Walking Off the Big Apple

The President on Sullivan Street

2010-07-29T15:50:00.001-04:00

I've become so familiar with President Barack Obama's frequent trips to my neighborhood, such as his appearance last night at a fundraiser at Vogue Editor Anna Wintour's townhouse on Sullivan Street, that I know the routine by heart. It goes this way. In the morning, the Command and Control Center, a big white NYPD van, sets up shop nearby, followed by the arrival of hundreds of NYPD policeman, some in patrol cars, others on motorcycles or plain bikes, as well as the blue-shirted community affairs specialists. After the policeman gather to hear their instructions or check their equipment, they fan out to their designated positions. Street barriers begin to appear along the route. A policeman takes a stroll through our apartment's laundry room. For the many of us Village types of a certain age, we have flashbacks to the Vietnam War.

The neighbors go about their business, passing one another on the streets or in shops, but they will talk about the events. Shopkeepers vent worries that no one will be able to get to the stores or restaurants. Typical comments address the enormous taxpayer expense or personal hassle involved with these high security visitations by the President of the United States. Helicopters are involved. There are a lot of sirens and the towing of cars. At every single one of these visits, a poor delivery person on a bike, oblivious to what's happening, ends up casually cruising past a police barricade and into the arms of a nearby patrol officer. Bystanders enjoy these occurrences. Several neighbors panic that they cannot reach their homes.

Then there's a lot of waiting. Knowing the routine, I stayed in my apartment until the arrival of helicopters started shaking the building. Then I knew that the POTUS motorcade was on the scene. Even then, I had no real motivation to leave the house, especially as I was not invited to the affair.

Nevertheless, I went out for a stroll on Bleecker and stopped at the street's intersection with Sullivan. While squinting past the barricades to look at the white awning set up in front of Wintour's townhouse, I exchanged in a Q & A with a police officer:

Me: "What is this, like the fourth visit to the neighborhood since he's become President? First, there was the date night at Blue Hill."
Policeman: "I was there for that one."
Me: "And then the Clinton meeting at Il Mulino."
Policeman: "Yes, I was there for that one, too."
Me: "And then the speech over at Cooper Union not so long ago."
Policeman: "And I was at that one, too."
Me: "So, is this the fourth time, right?"
Policeman: "I think I remember another one, but the guy might as well go ahead and move into the neighborhood."

This particular policeman knew how to work a crowd. One woman asked him if the President would be leaving by way of Bleecker Street and if there was any chance of seeing him. He responded, making the hand signs of a movie director, "You're not going to see anything. It's like The Sopranos. Just a fade to black."

As the officer suggested, the entourage would leave via Houston Street, so I walked over there. And clearly that's where the spectators had assembled. Typical of these special events, people constantly stopped to ask what was going on and someone would always offer a completely stupid and wrong explanation. Yet, it was a pretty night to linger and chat with strangers. Conspiracy theorists, of which we have many in the Village, speculated on various decoy vehicles and plainclothes policemen. Compared to past occasions, the crowd was on the thin side.

I also talked with a few neighbors about how we did not know Anna Wintour. We rarely see her slight figure gracing the sidewalks of our fair neighborhood. I offered my surprise that she even lived in our historic though pricey bohemia, largely because of the many besotted and unfashionable youth cruising our beer-soaked taverns. I do know that she showed up recently at a community board meeting to protest the opening of a club on her corner. I figured her for an uptown type, like the East 70s near the park. We make a ton of assumptions about people in New York City solely based on where they live. With her, it's like she was assigned the wrong neighborhood.

The sun was setting over the Hudson. As I was chatting with a pair of cops on traffic detail, I could see in the distance the headlights of several cars in the official motorcade. Two sped by in the wrong lane at a high rate of speed, prompting one theorist to offer the opinion that one car secretly carried the President and that it was time to go home. She left. Then the motorcycle policemen walked over to their respective bikes, turned on the lights, and cranked up their engines, pumping the gas for that impressive chorus of zoom.

Showtime. My experience is always the same. The wait is forever, but the end comes blazing fast. Black cars with tinted windows roar by in a total blur. In the middle, an impressive longer car, one with flags, signifies its importance. The crowd roars. Cameras flash. The heart races.

The President has left the neighborhood.

Until next time.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from the evening of July 28, 2010. Greenwich Village, New York, New York.

Walking an Uncertain Wall Street: A Strolling Guide to Stops, Sleepovers, and Anxieties in the Financial District

2010-07-26T12:51:00.002-04:00

Bank of New York Mellon at 1 Wall Street.

Maiden Lane

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress last week that the economic picture remains "unusually uncertain." What a lovely phrase. What did he mean by this? Two words beginning with "un" take a little work anyway, but the Fed Chair was trying to convey, I think, the notion that economic planning remains difficult in the face of good news arriving one minute and bad news the next. The volatility of the market, with its wild ups and downs, thwarts clarity, especially for banker types. For the consumer also, an unusually uncertain economic picture, especially with big question marks about jobs and income, can cause anxieties about future purchases and investments. Wall Street prefers certainty and quickly launched into a sell-off.

Walk where the streets lead

Never mind. The next day stocks rose over two hundred points, giddy with good news over corporate earnings. Expect more uncertainty and volatility ahead. As the new week of trading begins this morning, the news seems happy, but just a bit of bad news can quickly turn the market downhill. Wall Street is subject to tormented mood swings and whims, not unlike a bad romance. Unfortunately, the odds are that a wealthy shareholder will reap most of the benefits of the relationship and so leave the average Jack or Jill playing the sorry part in the unrequited love drama and left crying in the streets. (See the New York Times article, Industries Find Surging Profits in Deeper Cuts, July 25, 2010. )

Wall Street, the actual street in lower Manhattan, as opposed to the highly-charged symbol of high finance, can be coldly seductive. Beginning with the formidable Art Deco masterpiece at 1 Wall Street, Bank of New York Mellon, there's something alluring, dangerous even, in the way the narrow street moves down its shadowed canyons toward the East River. In their steely heights, the famous Stock Exchange on Broad Street, the Morgan building, the Federal Hall, the Trump Building, Tiffany's, the Bank of New York Building, and others, lure the visitor into the corridors of power. The fact that there's a heavy security presence at the Stock Exchange can create an aura of exciting danger. It's helpful to have Trinity Church at the head of the street, praying over the whole dark den of worldly greed.

Delmonico's

Stone Street

Streets near Wall Street still bear their older romantic names such as Maiden Lane, Nassau Street, Stone Street, and Old Slip, or their friendly ones like John and William. The curves and narrowness of these old streets, their crookedness (again, of the literal sort), the tactile materials of stone and wood lead to fragments of a lost city buried by the financial victors. It's crushing, however, that the sites of former homes of Thomas Jefferson and Herman Melville, individuals of some consequence in a counter-narrative of a literary and democratic city, can only be suggested by placemarks on buildings. Yet, the streets lead to some old-fashioned romantic places such as Delmonico's, the city's famed steak house, and Frances Tauvern, the old colonial watering hole. Other places are spooky, cold, or off-limits. The pleasures here tend to rest in walking the winding streets and discovering intriguing buildings at the vanishing points or horizon lines. The vistas are perfect for painters and photographers.

View Walking Wall Street: Stops and Sleepovers in the Financial District in a larger map

Andax Hotel at 75 Wall Street (at Water)

For friendly places, look for the taverns lining the cobblestone Stone Street, a favorite after-hours spot for traders, or bars and restaurants near Hanover Square. Despite the financial tentativeness of late, new hotels have been opening in the district, and oddly, those who stay downtown now may find more to do now than four years ago. At the Andaz Hotel's friendly high-concept bar, minimally adorned with several scattered high tables and bottles out on view, the staff invites the visitor to relax and involve themselves in the decision-making process. A drink is highly recommended after a visit to the Museum of American Finance, a necessary stop for financial enlightenment.

Never plan a fixed walk anywhere, especially downtown. Let John, William, Nassau, Broad, and Water Pearl lead the way. Walking the streets of the Financial District, like a moody romance, can be unusually uncertain. Yet, it's not unusually unpleasant either.

Along S. William Street. Don't let those Dutch gables lure you into thinking you've found New Amsterdam. They were built much later. The Wall Street Inn is here, too, as well as the Dubliner tavern (on the right). Stone Street is behind this block.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from July 20, 2010. More can be found in this set on Flickr WOTBA.

Matisse at MoMA

2010-07-19T13:11:00.000-04:00

A review of Matisse: Radical Invention: 1913-1917 at the Museum of Modern Art (July 18 - October 11, 2010)

The exhibition, Matisse: Radical Invention: 1913-1917, at the Museum of Modern Art (July 18 - October 11, 2010) offers a compelling case to reassess a famous painter too often and too easily taken for granted. Even the most casual of art lovers are in love with the paintings of Henri Matisse (1869–1954) - the sensual bright colors, the nudes encircled in a dance, the sumptuous French interiors, the Jazz cutouts, and his exotic decorative patterns. A good Matisse poster seems to always perk up a dull room. Looking at many Matisse can provide a quick escapist vacation whether it's a window opening to the southern coast of France or to the cliffs of Tangiers. Such a one-sided view of Matisse, however, shortchanges the artist. It's hard to remember that the artwork, so loved now, was once considered by critics to represent an affront to respectable art. The exhibit at MoMA brings the experimental and avant-garde Matisse back into proper perspective.

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
The Piano Lesson. 1916
Oil on canvas. 96 ½ x 83 ¾” (245.1 x 212.7 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund
© 2010 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The exhibit begins several years after Matisse's solo debut at Ambroise Vollard's gallery and the group exhibit of the Fauves. The works from 1905, especially compared to the subdued palette on display in the MoMA exhibit, come across as insane with color, a garish infraction of the rules. You can see where critic Camille Mauclair was coming from when he pronounced, "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public." An exhibition at the 1910 Salon d'Automne of two murals, La Danse (Dance) and La Musique (Music), two works signifying a shift in emphasis and made for collector Sergei Shchukin, met with equally harsh critical reception. The artist flees to Spain and Morocco, absorbs new lessons of decorative art and color theory and returns to Paris. The MoMA exhibit includes this valuable prequel, establishing patterns (quite literally) and themes for the artist's developing visual language. He also returns to Paris life more of a Cubist, fixating on geometric forms, a more reserved palette, and a willingness to edit information down to the lowest linear denominator. Importantly, we see Matisse making decisions in his studio, the sort that involves the intellect more than the senses.

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954).
Bathers with a Turtle, 1907–08. Oil on canvas,
179.1 x 220.3 cm (70 1/2 x 87 3/4 in.)
Saint Louis Art Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer Jr., 24:1964.
© 2010 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

1913-1917 not only represents an important turning point in Matisse's work but also signals a momentous time for experimentation in the arts. 1913 marked the year of the Armory Show (at Lexington between 25th and 26th Streets), introducing New York audiences to the shock of the new art trends in Europe and the U.S., but most analogous to Matisse's experimentation, the year also marks the near earthquake known as Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The ballet's debut introduced earthy polyrhythms and new dissonances not yet experienced by classical music audiences, and like the classically trained Matisse, Stravinsky knew all the formal rules before he knew how to properly break them. The same is often said of Picasso, a younger colleague of Matisse.

Henri Matisse.
The Moroccans. Issy-les-Moulineaux, late 1915 and fall 1916.
Oil on canvas. 71 3/8" x 9' 2" (181.3 x 279.4 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Marx
© 2010 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Two monumental paintings, one from MoMA and one from the Art Institute of Chicago (with the two institutions successfully collaborating on the exhibit), serve as the point of departure for this close look at the French painter's most innovative phase. The Moroccans (1915-1916) from MoMA explores forms and imagery from North Africa but comes across as a complex riddle. The use of black divides but also unifies three sections of the canvas, each a sort of signifier of the culture, illustrating Matisse's desire to show the transparency of his construction. Many of the paintings show the erasures and earlier marks in the process, a self-reflexive gesture of mark making that connects Matisse to contemporary practices. Central to the argument of the exhibit are the four variations of his sculpture Back. No artist has ever been more in love with the lines of the female spine.

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
Bathers by a River. 1909–10, 1913, 1916–17
Oil on canvas. 102 1/2 x 154 3/16” (260 x 392 cm)
The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection, 1953.158. © 2010 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Bathers by a River (1909–10, 1913, 1916–17), the contribution of the Art Institute, is clearly the focal point of the MoMA exhibit, a culmination of artistic experiments that the curators save for the last room. Accompanying the painting, a digital presentation serves as a pedagogical device, showing the sequence of repainting, repurposing, and other radical alterations in the composition over the years. What has not changed, however, is Matisse's fondness, if not obsession, for the lines of the female figure, ever present in his work, but now given a new clarity. The ovals of the head, circles of the breasts, straight lines of the back, and the convergence of the pelvis are resolved as natural forms of a verdant paradise of green palm fronds and blue sky and water. Matisse's rite of spring.

_______________
Exhibit information: Matisse: Radical Invention: 1913-1917 at the Museum of Modern Art (July 18-October 11, 2010). Timed tickets are required for entry to the Matisse exhibit. A limited number of timed-entry tickets will be available at the Museum on a first-come, first-served basis. Members may present their membership card for access at any time. The exhibit is installed on the sixth floor. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is located at 11 W. 53rd. St.

Dinner & a Movie: A Guide to NYC Movie Theaters & Nearby Bars & Restaurants

2010-07-15T12:50:00.001-04:00

Twenty-four movie theaters and over ninety bars and restaurants are included in this selected guide for good places to dine, drink, or get a cup of coffee before or after the movies. Click on a placemark for a New York movie house, and see Walking Off the Big Apple's suggestions for a nearby place within walking distance. Some are restaurants, others are bars, and several feature that nice middle ground called "bar food."

View Dinner & A Movie: A Guide to NYC Movie Theaters & Nearby Bars & Restaurants in a larger map

A New York friend who goes to the movies all the time recently asked me about new places to try near favorite movie theaters, so this map is my elaborated answer. She was particularly interested in places near many of the cinemas specializing in independent or classic cinema, theaters like the IFC, Film Forum, Landmark Sunshine, and Cinema Village. Many of these pioneering cinemas are located downtown, and they continue to play an important part of the area's creative heritage. Now, with the ever-changing dining and bar scene, it's possible to try many variations on the old standby date of dinner and a movie.

Images and map by Walking Off the Big Apple. Above: Three good pairings of movie theaters and nearby places to eat and drink - Angelika Film Center (Houston and Mercer), with Fanelli's Cafe (Prince and Mercer); IFC (6th Avenue and 3rd St.) with Home Restaurant (Cornelia St.); and Film Forum (E. Houston) with Cafe Henri (Bedford St.). Readers are most welcome to add their favorites in the comment section.

A Walk from The Plaza to The Waldorf: A Guide and a Map

2010-07-06T20:51:00.003-04:00

The Plaza Hotel

Walking from the historic Plaza Hotel to the equally historic Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, with stops at points of interest nearby, is so easy that the stroll can be accomplished in dress shoes or in the highest of high heels. Indeed, fancy shoes would be appropriate, considering the dressed-up venues along the way, if only for the sake of a little play-acting. As anyone who has ever studied My Fair Lady or Breakfast at Tiffany's knows, affecting membership in the wealthy classes requires a few props and a tweak of the accent. Visitors may also want to tuck in their shirts. Or not. Even if you don't dress up, act like you own the place.

I've been curious of late to see if the Plaza Hotel has regained any of its older flair, being one of those people more than disappointed with its renovation. As a member of the shabby genteel, I can state with some assurance that the old hotel is lost, and a recent visit did not help allay my fears. A great hotel needs a great hustle and bustle in its lobbies and a rapid movement in and out of revolving doors - many people at the hotel desks, people sitting in the lobby chairs, families waiting on the late ones so they can go to the museum, a concierge explaining availability of tickets to a Broadway play, business people heading to the bar, and so on. The whole place should smell of old roses, a variety of perfumes, mildew, and cigar smoke from fifty years ago. The Plaza, which once had everything going for it, is lacking in these areas.

The hotel, though seriously gutted of its Old World ambiance, at least now has Todd English's Food Hall, a fairly interesting market that offers a variety of foods and counter service. The handsome Boston celebrity chef has brought us a wine bar, a place for charcuterie, a cheese and dessert bar, a pasta bar, and a nice three-quarter-sided dining counter for seafood. Even if some of the market items are available at any New York grocery store, the counter space is welcome, especially for light fare and a glass of wine. I can see the Food Hall working really well in the holiday season. For those who remember the old Plaza and miss the wonderful feeling of its lobby, I recommend revisiting the space through the cinematic magic of movie rentals.

Louis Vuitton

Speaking of the movies, the Food Hall at the Plaza is a good place to grab a snack before settling into a seat of the nearby Paris Theatre just to the south of the hotel on W. 58th Street. In fact, a pleasant way to spend a city afternoon could consist of a light lunch at the Food Hall, a screening at the Paris Theatre, and then a walk down to the nearby Pond in Central Park. Conventional tourist advice would add shopping visits to Bergdorf-Goodman, FAO Schwartz, and the Apple Store, all nearby, to these activities.

We're looking for the smell of old hotel lobbies, the kind of thing that should be sprayed into new hotels to make them more authentic, so we'll press on with our walk. We'll walk south on Fifth Avenue to 57th Street and turn east, stopping to look at the charming window display at Louis Vuitton in honor of the great French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue. This designer homage to the photographer, best known for his youthful images of Paris, celebrates the enduring whimsicality of the Eiffel Tower, especially the sort of luggage it takes to get there.

Borders/ Ritz Tower

Next up - the Four Seasons Hotel (not pictured). Suffice it to say that this isn't the sort of old school hotel we're looking for, but please venture into the entrance and tell me this is not the most intimidating hotel entrance on earth. (I dare not describe the experience fully, for I wish readers to go there themselves, but I left there with my knees shaking and a set of instructions to go find the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West.) Before leaving E. 57th St., check out the Borders Bookstore on the east side of Park Avenue. From 1957 to 1971 the space was once home to Le Pavillon, one of the greatest French restaurants in New York.

E. 57th and Lexington

Continue walking to the corner of E. 57th St. and Lexington Avenue, staying on the north side of the street. Here we'll stop at a round Renaissance structure, a product of the 1980s, cast our eyes southward, and then contemplate why we love Lexington Avenue so much. The answer is "affordable food." After crossing Madison Avenue and its expensive places and Park Avenue and its nonexistent spaces, Lexington arrives as a godsend, loaded with eateries, both large and small. This stretch of the avenue, from here down to 42nd Street, is wonderful for architecture, too. Among the attractions of the built environment, look for the Central Synagogue, the Citicorps Center (with its sunken public plaza), the Miami-like Doubletree Metropolitan Hotel, and across the street, the Art Deco General Electric Building (once the RCA Victor Building). Notice the Art Deco sign for the Subway on the south side, and while there, take a walk over to Park Avenue to see St. Bartholomew's Church (or "St. Bart's," as it's affectionately known), one of the city's most ornate churches.

Citicorps Center

General Electric Building

If Citicorps Center follows the guidelines for successful public spaces - moveable chairs, a water feature, the availability of food, art, etc., then the Waldorf Astoria Hotel has found the comparable formula for that elusive Old New York ambiance. The sort of qualities lacking at The Plaza appear in abundance when strolling into the shared spaces of the Waldorf - the concierge explaining the Broadway tickets, the faint smell of scotch emanating from the bar areas, the soft retro lighting in adjacent corridors, soft but clear notes on a piano, the rich bouquets of flowers properly set in vases. The sense of continuity between generations of New Yorkers seems unbroken.

For those for whom lingering in hotel lobbies may be too old school, I suggest a walk to the Roger Smith Hotel, an arts-friendly hotelier, and an elevator ride to its terrace bar on the 16th floor, Henry's Rooftop Bar. It's open Monday through Friday from 5 to 10 p.m. There, looking out over an old working section of the city, it's possible to have a drink and contemplate what's new in old Manhattan, and how, back in the day, they didn't have such clean air and so many rooftop bars.

Back on ground level, it's easy to find your way home via Grand Central Terminal. Pick up cooked meals to go at the Grand Central Market. At the end of such a walk, everything smells so good. Who knew such a glamorous walk would begin and end at a food court?

View From the Plaza Hotel to Grand Central Terminal in a larger map

Before going home, look at the Graybar Building in the late blue light of the closing day. Isn't it beautiful?

Graybar Building

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple made with the iPhone 4 camera.

Scenes from a Morning Bike Ride: A Cruise Ship, Times Square, Sidewalk Catwalk, and Fifth Avenue

2010-07-04T12:33:00.004-04:00

There's a strange emptiness on a city morning on the 4th of July. It's a perfect time for a bike ride, as the traffic is nonexistent and the streets are wide open. The emptiness will not last long, however, as millions of residents and visitors head over to the Hudson River later today to see the fireworks show.

This morning I rode up the Hudson River Park to see the Norwegian Epic, the newly-christened cruise ship of truly epic proportions that has anchored in the Big Apple. The 4100-passenger boat, which barely cleared the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge as it made its way into New York Harbor, will serve as the main stage for the evening's entertainment.

From there, I rode east on W. 50th Street through a quiet Hell's Kitchen (you'd think Hell would be noisier) and then on to the Theatre District. On Broadway, I turned south. Riding a bike through Times Square is one of the great pleasures of the modern metropolis.

Though the streets were quiet, the billboards and neon lights still illuminated the avenues. Most people associate Times Square with late in the evening, but I recommend visiting at 8 o'clock on a holiday morning, especially if it's a Sunday.

Riding a bicycle south on Broadway gave me a good chance to look over the mannequins in the Fashion Center event, Sidewalk Catwalk, on view through September 3, 2010. Some thirty-two artistic interpretations of mannequins by New York designers lend a certain street style to the Broadway blocks of the Fashion District. I'll have to go back on foot to give each a proper viewing.

Near the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street, the meeting that shapes the Flatiron Building, I continued my solitary bike ride south on Fifth Avenue. As you see, I had the avenue pretty much to myself. And so I sailed, helped along with a warm morning summer breeze, toward Washington Square and just beyond, a home in Greenwich Village, U.S.A. I still had the whole holiday day in front of me.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from July 4, 2010.

New York's New Adolescence and the Play Impulse in the Contemporary Public Art

2010-07-01T13:14:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I think New Yorkers have recovered their inner child. I'm not talking about the obsession with youth normally associated with the larger culture, of which the city is not exempt, but more about the signs of an emerging adolescent culture that manifest themselves in several aspects of contemporary urban life. A city inhabited by many young people who are prolonging their adolescence, as a recent article in The New York Times notes, (see essay by Patricia Cohen -"Long Road to Adulthood is Growing Ever Longer" ) will likely reflect a certain Peter Pan quality.

The idea of perpetual childhood seems especially pronounced in food trends, like the unceasing craze for cupcakes, those pretty confections for that special boy and girl (especially those SATC girls), as well as the appetite for fried chicken, gelato on a stick, ice cream of all sorts, chocolate cake, and gourmet hamburgers and hot dogs. Outside of food, many New Yorkers resemble children at play. We ride bikes, carry big backpacks, wear sneakers, and frolic with dogs. Because the Mayor insists we behave, we know we are not supposed to do bad things like smoke or eat too many sugary snacks. And if the development trend continues to replace older neighborhoods with a virtual facsimile of them, then we'll adopt behaviors more typical of an amusement park.

The city playground continues to expand. The conversion of once-working waterfront piers to recreational parks, the addition of hundreds of miles of bike lanes, the construction of new sports stadiums, and the repurposing of a railroad track into a park (the greatest kid fantasy of all) underscore the profound shift from a manufacturing to a consumer and recreational economy. In the realignment of the workforce to an information society, many New Yorkers find themselves in alternative work arrangements, often at home or with the laptop at the coffeehouse or working in a an open floor plan of an office, surrounded by toys, in a kind of Montessori school of the work world. Wherever we are, we seem to need to update others on our status or check in at our current location.

The way that members of the creative class interact with the city has also shifted from the manner previous generations interacted with the city. Growing up on virtual games, enveloped in personal entertainment systems (even while walking), the youthful city dweller conceives of the city as a virtual board game where places become check-in points. With the economy in crisis, many people in the city, even the most highly educated, find themselves underemployed or unemployed, improvising things to do in a summer recess without end. With opportunities for grownup work disappearing, some people start blogs or websites out of necessity or to do something constructive with all that learning they picked up in school. I predict the new LEGO store in Rockefeller Center will be very popular among all age groups.

It's funny but unsurprising that the artwork of such a culture should somehow reflect the spirit of exploration associated with adolescent development. Consider the pubic art projects in the city this summer - Antony Gormley's Event Horizon, Doug and Mike Starn's Big Bambú, Paul Ramírez Jonas's

Key to the City, and Luke Jerram's Play Me - I'm Yours. While these projects encourage participatory democracy and question the ownership of urban spaces, they nevertheless engage the play impulse. With Event Horizon's identical nude male figures, we play a game of find-and-seek, and with Key to the City, we're off on an adventure. Gormley, in his statement about the project for Mad. Sq. Art, even articulates the idea - "I don’t know what is going to happen, what it will look and feel like, but I want to play with the city and people’s perceptions." (See fuller discussion on this website.)

Artist Jonas devised Key to the City, a participatory Creative Time project, to encourage people to explore issues of access and democracy. Upon the presentation of the key at a kiosk in Times Square (now closed, but the key will still work through Labor Day), the adventurer then begins a quest to locate the twenty-four designated sites and unlock their doors. Play Me I'm Yours, with its sixty pianos scattered across the boroughs, depends on our individual and community desires and our ability to play. In regards to Big Bambú, the evolving bamboo edifice on top of the Met, whose inner child cannot relate to the best jungle gym ever?

Engaging such a high level of play while encouraging an exploration of the city takes a lot of work. Believe me, I know all about it. There's nothing inherently wrong, however, with childlike wonder and play and with artworks that depend on the involvement of an active viewer. In his 1794 work, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, philosopher Friedrich Schiller equates the "play drive," the resolution of the conflict between sensuality and reason, with artistic beauty. These four art projects also signal the continuing challenge to the notion that artists make art and that the viewers consume or react to it. Works that once said, "Behold me and discern my meaning," now come with the invitation, "Can you come out and play with me?' For these artists, they're tapping into a growing public for whom the inclination to play is never far removed.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

New York Museum Exhibitions: Summer 2010

2010-06-28T17:54:00.011-04:00

One of the pleasures of this time of year is visiting the Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum, sipping a beverage, and taking in the sights of the current installation. This year's artwork of wonder is the impressive project, Big Bambú: You Can't, You Don't, and You Won't Stop by twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn (see image at left). The evolving bamboo structure is the perfect counterpoint to the formalities of the Beaux-Arts museum as well as the best match of an artwork to the summer season.

The following list includes exhibitions and openings for the remainder of the summer. A Fall 2010 list will be posted in early September.

In July, Matisse: Radical Intervention, 1913-1927 opens at MoMA (July 18, 2010 - October 11, 2010). At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Picasso exhibit continues through July. Look also for the Charles Burchfield paintings at the Whitney and Retro/Active: The Works of Rafael Ferrer at the El Museo del Barrio.

What follows is a list of selected museum and other art center exhibitions currently on view in New York City along with dates of upcoming exhibits (listed in bold) that are scheduled to open later this summer.

Temporary public art exhibitions:

• Antony Gormley: Event Horizon
Madison Square Park area (at right)
Through August 15, 2010
See related article on Walking Off the Big Apple.

Upcoming museum exhibitions are noted in bold type.

American Academy of Arts and Letters, 633 West 155th Street (Audubon Terrace):
For more on the must-see Audubon Terrace and neighborhood, see the post, A Visit to Audubon Terrace and Environs (one of Walking Off the Big Apple's 2 5 Great Things to Do in New York City. and see the nearby Hispanic Society, noted below.)

American Folk Art Museum, 45 W. 53rd St.:
• Approaching Abstraction
Through September 6, 2010
• Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands
Through September 12, 2010
• The Private Collection of Henry Darger
Through September 19, 2010

American Museum of Natural History (Central Park West and 79th St.):
• exhibits include Race to the End of the Earth (tales of Antarctic exploration); Traveling the Silk Road; Mysteries of the Great Lakes, and more.

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York:
• Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1964
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, 4th Floor
Through September 12, 2010
• Kiki Smith: Sojourn
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, 4th Floor
Through September 12, 2010
• The Mummy Chamber
Long-term installation now open
• American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection
Through August 1, 2010
• Andy Warhol: The Last Decade
Through September 12, 2010

Cooper-Hewitt

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2 East 91st St.:
• Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyer Glass from the Permanent Collection
Through Fall 2010
• National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?
Through January 9, 2011

The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster St.:
• Leon Golub: Live & Die Like a Lion?
Through July 23, 2010
• Dorothea Tanning: Early Designs for the Stage
Through July 23, 2010

El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street:
• Retro/Active: The Works of Rafael Ferrer
Through August 22, 2010

Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street :
• From Mansion to Museum: The Frick Collection Celebrates Seventy-Five Years
Through September 5, 2010

Grey Art Gallery (NYU), 100 Washington Square East:
• next exhibit in September

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th St.):
• Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance
Through September 6, 2010

Hispanic Society

The Hispanic Society of America Audubon Terrace, Broadway between
155th and 156th streets, New York City
• The Sorolla Gallery has now reopened.
• Gonzalez-Foerster's Chonotopes & Dioramas, open in the East Building Gallery.

International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street:
• For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights
Through September 12, 2010
• Perspectives 2010: Carol Bove, Lena Herzog, Matthew Porter, Ed Templeton, Hong-An Truong
Through September 12, 2010

Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, 3237 Vernon Blvd., Long Island City:
• Noguchi ReINstalled
Through October 24, 2010

American Wing, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue:
• Mastering the Art of Chinese Painting: Xie Zhiliu (1910-1997)
Through July 25, 2010
• Celebration: The Birthday in Chinese Art
Through August 15, 2010
• An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Corregio to Tiepolo
Through August 15, 2010
• Between Here and There: Passages in Contemporary Photography
Through February 13, 2011
• Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Through August 1, 2010
• Big Bambú: You Can't, You Don't, and You Won't Stop
Through October 31, 2010 (weather permitting)
• Side by Side: Oberlin's Masterworks at the Met
Through August 29, 2010
• American Women: Fashioning a National Identity
Through August 15, 2010
• Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980
Through October 17, 2010

MoMA sculpture garden

MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art), 11 West 53 Street:
• Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense 
Through August 30, 2010
• Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront
Through October 11, 2010
• Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography
Through March 21, 2011
• Contemporary Art from the Collection
Through September 12, 2010
• Matisse: Radical Intervention, 1913-1927
Through October 11, 2010
Read Walking Off the Big Apple's review of the Matisse exhibit here.

MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Avenue, Long Island City
• Greater New York (quintennial exhibition showcasing contemporary art by New York area artists)
Through October 18, 2010

Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street:
• Palladio and His Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey
Through August 1, 2010
• Defining Beauty: Albrecht Dürer at the Morgan
Through September 12, 2010
• Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design
Through August 29, 2010
Note: The McKim Building (Library, study, rooms, rotunda) is closed for restoration through October 30, 2010.

Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue:
• Cars, Culture, and the City
Through August 8, 2010
• Mayor John V. Lindsay
Through October 3, 2010

National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue:
• Closed for renovations from July 2010 to September 2011

Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue:
• Otto Dix
Through August 30, 2010

New York Academy of Art, 111 Franklin St.:
• 4th annual Summer Exhibition (juried group exhibition)
Through July 31, 2010

New York Transit Museum, Boerum Pl and Schermerhorn St.:
• Inspiring Spaces: 25 Years of MTA Arts for Transit
Through October 11, 2010 Brooklyn (address above)
July 27 - October 31, 2010 Grand Central Terminal

The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery:
• Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other
Through September 19, 2010

New York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West:
• Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New York Historical Society
Through September 5, 2010

New York Public Library (Stephen A. Schwartzman Building), 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue:
The NYPL maintains an extensive exhibition program, so check the website for what's on display at the various branches.

Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street:
• Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures
Through August 16, 2010
• In the Shadow of Everest
Through July 26, 2010
• Tradition Transformed
Through October 18, 2010

South Street Seaport Museum, 12 Fulton Street:
• DecoDence:Legendary Interiors and Illustrious Travelers Aboard the SS Normandie
Through January 2011

The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street:
• Zwelethu Mthethwa: Inner Views
• Usable Pasts 2009-10 Artists in Residence: Mequitta Ahuja, Lauren Kelley and Valerie Piraino
• Inside the Collection: Interiors from the Studio Museum
• Hi-Res: Expanding the Walls 2010
• Harlem Postcards Summer 2010
• StudioSound: DJ /rupture’s Radio GooGoo
Through October 24, 2010

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue At 75th Street:
• Collecting Biennials
Through November 28, 2010
• Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield
Through October 17, 2010
• Facing the Artist: Portraits by John Jonas Gruen
Through August 8, 2010

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

Visiting New York on a Monday and want to know which of these museums are open? See the list here. Clicking on museum names above will link to their respective homepages.

A Quiet Morning Spot in the West Village

2010-06-27T08:20:00.002-04:00

It's easy to walk straight by James J. Walker Park in the West Village. On the west side fronting Hudson St., a large city ball field commands attention. On the east, the Tony Dapolito Recreational Center and the Hudson Park branch of the New York Public Library take up much of the real estate on 7th Avenue between Clarkson Street and Leroy Street. One the north side, this special block of Leroy Street is renamed St. Luke's Place, an elegant row of townhouses, nearly all with a celebrity past. One of the oddest of the most elegant homes, only odd because of the runaway greenery overwhelming the entrance, once belonged to the Jazz Age Mayor of New York, the young and handsome playboy reformer, Jimmy Walker, or "Beau James," for whom the park is named. Walking casually along St. Luke's Place, the tendency is to look at the pretty townhouse row and not at the gates to the park across the street.

Even a casual glance through the park's tall grated iron fence toward the benches in the shady seating area of the park does not reveal anything out of the ordinary there, though in many ways, the ordinariness of this park, with its pastiche of styles from the past, functions as its chief virtue. With the arrival of summer, the large parks like Washington Square Park are overwhelmed with visitors, so a bench in Walker Park seems right for locals in need of gathering thoughts before work or as an uneventful place to stop and sip coffee.

Sitting for a time in Walker Park and observing its details, however, begins to reveal that there's more than a few benches here. On the north side of the seating area, near a locked gate that opens to a small garden, full of blooming hydrangeas in the summer, sits a marble sarcophagus, graying peacefully in the shade, dedicated to three fallen firemen. A look at the NYC Parks & Rec website explains that the land here was once used by Trinity Church as a burial ground during the 19th century. In 1895 the Park department acquired the property, changed its name to Hudson Park, and hired the esteemed firm of Carrère and Hastings (New York Public Library, Henry Clay Frick House, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre) to design a new layout. In addition to a lagoon and a sunken garden, they installed a perimeter walkway, perfect for the perambulations of New York's flaneurs at the end of the century.

The history of the park does not reveal itself solely in observation, but the presence of colorful handmade tiles of animals does have that 1970s look. Furthermore, the same park website page explains that the park has been redesigned several times in the 20th century - in 1935, 1946, 1972, and in 1996, the latest apparently spearheaded by a PR campaign of neighborhood children. The current design incorporates the animal tiles from the 1970s as well as the horse-head hitching posts outside the playground area.

A good neighborhood playground in the Village should always have a bocce court, a symbol of the area's Italian heritage, and while the court in Walker Park looks a little worn, its raised wooden boards and painted finish give it a certain vintage style. Behind the court, the tall fence in the baseball park features an abstract design in primary colors as well as the giant letter "W" shaped into its construction.

The images in the post give the false impression that Walker Park is a little empty on a weekday morning, but in fact, several people were there when I visited on two occasions this past week. Like me, they seemed to be relishing their quiet moments and privacy in this tucked-away park, and I felt no reason to steal their souls.

James J. Walker Park
boundaries of Hudson, Leroy, Clark Streets, and 7th Avenue.
NYC Parks & Rec page: http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/M038/

For more on St. Luke's Place, please see this page on WOTBA.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple made with various camera apps for the iPhone.

At Sotheby's for the Auction of the Polaroid Collection

2010-06-22T12:34:00.003-04:00

At Sotheby's. Photo by WOTBA.

Over the past several days, visitors have been filing into Sotheby's New York on York Avenue and 72nd Street to look over the collection of stunning photographs of the former Polaroid Company, over a thousand images from the likes of Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, William Wegman, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Robert Frank, David Hockney, and others, artworks forced into auction by a bankruptcy judge in Minnesota so the company could pay its creditors. Visiting the works on display provided a rare chance to see some of the finest photographic work of the twentieth century and often at a rare scale, with the knowledge that as soon as the final auction gavel comes down later today, these works will likely be dispersed to far-flung locales. Many will disappear into private hands, and we may never see them again.

The sale at Sotheby's, an unusual bankruptcy proceeding for the auction house, has not been without controversy. Several artists and photo historians have expressed alarm over the breaking up of such a formidable collection, and efforts by several museums to acquire the collection broke down in negotiations. Second, and related, several artists who had participated in the company's Artist Support Program, one in which they received film, equipment, and technical support from the company over the years, have stated that they understood that the collection would remain together and stay accessible. (See A. D. Coleman's blog, Photocritic International, for details and updates on these matters. Coleman has been a leading critic.) In this video from The Deal Magazine, Sotheby's Denise Bethel, Head of Photographs, and Christopher Mahoney, Senior Specialist in the Photographs department, explain the circumstances of the auction and share their thoughts about the sale.

Lot 51
Andy Warhol
Farrah Fawcett
Unique Polacolor Type 108 print
Est. $5/7,000
Sotheby’s New York
Photographs from The Polaroid Collection
June 21-22, 2010
Courtesy: Sotheby's New York.

Now underway at Sotheby's, with one session yesterday and three today, the Polaroid auction nearly achieved its estimated value on the first day. A rare work by Ansel Adams, "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park," one of several monumental mural-sized prints by the photographer at the auction, sold for $722,000, much higher than the expected $500,000. Adams, a friend of Polaroid founder Edwin Land, helped develop the non-Polaroids for the company's Library Collection, buying works by Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Harry Callahan, and others. Also at auction are several works by Andy Warhol, a famous user of Polaroid cameras. According to Art Daily's story on the first session, the auction record for an Warhol photograph was broken twice, with the sale of the funny large close-up, "Self-portrait (Grimace)" and then "Self-Portrait (Eyes Closed)." According to same report, the latter Warhol served as the object of a fierce bidding war, with several bidders pushing up the final price to $254,500, considerably higher than Sotheby's high-end estimate of $15,000. So, in terms of money, these works are highly valued and will surely boost the market for the represented photographers.

While walking around six floors of Sotheby's in advance of the auction, I certainly placed my own value on many of the photographs, though not in monetary terms. The large murals by Ansel Adams, images I could acquire in much cheaper poster editions but with the loss of considerable quality and aura, knocked me over with their insight into the preternatural beauty of the American West. It’s all about the sensitivity of light, tones, the Zone, fused with visions of sky, water, trees, rocks, and mountains. For a time, I was no longer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan but in a valley looking at the moonrise in New Mexico or dipping my toes in a clear stream in Yosemite. At another moment, as a dog person and a William Wegman fan, I had the treat of seeing more fetching (sorry) Wegman Weimeraners than I had ever seen assembled in my life. In 1978 Polaroid invited Wegman to try out their 20-by-24 inch camera, an instant camera but at a new unprecedented scale. His subsequent work made him and his canine companion Man Ray photo rock stars.

Lot 411
Ansel Adams
Half Dome, Merced River
Mural sized
Est. $30/50,000
Sotheby’s New York
Photographs from The Polaroid Collection
June 21-22, 2010
Courtesy: Sotheby's New York.

Lot 47
William Wegman
‘Game Preserve’
Unique large-format Polaroid Polacolor print
Est. $4/6,000
Sotheby’s New York
Photographs from The Polaroid Collection
June 21-22, 2010
Courtesy: Sotheby's New York.

Polaroid's ability to rock and roll appealed to me personally as a young shutterbug. Half way through viewing the collection, I had one of those Proustian flashback moments when my eyes set upon a display of cameras, including the fabulously groovy object known as the Polaroid Swinger, the company's popular camera marketed in the late 1960s. In an instant, so to speak, I remembered the abrupt and startling sound of the machine as it dispensed its print and the smell of the film as the image appeared. After the first Swinger, I would go through several more Polaroid cameras. A quick survey of my own personal archive turned up dozens of Polaroid prints, still in fairly good condition, with images of my family, friends and pets. As I write this, I'm looking at four instant snapshots of one of my dogs, the one that passed away last year. He was a puppy then, and he looked so cute. MY Polaroid collection is precious and irreplaceable. It’s no joke that it’s recommended in the case of an emergency to stash your book of photographs where you can find it as you flee the door.

Walking Notes: I recommend a visit to Sotheby's New York (1334 York Avenue), especially to see exhibitions of works in the days preceding a particular auction. Catalogues are for sale in a section of the lobby. Sotheby’s Terrace Café, offering light fare and lovely views, is on the 10th floor. The next large events at Sotheby’s New York will come in late September 2010 with high profile sales of Contemporary artworks and American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture. The sale of the Polaroid Collection was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Images: Many thanks to Sotheby's New York for auction images.

Let's get the jingle for the Polaroid Swinger stuck in our heads all day, shall we? Yes, that's Ali McGraw. This is a camera that says "YES."

"It's more than a camera. It's almost alive."

UPDATE with auction results 06/23/2010: Lot 51 (Farrah Fawcett by Andy Warhol) sold for $43,750; Lot 47 (Wegman) sold for $15,000.

A Kind of Blue: A Walk Through Woodlawn Among the Blue Hydrangeas

2010-06-19T05:49:00.001-04:00

Certain species of hydrangea feature opulent and puffy flowerheads, some in pink and some in blue, depending on the pH of the soil, but the ones in the blue-violet spectrum, seen in many city gardens in the summertime, look uncommonly unreal and ethereal. In context, the blue hydrangea that dot the eternal city of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx seem to assume a celestial appearance under the varied canopy of a thousand different trees, ice blue floral memorials for New Yorkers alive to memory. Describing the exact shade of these flowers goes beyond my descriptive abilities and understanding, but it is a kind of blue, a color more common in landscape paintings than in real life.

King's handbook of New York city, published in 1892, notes that the then-modern Woodlawn Cemetery "has become the fashionable burial-place of New York millionaire families," surpassing "every other place of burial in the country in the number, the beauty and the value of these imposing houses of the dead." (p. 473) One such millionaire, industrialist Jay Gould, who commissioned the first great mausoleum - a stunning classical temple of Parthenon proportions, may have started the trend. More than a hundred tombs of Classical, French Gothic and Egyptian styles eventually gathered around these pastoral streets.

Seeing the gorgeous old trees, the tombs in every style popular with the Beaux-Arts, and walking the winding avenues with suburban-sounding names like Laurel, Wintergreen, Hawthorne, Butternut, and Knollwood feels like visiting a wealthy neighborhood but with small temples instead of stately mansions. While peering through the front doors or windows of the houses, the inclination is to remain quiet, as the residents are asleep. Out beyond the wealthy districts of Woodlawn, conventional notions of the more crowded cemetery begin to appear - some in clusters on a hill or sprawled on the edges near the walls and gates. In other words, the cemetery mirrors the social structure and geographic arrangement of the city's history. Yet, the overall feeling is that of a city slightly shifted into another dimension, not necessarily a heavenly one but perhaps an ideal Roman city, something like the landscapes depicted in Thomas Cole's paintings in the series The Course of Empire. (Wikipedia entry).

A later New York guidebook, Rider's New York city and vicinity of 1916, includes an extensive walking guide to this great cemetery in the Bronx, including the most notable Greek temple crypts, the locations of illustrious notables such as Admiral Farragut, publisher Charles Scribner, NYU chemistry professor John Christopher Draper, the locations of several gentlemen known in 1916 but unfamiliar to us now, the impressive monuments designed by McKim, Mead & White and other renowned architects, but Rider's description contains no mention of the a writer of seafaring tales (as the New York Times describes the stories in a short obit on September 29, 1891) by the name of Herman Melville (1819-1891). The latter's grave, in the south section of the ethereal city, in contrast to the small temples of the city's illuminati, is marked by a more humble tombstone bearing a cryptic image of a scrolling blank piece of paper. According to Museum Planet's online slideshow of the cemetery, Melville may have designed his own grave. The narrator says, "It may have been in reaction to the bitterness over which his greatest novel, Moby Dick, was received."

While visiting Woodlawn this past week with a friend, we realized after an hour or so that the cemetery was so vast that we could not see everyone we wanted, including my favorite writer of sea adventures. After entering through the gate nearest the Woodlawn station at the end of the 4 train, we stepped into the visitor center and picked up the free map that notes the location of gravesides, tombs, and mausoleums. Who of note is here? Finding a place on the front steps of a tomb, we make notes - Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, William 'Bat" Masterson, Robert Moses, Victor Herbert, Antoinette Perry (for whom the Tony Awards are named), Gail Borden (the inventor of condensed milk), cartoonist Thomas Nast, artist Joseph Stella, reporter Nellie Bly, Joseph Pulitzer, Augustus Juilliard, Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, the great women's rights advocate, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for starters.

View Directions to Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx in a larger map

Miles Davis (1926-1991) is here, or rather "Sir Miles Davis," as the carved name in cursive script on the monument notes, at the tapered intersection of Heather and Knollwood Avenues. I learned from my friend that a plan developed the time of the Harlem Renaissance to bury the jazz greats of the New York City in Woodlawn. And so Miles is in the neighborhood with Duke Ellington, Celia Cruz, Lionel Hampton, W. C. Handy, Sonny Greer, Cootie Williams, Max Roach, and many others. If not a leap of faith, then surely it is only a stretch of the imagination to hear the echoes of a great heavenly host of music in this celestial city.

Before leaving this place, let's watch and listen to Miles Davis and John Coltrane playing Miles's composition, "So What," recorded by CBS producer Robert Herridge in New York City on April 2, 1959. At the time, Miles was in the process of recording one of the greatest jazz albums of all time, Kind of Blue. After a visit to Woodlawn, I will forever associate the sound of Miles’s trumpet with this kind of blue, the color of blue hydrangeas.

Additional notes: The trip on the subway from Union Station to Woodlawn takes approximately 40-45 minutes. The gates close before 5 p.m., so allow ample time to visit.

Strolling Notes: The World Cup in New York, the Situationist Dog, and a Footbridge in Tribeca

2010-06-16T15:57:00.009-04:00

The Red Lion on Bleecker

• The World Cup in New York: An early day walk around New York neighborhoods these days brings the added surprise of seeing patrons in bars at 7:30 in the morning and hearing the not-so-subtle sounds of blowing musical instruments. Not every city bar has opened its doors for the first match of the day, but several venues have enthusiastically welcomed the early morning fans of the sport, including their matracas and vuvuzelas.

By the afternoon, many more bars and restaurants have opened, with fans sometimes spilling out into the street. Some venues cater to a particular team and feature special food and drink for the festivities. Outside of the bars, World Cup fever is in the air, with friends and acquaintances, especially those who have immigrated from countries represented in the competition, chatting wherever convenient to share news and friendly bantering.

It's hard to keep up with the expanding list of places to watch the World Cup in New York, but here are a few links to compilations of where to watch the matches in the big city:

"Germans Take World Cup of New York Bars, as England Loses Again" (Bloomberg.com)

"Watch the World Cup in New York at the bars and restaurants of the participating nations" The link is for Group G, with the article linking to other groups. (examiner.com)

"Where to Watch the World Cup in New York" (Zagat.com)

"Where to Watch the World Cup in New York City" (nytimes.com)

"Where to Watch the World Cup" (nbcnewyork.com)

You get the idea. Or simply find a bar-enhanced neighborhood like mine, the South Village, and come on down. If you're confused about what to drink in a bar that early in the morning, may I suggest the advice of a Tex-Mex restaurateur? He once said that it's OK to start drinking when MacDonald's stops serving breakfast.

• Amusing features of the Lower West Side/Tribeca: I often let my dog lead the way on walks, rather than the other way around, because she will lead me on fun, improvisational excursions. She doesn't pay attention to human conventions such as stop lights or intersections, so sometimes we get in trouble this way. She is a Situationist Dog, fighting the hegemony of city planners.

If you get stuck on the west side of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, look for the footbridge shown in this image.

Fleming Smith Warehouse

The other day the dog took me on a walk down the new section of Hudson River Park, described here in blazing blues and greens, and then south of Canal Park into Tribeca. At the intersection of Watts and Washington, we happened upon a particularly beautiful building from the late nineteenth century. Later, I flipped through the new edition of the AIA Guide to New York City and saw that it was called the Fleming Smith Warehouse. The writers of the guided describe it as "Fanciful Femish." Indeed, it looks like a lost building from a Flemish Old Masters painting. After exploring Desbrosses Street and Vestry Street, we suddenly seemed stuck on the west side of the highway and Holland Tunnel with no easy way out. Then I spotted a footbridge near Laight and Varick that took us back to a little park and then on to the south end of the Avenue of the Americas near the Tribeca Cinemas. The newish park is called CaVaLa Park, named for the triangle at Canal, Varick, and Laight Streets, and it's been refurbished with money from the Tribeca Film Festival.

Walking back home from the morning walk, my dog and I strolled north on West Broadway, a tony street with many upscale bars and restaurants. Needless to say, we passed several bars open for the World Cup. North of Houston, West Broadway is called La Guardia Place. Favela Cubana at 543 La Guardia Place is one of my favorites and a fun place to cheer on Brazil.

View The Footbridge at Laight and Varick in a larger map

The walk, designed by a large mixed breed canine, begins and ends in Washington Square Park. Along the way - Bleecker Street, with its ample supply of World Cup venues, Downing Street (for supporters of England), W. Houston, Hudson River Park, Tribeca warehouses, the Holland Tunnel (for fans of the Dutch?), a couple of refurbished parks, a bunch of chi-chi restaurants on West Broadway, a Cuban-Brazilian restaurant, and the NYU Library. The walk circumnavigates the Charlton-King-Vandam-District, described in another post. The complex ideas of Situationist practice, though simple to a dog, may be found here.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

A Walking Guide to Sixth Avenue / The Avenue of the Americas

2010-06-14T13:09:00.001-04:00

This is your brain on Sixth Avenue.

To prepare for a recent post on the Avenue of the Americas, the official name for Sixth Avenue, I walked the street's entire distance of 3.6 miles, from Central Park to Tribeca, in order to fully grasp Mayor La Guardia's original vision in renaming the avenue. While the remnants of the Pan-American avenue now seem somewhat tattered and confined to the extreme southern and northern ends, I still highly recommend a stroll down the avenue for a host of other reasons. The walk, in fact, is more like a hike after about three miles, requiring frequent stops and water, but the effort is worth it for those trying to walk off all sorts of problems and over-indulgences. The serious reason, however, rests in the usefulness of Sixth Avenue for studying the historical variations of New York commercial life as represented in its architecture and places of business. Walking all the way from the corporate blocks at the north end toward the south - through Midtown, Ladies Mile, Chelsea, the Village, the Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District, and Tribeca - encourages meditations on scale, public space, and the vestiges of New York history. It's a good way to see several historic areas of Manhattan in one walk. Wear comfortable shoes.

The walk starts on a few graceful notes. After the lofty equestrian sculptures of Latin American liberators on the plaza just to the north of Central Park South, turn south and walk past the Ritz Carlton (formerly the St. Moritz) Hotel and down the way, the Warwick Hotel, and later Radio City Music Hall, all on the east side, along with a few oddities on the west, such as the weird and grotesque Jekyll & Hyde Club on the west. Prominent features of the northern stretch of Sixth Avenue include a couple of significant public sculptures - Robert Indiana's famous and iconic "Love" and Jim Dine's set of twisted female torsos, variations on Venus de Milo, titled "Looking Toward the Avenue." (a joke, as the headless sculptures aren't looking anywhere.)

Without the humanizing art and the sleek, comforting public fountains out front, the imposing corporate presence of 1251 Avenue of the Americas (known also as the Exxon Building, though the oil giant took its headquarters to Texas in 1989) and its giant corporate siblings, technically part of Rockefeller Center, would constitute a dystopian future. As a grouping, the slabs come across like a giant piece of op-art (see image at top). Fans of architecture should also note the CBS Building, a black mammoth designed by Eero Saarinen & Associates in1965. Down the way, see Radio City Music Hall, and across the avenue, another corporate box. Don't forget to try out the rounded concrete tables and chairs in a so-called public space. (I'm joking. They look groovy, but they are uncomfortable.) Publishing and broadcasting maintains a strong hold on the avenue, with offices for McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, and the Fox News Channel (the latter, a must for a right wing tour of the Big Apple).

Water fountains keep the urban resident from growing despondent.

Before arriving in the Bryant Park area, look for the Diamond District on W. 47th between Sixth Avenue and Fifth Avenue, as well as the International Center of Photography and the glassy new skyscraper, the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park. Continuing the Avenue of the Americas theme, walk past the park to see a petite statue of Benito Juarez of Mexico
and a more imposing one of Brazilian leader José Bonifacio De Andrada E Silva, both standing just on the outside of the park walls. From Bryant Park, it's a relatively short distance to Macy's at Herald Square and then to Greeley Square. Nearing W. 28th Street, check out what remains of the city's Flower District. Near here also look for the "Jazz Loft," photographer W. Eugene Smith's apartment at 821 Sixth Avenue where he took thousands of photographs and made recordings of jazz music and radio programs. Blocks like these are becoming a rarity along Sixth Avenue. The long stretch of residential towers to the south in Chelsea spells out a distinctly Bloomerbergian commitment to the construction of high rise luxury apartments in the city. A look at how many of the great buildings of the nearby Ladies Mile have been repurposed for the home improvement market, along with the recent conversion of a church, famous for its Limelight disco years, into a tony marketplace, tells you something about the economic priorities of contemporary New York. You will find (too) many cupcakes in the Limelight.

A particularly human-scale and colorful block of Sixth Avenue, between W. 38th And W. 37th Streets.

A block in The Village along Sixth Avenue, fortunately still looking like the old and familiar neighborhood.

As a Villager, crossing 14th to the south brings at least an illusion of escape from the bourgeoisie. But wrong, as the Village of today is among the city's most expensive. Still, it's comforting to see the Jefferson Market Library, the Waverly Diner, the IFC Center, the West Fourth Street Court, commonly known as "the Cage," and Father Demo Square. Around these Village blocks, look on the lampposts for the medallions representing the countries of the Avenue of the Americas. (many noted in the companion post.) South of Houston, the Playground of the Americas further serves as a reminder of the avenue's official name, but nothing intrinsic about the playground equipment reveals a hemispheric theme. Stop to read the plaque on the fence about the story of the Avenue of the Americas and how Houston Street got its name. Way down through the southern part of the thoroughfare, look for the statue of General José Artigas of Uruguay in a sad, narrow triangular park, and toward the end, Juan Pablo Duarte Square. South of Canal Street, Avenue of the Americas finally veers toward a close in Tribeca, merging with Church Street just south of Franklin.

The best parts of Sixth Avenue can be found in the occasional funky eclectic blocks of mixed-use development. When they are gone, the avenue, whatever its name may be, will be history.

The leafy area in the middle of the picture is a small park in Tribeca, a neighborhood in need of trees. If you've walked from Central Park, you may want to sit down here.

The walk: Start at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Central Park and walk south for 3.64 miles. The map notes a handful of cafes and restaurants suitable for snacks and refreshments.

View A Walking Guide to Sixth Avenue/The Avenue of the Americas in a larger map

This is still your brain after walking the entire Avenue of the Americas.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

This post is a companion post to What's Left of the Avenue of the Americas?

The Rain on Prince Street

2010-06-09T17:30:00.004-04:00

Some posts on this site advise people what to do when it rains in New York - things like go to a museum or visit Grand Central Terminal, etc., but actually, everyday life in New York can be lovely when it rains. Unlike days with sunny weather, when the sun bleaches out colors, a rainy day accentuates the bright colors of painted buildings, the yellowness of the yellow taxis, and the colors of those funny objects called umbrellas. (It's a mystery to me how New Yorkers can magically produce umbrellas at a moment's notice.) A walk in a busy neighborhood like Soho can offer a chance to look at the rain on the shiny street or visit an unfamiliar store or escape into a cafe. Walking along Prince Street today seemed to afford those kinds of pleasures.

A selection of previously published rain-themed posts follows. The images, however, are as fresh as the newly-fallen rain.

• Good Subway Stops for Bad Weather Days: A List of Stations Near Major NYC Attractions (January 30, 2010)

• Rainy Day New York: Places to Go When the Weather Turns Frightful (November 20, 2008)

• New York Notes on Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" (March 31, 2010)

• The Rain on Bleecker Street (March 19, 2008)

• The Girl With the Purple Umbrella (February 11, 2008)

A rainy day in New York can evoke the cinematic romance of New York. If you've ever seen the last scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's, you know what I mean.

"CAT!!!!!"

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from the afternoon of June 9, 2010.

A Beginner's Guide to Governors Island

2010-06-07T11:56:00.002-04:00

• Governors Island in New York Harbor, now open to the public on a limited basis, was a military base for 200 years. The Coast Guard closed the island in 1996, and in 2003 the federal government sold much of the island to New York. The National Park Service continues to manage the two historic forts on the island.

• Open every Friday through Sunday until October 10.

• The views from the island are stunning, and a trip affords a quick getaway from the urban canyons.

• Visitors to Governors Island can walk the 2.2. promenade around the whole island and enjoy access to the northern part. The southern part is awaiting development.

• The Water Taxi Beach serves food and affordable drinks, including a few tasty beers on tap.

• In my opinion, drinking beer on a hot day on a sandy beach while looking at the skyline of Lower Manhattan as viewed between plastic palm trees is an experience both pleasant and surreal. Mostly surreal.

• Because of its strategic location, the island was mainly used for military defense. Now because of its proximity to Manhattan and Brooklyn, the island is seen as the perfect beachhead for sand volleyball, contemporary art projects, cocktails, concerts that will not upset the neighbors, and utopian visions for the urban future.

• Architects McKim, Mead & White designed a structure on Governors Island that once housed an entire regiment.

• The vibe is low-pressured and relaxed. It's possible just to grab a book and a beach towel and go hang out.

• The architecture on Governors Island resembles a college campus. Plans for the island, however, suggest things may get weirder in the future. See "Governors Island Vision Adds Hills and Hammocks" by Nicolai Ouroussoff, New York Times, April 12, 2010.

• It's possible to rent facilities on the island for a private event. While there on the opening day of the season, I saw a wedding party reception and watched a couple as they danced to their special country music tune. I was finishing my beer and thought I was back in the South.

• There is no apostrophe in the name of Governors Island, a fact that would serve as a point of embarrassment for any website or weblog that inadvertently stuck one between the "r" and the "s."

• The island has been used for high-level diplomatic talks, including a meeting in 1988 between President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev at the stately Admiral's House.

• In 1909 Wilbur Wright inaugurated the first flight over American waters. He took off from Governors Island and circled the Statue of Liberty and came back.

• The deed signed between the federal government and the people of New York prohibited the construction of casinos and permanent housing. Developers and colleges like NYU dream about luxury hotels and a satellite campus.

• It's easy to bring your own bike on the ferries to the island, but it's also easy to rent one there.

• Getting to the island is quick and fun, as the ferry rides last under five minutes. The ferry from Manhattan departs from the Battery Maritime Building at 10 South Street, and the one from from Brooklyn departs the new Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The ferries from Manhattan are free on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The ferry from Brooklyn is free on Saturdays and Sundays. Click here for official directions. If you know how to get to the Staten Island Ferry, then look for the Maritime Building just to the east. By the way, the R, W station is very close. A walk through Willowtown is one fun way to get to Pier 6 in Brooklyn.

• The main thing for planning a trip is that the first ferries leave at 10 a.m. in Manhattan and 11 a.m. in Brooklyn but that the last ferry leaves at 5 p.m. on Friday (to Manhattan) and at 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Ferry service will run for special concerts and may involve extra fees if the particular performance costs money. If you're planning on exploring the island, leave on an early ferry.

• The island has become an ideal setting for a range of arts projects, especially outdoor sculpture and interactive displays. See links to follow.

• According to the official site's timeline, the first squirrels were brought to the island in 1895. Many years later, in 1983, a Burger King opened on the island and served beer.

• The TV series, Lost, should have ended with the dramatic surprise that the survivors were, in fact, stranded on Governors Island. That would have been awesome, encouraging a fan-based subculture to develop on the island.

A few links:

• Official site - Governors Island Preservation & Education Corporation
• The Beach @ Governors Island. Music concerts.
• Scouting New York wrote a mind-blowing account in September 2009 of the excavation of a buried town on Governors Island.
• Participatory and interactive art projects sponsored by Figment.
• Sculptors Guide exhibit titled "Encounters."
• No Longer Empty, the arts program that helps revitalize vacant spaces, presents "The Sixth Borough" until September 25, 2010.
• Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has set up art studios, rehearsal studios, and an exhibition space in Building 110, once used as a munitions warehouse.

Images by a sunburned Walking Off the Big Apple from Saturday, June 5, 2010. For more images of the voyage to the New World, view a slideshow on Flickr WOTBA.

Studies in Blue and Green: The Hudson River Park, South of Houston, Morning

2010-06-04T22:05:00.003-04:00

For our morning walk, my dog forcefully pulled me toward the new Tribeca section of the Hudson River Park, as if she really needed me to check it out.

along the Hudson River Park, looking south. Sometimes, but especially in the summertime, it feels like the old core of the city fades to the background, while the edges near the shoreline present new chances for exploration.

On our semi-regular walks, we usually wander toward the pier in the Greenwich Village section near Christopher Street, so I hadn't realized that this stretch of the park to the south was open for our recreational pleasure.

This newly renovated section sports some nice features —

a well-landscaped nature boardwalk,

different types of grasses are planted in the nature boardwalk. So many parks and waterfront areas are being developed, not just sections of the Hudson River Park, but the new Brooklyn Bridge Park, the East River, Governors Island, and more.

an installation of sculptures titled "Serpentine Structures" by artist Marc Gibian,

artwork and landscaping help lend interest to the park. The new New York is characterized in part by development of green spaces and waterfront throughout the boroughs.

a raised seating area with chairs and tables,

Everyone has to sit down at some point. City planning has embraced the concept that one key to a successful urban space is movable chairs.

a "pile field" popular with at least one bird,

Pile fields, the remaining wooden structures that once supported a removed pier, are left in place to help provide habitat for fish and other river organisms. One little white bird is perched here, joined by sculptures of birds. This morning, it was hard not to think about this little bird and the horrific scenes of birds covered in oil in the Gulf.

a minimalist standing pier with many benches,

Don't ask me what happens at the end of the pier in that structure. I don't know yet.

and a couple of sets of sleek devices for viewing boats and the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

These are well-designed, meant to be used by people of different heights. Another set is on the pier. These telescopic devices are a symbol of ancient longing, as we cast our eyes outward to the seas. Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, describes the city "water-gazers" who are "fixed in ocean reveries."

This new section of the Hudson River Park is squeaky clean and tidy, and with the fresh and clear morning air, I thought for a few moments that I was in another place.

The boulders are even placed in a tidy and artful way.

As this was an unplanned adventure, I had only my phone with me for picture-taking. The images came out in highly saturated hues of blues and greens, the result of my choice of settings on the wacky camera app. The color of the water, the clear sky and the newly planted grasses along the boardwalk did lend an overall cool wash to the scene, although I remember the colors to be somewhat less intense than what is pictured here.

New Jersey is so blue.

Across the river, Jersey City shimmered like a tropical city. I thought for a moment that New York could be a new Miami. When folks retire, after toiling for years in their skyscrapers down south, I thought, they would enjoy moving up here to a life of leisure on the Hudson. Climate change and all that - it could happen.

Directions: Wander over to Hudson River Park via W. Houston Street and walk south until you have to stop. Bring water.

Images from June 4, 2010 by Walking Off the Big Apple. Clicking on the images will make them big and green and blue.

What's Left of the Avenue of the Americas?

2010-06-03T10:40:00.002-04:00

The change of name from Sixth Avenue to "Avenue of the Americas" became official October 2, 1945 when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia signed a bill passed by City Council. According to an article in The New York Times ("6th Avenue's Name Gone With the Wind," New York Times, Oct. 3, 1945), a few voiced opposition to the change, including the Citizen Union, arguing that the street contained so many "eyesores" that the new name would be "scarcely an honor to our sister nations." Others speaking on record at City Council included Mrs. Viola Warrin, who thought the new avenue name was "an awful mouthful;" Albert W. Ransom, who shared his observation that "Avenue of the Americas" was supported "by nobody 'but a group of people seeking propaganda';" and various Greenwich Village activists, including Marion Tanner (the aunt of writer Patrick Dennis, more on this website) of the Greenwich Village Association. The Mayor, on the other hand, said he found "general approval in this city, in this country and in the entire hemisphere." The Sixth Avenue Association, chief instigators of the "Avenue of the Americas," celebrated with a luncheon at the Rainbow Room.

northern block of the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Ave.) with medallions for Argentina, Costa Rica, and Chile

On October 20, a formal parade and ceremony took place to officially rechristen Sixth Avenue as the Avenue of the Americas. Crowds cheered a parade of four thousand Navy veterans, newly returned from victory in the Pacific Theater of War, upstaging Mayor La Guardia and President Juan Antonio Rios of Chile. ("Navy Steals Show at Dedication of Avenue of Americas by Rios," New York Times, October 21, 1945). According to the Times, the Mayor said that the street name change reflected "the love and affection we have for our sister republics of Central and South America" and the realization of President Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy. At the ceremony, President Rios, who spent part of the previous day in Hyde Park to lay a wreath on the grave of the late President, placed a new Avenue of the Americas sign on a reachable street pole especially built for the occasion.

"With the ceremonies ended, the signal was given to dismiss the service men, and with a shout that startled the dignitaries the patient sailors, marines and midshipmen evacuated the Avenue of the Americas for simple Broadway."

Simón Bolívar

José Martí

With twenty-one countries signing the Charter of the Organization of American States in April of 1948, the idea of an Avenue of the Americas seemed promising. The city designed a new plaza at the intersection of Central Park South and the Avenue of the Americas in celebration, and an existing equestrian statue of Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) was moved from Bolivar Hill to a new granite pedestal on the east side and rededicated in 1951. According to the city's Parks & Recreation page on the statue, Bolivar was soon joined there by a statue of Argentine general José de San Martín. In 1965 the dedication of a statue in honor of Cuban leader José Martí completed the trio.

Farther south on the avenue, a handsome statue of Brazilian leader José Bonifacio De Andrada E Silva, now re-sited on the west side of Bryant Park, was dedicated in a ceremony in April of 1955. (Park page) On the southern end of the avenue, statues of Juan Pablo Duarte (1813-1876) of the Dominican Republic and General José Artigas (1764-1850) of Uruguay, each in their own small park spaces, complete the official set of six statues. A relatively recent statue of Benito Juarez of Mexico, diminutive in comparison, also on the west side of Bryant Park, was dedicated in 2004.

One of three surviving medallions of Cuba

In addition to the statues, in 1953* the city erected hundreds of new lampposts bearing medallions, each with distinct symbols representing the countries of the Americas (* The City Review Midtown Book page). Later, when the city replaced lampposts with new ones, the medallions came down, too. Some remain to this day, chiefly on the far north and on the far south end of the Avenue of the Americas. For those going to a movie at the IFC, the nearby medallion of Surinam hangs from a post just to the north side of the theatre marquee. Along the northern block between Central Park South and W. 58th, following medallions for Argentina and Costa Rica, the one for Chile hovers over the opening of the grotesque Jekyll & Hyde Club. Across the street and down a block or so, look for a shield with beach and palm trees signifying Cuba, one of three medallions for the nation that still dangle over the Pan-American boulevard. The sign is near a travel ware store and a cigar shop, if you're in the mood for irony.

medallion for Canada at the intersection with Washington Place

Playground of the Americas

After many blocks in which the signs have fallen by the wayside, the medallions pick up again in Greenwich Village - Canada, at Washington Place; Cuba (again) at W. 4th, Honduras, Barbados, and Venezuela near Bleecker St. Crossing Houston, an official Parks plaque notes the small Playground of the Americas, a site that features nothing more than a modest set of playground equipment. The sign itself is fascinating to read. While noting the story of the Avenue of the Americas, as described here, the narrative also includes the story of the name "Houston," originally named for a southern-born American patriot who spelled his name H-O-U-S-T-O-U-N. The current street name, a corruption that's been misspelled since 1811, "is often erroneously associated with Sam Houston (1793-1863), the commander of the Texas forces during the Texas War for Independence." (I suppose this digression does help to advance the story of the Americas, and native Texans in the city should enjoy this brief mention of the Lone Star State. Someone should lobby for an appropriate equestrian statue in honor of the Republic.)

Juan Pablo Duarte

Cuba shows up again - now, three! - at the intersection with King Street in the Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District, with nearby medallions for Uruguay, Grenada, and Bolivia. El Salvador presides over an untamed empty lot near a car wash. The General José Artigas Monument comes into view in a shady block-length park that, given visual evidence on a recent visit, could use some work. The medallion for Nicaragua is at Broome Street, and the one for Belize is at Watts. Crossing Grand St., the thin triangular Juan Pablo Duarte Square features a statue of the dignified leader of the Dominican Republic, dedicated in 1978 by the country's consulate. Across the street, one of the avenue's most rusty and worn medallions hangs from the lamppost, this one symbolizing the United States of America.

rusty medallion with symbol of the United States of America

The walk: I highly recommend walking the entire length of the north-south stretch of the Avenue of the Americas to absorb the whole effect, beginning at the northern end at the equestrian statues on Central Park South and ending at Canal Street. The distance is approximately 3.6 miles, so stop for snacks and wear sensible shoes. There’s much more to see than what’s described, so a companion post, a strolling guide to Sixth Avenue, is posted here. The new name for Sixth Avenue never took hold among locals, except for its use as a fancy-sounding address.
________________

EVENT: LentSpace, a cultural space developed by the Lower Manhattan Community Council and located at the foot of Sixth Avenue, is currently hosting an exhibit titled "Avenue of the Americas." Takes as its point of departure from the name given to the avenue, artists Julieta Aranda, Carlos Motta with David Sanin Paz (horticulture), Judi Werthein, and Carla Zaccagnini address the contemporary cultural implications of the Pan-Americanism. Adam Kleinman serves as curator. The exhibit continues through November 19, 2010. See the LMCC page on the exhibit at this link.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from May 28, 2010.

NOTE: This is the companion post and map for A Walking Guide to Sixth Avenue/The Avenue of the Americas.

The Sun's Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Manhattanhenge

2010-05-31T10:44:00.005-04:00

Many people left the city for the Memorial Day weekend, but several of us who belong to a particular tribe of neo-Druid photographers made sure we were back in town just to watch the sunset. Sounds peculiar, I know, but the weekend happened to correspond with "Manhattanhenge," a word coined by Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson to describe the phenomenon when the east-west crosstown streets of midtown Manhattan move into alignment with the setting sun.

On an evening when no clouds interrupt the view and the temperature hovers in a netherworld between not-warm and not-cool, the luminous experience is glorious and transcendental. The payoff comes in the last fifteen minutes of blow-out glory, when the Sun, saying its goodbyes, throws out a splash of gold and crimson along the manmade canyons. Several of the great crosstown streets show off the effects of this spectacular light show - 14th, 23rd, 34th, and 42nd, for example, as well as the streets in between.

Last evening, I joined others on the bridge that overlooks 42nd Street at Tudor City, a well-known spot for the viewing, arriving around 7:35 p.m., just in time to watch and wait for the expected setting of the half-Sun at 8:17 p.m. The Chrysler Building was there. As the clock ticked down to the Sun's fifteen minutes of fame and the horizon grew ever more blazing, the gathered photo tribe, literally focused and dead set on the great shot, laid down a soundtrack of whooshing shutters. The Sun went out like a rock star, and we were its paparazzi. We applauded at the end.

Weather permitting, Manhattanhenge will repeat with the Full Sun on the grid at 8:17 p.m. on Monday, May 31, 2010. For dates in July and more on the phenomenon, see the Hayden Planetarium page on Manhattanhenge.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple, in sequence, from approximately 7:35 p.m. to 8:17 p.m.

Cool Plans for a Hot New York Day - A Walk, a Matinee, a Dinner

2010-05-28T15:17:00.003-04:00

This past Wednesday we saw the hottest day so far this year in the city, 94℉ in the shade, and the kind of heat that feels like standing next to an open oven door. Perhaps the arrival of a hot weather day promises that the upcoming summer, unlike last year's tepid affair, will live up to the season's potential. At any rate, we had plans that day to take a long walk in the morning, see a Broadway matinee in the afternoon, and go to a nice place for dinner at night, the sort of things appropriate for a birthday. As it turned out, the well-paced day of outdoor and indoor amusements proved a great way to beat the heat. In addition, I thought that a walk, a play, and a dinner, as general categories, would provide a winning combination for spending any sort of day in New York and wanted to pass the idea, though hardly novel, along to readers. The success of the day, however, would be highly dependent on the choice of walks, the play, and the restaurant.

A Walk
Walking along the waterfront in the morning, especially with a nice breeze in the air, is a great way to start the day in the city; that is, after sipping a good strong cup of coffee. From the Village I often make my way west over to the Hudson and to Pier 45, the long open pier with a green lawn and shady areas at the end of W. 10th St. From there, it's easy to walk north or south, depending on the mood, along Hudson River Park. My walk this past Wednesday happened to coincide with the exciting opening event of Fleet Week, the Parade of Ships, when members of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps sail into port. The air on Wednesday morning was a little hazy, presaging the oven-like day, but it was a thrill to watch the big ships sailing by, with the sailors at parade rest in advance of the docking. My movie-fed imagination led quickly to singing and dancing sailor scenes from the 1949 musical film, On the Town.

Hudson River Park is only one choice for a morning promenade. The East River, Roosevelt Island, the Battery, the new Brooklyn Bridge Park, or Riverside Park, among many others, would be excellent choices for a morning walk on a hot day.

A Play
So, let's say, after the morning walk, there's plenty of time for another cup of coffee or a little rest or a little lunch or, as we like it here, a lot of brunch. Then, as the day is heating up, it's time to go to the theatre. Matinee performances are usually scheduled for Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. and on Sunday at 3 p.m.; so obviously, the day of the week defines this schedule. This past Wednesday, we saw a matinee performance of David Mamet's play, Race, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre (243 W. 47th St.), one of the great Shubert houses, built in the late 1920s. The theatre seemed freezing cold, but comfortable and intimate, a nice touch for some hot language, serious subject matter, and stinging laughs.

For spur-of-the-moment decision-makers, the TKTS Discount Booths (official site) provide discounted tickets for Broadway and off-Broadway musicals and plays. If you choose to see a straight-up play without music, TKTS features the fast-moving "Play Express" window. The TKTS booths at the South Street Seaport and the one in Downtown Brooklyn sell matinee tickets the day before performances, so it's possible to do a little planning.

A Dinner
Choosing a restaurant often involves a discussion about the type of food, atmosphere, location, noise, reputation, and price. On this hot night, we opted for "a nice restaurant," meaning one above the normal standard, as in "No, I don't want meat loaf again. I want to go to a nice restaurant." We achieved a quick consensus on Lupa (170 Thompson St.), a lovely comfortable restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Rome, and I made reservations for an early time through OpenTable. Having already seen sailors in the morning and actors in the afternoon, we could linger over our courses - a plate of shaved vegetables, ricotta gnocchi, wild striped bass with fava beans - lit by soft light, and talk about the events of the day. For dessert, the waiter brought us a Tartufo, an ice-cream dessert, topped with one burning candle. After the last sip of wine, we strolled home through a clear night with a surprising cool breeze. The hot day had melted away.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from May 26, 2010.

Three Guide Books to New York City: Online, but a Little Dusty

2010-05-25T12:50:00.005-04:00

For fans of time travel, literary researchers investigating the mindset of a previous era, and for city residents who grow bored with the present metropolis, I have three books to recommend. The following guide books to New York City, originally published in the years 1857, 1901, and 1920, respectively, and now in the public domain, are available for online browsing. All three guides provide insight into the values and attitudes of their respective times, revealed in their choices of worthy points of interest, in words of caution to visitors, and in their often stereotypical attitudes about ethnicity and class. For present-day visitors, for example, visits to charitable institutions may not be a priority, but in the 19th century, a trip to New York City would not be complete without a visit to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. As for the attitudes, the Rand McNally guide from 1920, for example, directs visitors toward the crowded streets of "Judea," a word often used interchangeably with "ghetto" in reference to the streets of the Lower East Side.

One fascinating aspect of these guides rests in the contemporary accounts of the modern metropolis in progress. As examples, the first guide from 1857 points out the exciting plans for the new Central Park, the 1901 guide takes in the construction of St. John the Divine Cathedral, and the 1920 guide, as you will see, expresses confusion about the new subways. To help establish the cultural context for the guides, I have added a note with each title, indicating some notable novels published that same year.

• Phelps' strangers and citizens' guide to New York City by Humphrey Phelps. Published by Gaylord Watson, 16 Beekman Street, N. Y. 1857.

New books of 1857: Herman Melville - The Confidence-Man, Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary, Charles Dickens - Little Dorrit.

The book begins with a fascinating section, "Advice to Strangers," a collection of warnings to visitors about such dangers as cheap lodging houses, the operation of pickpockets, offers of fake merchandise, and "mock auctions." Best line in this section - "there are some places where the morals of strangers or citizens will not be particularly improved by visiting, to say nothing of the bodily danger one incurs, especially in the evening and unattended."

The author recommends visits to the spire of Trinity Church for the sweeping views of the surrounding landscape, to the charitable institutions such as the Home for the Friendless on E. 30th St., the House of Refuge on Randall's Island, the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum between 115th and 120th Streets, and to several of the dispensaries handing out medicine to the poor. He's excited about the libraries and parks, especially the new Central Park: "when its walks and drives are completed, and trees and shrubbery planted, it will be the most extensive and beautiful public park on the continent." (p. 50)

• New York City Standard Guide - A New and Complete Handbook for Visitors to New York and for New Yorkers. The Standard Guide Series. 1901. New York: Foster & Reynolds.

New books of 1901: Henry James - The Fount, Joseph Conrad & Ford Madox Ford - The Inheritors, Frank Norris - The Octopus.

By the turn of the century, guide books pointed out many more attractions, especially in the financial sector of lower Manhattan and nearby in the newspaper district on Park Row and Printing House Square, then home to the New York Times and the Tribune. The guide describes the scene in Printing House Square in breathless detail: "Crowds gather about the bulletin boards; great rolls of paper are unloading for the cylinder presses; yellow delivery wagons are scurrying away with yellowed extras, and newsboys and newswomen obstruct the sidewalk and assail us with with their shrill but not unmusical cries." p. 41 The guide makes a great deal of fuss over the Brooklyn Bridge, a relatively new feature of the city, recommending a bridge walk in order to take in the views, and another forty-minute walk to take in the skyscrapers downtown.

Written during a time that especially highlighted the vast inequality of wealth, the guide notes the division between the rich and the poor on opposite sides of Washington Square Park. While the north side of the park sports houses that are "eminently respectable," the "purlieus south of the Square have for years harbored the vicious and depraved." The construction of the Mills Hotel on Bleecker Street, however, indicates the area "is rapidly becoming a business district." p. 81

New York City Standard Guide is illustrated with beautiful photographs, many showing off the city's flâneurs in their heyday. In fact, the guide seems tailor-made for the strolling class. Check out the guide's art feature on page 112 - "Twenty-five of the most popular pictures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Also of historical note, the guide looks forward to the construction of the massive Cathedral of St. John the Divine, surpassing "any ecclesiastical edifice in America," and the fancy new underground subway system.

• Rand McNally New York Guide to the City and Environs. New York, 1920

New books of 1920: F. Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise, Sinclair Lewis - Main Street, Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence.

By 1920, the automobile and underground railways offered new means for getting around the city. The writers of the 1920 edition of the Rand McNally city guide seem particularly excited about the new subways - "the greatest transit development ever undertaken in any city of the world." Explaining the particulars of the new transportation system, however, seemed beyond them: "The full details of routes, connections, changes, etc., of the entire system, are very complicated and beyond the scope of this guide." p. 16.
The guide extols the monumental metropolis of gleaming white buildings such as Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station as well as the new skyscraper city, but like earlier guides, the Rand McNally edition emphasizes the parks and points of historical interest downtown. The guide briefly characterizes the immigrant districts, unfortunately relying on stereotypes: Chinatown, where "people maintain habits of personal cleanliness;" The Bowery, where "Americans have almost disappeared…giving way to the German and the Jew, who are good-natured and frugal in their amusements; and "Judea," the guide's name for the Lower East Side, home to "the hardest working part of the population."

Uptown, the guide recommends Grant's Tomb and the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument as must-see attractions, as well as the Zoological Garden in the Bronx. The guide also singles out several attractions now gone, like the "Speedway" in upper Harlem, a long drive where residents take their horses out for a fast trot, and the Claremont Restaurant, an elegant 1797 house with splendid gardens overlooking the Hudson near Riverside Drive and 125th Street. The guide also mentions the Morgue at Bellevue, a wooden building "designed to care for the unknown dead in the most approved manner." As with many of the early guides, Rand McNally recommends a visit to Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the "famous city of the dead."
__________

Other New York guide books in the public domain are available online. Enter the phrase "New York City Guide Books" or something like it into the search bar on Google Books. An even better source for related material may be found through similar searches in the Internet Archive.
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For the record, Walking Off the Big Apple lives on "the vicious and depraved" side of Washington Square Park.

Scenes from a Walk Through Hell's Kitchen

2010-05-21T15:46:00.003-04:00

On two consecutive nights in March of 1905, poet Vachel Lindsay tried to peddle his poems on the streets of New York City. A young and poor art student at the time, he possessed vaulted ideas about taking Beauty to the masses. On the first night, he began his door-to-door poetry crusade at 10th Avenue and 50th Street and then walked down the west side of 10th, stopping in stores, laundries, delis, and drugstores to talk the proprietors into buying his poems. He didn't do all that well, but he seemed to enjoy his efforts. In his diary, quoted at length by Edgar Lee Masters in his biography of Lindsay, the aspiring poet detailed his interactions with many of the shopkeepers he encountered, offering commentary about their various ethnic backgrounds - Greek, Chinese, African-American, and German. While his comments often take on offensive stereotyping, he does paint a fascinating, if naive, portrait of the multi-ethnic neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen.

Tenth Avenue at W. 50th St. looking south

In the mid 19th century, Irish dockworkers settled along the banks of the Hudson in this area, soon to be joined after the Civil War by poor and working class immigrants from other countries. Poverty bred gang life and violence, so that by the 1880s this increasingly industrial section of the West Side had developed into one of the most dangerous neighborhoods. One theory about the origin of the name Hell's Kitchen stems from an anecdote in the 1880s. Responding to his rookie partner's observation that the block of W. 39th between 10th and 9th Ave. resembled Hell, Dutch Fred The Cop retorted, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen." (See the Wikipedia entry on Hell's Kitchen for alternative theories of the neighborhood name.) Walking this particular block today, nothing much is left to recall the looks of the old neighborhood, except for a handful of buildings near 9th Avenue. This block, however, is the site of the popular weekend market, the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market.

10th Avenue between W. 48th and W. 47th St. west side

Lindsay, though walking at midnight when neighborhood gangs controlled the streets, made no mention of fear or danger, just the quiet, and the occasional drunk person. He didn't venture, however, below 42nd Street:

"I walked down 10th to 42nd. I met some prowling soaks* on the cross streets, and most of the saloons on 9th and 10th ave had three men sober and one man drunk loafing in front of them. It was just cool enough to be pleasant for a soaked loafer. There were a few bad women standing at the foot of stairways, but not the obtrusive kind. Tenth ave was for the most part very still except for the intermissions that every city must have." (diaries, cited in Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America. p. 126

Couldn't help pointing out the 666 address, especially in a place called Hell's Kitchen. East side, 10th Avenue.

Hell's Kitchen continued to change demographically in the 20th century, with Puerto Ricans and immigrants from the Balkans settling in the area. The 1939 WPA Guide to New York City noted patterns of assimilation in the Middle West Side, as the guide called it, pointing out that the 1930 census revealed that "native-born residents of the district outnumbered the foreign born by nearly two to one." (p. 145) The conflicts remained, however, most notably in the 1950s, especially among the Puerto Ricans, Irish, and Italians. Their territorial skirmishes would inspire the great musical, West Side Story. By the 1960s, in an effort to overturn negative perceptions, boosters and real estate people attempted to push Clinton as an alternative name for the district, but Hell's Kitchen has been stubborn and remained more popular.

Look for St. Raphael's Croatian Catholic Church on 41st Street, just west of Tenth Ave. The church dates from the 1890s.

While walking the same route as the poet today, especially in the morning and not at midnight, only an active imagination can help visualize the rough and tumble Hell's Kitchen of old. Most of the old tenements near W. 39th disappeared, torn down to make access roads for the Lincoln Tunnel. Though still ethnically diverse, the neighborhood has witnessed much gentrification in the past decades, thanks in part to its proximity to the Theatre District to the east. The current state of Hell's Kitchen development seems much in evidence, especially on the vertical end, connected to the desirability of living in a tall luxury residence with stunning views of midtown Manhattan and the Hudson River. The sky remains one of the most impressive features of the Middle West Side.

View of apartment buildings at the corner of 10th Avenue and 45th Street.

View of midtown Manhattan skyscrapers from W. 39th Street.

In order the appreciate the perspective of the west side, begin by retracing Vachel Lindsay's footsteps along Tenth Avenue down to 42nd Street. Continue south to explore the Lincoln Tunnel area (best enjoyed by fans of heavy infrastructure) and then wander west and south over to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. At the Convention Center, look for the big hole in the ground across 11th Avenue. That's the construction site for the extension of the 7 subway line. Until the 7 line is completed, the best way to reconnect with midtown Manhattan is via the crosstown bus to convenient stops such as Herald Square. Or, alternatively, continue west and walk along Hudson River Park. Before getting on the bus, however, take one last look around at the wide expanse of sky. It may not last forever.

Jacob Javits Convention Center. 11th to 12th Avenues. between W. 37th and W. 34th. 1986. currently undergoing renovations.

Perspective from bus stop on the southwest corner of W. 34th and 11th Avenue. It's OK - a bus will eventually come and take you back to the middle of the island.

Now, how about a map?

View Scenes from a Walk Through Hell's Kitchen in a larger map

See related post - Vachel Lindsay, Artist and Poet, Walking in New York. This post is the second in a series.

* A "soak" is a slang term for a drunkard.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from Thursday morning, May 20, 2010. Clicking on images will enlarge them. Walking Off the Big Apple did not encounter any prowling soaks on her walk and is a little disappointed. Will have to return at night sometime, before Hell is paved over.

P.S. If you thought you were going to read about a cooking show on television, I am sorry.

A Jazz Weekend

2010-05-18T13:09:00.002-04:00

With guests staying in town and tickets to the Village Vanguard to hear Bill Frisell's 858 Quartet on Sunday night, the weekend took on a jazz theme. In addition to also hearing snippets of free live jazz in Washington Square Park, we took a group excursion to the NYPL’s Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center to see the exhibit, The Jazz Loft Project. On Sunday afternoon, I ventured a solo trip to revisit photographer W. Eugene Smith's loft on Sixth Avenue, the subject of the exhibit, to see what remained of this jazz-infused block near W. 28th Street. Within forty-eight hours, a few trips on the A train and the walks around Lincoln Plaza, the parks, the streets, and the avenues assumed varying syncopated tempos on their own. Like Vachel Lindsay picking up the tempo of the elevated trains for his poetry, the walking excursions to places in jazz history tapped into the alternating syncopations and meters of the language of jazz. Listening to the street, the visits seemed to inspire riffs on an altered image, down beats strong enough to forsake straight photography at times for alternative sources of visualization. Jazz was making me look anew at the city's visual rhythms.

• The Jazz Loft Project, a multimedia exhibition focusing on photographer W. Eugene Smith's documentation of the city's jazz scene in the 1950s and 1960s, closes at NYPL's Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center this week, and for serious jazz fans, it's not to be missed. The exhibit was organized by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in cooperation with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona and the Smith estate.

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 40 Lincoln Center Plaza.

A successful photographer for Life magazine, Smith quit the magazine in 1955 after arguing with the editors in order to pursue more creative freelance assignments. He joined the Magnum Photo Agency and soon headed to Pittsburgh for a documentary project. He managed to lengthen a short visit of a few weeks into an unmanageable project of thousands of photographs over a period of three years. Stressed and strung out, he moved away from his family and home up the Hudson and into a messed-up loft in New York at 821 Sixth Avenue near W. 28th Street. In the heart of the flower district, the five-story building had become a favorite late night hangout for some of the most celebrated jazz musicians in the history of the genre - Thelonius Monk, Zoot Sims, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, and many more. According to the documentation by scholar and writer Sam Stephenson, nearly six hundred musicians, teachers or artists can be documented at one time or other visiting this mecca of jazz, creativity, and art during its heyday.

821 Sixth Avenue is the white five-store building at right. Smith lived on the fourth floor.

As a resident of the loft, Smith made approximately forty thousand exposures between 1957 and 1965, images of jazz sessions, portraits of musicians and colorful characters, and of street life from the vantage point of a window in his fourth-floor apartment. His night images in black and white - neon signs, cars slipping through rainy streets, smoke, and exhaust fumes - often evoke a seedy and slightly dangerous film noir city, one often depicted by other photographers and cinematographers in the 1950s. Many are straight shots, while others, such as a shot of the nearby Empire State Building seen through a jagged tear in a papered-over window, veer toward the experimental.

Fortunately, the photographer, enjoying the fad of the day for reel-to-reel sound recording, wired 821 Sixth Avenue for audio recording. Previously unheard before The Jazz Loft Project, Smith's preserved recordings reveal his wide range of interests, from recordings of jazz sessions to ambient street sounds to tapes of radio and TV programs. He taped Mr. Magoo cartoons, radio talk shows, poetry readings, and news coverage of John F. Kennedy's election and assassination.

The exhibit of The Jazz Loft Project includes sights and sounds, displays of his photographic and recording equipment, and a 16mm film of Smith working in the loft. Listening to the jazz in the headphones while looking at the photos encourages rich associations between image and sound. The exhibit continues through May 22, 2010. The official website is the main place for exploring the project online, and the companion book is great for offline browsing.

• The loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue still stands today (see above), although the jazz milieu along the block has given way to the wholesale trade in pashmina scarves and cheap handbags. Within the dwindling Flower District near Seventh Avenue and W. 28th Street, older loft buildings house inexpensive accessories and merchandise, but many of the buildings shown in Smith's photographs have since been replaced with high rise apartment buildings, unremarkable office buildings, or cheaply built fast food restaurants. A few remnants of the older city linger. A flower shop in Smith's photograph at the corner of W. 28th and Sixth Avenue, for example, is still a flower shop.

Contemporary scenes of Sixth Avenue and W. 28th St,

• Last weekend's sunny weather brought out the crowds and the musicians to Washington Square Park. The jazz cats often frequent the west side of the park, and it's possible to hear some great jazz standards while relaxing on a park bench and watching the world walk by. Help them out when they pass the hat or buy one of their CDs.

• On Sunday evening, our merry group took in Bill Frisell's 868 Quartet at the Village Vanguard (178 Seventh Avenue), and while the composer and accompanying star musicians (Hank Roberts, Eyvind Kang, and Jenny Scheinman) played in one of jazz's best known houses, the music itself pushed through existing walls in the genre. Frisell originally composed the music for his 858 Quartet based on Gerhard Richter's Abstract Picture (858-1 through 858-8) - hence the group's name, so the music offered intentional dissonance and abstraction while still finding its way to Frisell's well-known lyricism. For an hour, sitting behind clusters of people gathered around tables, I became lost in sounds that defied my expectations. In the richly sonorous triangular basement room of the Vanguard, I heard new sounds that I immediately longed to hear again. And what better way to wrap up a walk through a jazz weekend in New York?

Empire State Building, from near the corner of Sixth Avenue and W. 28th Street. Made with an iPhone and Hipstamatic app.

Images and sketches by Walking Off the Big Apple. May 15-16, 2010.

Vachel Lindsay, Artist and Poet, Walking in New York

2010-05-13T16:34:00.007-04:00

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931), the peripatetic poet from Springfield, Illinois, came to New York City in 1905 to study art with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, but his famed teachers, especially Henri, quickly assessed the young man of twenty-five more talented in poetry than in drawing. Lindsay found himself so torn between his poetry writing and art that he often had trouble focusing. That opinion, at any rate, belongs to biographer Edgar Lee Masters who also observed that his fellow Illinois poet "had no faculty for the practical things." Lindsay spent much of his time after school walking through the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as through "the quaint and curious neighborhoods of the city, which had not yielded at that time to the innovation of the modern apartment building and the skyscraper." (Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America by Edgar Lee Masters. Charles Scribner's Sons. New York, 1935) As it turns out, walking serves a purpose.

Vachel Lindsay studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York. This image is from a later period. [Hoboes sitting and sleeping outside Art Institute of Chicago]. Chicago Daily News, Inc., photographer. 1921. DN-0073421A, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum. Library of Congress.

While strolling New York neighborhoods and the corridors of the Met, Lindsay looked both outward and inward, struggling to find his identity. He was not yet the poet of high school English textbooks, famous for works such as "General William Booth Enters Heaven," "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, " and "The Congo." He was not yet the popular speaker on the lecture circuit, known for his curious poetic signing. If his art teachers weren't exactly encouraging his artwork, he found he could command enthusiastic pupils himself while teaching art history classes at the Y.M.C.A. He proposed the idea of such a class, and after a few weeks, he persuaded the organization to pay him $10 a week for his efforts. The compensation did not go far, and Lindsay, as with thousands of other younger people who migrate to the city, couldn't ask his parents too often for supplementary support. The Illinois couple worried their son would find a way to drag out his artistic journey.

[Manhattan entrance to Brooklyn Bridge, New York] 1905?. LC-D4-33873 DLC (b&w glass neg.) Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection. Library of Congress.

To make his name and get his work in circulation, Lindsay mailed his poems to New York actors and preachers, though it's not clear what he exactly expected in return. He then took directly to the streets to peddle his poems to unsuspecting shopkeepers. Quoting Lindsay's diaries from the New York days, Masters recounts a few of these adventures. One night in March 1905, Lindsay stuck twelve copies of his illustrated poem "We Who Are Playing Tonight" in his overcoat and set out to visit each store along the west side of Tenth Avenue near 50th St. He met with a few takers, but often with disappointment or derisive rejection. He wrote in his diary, "The whole town, the candy shops turned me down. They deal out sweets for the flesh, not the spirit. I must land a candy man yet." (quoted in Masters, p. 125). After walking down Tenth Avenue to 42nd St., he tried his luck walking north on 9th Avenue and then on Broadway. It was getting close to midnight. A few more customers materialized, including a young man working at a drugstore near Broadway and 53rd St. He told Lindsay, "This is a hell of a time of night to bring around those things." Yet, he gave Lindsay two cents, the asking price, for a poem.

Encouraged by the lack of a wholesale rejection, the poet set out two nights later for the east side of Manhattan. Walking south along 3rd Avenue from 57th Street, he brought with him copies of another illustrated poem, "The Cup of Paint." He liked the excursion much better. He found an enormous difference between the two sides of Manhattan, with 3rd Avenue seeming like "a continuous street picnic, and family reunion festival." Trying to account for the differences, Lindsay becomes part pop psychologist and part urban planner.He tells his diary,

"Another difference between 3d and 10th, 10th is very wide and cheerless, three times as wide as 3d, and tenth has low narrow sorrowful stores, and a more drunken and less prosperous Saturday night. And 10th Ave. the only happy people are the children. 3rd Ave everyone is happy. 3d Ave is cozier, too, for the elevated sort of roofs it over, and the trains go by with a rumbling and comfortable drum music." (Masters, p. 129)

Continuing on his walk, Lindsay handed a few of the remaining poems away to passersby. In the biography, Masters surmises Lindsay was well aware that peddling his poems would come to nothing. In this peculiar exhibitionist display, he seemed to be centered more on his vanity than on his art. Still, from these walks around midtown, Masters observes, Lindsay picked up on an important quality that would come to define his future work - the rhythms of the city. He writes, “Soon after these nights it occurred to him that certain songs should be written in America in brass band style, harsh, popular, marching songs, of crashing iron, of men in a hurry, or roars in the street, of the rivers of money."

The poem-peddling excursions in midtown would soon transition into epic treks. Beset with visions of the Old Testament and dreams of an ideal civic order centered on the villages of the American heartland, Lindsay left New York on Mach 3, 1906 aboard a boat headed to Florida. From Jacksonville he walked all the way to Kentucky, traveling through Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee. By the time he reached Asheville, he was penniless and traded his shirt for lodging. Two years later, after traveling to Europe with his family, he set off on another tramp, this time walking from New York to Ohio. He basically winged it, stopping on occasion to earn money from lectures, but mostly he depended on the generosity of strangers. After settling back home in Springfield, he took off on a third and final pedestrian trip in 1912, an ambitious cross-country walk to California.

Lindsay only made it to New Mexico by foot, but by then, newspapers had started following him. He took a train to Los Angeles, and while there he wrote the poem, "General William Booth Enters into Heaven," his response to reading about the passing of the leader of the Salvation Army on August 12, 1912. The poem, noted for its musicality and what Masters calls “the brass band style,” first appeared in Harriet Monroe's Poetry magazine in January 1913. Lindsay won a prize of one hundred dollars for the poem, and it would bring him fame.

Images above from the Library of Congress, with complete citations in captions.
This is the first part of a series, not necessarily in sequence, that will eventually include a portrait of composer and insurance man Charles Ives (1974-1954), at one time a resident of Greenwich Village.

Read Part II of this series - Scenes from a Walk Through Hell's Kitchen, retracing Vachel Lindsay's walk down Tenth Avenue in contemporary New York.

A Walk in the Ramble

2010-05-09T13:46:00.008-04:00

A Walk in the Ramble in Central Park: A visit in May 2010 told mostly in pictures and published accounts from the nineteenth century

For those who enjoy a long walk in nature but who also like their creature comforts not far away, a visit to the Ramble in Central Park should fit the bill. This 38-acre site of wild woods, outcroppings of rock, man-made rustic features, and confusing trails, all set to the tune of birds and sometimes screaming children, sits roughly between 78th St. on the north and 73rd St. on the south. The Lake is to the south. A walk through this intentionally contrived wild northern shore affords great views of the water, its seasonal recreational boaters, and beyond, the formalities of Bethesda Terrace. New York Central Park's landscape designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, designed the Ramble this way as a counterpoint to the nearby formal elements of the park.

Entering the Ramble from Bank Rock Bridge on the west side of the park

From the days of its construction in the late 1850s, when scores of workers moved the earth, constructed masonry, built artificial hills and streams, carved out paths, and planted a diversity of trees and plants, the Ramble has interested many visitors for its elaborate mimicry of nature.

View of boaters on the Lake from Bank Rock Bridge

From the 1869 book, A description of the New York Central park by Clarence Cook:

"Nature having done almost nothing, art had to do all. And yet art, trying to contradict nature in nothing, but only to follow her hints, improve her slight suggestions, and take advantage of her help, however stingily it may sometimes seem to have been proferred, has been able to produce a result, which, on the whole, so closely resembles nature, that it is no wonder if the superficial observer does not clearly see how vast is the amount of work that had to be performed before the Park could reach its present perfection." (A description of the New York Central park, Princeton University, 1869, p. 115)

Below, a page from A description of the New York Central park, Princeton University, 1869:

The Ramble Arch

George Haven Putnam, a cousin of Olmsted, remembers working on the park during the summer of 1859. His cousin assigned him to the staff of an Austrian landscape gardener in charge of the Ramble. In his memoirs, he writes,

"I remember taking a good deal of pride in the success of the curves of one of the paths in the ramble, for the shaping of which I was responsible, but I have never been able since to identify that path with any degree of certainty. I received the daily wage of $1.10; the dollar being for my work and the ten cents for the payment of my fare back to town."(Memoirs of my youth, 1884-1865. Putnam, 1912, p. 87)

Deep into the Ramble, with paths in different directions and a lamp post to mark the way.

A humorous account from 1868 describes a country visitor encountering the big city Ramble:

"It is curious to see how folks' minds work. Here in the country, the great object seems to be to get rid of water, rocks, and brush. You see, I spent considerable in draining the horse-pond, and Uncle Jotham made dry land where the muskrats built their nests. But Fred Olmsted has got things turned tother end foremost, and gone and filled up a valley of well-nigh twenty acres with water, and made all the shores of the pond as crooked as a ram's horn. I shouldn't think there was a rod of it any where in a straight line."(The Tim Bunker papers: or, Yankee farming by Willam Clift, 1868, pps. 136-137)

The irregular shoreline

"Nature in her own moods" is how Daniel Van Pelt described the Ramble in Leslie's History of the Greater New York:

"In 1858 a plan for laying out the park, submitted by Messrs. Olmstead (sic) and Vaux, landscape gardeners, was adopted, and the park became what it is now in general features, somewhat artistically, perhaps artificially, arranged in the southern portions, below the main lake; but on the east side of the lake, and north of it, left studiously and comparatively wild, the paths, almost labyrinthine, allowing the most perfect enjoyment of nature in her own moods." (Leslie's History of the Greater New York, 1898, p. 387)

For those worn out by the dainty and picturesque pleasures of the artificial wilderness, stroll over to the nearby Boathouse for some refreshment.

In our day, some might conceptualize the Ramble as a sort of virtual reality, a theme park based on 19th constructions of nature, but contemporary caretakers of the park view these acres as an "ecosystem." Hence, signs in the Ramble urge visitors to not trample away from the paths and to not leave anything behind. A great variety of birds in the park have long taken to the Ramble for its combination of tree canopies, understory, and water, so the area often teems with birders quietly tracking them. Because of this, the best detailed descriptions of the Ramble may be found on sites and in books devoted to birds.

Aside from birding, the Ramble is a good place to sketch nature, sunbathe, picnic, exercise or to make scenic images with photographic or digital equipment. Individuals also enjoy the area for their own preferred social amusements, and so one might stumble upon couples in the woods engaged in various forms and stages of bliss. The Ramble, though hardly an untouched wilderness, continues to provide a pleasurable intersection of nature and art.

Another view of boaters on the Lake from Bank Rock Bridge. Created with the Hipstmatic app for the iPhone.

Visualizing the Ramble can also include the use of Google maps, but the maps won't help in the likely event of getting turned around in the woods. Still, cellphone coverage in the wilds of Central Park is excellent, and as soon as the lost visitor starts to panic, an oasis appears in the form of the Loeb Boathouse. Getting lost in the woods and then ordering a glass of Sauvignon Blanc can all happen in the space of a few minutes. The map notes a few of the landmarks and bridges and other ways of stumbling into the wild side of New York City.

View The Ramble, Central Park in a larger map

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from Friday, May 7, 2010. Click on images to enlarge them. Many more conventional images of the walk at Flickr WOTBA. The artier iPhone images are in this set. Quotations above come from sources in the public domain. Follow links in the post to read more.

New York Museum Exhibitions: Late Spring, Early Summer 2010

2010-05-04T18:45:00.014-04:00

Note to readers: See UPDATED listings at the post, New York Museum Exhibitions: Summer 2010.

Of the current museum exhibitions in New York, two stand out and should not be missed - the Henri Cartier-Bresson retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the major Picasso exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. In addition, several exhibitions of note conclude in May, so be sure to see William Kentridge: Five Themes and Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present, both at MoMA, and the Whitney Biennial (at the Whitney Museum, of course) before they close.

Of the openings in May and early June, look for Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography at MoMA (opens May 7), National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? at Cooper-Hewitt (opens May 14), and at the Metropolitan Museum, Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980 (opens June 8). The Rubin Museum will open an exhibit of contemporary Tibetan Art titled Tradition Transformed (opens June 11). Toward the end of June, Brooklyn Museum will exhibit work by Andy Warhol in his final decade, and the Whitney Museum will present Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield (opens June 24). The Burchfield exhibit is curated by the artist Robert Gober.

One of the pleasures of this time of year is the opening of the Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum. This year's installation is the impressive project, Big Bambú: You Can't, You Don't, and You Won't Stop by twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn.

What follows is a list of selected museum and other art center exhibitions currently on view in New York City along with dates of upcoming exhibits that are scheduled to open in May and June of 2010.

Temporary public art exhibitions:

• Antony Gormley: Event Horizon
Madison Square Park area
Through August 15, 2010

Upcoming museum exhibitions are noted in bold type.

American Academy of Arts and Letters, 633 West 155th Street (Audubon Terrace):
For more on the must-see Audubon Terrace and neighborhood, see the post, A Visit to Audubon Terrace and Environs (one of Walking Off the Big Apple's 2 5 Great Things to Do in New York City. and see the nearby Hispanic Society, noted below.)

American Folk Art Museum, 45 W. 53rd St.:
• Approaching Abstraction
Through September 6, 2010
• Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands
Through September 12, 2010
• The Private Collection of Henry Darger
Through September 19, 2010

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York:
• Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1964
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, 4th Floor
Through September 12, 2010
• Kiki Smith: Sojourn
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, 4th Floor
Through September 12, 2010
• The Mummy Chamber
Long-term installation now open
• American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection
Through August 1, 2010
• Andy Warhol: The Last Decade
Through September 12, 2010

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2 East 91st St.:
• Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyer Glass from the Permanent Collection
Through Fall 2010
• National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?
Through January 9, 2011

El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street:
• Retro/Active: The Works of Rafael Ferrer
Through August 22, 2010

Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street :

Grey Art Gallery (NYU), 100 Washington Square East:
• Lil Picard and Counterculture in New York
Through July 10, 2010

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th St.):
• Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance
Through September 6, 2010

The Hispanic Society of America Audubon Terrace, Broadway between
155th and 156th streets, New York City
• The Sorolla Gallery has now reopened.
• Gonzalez-Foerster's Chonotopes & Dioramas, open in the East Building Gallery.

International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street:
• For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights
Through September 12, 2010
• Perspectives 2010: Carol Bove, Lena Herzog, Matthew Porter, Ed Templeton, Hong-An Truong
Through September 12, 2010

Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, 3237 Vernon Blvd., Long Island City:
• Noguchi ReINstalled
Through October 24, 2010

Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street:
• Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H.A. Rey
Through August 10, 2010
• Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber, and Gottlieb
Through August 10, 2010
• The Monayer Family: Three Videos by Dor Guez
Through September 7, 2010
• South African Photographs: David Goldblatt
Through September 19, 2010
• South Africa Projections: Films by William Kentridge
Through September 19, 2010

MAD (The Museum of Art and Design), 2 Columbus Circle:
• Intertwined: Contemporary Baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman Collection
Through September 12, 2010
• Dead or Alive
Through October 24, 2010
• Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle
Through August 15, 2010

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue:
• Celebration: The Birthday in Chinese Art
Through August 15, 2010
• Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Through August 1, 2010
• Big Bambú: You Can't, You Don't, and You Won't Stop
Through October 31, 2010 (weather permitting)
• Side by Side: Oberlin's Masterworks at the Met
Through August 29, 2010
• American Women: Fashioning a National Identity
Through August 15, 2010
• Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980
Through October 17, 2010

MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art), 11 West 53 Street:
• Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense 
Through August 30, 2010
• The New Typography
Through July 12, 2010
• Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Through June 28, 2010
• Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography
Through March 21, 2011

MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Avenue, Long Island City
• Greater New York
Through October 18, 2010

Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street:
• Palladio and His Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey
Through August 1, 2010
• Defining Beauty: Albrecht Dürer at the Morgan
Through September 12, 2010
• Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design
Through August 29, 2010

Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue:
• Cars, Culture, and the CityThrough August 8, 2010
• Mayor John V. Lindsay
Through October 3, 2010

National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue:

Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue:
• Otto Dix
Through August 30, 2010

The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery:
• Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other
Through September 19, 2010

New York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West:
• Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New York Historical Society
Through July 4, 2010

New York Public Library (Stephen A. Schwartzman Building), 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue:
The NYPL maintains an extensive exhibition program, so check the website for what's on display at the various branches.

Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street:
• Bardo: Tibetan Art of the Afterlife
Through July 12, 2010
• Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures
Through August 16, 2010
• In the Shadow of Everest
Through July 26, 2010
• Tradition Transformed
Through October 18, 2010

South Street Seaport Museum, 12 Fulton Street:
• DecoDence:Legendary Interiors and Illustrious Travelers Aboard the SS Normandie
Through January 2011

The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street:

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue At 75th Street:
• Collecting Biennials
Through November 28, 2010
• Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield
Through October 17, 2010

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

Visiting New York on a Monday and want to know which of these museums are open? See the list here. Clicking on museum names above will link to their respective homepages.