June 22, 2016
NoMad Media Roundup: New York Post on Home Design, Wall Street Journal on the MSPC
NoMad has had a growing presence in general press coverage over the last few years. In recent weeks, both the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal have published extensive features on our neighborhood.
Read the highlights below.
New York Post, “Trendy NoMad Nabe Blossoms Into NYC’s Home Design Hub”
“NoMad’s renaissance has been an extraordinary journey, from a slightly seedy commercial swath to a dining destination, hotel hot spot, and celebrity landing pad for residents like Tom Brady and Giselle Bundchen, Jennifer Lopez and Chelsea Clinton,” writes the New York Post in a recent feature on how NoMad has become New York City’s hub for numerous home design brands.
Back in September, we reviewed NoMad’s growth as an interior and architectural design center and covered many of the same design brands mentioned by the New York Post. It’s great to see major media catching on to our neighborhood’s growing reputation.
The Post references Florim, an Italian ceramic surfaces company that opened its first US showroom at 152 Madison Avenue last December. “Now a lot of other Italian brands are opening showrooms here,” Cateerina Francisca of Florim says. Certainly it appears that NoMad’s momentum as an international design hub is growing by the day, with a 9,000-square-foot showroom for B&B Italia opening at 135 Madison Avenue later this month.
The Wall Street Journal, “Where Burgers, ‘Bling’ and Old Elms Align”
The beauty and liveliness of Madison Square Park is taken for granted these days, but a recent feature in the The Wall Street Journal makes note of “a time before the park’s restoration, completed in 2001, when many of the storefronts surrounding the park were empty and NoMad—the mashup stands for NOrth of MADison Square Park—wasn’t yet a hot neighborhood.”
It’s hard to imagine that era, seeing the energy and development in NoMad and the park today. The Wall Street Journal credits our friends the Madison Square Park Conservancy for much of the progress, and highlights many of the park’s features like the new art installation Big Bling and the daily Shake Shack line.
It also reveals some fascinating information about Madison Square Park’s huge elm trees. Two of its English Elms are over 300 years old. A large stump near the southern end of the park marks the place where a third tree of similar age once stood. It seems that a horticulturist was so connected with this third tree that he didn’t want to eliminate it completely, so the stump (nicknamed “stumpy”) survives. The article points out the possibility that the Madison Square Park elms came from grafts of the oldest tree in Manhattan — the “Hangman’s Elm” of Washington Square Park.