8 Million Stories, 32 Reasons, 1 Big Apple App

Photo credit: Film still from The Naked City

"There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them." That iconic phrase gravely ended each episode of Naked City, the gritty black-and-white late '50s crime drama and precursor to Law and Order, CSI, NYPD Blue, and others of that ilk. Each week the show presented a story of one New Yorker and his or her untimely end. It captured the mood of the city, the glamor, the grime, the excitement, the fun, the fear – the way that people inhabit the city, how they interact, how they lived, and yes, how they died. There are so many stories in New York, just make a trip to work, to dinner, to a show, to a ball game, and you'll see them happening live and in color on the streets, every minute of every day. It's what brought me here, it's what brings so many of us here - we want to write our own New York story.

The Two Twelve story started 32 years ago when we founded our company at 212 York Street in New Haven. It continued in 1983 when we landed in the belly of the beast and settled on 15th Street in what was then a quiet, sometimes gloomy neighborhood called the Photo District. Several years later we moved to lower Broadway in Soho, which was just beginning to make the transition from artist/gallery/sweatshop district to shopping center. Broadway south of Houston was more like south of the border, the street was lined with bodegas for the Latin American workers who sewed Elegant Undies – they were on the 8th floor in our building – and all the other garments in the factories along Broadway. After fifteen years, the need for bigger and better space took us further south to the tip of Manhattan and the glamorous top floor of a remarkable Cass Gilbert skyscraper in the shadow of the World Trade Center. The events of 9/11 abruptly ended our downtown penthouse life, and in the fall of 2001, we headed back up Broadway to the Flatiron District or Silicon Alley, as they sometimes call it these days. 

In our 32 years in our six different homes, Two Twelve has has completed hundreds if not thousands of projects all over the United States. Our New York stories are among the most memorable, and we want to share some of those with you, 32 of them, in fact. Our app, 32 Reasons to Love New York, is a curated collection of project stories, but not the usual "how we did this and then we did that." The iPad technology has allowed us to create an experience for you, a chance to see and read about people and places, the history of those places, and the ways that our work has become part of the tapestry of the city.

As we researched the stories, great memories came back to us and we made some interesting new discoveries as well. We'd forgotten that Carrie and Mr. Big began a Central Park date in the lake and never made it to their lunch at the Loeb Boathouse. Who knew that King William IV of England bought plants from a nursery in Flushing? Writing about the New Amsterdam Theatre reminded us how its renovation transformed a creepy damp ruin into a glittering Broadway entertainment palace. 

Creating 32 Reasons was a fantastic collective effort that involved most of our office. I led a team of writers who crafted the 32 stories. Another team collected and programmed the revolving images, while others designed and programmed the app. We've organized 32 Reasons into a series of seven different kinds of experiences – take your pick – want a special place to eat? an idea for a weekend excursion? to learn something new? You get the idea. The navigation works two ways, you can either select an item from the map view to reveal a particular story, or you can scan the list view to choose from the range of experiences.  

Our app is free. You can go to the app store or the page on our website to download it. There's no murder or crime in our version of the Naked City, just 32 short stories that should remind you why this is possibly the most interesting place to live and work in the world. If you don't have an iPad, hang on until our iPhone version comes out this summer!