Note: Be sure to check the MTA's Web site for up-to-the-minute subway service advisories, especially on weekends, when so much track work takes place.
Saturday, NOVEMBER 5 2:00-4:00 WILLIAMSBURG Sponsored by the Brooklyn Historical Society $15/$10 BHS members Meet at the corner of Broadway and Marcy Avenue, downstairs from the elevated station of the J train.
Once an independent city, Williamsburg is a place of great contrasts. This walk will take us along architecturally rich Broadway, skirt the Hasidic area, move to the soon-to-be- redeveloped waterfront (where we will see the recently closed Domino plant), and end up in trendy Northside. Along the way you will see some things like Henry Merwin Shrady's magnificent equestrian statue of George Washington at Valley Forge, the high, skyline-dominating dome of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank on Broadway at Driggs Avenue, and the saucer dome atop Helmle & Huberty's Williamsburg Trust Company, that should make you feel like you are in Rome. These are among the best things in New York. Yet with the fearsome Williamsburg Bridge roaring overhead, and Robert Moses's Brooklyn-Queens Expressway violently bisecting the neighborhood, we will also experience some of the worst of New York. Amid it all, property values continue their ascent, with lofts on Broadway going for more than a million dollars, sometimes to stars like the rapper Busta Rhymes and the actress Annabella Sciorra. And the city has rezoned the waterfronts of Williamsburg and neighboring Greenpoint to encourage the development of high-rise luxury housing that will physically and economically alter these neighborhoods forever.
By the way, last year's closing of the Domino plant on the Williamsburg waterfront means that 2005 is the first year in 275 years that there has not been a working sugar refinery within the present boundaries of New York City. Sugar refining is as historically important a New York industry as clothing manufacturing or printing and publishing. As recently as the 1980s, Brooklyn boasted two of the ten largest cane-sugar refineries in the country--the Williamsburg Domino plant, and the Revere refinery in Red Hook. The closing of the Williamsburg plant also closes out a chapter in the industrial history of New York City. (Incidentally, Sweet 'n' Low is now produced in the Brooklyn Navy Yard!)
Please note that the tour will end nearer to the Bedford Avenue station of the L train, and so far as I can determine from the MTA web site, the L, which has had some weekend weirdness, will be running from Bedford Avenue into Manhattan as normal.
Sunday, NOVEMBER 6 11:00-1:00 HERMAN MELVILLE'S NEW YORK Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society $30/$20 MAS members Meet in front of the U.S. Custom House on the south side of Bowling Green.
This is the third and final walk in my "Literary New York" series for the Municipal Art Society. I've already done "Washington Irving's New York" and "Edith Wharton's New York." Herman Melville takes us downtown. At the Battery we will recall the immortal words from the beginning of "Moby- Dick": "Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see? Posted like sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries."
On this walk we will see locations associated not only with "Moby-Dick" but with "Bartleby" and "Pierre, or the Ambiguities," the latter taking place on Dutch Street, where Melville resided while he saw "Moby-Dick" through the presses in a shop around the corner on Fulton Street. In addition, we will see the site of Melville's birthplace, on Pearl Street.
Right across the street from Melville's birthplace is a Starbucks. That isn't surprising, as there is a Starbucks everywhere. But the chain's founders were Melville fans, and named the company after Captain Ahab's first mate on the Pequod, in "Moby-Dick." I have always wondered if the Starbucks founders have any idea that one of their stores is right across the street from where their favorite writer was born.
At my introductory lecture for the "Literary New York" series I prepared and handed out a rather lengthy timeline of New York City literary history, but it covered only the 19th century. I am working on bringing it up to date, and also making some improvements to it. If you'd like to receive a .pdf version of it via e-mail when it is ready, please e-mail me.
Saturday, NOVEMBER 12 2:00-4:00 THE FAR WEST SIDE: WHAT NOW? Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society $15/$12 MAS members Meet at the southeast corner of Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street.
In recent years I have led tours around the "Hudson Yards" when it seemed all but certain that the new Jets stadium was going to be built there. The city had hoped to use that stadium as the central facility in the 2012 Olympics the Bloomberg administration worked so hard to secure for the city. When the stadium failed to make it through the state approval process, that also pretty much dashed the city's Olympics hopes. Yet there the Hudson Yards remain, tantalizing developers and city officials alike with possibilities for a grand new coordinated development that could include, if not a stadium, apartment houses, office buildings, parks, a much-needed expansion of the Javits Center, ferryboats--maybe even a southward extension of the No. 7 train. We don't know what's going to happen here, but the days are numbered when you can stand on Tenth Avenue and look down into the awesomely vast train yards that were originally built by the Hudson River Railroad, which was later absorbed into the New York Central system. (It surprises people to learn that the Hudson Yards were part of the New York Central system when Pennsylvania Station, built by the New York Central's arch-rival the Pennsylvania Railroad, was just to the east of the yards. The Pennsylvania's trains from New Jersey actually passed through a tunnel underneath the New York Central yards.)
Anyway, the focus of this walk is not so much on the future as on the past of this area of Manhattan. Once, the greatest system of waterfront railroads in the world operated along the Manhattan shore of the Hudson River. Here were freight terminals, served by carfloats coming across from New Jersey (i.e. the mainland U.S.A.), of the New York Central, the Baltimore & Ohio, the Lehigh Valley, the Erie, and other railroads. The humongous Starrett-Lehigh Building, included on this tour, is one of the most impressive industrial buildings ever built.
The Hudson Yards are also the source of the "High Line," which extends south from here to Gansevoort Street. (It once went as far as Spring Street.) So there will be plenty of High Line talk on this tour as well. I will also discuss the current state of the plans to convert the General Post Office into a new Penn Station, and point out some remnants of the old Penn Station.
The tour will end pretty far west, perhaps around the Chelsea Piers.
***Free!*** Friday, NOVEMBER 18 12:30-2:00 GRAND CENTRAL PARTNERSHIP WALKING TOUR Sponsored by the Grand Central Partnership Free Meet in the atrium of the Altria (formerly Philip Morris) Building at the southwest corner of 42nd Street and Park Avenue.
I am leading this tour three times in November and December. Normally, my friend Justin Ferate leads the tour. When he is out of town, however, he asks me to substitute. I really enjoy doing this tour. Sponsored by the Grand Central Partnership, a business improvement district, the idea of the walk is not to focus on Grand Central Terminal itself, but to show the terminal in its midtown context, in particular in the context of the vast air-rights development of which the terminal was but a part. (Did you know that as this development was taking place, William Wilgus, the chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad, invented the term "air rights"?) In the 1910s and 1920s the New York Central Railroad built more than thirty office buildings, apartment houses, hotels, clubhouses, and other structures on the newly developable land created by the decking over of the submerged train yards. The whole thing was made possible by the railroad's changeover from steam power to electrical power, allowing the vast yards to be placed underground since the smoke from steam engines was no longer a problem. The New York Central's favorite architect, Whitney Warren, who co-designed the terminal, oversaw much of the air-rights development, and the resulting group of buildings possessed an aesthetic harmony that was unprecedented in a group of skyscrapers. It was one of the glories of urban America. Alas, after World War II, most of the original air-rights buildings yielded to much larger, modern glass-curtain-wall office buildings, which utterly destroyed the aesthetic harmony of the district. But as you will see on this walk, enough remains of the original development to give a sense of what it was once like.
Oh, and we also go inside of Grand Central Terminal.
Sunday, NOVEMBER 20 2:00-4:00 GREENPOINT Sponsored by the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment $11/$9 BCUE members/$8 students and seniors Meet at Manhattan and Greenpoint Avenues, upstairs from the Greenpoint Avenue station of the G train.
Yes, I know, it seems like I am always doing a tour of Greenpoint. I have become the Greenpoint walking tour man. I never set out to become that. It just happened. Put another way, I have grown fascinated with this neighborhood, and have kept doing tours of it in the hope that I could somehow figure out how to express--to myself as well as to others-- what it is I find so compelling about Greenpoint. For I do find it compelling. Anyway, as I was getting to know Greenpoint over the years, the Greenpoint story changed. The Bloomberg administration has rezoned Greenpoint's waterfront, making it possible for developers to build lots and lots of luxurious apartment high-rises. The new zoning makes it possible that there could be as many as 28 buildings of 20 to 40 stories each along the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfronts. The city's plan is that along with this mega-development there will also be publicly accessible parks along the riverfront.
Anyway, developers are already on the move. Old buildings, some that have been identified by the Municipal Art Society as potential landmarks (click here for a .pdf file identifying
these potential landmarks), are being torn down. And I think everyone should avail himself of the chance to get one last good look at these waterfronts before they begin to look like Battery Park City. Right now, these waterfronts are not pretty. In fact, they are dismal. But you still have a sense of the industrial past, and one day soon all traces of that will be gone.
Thursday, NOVEMBER 24 Happy Thanksgiving!
Sunday, NOVEMBER 27 2:00-4:00 LITERARY BROOKLYN HEIGHTS Sponsored by the Brooklyn Historical Society $15/$10 BHS members. Meet in front of the Brooklyn Historical Society on Pierrepont Street at the southwest corner of Clinton Street.
Writers have lived in Brooklyn Heights from its beginnings. Indeed, at least two Heights streets--Sidney Place and Montague Street--were named for famous English writers (Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu). But in the 20th century, the Heights boomed as a writer's neighborhood. On this walk, we will weave general Heights history with the area's literary heritage as we look at buildings and sites associated with Hart Crane, Lewis Mumford, Truman Capote, W.H. Auden, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, and other writers. Also, the Heights's two most famous 19th-century clergymen, Richard Storrs and Henry Ward Beecher, made their national reputations partly through the books they wrote.
Think of this as a continuation of the "Literary New York" series I am doing for the Municipal Art Society, which concludes with "Herman Melville's New York" on November 6.
Those of you who have seen the recent critically acclaimed movie Capote will be interested in knowing that this walk will include a fair amount of Capote material, such as a stop in front of 70 Willow Street, the home of the famous theatrical designer Oliver Smith. Capote rented an apartment in that house, where he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood, and the house appears in the movie. Capote
wrote of this house in his charming A House on the Heights.
Please let me know if you would like me to send you a .pdf
version of my New York Sun column on 70 Willow Street.
***Free!*** Friday, DECEMBER 2 12:30-2:00 GRAND CENTRAL PARTNERSHIP WALKING TOUR See November 18.
Sunday, DECEMBER 4 2:00-4:00 BAY RIDGE SOUTH Sponsored by the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment $11/$9 BCUE members/$8 students and seniors Meet at Fourth Avenue and 86th Street, upstairs from the 86th Street station of the R train.
I do two different Bay Ridge tours. Some of you participated in my "Bay Ridge North" walk a couple of months ago. That one covered the area north of 86th Street and to the west of Fourth Avenue. This one covers the area south of 86th Street and west of Fort Hamilton Parkway. Some people, like the editors of the Encyclopedia of New York City, say that this area should be called "Fort Hamilton," after the U.S. Army installation of the same name, not "Bay Ridge." But I don't know a single person who lives in the area who does not call it Bay Ridge. So I am calling it "Bay Ridge South." It's a great area. The tour starts out a little unprepossessingly, until we get to 95th Street between Narrows Avenue and Shore Road. That's where the Bennet-Farrell house is located, a sparkling gem of an 1840s shorefront house. On either side of it are lovely Art Deco apartment buildings. And then, at Shore Road, New York Harbor bursts into view, a breathtaking sight enhanced by the Verrazano Narrows Bridge as it describes its graceful arc over the earth. There is much more, of course, but the lure, I should think, is that dazzling harbor view.
***Free!*** Friday, DECEMBER 9 12:30-2:00 GRAND CENTRAL PARTNERSHIP WALKING TOUR See November 18.
Saturday, DECEMBER 10 2:00-4:00 FROM BEEKMAN PLACE TO MOUNT VERNON Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society $15/$12 MAS members Meet at the southwest corner of First Avenue and 49th Street.
Beekman Place and Sutton Place connote wealth, it is true, yet the areas are charming enclaves whose pioneer “gentrifiers” in the 1920s were often people in the arts, especially the theater. You will learn about such people as Katharine Cornell, Irving Berlin, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Ellen Shipman, Paul Rudolph, Elisabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan, and Anne Vanderbilt, and see works by such great architects as William Lawrence Bottomley and Mott B. Schmidt. We’ll also see the lovely Queensboro Bridge and its adjacent Bridgemarket, with its marvelous Edwin Blashfield mosaic (restored through the Municipal Art Society's wonderful Adopt-a-Monument program), and end outside the "Mount Vernon Hotel," which research has indicated is a more apt name for what used to be called the "Abigail Adams Smith house." We no longer call it the latter because A) Abigail Adams Smith never lived there, and B) it was not a house. But it is still lovely, and one of the rare 18th-century structures on Manhattan island.
Sunday, DECEMBER 11 2:00-4:00 THE LOWER EAST SIDE Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society $15/$12 MAS members Meet at the northwest corner of Delancey and Essex Streets.
This walk takes us south of Delancey Street through the fabled streets of the old East Side, with its rich multiethnic history of German, Irish, Eastern European Jewish, Chinese, and other immigrant settlements. There is also a lot of interesting architecture. Highlights include a typology of tenements, grand synagogues and Irish Catholic churches, the Manhattan Bridge Arch and Colonnade, Seward Park, East Broadway, Henry Street Settlement, and much more. Today the neighborhood may be more diverse than ever, as Chinese, hip young people, and members of an Orthodox Jewish revival that has taken place in the neighborhood share the streets that are filled with history. _____________________________________________
Every Thursday at 12:30 I lead a FREE walking tour for the 34th Street Partnership. It meets in front of the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Empire State Building between 33rd and 34th Streets. I talk about the Empire State Building and then each week head off in a different direction. Lately, I've enjoyed trying to talk about Art Deco (one only tries to talk about Art Deco), in which this area is especially rich.
Some weeks I can't do the tour and someone substitutes for me. If you want to be sure you go on a week I'm doing it, send me an e-mail.