A Map of Air Travel in 1929

Flying across the country is a whole lot easier than it used to be. Today you can spend a few hundred bucks to get a non-stop flight from New York to San Francisco and you can get there in about 6 hours. Back in the twenties though that whole long-distance air travel thing was a lot more complicated. Even though great advances in aviation were made during that decade like Charles Lindburgh’s first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the advent of in-flight entertainment, flying was still quite new, dangerous, and lacked much of the infrastructure that airlines heavily rely on today.

The David Rumsey map collection has an incredible flight map of America from 1929 and it shows you how difficult it would be to cross our country as quickly as possible back then. A trip from New York to San Francisco back then would require several train rides over hundreds of miles and layovers at fourteen different airports. Even though back then there were planes like The Spirit of St. Louis that were able to fly over 3000 non-stop miles, those planes were only designed to hold one or two people. The earliest passenger planes of that era had to carry far more people and weight and therefore had a much shorter range. It really is amazing how quickly commercial aviation has advanced to the point where almost anyone can hop on a plane and cross a continent or an ocean in the course of a few hours. It is something that our ancestors would be quite envious of.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available Nationwide. Please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com for more information.

What to do if You’re Stuck at a Busy Airport

Layovers at an airport are rarely fun especially when you didn’t plan for them. Portable electronics are good to pass the time but they have a limited battery life and terminals don’t have many power outlets to supply you with the juice you need. Typically they end up with you munching on overpriced, sub-par airport food while reading a magazine you got at a newsstand. Boring as that may be, sitting around in the terminal at least allows you to be ready to go when the plane is. But if you have more than about 4 hours before your next flight, you can afford to be a little more adventitious and leave the airport. The problem with that move is where should you go? Airports are usually on the outskirts of cities and many of the best places to check out are further away.

Airfare Watchdog has a great post up now that gives you some great recommendations for things to do if you’re laid over at some of the world’s busiest airports depending on how long you’re laid over. They lay out the most cost-effective airline lounges and some cool things to check out that are pretty close to the airport. After reading that I’m quite convinced now that Las Vegas is probably the best city in the world to have a layover in. McCarran Airport is a 10 minute cab ride from the Strip and all of the fun things you can do there.

In Vegas you don’t need to go very far if you need to skip town.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available Nationwide. Please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com for more information.

Renderings of the High Line’s Final Section are Released

One of the coolest new things to recently come into existence in Manhattan was the High Line. What used to be an elevated rail line in the Lower West Side hasn’t seen a train roll over it since 1980 and sat abandoned and deteriorating for almost twenty years. The line was almost completely demolished in the late 1990s until some concerned citizens convinced the City Hall that they had a better plan for it. Since 1999 there has been a lot of work done to transform the rail line into a beautiful public park for all to enjoy. The first third of the new park was opened to the public in 2009 and the second third was opened up in 2011. Construction for the final third of the High Line began last year and is scheduled to open in 2014. However, there is one big piece of recent news regarding that final section under construction. For the first time, detailed plans and renderings of the completed northern section of the High Line were released to the public and those pictures look incredible. Especially impressive was the plan for the northeastern terminus which will look like a big bowl surrounded on all sides by trees and overlooking the Hudson River and 10th Avenue. The High Line is an incredible example of our ability to transform an obsolete eyesore into a beautiful attraction and I for one can’t wait to see the finished result next year.

New York likes their trains underground now.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available in New York and Nationwide. For more information please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com.

New York’s Best Running Routes

Last weekend the New York City marathon returned after a one year hiatus following Hurricane Sandy. The grueling race starts in Staten Island and goes the long way around all five boroughs before finally ending in Central Park. The race goes through some of the most beautiful parts of the city with some of the best views you can find. The problem is that you can’t run much of it yourself unless you’re running in the marathon. As an average pedestrian you can’t expect major roadways to shut down for you any time you want to go for a run.

That’s where Leah Serinsky of Fathom comes in. She put together a map of some of the best running routes that you can take advantage of year-round. These areas are mostly cut off from car traffic and also feature some incredible views of the metropolis. They also a feature an extended route for those who can do it and a shorter version for people like me without the endurance of a marathoner. A common theme of these routes is that they’re all along either the Hudson or East Rivers which comes with provides some great perks to a runner. The open space of the river ensures that you always have some great scenery to look at on the other side while the large amount of open water has a moderating effect on the temperature making you run cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter compared to the rest of the city.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available in New York and Nationwide. For more information please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com.

How to Ace Winter Air Travel

I really hate the trend that has become known as the “Christmas Creep” Every year it seems like businesses across the country start their marketing for the holiday season earlier and earlier in the year. This year I saw my first holiday-themed ad in September and it made me want to cry. All that being said I’m going to be writing about holiday travel before Halloween today but there’s a very good reason for that. If you anticipate that you’re going to be traveling for the winter holidays now is probably the best time to start looking at your options. With winter approaching, Conde Nast has a great article sharing some excellent air travel advice for the coming winter months. Here are some of the highlights:

The cheapest days of the year to fly. Early December and late January are typically when you’ll find some of the cheapest airfares of the year.

Book Presidents’ Day weekend in early December. Prices probably won’t come down much before then.

Try going to a cooler big city instead of a resort. You can get some great deals in the winter by opting to go to a city like New York, Washington DC or San Francisco because there is less business travel there in the winter.

Consider alternate airports. For example, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale are good substitutes for Orlando and Miami respectively in Florida. You may have a longer drive to your final destination but you’ll save a lot on airfare.

Schedule connecting flights out of Southern airports. Those airports are far less likely to experience weather related problems in the winter.

Fly early. Early morning flights are cheaper and have the best chance of going out on time.

If your flight is cancelled:

Be the first to find out. This increases your chances of getting an alternate flight that works for you. Flightstats.com is a good tool to use to get the most up-to-date information.

Have an alternate flight in mind before contacting your airline. You don’t want to depend on just the airline to find you the flight you want. Besides, telling them the exact flight you want will insure you get it faster and save everyone a lot of time.

When all else fails consider going to Vegas. If you know you’re not going to be getting to your destination for a while, Las Vegas is a pretty good place to wait it out. It has a huge airport with lots of flights, cheap hotels, and clear weather. Besides it’s better to be stuck in Las Vegas than the frozen tundra of Chicago, Detroit, or Minneapolis.

You want to avoid this fate at all costs.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available Nationwide. Please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com for more information.

Ellis Island is Finally Reopening

Starting next week, Ellis Island will finally be open to the public again. A short distance away from the Statue of Liberty, from 1892 to 1954 the island was the place where around 10.5 million immigrants first stepped foot in America. It was there that new immigrants from the Old World would land and go through the necessary legal process of getting American citizenship which back then only took a few hours. The immigration station closed in 1954, was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1966, and is now a museum dedicated to the important role immigration played in America’s history.

Ellis Island was closed off to the general public last year after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc in New York Harbor. Of all of the historical places in the area Ellis Island probably got the worst of Sandy’s wrath. For comparison, Liberty Island was able to reopen in time for the Fourth of July this year. Thankfully many of the museum’s artifacts were removed and safely stored prior to the hurricane hitting but even a year later the damage has not been fully repaired yet. Why then is the island reopening? I think it has to do with timing and money. Next week will be both the one-year anniversary of Sandy hitting and the 127th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty being dedicated which would make it a good time to coordinate the reopening. The financial reason is that both the park and the ferries have had a brutal year financially. The number of people visiting Liberty and Ellis Islands are less than half of the number of people that visited in 2012. For all of those reasons Ellis Island is now back up and running and ready to accept more people to its shores again.

Notice how they’re both on the New Jersey side of the river though.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available in New York and Nationwide. For more information please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com.

What New York City Sounded Like in the 1920s

Ambient noise is almost always all around us. Right now where I’m sitting I can hear the constant hum of a very loud refrigerator and the footsteps of people walking on the floor above me. That also exists when you go outside as well. If you walk outdoors onto any street in New York City your ears will not be greeted with silence. You will hear the background noise of cars, trucks, and buses operating. You will hear the chatter of people walking on the sidewalks even though you will almost instantly forget the words that were spoken. This is all background noise, the sound that emanates from a city merely existing.

What we don’t often realize is that the ambient noise we hear when we step outside has changed dramatically over time. Hundreds of years ago New York City existed in a world without a combustion engine where the quickest and most reliable forms of land transportation were all horse-powered. What New York sounded like then we don’t exactly know because Thomas Edison hadn’t invented the phonograph yet. However, thanks to the work of historian Emily Thompson we do know what the ambient sound of New York City existing was in the 1920s. Her project has collected as many sound recordings from that era as she could from the twenties and thirties and reconstruct what the ambient soundscape likely would have been. It’s a really cool project from a time when New York City was finally starting to resemble what it is today.

Now we know what that sounds like.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available in New York and Nationwide. For more information please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com.

A Map of America’s Personality Types

It’s no secret that regional stereotypes about people exist in America. While there is some element of truth to stereotypes of all groups of people, it is hard to really scientifically quantify that. It is difficult to determine if New Yorkers really much ruder than the rest of the country of if Californians are really more laid back and creative. Well the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology just released a study covering all that and more. The primary goal of the study was to determine exactly the amount of regional variation in personality types America has.

Generally speaking the country was split among three different personality types: friendly and conventional, relaxed and creative, and temperamental and uninhibited and they released three maps showing the frequency of each personality type appearing in each state. The results are actually kind of what you would expect with few surprises. The state of New York scores very low in the frequency of friendly and conventional, while scoring extremely high in temperamental and uninhibited. The same is true of California which scores way higher in creative types than anything else along with much of the West. At last we finally have some peer reviewed scientific data that backs up what we suspected was true all along.

Sit in traffic on either side of the Hudson River and you’ll understand us.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available in New York and Nationwide. For more information please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com.

A View of New York From the Rooftops

It’s certainly no secret that Manhattan has many skyscrapers and that there are many incredibly beautiful pictures of that skyline. The thing about many of those pictures though is that they are often shot from a long distance away. In fact the best places to get a good shot of the whole skyline are on the other side of the East or Hudson Rivers. However, those pictures can get boring after a while. Many of the best pictures of the city are taken from little known places inside the city itself. That is where the work of the photographer Stewart Mader comes in. Two years ago he started a project where he takes pictures of the city from a new rooftop every week and so far he’s gotten some incredible shots. Looking through these pictures shows us that there are beautiful parts of the city we never even knew existed and provides us with a fresh, unique look at America’s largest metropolis.

Upper East Side from 66th floor, Chrysler Building.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available in New York and Nationwide. For more information please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com.

A Map All About Pizza

I wish I could go back in time to 17th century Naples and personally thank the unknown Italian who first came up with the idea of baking a flatbread crust with tomato and cheese on top. This staple of poor Neapolitans was introduced to America in 1905 in New York’s Little Italy and its popularity has exploded from there. Fast forward to today and there are now several pizza chains worth hundreds of millions of dollars all over the country competing against one another to offer the best pizza possible. Pizza has come a long way in America in 108 years.

Gizmodo has now quantified the spread of pizza in America with this cool new map. Specifically it will tell you where the closest pizza chain is in any 10 mile radius. The heaviest nationwide hitters are the ones you would probably expect like Pizza Hut, Domino’s, and Papa John’s but there are some very strong regional players as well. Even more interesting is that they actually have a chart comparing the distribution of one chain versus another which gives you a much clearer indication as to who has a stronger presence where. Also on a depressing note, there are large swaths of pizza deserts in sparsely populated areas in places like Montana, South Dakota, and Nevada where no chains have opened up shop. Of course this map excludes the presence of small independent pizza places which often produce a better tasting pizza than the chains (at least in New York and New Jersey) so this is not a comprehensive map of all areas where one can get pizza. While I may prefer my local, independently owned pizza shop in New Jersey, it is still really cool to see just how much the pizza business has come to blanket the country.

Apologies to Alaska and Hawaii.

Churchill has short-term corporate housing available Nationwide. Please contact us at 866-255-0593 or National@FurnishedHousing.com for more information.