Christopher Bonanos

New York

Freelance Writer at Freelance

Contributor at Curbed

@heynell’s husband. Dad. City editor/Memory Alpha of @nymag. Books: Weegee, Polaroid, Greeks. 10/10 on Room Rater. In the archives, turning every goddamn page.

Articles

The Torch and the Gimmick Skyscraper Era

3 weeks ago | curbed.com | Christopher Bonanos

A rendering of the Torch derived from “Manhattan Sunset Dream #9 (#2)” by Alan Turkus, used under CC BY 2.0. When I was a little kid, I conceived an idea for a car with no pillars holding up its roof. It would have a single more-or-less-cylindrical piece of glass encasing the passenger compartment, giving driver and passengers 360-degree views, with no blind spots anywhere. I was the Virgil Exner of our time, I thought, envisioning the future in a way no automobile designer ever had.
Poker Night at Susan Brownmiller’s

1 month ago | thecut.com | Christopher Bonanos

Photo: John Mahler/Toronto Star via Getty Images I met Susan Brownmiller in the final minutes of the 20th century. New York had sent out its younger reporters to cover an array of parties on Millennium Eve, and I had been dispatched to hers. “It’s at her apartment — all old feminists, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem,” a senior editor had told me. Of course, I said, I’d be game to cover it, especially because I knew that Friedan and Steinem didn’t get along.
Andy Byford’s Back in Town

1 month ago | curbed.com | Christopher Bonanos

Andy Byford in 2019 as NYCT president wishing a happy New Year to MTA employees. Five weeks ago, Transportation secretary Sean Duffy grabbed back the Penn Station reconstruction project from the MTA. New York State’s transit agency, he said, was too sluggish, too spendy, too hidebound.
An Eyewitness Account of the Brooklyn Bridge Ship Crash

1 month ago | curbed.com | Christopher Bonanos

The Brooklyn Bridge, despite taking a punch, isn’t going down. After the Cuauhtémoc, a tall ship used for training sailors in the Mexican Navy, crashed into the bridge deck on Saturday night, the bridge was closed to traffic for a couple of hours, reopening around 10:30 p.m. “Minor damage” was inflicted, said the city; presumably, that means scratches and paint scrapes. That is no surprise.
Feeding the Bronx Zoo’s Baby King Vulture With a Hand Puppet

1 month ago | curbed.com | Christopher Bonanos

A few decades ago, William G. Conway — the late ornithologist who’s largely responsible for reimagining the Bronx Zoo as the conservation-minded institution we know today — had his upper lip bitten halfway off by a king vulture. Apparently, however, it didn’t put anyone there off the vulture business because the zoo has gone to significant lengths to breed a new one.
Every NYC Location on Lorde’s Route in ‘What Was That’ Video

2 months ago | curbed.com | Christopher Bonanos

Name that tunnel. This morning, Lorde dropped “What Was That,” her first major release since 2021 and the one she teased on April 22 with an unannounced appearance in Washington Square Park. It was supposed to be a full-on performance, but she hadn’t gotten a permit so the police put a stop to that. Lorde briefly danced to one of her recordings instead.
How Well Is Congestion Pricing Doing?

2 months ago | curbed.com | Christopher Bonanos

“By the way, I have a favorite statistic,” Juliette Michaelson tells me midway through our conversation. She’s a deputy chief of the MTA, working on policy and especially on the rollout of the congestion-pricing toll program. “The city’s 311 collects information about how many people call about what is called ‘excessive car-honking,’” she says. “And the number of complaints about excessive car-honking in January and February was 70 percent lower than last January and February.
A First Look Into the Joan Didion Archives

Mar 26, 2025 | vulture.com | Christopher Bonanos

A Polaroid photograph of Didion in the art department at Vogue, circa 1958. Joan Didion, unsurprisingly, took a lot of notes. The author and journalist, who died at 87 in 2021, also kept those notes, and her datebooks, and more generally the paper trail of her literary legacy. All of it, after her death, went to the New York Public Library, knitted together with that of her writer husband, John Gregory Dunne.
‘Severance’ Fans Are Swarming Bell Labs, the Lumon HQ Set

Feb 27, 2025 | curbed.com | Christopher Bonanos

The atrium at Bell Works, in Holmdel, New Jersey (without the Lumon set-dressing). “Come with us to get severed at lumon,” reads the caption on one enthusiastic TikTok video. “I’m soooo obsessed #severance #lumon #bellworks.” The poster, Sophia Stern, had just filmed at an office park with an illustrious past: Bell Works, the former Bell Laboratories research center in Holmdel, New Jersey, designed by the midcentury master architect Eero Saarinen.
The Floors of Grand Central Madison Were Cracking Before It Opened

Feb 19, 2025 | curbed.com | Christopher Bonanos

The floor of Grand Central Madison, under repair in December. If you went through Grand Central Madison in the past three months or so, you likely saw something going on underfoot. The terrazzo floor on the mezzanine was spiderwebbed with yellow CAUTION tape and silver duct tape, clearly covering cracks of some kind.