D Staten Island

This event repeats on Sunday, January 18th.

Led by the Folk Music Society of New York, this program offers a great opportunity to experience authentic, time-honored maritime songs in an appropriately historic setting. The sessions are free and family friendly, and you are encouraged to sing along if the mood strikes you! If you can't make it this weekend, we hold a session on the third Sunday of every month. 

The Cooper Hewitt Museum, housed in the former mansion of Andrew Carnegie, is the Smithsonium Museum of Design.

Made in America features over 70 photographs by Christopher Payne, highlighting the craftsmanship behind industrial and artisanal production in the U.S., from pencils to rockets. The project was supported by the Smithsonian’s Our Shared Future: 250 initiative, with contributions from Lilly Endowment Inc., Target, and New Balance.

Art of Noise, organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, explores 100 years of music-related design, showcasing more than 300 works from Cooper Hewitt and SFMOMA collections, plus sound environments by teenage engineering and Devon Turnbull.

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers

The Guggenheim Museum

Through January 19th

For nearly 30 years, artist Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago) has cultivated a diverse body of work that draws upon an array of disciplines such as history, philosophy, literature, and music. This major solo exhibition highlights Johnson’s role as a scholar of art history, a mediator of Black popular culture, and as a creative force in contemporary art.

Almost 90 works—from black-soap paintings and spray-painted text works to large-scale sculptures, film, and video—fill the museum’s rotunda, including Sanguine, a monumental site-specific work on the building’s top ramp with an embedded piano for musical performances. Additionally, a dynamic program of events, developed in collaboration with community partners across New York City, activate a sculptural stage on the rotunda floor.

This hidden gem houses NYU's advanced degree programs in the study of ancient civilizations and includes a free public museum located in a former private mansion.

Rodin's Egypt spotlights the French master sculptor Auguste Rodin’s (1840–1917) little-known fascination with ancient Egypt through the Egyptian artifacts he collected and his own sculptures that were inspired by them. Featuring over sixty works from the Musee Rodin, the show surveys the profound impact Egyptian art had on the sculptor's artistic practice and his approach to the human form. It also showcases Rodin's enchantment with the Egyptian body in it's many iterations, from the monumental figures of pharaohs to the chimeric anatomy of gods, and how this then cultivates conversations on corporeality across the centuries. 

Rodin’s Egypt is curated by Bénédicte Garnier, curator at the Musée Rodin in Paris. The loans are generously granted from the Musée Rodin, with additional items from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Jeff Koons Porcelain Series

Gagosian Gallery

541 West 24th Street

Through February 28th

Gagosian is pleased to announce Porcelain Series, an exhibition of new and recent sculptures and paintings by Jeff Koons opening on November 13 at the 541 West 24th Street gallery in New York. This is the first dedicated exhibition of the artist’s Porcelain series.



In Koons’s Porcelain oil paintings, the first layer is a naturalistically rendered element of landscape such as an ocean wave, clouds, or a forest. On top of this, Koons himself paints large, active, gestural brushstrokes. Then, a layer of aluminum leafing is applied, using a sizing technique, producing images of prints drawn from the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation. Finally, Koons paints additional dynamic gestures on top, adding a material richness that echoes the work’s sensual and conceptual depth.

• Giving more is always appreciated by workers who bear the brunt of inflation
• Average tip for super, $150-$300; doorman and concierge, $75-$200

Who to Tip

Make a list of the people you see every day or every week without whom your life wouldn’t run as smoothly: Doorman, building super, dog walker, house cleaner. They all should be thanked personally and tipped according to the list below.

Now think about the secondary people who help out in the background. Does your building have a night doorman or a porter? Do you have a babysitter that often saves the day? You should remember these service providers at the holidays, too. Boland suggests including a personal note to each person, thanking them for their special service and letting them know why you appreciate them.

When it comes to the form of the tip, an envelope of cash works best if you’re handing out gifts directly. But if building management is collecting gifts for workers you won’t see, checks may be your best choice — that way you can ensure that the correct person receives your gift.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani ran on a promise to tackle New York City’s affordability crisis, pledging to triple the pace of affordable housing construction, freeze rents, and make housing attainable again. Voters agreed: the ballot measures that passed made clear that New Yorkers see expanding the housing supply as the city’s most urgent challenge. But affordability alone isn’t enough. The floods that took lives and homes last month are a stark warning that resilience must be part of the solution.

This is why Environmental Defense Fund, Regional Plan Association, the Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development, and Cornell University are taking a new approach that addresses these two deeply intertwined realities. New York cannot fix affordability while ignoring rising flood risk, and it cannot build resilient infrastructure that prices people out. With a new administration preparing to take office, this is the moment for a truly holistic approach that brings housing, safety, and long-term community stability under the same umbrella.



(courtesy of City Limits)

Commercial Real Estate: No One Leaving NYC Because of Momdani, Say Two Top Real Estate CEOs.



• Major businesses are adding significant square footage and there is urgency to lease even more office space in New York City with no sign of any looming corporate exodus caused by democratic socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s election win.
• That was the view shared by two top commercial real estate executives based in New York at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference on Thursday: Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR, and Bill Rudin, long-time CEO of family-owned Rudin Management who is now co-executive chairman.
• One prominent example cited was outspoken conservative hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who is a partner in a Rudin project to build a new two million square foot office building at 350 Park Avenue. “Ken is committed, and will have more employees at 350 Park than in Miami,” Rudin said.