In what I hope will be one of the last winter-related posts of this winter at least, I am amazed at the ingenuity of some people who live in New York. They have everything and now they have heated pavements! Yes, some buildings are so fancy that they have paid the city for the rights to dig up the nearby pavement and install a heating system so that when it snows they don’t need anyone to shovel the snow. Now that’s what I call lazy. The New York Times will tell you all about it, but it will say sidewalk and not pavement, of course. Have a read. And laugh.
Category Archives: Environment
Hey, Duke
Because it is so cold still, I continue to try and to find new and interesting things to do indoors with J, who is now 2 and 3 months. I’ve taken him to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum a couple of times now. It hosts free toddler classes but they are in Harlem. The actual museum is on 91st Street at 5th Avenue, where it is housed in the enormous, grand mansion that was originally built for the philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. It’s a beautiful site undergoing massive renovation and is due to re-open later this year. In the meantime, it has moved its educational activities to a modern space on 110th Street overlooking the north end of Central Park. The contrast between the two locations couldn’t be any more stark. Even at 91st Street, 5th Avenue is smart and the park well used. Go up another 20 or so streets and you are in Harlem proper. It feels different and looks different with the large, daunting correctional facility looming over the newly refurbished playground in the park.
This end of the park is also home to a huge statue of Duke Ellington. I am embarrassed to confess I only noticed it today – not sure how I missed it as it’s got to be 30 feet tall. He stands proud on the north eastern corner of the park, in the middle of a roundabout. He stands next to his piano and looks like he’s commanding the traffic going down 5th Avenue. Underneath the plinth he stands on are a number of naked ladies who hold him in place.
I’m sure in the summer it looks good, with the trees in their full green finery, but ultimately this isn’t a great area and not one you’d see any but the most dedicated music enthusiast visit. It’s not one you’d want to hang around in, anyway. Here are some pics from three different vantage points, whilst I was trying not to be run over or lose J; they should give you an idea of the size and setting and to save you the trip.
Sun, snow and sadness
I’m getting used to running in minus temperatures. It’s bloody hard to start with, but once you get going, you warm up a bit and with just my face exposed to the elements, I’m covered from head to toe. Running along the streets, it’s cold and sunless, despite the fact that I know it is a beautiful sunny day and not a cloud in the sky. I pop out on to Fifth Avenue and breath a sigh of relief as the light returns and the pristine snow of Central Park beckons. It is lovely.
The 6 mile inner loop road used by runners is clear but the bordered by walls of snow. Vast swathes of the park are just covered in a blanket of white snow and everyone just seems quite happy. I run the bottom half of the loop road from north to south, all the way past the ice rink at 61st Street which looks great in this weather. Too cold to hang out at the reservoir for some stretching today, so I tootle back down to Fifth Avenue and the sun disappears in the shade of the tall buildings of Manhattan.
I pause at Park Avenue as I just miss the lights and am faced with a wall of photographers and TV cameras camped out in the central reservation of Park Avenue. What’s this? I quickly realise it’s the funeral of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s not yet started, but the press are out in force, flanked by many NYPD officers. In the few minutes I wait for the lights, I see no one arrive but the anticipation is great and they clearly expect Hollywood stars to appear at some point to pay their last respects.
The lights change and then I’m off. It’s a surreal pause in my journey today, where sun, snow and sadness mingle together in the freezing streets of New York.
“Cabbages as decoration?” Discuss
When we arrived in New York last year, I saw cabbages everywhere. They are planted in the small patches of soil that surround the trees lining the pavements. They get more elaborate with the fancier apartment buildings and seem to be able to withstand the bitter New York winter. Not something I’d ever thought of before, using a cabbage to make the street prettier rather than just eating it. This is one of the better examples. See what you think.
Mind the red snails!
I was running in Central Park yesterday and came across a large circle of red snails. After checking my lenses were in and that I wasn’t hallucinating, I could see that they were about 6 feet tall and about the same in width. What on earth are they doing there?
So J and I went and had a closer look earlier today. It’s another bonkers art installation in New York. This time it’s a red snail invasion from Florida. You’d think in the winter they’d want to stay in warmer climes, but no, they hanging out in Central Park, around 72nd Street on the east side, if you fancy a visit. They are here courtesy of the Villa Firenze Foundation and here until 5th December when they decamp to Columbus Circle for Christmas.
The smallest park in the world
This is Short Triangle. It is outside Court Square subway station in Long Island City, Queens. It is owned and maintained by the New York City Parks Department. It is not a park. If it was, it would be named Tiny Triangle (not really a park, but a bit of soil with a shrubbery) Park. Hardly worthy of a name, let alone a sign.
See?
190 Bowery
And the third in a series of posts about our day out to the Lower East Side. This time it’s about the mysterious building on the corner of Bowery and Spring Street. We went by it on the way the Pickle Day and stopped short to gaze up at this graffiti clad vast old building that was once a bank. You can see from the pictures below that in its day it was very grand and imposing. The front steps retain their iron gates and the pillars are grand and imposing. The graffiti is awful.
I was intrigued. What on earth was this place. As usual, the Internet turns up the answer pretty quick. It was the home of the Germania Bank, built in the late 19th Century. The area was home to a large German population at the time and I’m sure it would have been as imposing then as it is now. Incredibly it is the home of one family, the Maisels. Jay Maisel is an artist who bought the bank for $100,000 in 1966 and has lived there ever since. He uses the space for his own art and has rented it out to other artists, including, impressively, Roy Lichtenstein. There’s a really good article from 2008 in New York Magazine, so I won’t go into any more detail here. Read it, it’s really good and the pictures are great.
As for Mr Maisel, he says he gets approached by real estate agents all the time and he has had to put a website up called 190thebowery.com to try and stop them as he has no interest in selling. New York Magazine asked agents to put a price on the 30,000+ square foot building. These topped out at $50 million and that was five years ago. New York is in the grip of a property boom right now, so heaven knows what those estimates would look like now.
So why doesn’t Maisel sell and realise his investment all those years ago? ‘Where am I going to live? A three bed apartment?’. Fair point. Not sure I’d fancy it, he and his wife have to clean up the sidewalk every day as they are responsible for it. Doubt that’s a pretty sight after a Saturday night.
Watching over Harlem
For many Upper East Siders the thought of going much beyond 86th Street on the East Side is anathema. Park Avenue drops off massively as it flows north through Manhattan and Fifth Avenue is a very different place once it’s not bounded by Central Park on its west side. The boutiques of Madision Avenue are long gone once you cross over 90th Street. This is Harlem. Harlem is full of amazing brownstones that, had they been twenty or more blocks south would be worth a small fortune. Here, around 125th Street they are unloved and empty.
I am here to explore Marcus Garvey Park. I spotted it on the map above the very top of Central Park and went to take a look. I had experienced 125th Street on the way to La Guardia a while ago: it’s a cacophony of street noise, buses, music, shouting and a major transport hub for the 4,5,6 trains and Metro North.
Here, below around 123rd Street is the park. Originally created in 1840 and called Mount Morris Park, it was renamed Marcus Garvey Park in the 1970s after a Jamaican political leader, active in New York politics but who died in London in 1940.
It’s a funny place. It’s 20 acres, so not huge. It contains an amphitheatre for open air performances; a large open air swimming pool and a vast sports area. It has a rocky hill in the middle made of Manhattan rock called ‘schist’. Looks pretty nice from the photograph below, eh?
I’m afraid the reality is rather different. On it’s northern side are two run down kids playgrounds. I take J in but only because I see another mother with her three little boys there too. She makes me brave enough to go in, past the milling people, hanging out on the benches in the morning. Why are they there? Some are from the old people’s home opposite but some are too young. They look bored and listless but they are uninterested in us.
I ask this mother how I can find the Fire Watchtower that I had read about. She points to an internal road sloping up but warns me about drug ‘transactions’ and I am conflicted about going up. I had come here to see it and she thought, as do I mostly, that people pretty much ignore women with kids and buggies, so I’d probably be ok. And I was. I saw the odd character milling about but no one bothered me.
We reach the top of the hill and the Fire Watchtower is run down and unloved too. It originates from the 1850s when Manhattan had eight volunteer fire districts and each one its own watchtower. They are vast iron structures with a bell in the middle. In their time, they would have been ‘manned’ constantly, with the watcher looking for signs of fire and ringing the bell to alert the volunteer firefighters down below. Later in the century the New York Fire Department was created with permanent full time firefighters and there was no longer a need for the watchtower as communications developed over time.
There is a lovely website all about this, but it really doesn’t tell you quite how sad it looks behind its high fencing with rubbish strewn around.
We wander back down through the park and into the noise of Harlem below. Watching over Harlem – at least it was quiet up there.
Stoop stories
Stoop isn’t a word I’d used before I lived in NYC. I knew of it because I’d watched Sex and the City and seen Carrie Bradshaw sitting the steps outside her building, smoking a cigarette and watching the world go by. The stoop is those steps. It’s the steps up to a ‘walk up’, which is mostly a four storey building with an apartment on each floor. Originally many of these would have been single family homes, but in more recent years they’ve been divided up into apartments. They line the streets of Manhattan and make you feel like you’re really in New York when you walk down one.
I write about this simply because I took a walk around the block with J, who is now nearly 21 months, and he likes to walk without his buggy. It took us an hour to walk not very far because when you’re that age, everything is interesting. Everything is a place to run your 1970’s-style matchbox car. And just after the rain storm of this morning, lots of people are sat on their stoop, escaping from the non air conditioned oppression of their own apartments and enjoying a dry moment in the open air. J enjoys this. He walks up the steps and sits with random men, mostly men, to say ‘hi’ and show them his car. We chat, they share. We remark on his hair colour and mine, his size, my accent and then move on and repeat it on the next stoop stop. I think this is the friendliest I’ve seen Manhattan so far. And this is reassuring, as according to a survey I read the other day, New Yorkers are the rudest people in the US. I’d agree mostly, but today, I just enjoy the friendliness and the joy of having a toddler.
nw3 to nyc 