Oh my! It’s OHNY! Annual Open House New York kicks off with behind the scenes looks of over 300 NYC spots

As a city of secrets, New York is a place where, if you know, you know, and if you don’t, you miss out. Hidden gems exist throughout the city’s 51 districts, but once a year, those secrets become secret-no-more, during a weekend of unparalleled access.

New Yorkers who love deep exploration of the city’s infrastructure, manufacturing shops, parks, performance spaces and private collections will see an annual festival unlock over 300 destinations across the five boroughs for behind-the-scenes tours and special activities in mid-October in what might be described as the ultimate Big Apple treasure hunt.

Open House New York had its kick-off on Oct. 16 with a fundraiser event and will follow it with a host of events over the weekend, aimed at exploring the connections between quality of place and quality of life.

Promoting access to and engagement with city systems, OHNY, a non-profit citywide education platform, boasts 1600 hours of programming over three days in one city-wide festival. The five-borough festival will unlock the places and stories behind New York, be they natural or constructed.

Founded in the wake of 9/11, at a time when access to city systems and infrastructure was widely restricted, OHNY plays advocate for what they term “openness as a defining principle of civic life,” aiming to ensure New Yorkers can enjoy full access to their city.

OHNY facilitates that open access by offering a confederated look at the forces that shape the city’s over 350 distinct neighborhoods.

Venues like Yankee Ferry, the historic steel-hull ferry which serves as the Staten Island floating home-studio of Victoria and Richard Mackenzie, become open to guests. Daylighting tours around Flushing Creek in Corona, Queens, or the Four Sparrow Marsh in Marine Park, Brooklyn, are ways for New Yorkers to become tourists in their own city and experience something new. 

Around half of the venues opening to the public are ticketed and sold out, but the other half of the spaces are drop-in and function as spaces open to the public year-round.

Relying on a network of more than 1,000 volunteers to help provide access to buildings and experiences, no one person could make OHNY run smoothly, just as no single amNY reader could attend the over 300 events planned for the three days.

Here are five can’t-miss drop-in spaces to attend during this year’s festival.

Staten Island and History Beyond the Five Boroughs

Once, the shores of Richmond County were lined with oysters, crabs and cockles, and the land, originally inhabited by the native Lenape people, was a combination of wooded areas and marshlands. 

Now, inland from the coast, palisade walls and wigwams made of bent cedar trunks stand tall in recreated native encampments. Brick and mortar homes raised by Dutch colonists house interpreters who detail the history of the first settlers and the colonists who followed. 

Such is the living history of Historic Richmond Town’s Old Home Day.

A 501(c)3 educational non-profit, HRT collects and preserves the material culture of Staten Island and will host its annual festival on Saturday, Oct 18.

The day will include tours covering over 200 years of history from the 1630s to the 1820s, with houses that are either on their original foundation or moved from other parts to preserve its history.

Gwen Raffo, the lead historical interpreter at HRT, noted how excited they were to receive the Christopher House, a one-and-a-half-story stone farmhouse pivotal to the American Revolution.

“This house was moved in a very unique fashion,” Raffo said. “Most of the houses are lifted off their foundation, but this house was actually dismantled and brought over here. That’s not normal for most historic homes.”

Programming for Old Home Day will include 3rd person living history where guests can walk the grounds and interact with interpreters to learn some fascinating facts about New York’s lesser-known history.

Participating in OHNY how Historic Richmond Town can connect with a broader community interested in the long history of the five boroughs. For those looking for a more recent history, one need not look further than the Two Bridges Neighborhood of Manhattan, where a world-famous skate spot has been given new life.

The Brooklyn Banks at Gotham Park: It’s under the Arches.

Before the ubiquity of the internet, virality was not how a person learned of cool things happening around the city. For skateboarder and owner of 5boroNYC, Steve Rodriguez, finding his place in the culture happened entirely by accident. 

“I just got super lucky that I moved to New York in ‘93,” Rodriguez said. “All this stuff was blowing up.”

Rodriguez, referring to a growth period for skateboarding, street culture, graffiti and hip hop, lived through a cultural explosion centered around the brick-layered park space beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, in Manhattan’s Two Bridges neighborhood.

Part of OHNY on Sunday, Oct. 19, he and ex-skateboarder Jay Maldonado will lead oral history tours around the revitalized space that detail a different history existing under the iconic bridge.

Over the years, the Banks at Gotham Park underwent different stages of closure — sometimes for construction, other times to be parking for precinct vehicles. There is even a rumor that a skater may have angered then-Mayor Giuliani while attempting a trick that landed too close to his motorcade.

“The story goes, his vehicle was going down there and someone had obstructed it,” Maldonado said. 

The rumor may have existed because access to the whole banks around that time became more restrictive.

“It was Giuliani time, we just had to blame him for everything, you know?” Maldonado said.

Attendees can expect stories like that from skaters who know the place best and will have a chance to explore the reimagined park now that it is open to the public again.

After founding the Gotham Park 501(c)3 in 2021, Rodriguez, alongside his co-founders Rosa Chang and Rob Magliaro, was able to advocate for the park’s reopening and expansion under the new name.

“I really thought the space should become an open public space,” Chang said. “An open recreation space, which we don’t have very much in our lower Manhattan East Side community.”

It took a lot of legwork on behalf of the foundation to get the community interested in reexamining the spaces under the bridge. Once they gained the support and partnership of the city’s Transportation Department, the NYPD and the Mayor’s office, space under the bridge they call a sleeping giant awoke.

In a statement, the DOT said, “The Arches illustrate just how communities can be re-engaged to revitalize space for skateboarding or simply relaxing with neighbors.” 

To Rodriguez and other “OGs” in the culture, reopening this space carries a lot of meaning.

“The way I see it, it’s like almost a cathedral to skate culture in NYC,” Rodriguez said.

La Bodega Studios: It’s more of a community thing.

To the average New Yorker, some spaces are perennial. The Unisphere will always be there, the Staten Island ferry shepherding riders around the harbor will forever define Richmond county and bodegas in the city might as well be embedded in the bedrock.

To Joseph Guerrido, founder and co-owner of La Bodega Studios in Mott Haven, there is nothing more New York than representing your community and giving back to it. 

“The purpose is to be a staple for community. It’s not solely for like, music videos and productions.” Guerrido said.

A hub for creatives and a safe space for people to express their creativity, La Bodega Studio is a 5,000-sq. ft. soundstage and event venue that contains a replica NYC street. 

Starting on Saturday, Oct. 18, as part of OHNY, visitors can explore the venue with Guerrido, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the on-site recording studio and artwork provided by world-renowned graffiti artists.

From ideation to completion, in its current state, building La Bodega took Guerrido about 5 years. Now that his space is complete, he’s looking toward a future and how his art can also be of service.

“I wrote a curriculum where I’m going to challenge middle school students to create from an honest place,” Guerrido said. “My goal is to interrupt, the influence in a way. To allow these kids the space and opportunity to find an identity before they attach themselves to someone else’s.”

Guerrido, has been working toward assisting his community through jobs placement programs and after-school arts programming for middle and high schoolers.

“The goal here is to be the YMCA of the Arts,” Guerrido said. “So to take La Bodega to every borough and have these programs running for all students.”

To Guerrido, a self-described BX politician, La Bodega is a citywide initiative that can have a positive impact on culture, especially in the South Bronx. 

To join Guerrido at his space and search for the many easter eggs painted into the structures, one need simply to hop right on the 6 train, to 138th Street.

“Make sure you get on the local, not the express to 138th Street and Cyprus,” Guerrido said. “But other than that, we’re extremely, extremely accessible.”

Brooklyn Glass: BK Artisanship

Of all the artist-owned studios found in Brooklyn, perhaps none is so unique a resource for glass artists and craftspeople as Brooklyn Glass, an open-access glassblowing studio that serves the whole city.

On Sunday, Oct. 19, the 4,000-sq. Ft. Sunset Park studio will open to the public as part of OHNY’s Alphabet City series that explores NYC’s rich visual culture of signage and typography.

Michael Helt is the studio manager at Brooklyn Glass, and has taught in all their areas of education, as well as, built several furnaces. His work with the studio started much in the same way anyone who comes to art glass did.

“I started with Flame-working and making marbles,” Helt said. “I’ve been doing it full-time for a decade now, maybe a little more. It just took over my whole life.”

Open to the public since 2011, the glassworking studio facilitates a lot of education. Hundreds of students every year take classes in glass blowing, hot casting, kilncasting, fusing and more.

Visitors in the space will get to see glassblowing, neon, and flameworking demonstrations that feature equipment such as, clear glass and color glass furnaces,  glory holes, various annealers, a fully-equipped neon facility and a cold working studio. 

Brooklyn Glass offers many classes throughout the year where students get to take home whatever objects they make.

“Maybe it’s a neon squiggle or something,” Helt said. 

The studio also hosts events throughout the year, like “Hot Glass, Cold Beer,” where guests who’ve purchased tickets will receive a hand-blown drinking glass.

“It’s a nice change of pace to work with your hands and get a little hot and sweaty and dirty, and make some glass,” Helt said.

Anable Basin: Rowing with East River Crew and Paddling with LIC Boathouse

Kayaking on the East River is not something the average New Yorker thinks to do. If one were to conduct an informal poll on people’s attitudes toward the river, it wouldn’t be shocking to see responses such as, “is that even possible?” “It’s polluted.” “It’s rough, it’s dangerous.”

The same kind of responses that Ted Gruber’s family first gave him after expressing interest in the activity. 

“My family said don’t go by yourself, you’ll get killed, find some people to go with,” Gruber said. “So I googled around.”

Gruber is a guide and instructor with LIC Community Boathouse, an organization that  celebrates open access to the city’s waterways by providing residents and visitors with educational and recreational paddling opportunities at points along the East River.

As part of OHNY’s series Water Works, LIC Community Boathouse and the East River crew will host a gathering of rowers and kayak enthusiasts of all skill levels to the Anable Basin launch site both Saturday, Oct. 18 and Sunday, Oct. 19.

NYC’s working waterfront drove the city’s economy for centuries, but in recent years, with the harbor being less of an economic center, movements to clean and reclaim the waterways for a mix of transportation and recreation has been underway.

“The water is cleaner than ever. Access has never been better, we need more of it,” Gruber said. “We all advocate for better access to the water. There are approximately 50 water trail sites city-wide, 10 in each borough, which sounds like a lot, but it’s not.”

Now in its 20th year, LIC Community Boathouse runs programming to raise awareness about estuary ecology, open access to the waterways, and to support restoration of the natural beauty and health of the Harbor.

“We believe you shouldn’t need a degree or diploma to go kayaking or canoeing,” Gruber said. “I learned everything I needed to learn in the first 30 days. The water goes this way, six hours later it goes that way.”

At this drop-in event, learn to row in a five-person Whitehall gig or paddle a stable tandem kayak around the basin. All equipment is provided and experienced volunteers will assist and coach visitors. All you’ll only need is to show up and be enthusiastic about rowing.

Open House Worldwide

Come Sunday night, the celebration of urban landscapes and city systems does not have to end in New York. From Athens to Zurich, festivals like OHNY run in 60 cities globally through Open House Worldwide. The network, a project of Open City, includes programming that advocates, sparks dialogue and empowers citizens and visitors to know the city they’re in.