So I'm D.C.-bound -- all I have to do is catch my 3am train

The great John Russell Pope's National Archives Building (1931-35), one of the landmarks mentioned in Francis Morrone's description for tomorrow's "Monumental Washington in the 1930s and 1940s" tour for the National Civic Art Society

by Ken

As long-time DWT readers may recall, Howie is my oldest friend in terms of continuous service -- dating back to the 9th grade at the James Madison HS Annex on the top floor of a public school way the hell on the other side of Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. Long-time readers will also have heard more than once from both of us about our 9th-grade English teacher, Mr. Fulmer, one of the great influences on both our lives. Mr.Fulmer was wont to say pithy things like "In a thousand years we'll all be dead, and all that will matter is our record of truth and beauty," or to point out helpfully, whenever a hapless student would say unthinkingly, "I think that . . . .," that "That's not thinking."

Now you may think, especially if you're not conversant with the math that includes our ages, that 9th-grade isn't going back all that far as friendships go. Certainly not among the kids I encountered growing up, when my family seemed to move every couple of years (if not oftener), either within cities or, a couple of times, from city to city, so that every couple of years (if not oftener) I found myself standing alone on the playground of a new school among kids who'd been going to school together their whole lives.

Still, from this vantage point of antiquity, a continuous friendship dating back to the 9th grade and Mr. Fulmer counts for something. Warning: You don't want to get him started on our 10th-grade English teacher, Miss Kliegman, who still comes up fairly regularly in our conversations. And so maybe it's not entirely beside the point that you encounter us both, all these years later, in the act of shoving words around.

Our more obvious connection, which long-time readers will also have noted, is political and worldviewish. For all our differences, I am still regularly startled by how similarly we respond to Stuff That Happens Out There in the World -- the way our attention tends to be caught by the same events and our responses tend to be so similar.

Possibly factoring into the above (or possibly not) is that Howie is the only friend I've ever had who's as geography- and map-obsessed as I am. Again, our geographical, er, styles are different. He's the one who, as he has chronicled here a number of times, set out one summer for the Pacific island kingdom of Tonga. No, he didn't get there, but for a high school kid getting across our native continent was no small deal. Not to mention that you would never in a lifetime find me doing any "setting out for" of that sort.

And again, long-time readers will have glimpsed that difference in our recorded travel adventures. Howie is the one who, with his grueling health crisis still clearly visible in the rear-view mirror, planned and executed a several-weeks' expedition to Russia with a side swing to Azerbaijan. (I wish you could have heard the hair-raising stories of just the adventures in visa-hunting he and especially his friend and frequent travel companion Roland underwent for this trip.)

Whereas my traveling is done mostly via armchair -- most happily in the happy company of Michael Palin on DVD. And, of course, the urban gadding that has become my latter-years evening and weekend preoccupation -- most always in day-trip form, and almost invariably within the geographic boundaries of NYC.

Which is a prelude to explaining why I'm not tackling one of my customary "serious" blog topics (that's right, the depredations of Next Food Network Star will have to await another occasion) today, as I prepare for a journey that will respect my "day trip" boundary but not the geographic one. 'Cause I'm busting out of the Greater NYC area -- all the way to Our Nation's Capital. And I'm doing it on a 3am train out of Penn Station. (Shudder.)

True, the impetus is local-ish. Which is to say that one of my most cherished walking-tour leaders, Francis Morrone, mentioned not long ago during a Municipal Art Society tour that he was going to be doing a tour in Washington on July 9. He didn't say any more, and I didn't ask, but after letting the thing percolate in my head awhile, I finally decided to try to track it down online, and track it down I did -- to the final event in a series, "Classical Architecture, Classical Values," offered by the National Civic Art Society:

Tour V, Saturday July 9

V. Monumental Washington in the 1930s and 1940s. Classicism in the era of Modernism.

We will explore works from the 1930s and 1940s--when the Modern Movement was in the ascendant--by such architects as Arthur Brown Jr., York and Sawyer, William Adams Delano, Milton Medary, and especially John Russell Pope (National Gallery, National Archives, Jefferson Memorial), with a big tip of the hat to the relatively unsung Otto Eggers and Daniel Higgins. Along the way we'll note other things, including, for context, later works by I.M.Pei and Partners and Pei Cobb Freed. Please note that this is an outdoor tour only. We'll leave the glorious interiors en route for another day.

The tour meets at 10 AM at the intersection of Constitution Ave. NW and 6th St. NW.

Again, it took me a bit of time to process this information, and discover that I had a conflict with a Brooklyn Brainery event I'd already registered for, "Blintzes, Malaysian Peanut Pancakes, and the Many Faces of Crepes" with Jonathan Soma (half of the great Masters of Social Gastronomy team, with Sarah Lohman; they have a slew of interesting-looking events planned for July and August), part of Soma's BB Summer of Pancakes series. However, as I'm a bit embarrassed to note, I quickly recalled that Brooklyn Brainery, in addition to offering interesting programs at eye-catchingly low prices, actually allows you to cancel events, and I did just that. (I just checked, and tomorrow's class is sold out, so maybe the Brooklyn Brainery folks aren't as naive as we might think, allowing registrants to cancel with enough advance notice. I'm delighted to see that my ruthlessly abandoned slot hasn't gone to waste! And I've still got my place on the 19th for Soma's "Going All-in on American Pancakes," which I see is also sold out. I don't plan on canceling that one.)

From there the details fell into place in rapid order. I had no trouble booking my spot for Francis's tour.(I guess the D.C. folks don't know about him. In NYC, that tour would probably have been sold out within days of being announced), for a measly 15 smackers. Of course adding in carfare hiked the total trip cost a bit: $74.80 (advance-purchase senior fare) for a train down, then a mere $23 for one of those cheap-cheap Chinatown-bassd buses back in the evening. I've taken the cheap-cheap bus before, and would have done so for the trip down if there's been a bus that would enable me to get to the tour meeting point by 10am, but there wasn't -- not even close.

And even the Amtrak scheduling was tricky. There's a 6am train that's scheduled to arrive in Union Station at 9:30am, and judging by the map, that should leave me enough time to make my tour -- that is, assuming I have such faith in Amtrak's on-time performance. Not to mention the consideration that I only theoretically know how to get from my Point A to Point B, and I would spend every second of every minute today all the way through boarding and then all the way on train obsessing over the time. So I swallowed hard and instead of booking the 6am train pulled the trigger for the 3am one, due into Union Station at 6:30am. Meaning that, once I'm on the train, nothing short of a derailment (a possibility one can't ever entirely discount) should prevent me from making the rendezvous with Francis. (Who, incidentally, has no idea that I'll be there. I've done at least one MAS tour with him since I made all these plans, and thought I would find a way to drop it into conversation, but I didn't. It should at least be interesting to note his response to seeing me amidst the tour group.

So today, in addition to planning everything around the 3am train departure, I'm occupied with finishing my research and resource planning, including printing up all sorts of Google maps, including locations of local ATMs of my bank and gym branches that my membership card should get me into. (In addition to not wanting to skip a day at the gym, I'm inclined to have some possible indoor activities in my arsenal. Not at all to my surprise, thunderstorms are predicted for tomorrow.) I thought I could piggyback some serious apartment decluttering in the form of a frantic hunt for my buried D.C. street atlas and aging Time Out guide, but wouldn't you know, I found both of them almost as soon as I started looking. Of all the luck!)

So you'll see why I don't have time today to prattle on about, say, the Supreme Court, or the wide-screen version of Gilmore Girls I'm now a mere two episodes away from finishing on UP. What's more, I"ve got another crossing-state-lines day trip planned for next month, built around an event my college alumni people have planned at Connecticut's Mystic Seaport, which I've heard about much of my life but have never visited. Highlighting the festivities, one of our distinguished English professors will be offering a presentation on "The Myth and Legend of Moby Dick," so part of my adventure will be finally reading Moby-Dick. (Yes, I was supposed to have read an abridged version -- in, I think, Miss Kliegman's 10th-grade English class. But there are a lot of things I was supposed to have read that I haven't.)


[For a follow-up, see below.]

#

Read More

Stepping back into NYC's "club era" -- the Yale Club today, the University Club in March

McKim, Mead and White's University Club, at Fifth Avenue and West 54th Street

by Ken

This morning I made sure to get enough of my day's posts posted so that I could go out and play, notwithstanding the arctic weather here in the Big Apple. Today that meant a special of the historic "club" districts of Midtown Manhattan, including a visit to the largest of them all, the Yale Club (which survives in part by sharing its facilities with a bunch of other clubs, like that of my alma mater, I was surprised to be reminded).

Matt Postal has been doing a series of tours for the Municipal Art Society of some of the surviving clubs, namely those that have responded at all positively to his entreaties. He has explained that when he was attending graduate school at the City University of New York in the '90s, he was involved in a massive project into the clubs built during the great era of clubs in Midtown, the later part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. It was a natural project for the CUNY Grad Center when it was located on the block north of the New York Public LIbrary, on 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, a virtual stone's throw from the graet club blocks -- 43rd and 44th Streets between Sixth and Vanderbilt Avenues and -- opposite the south side of the library and its neighbor to the west, Bryant Park, 40th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. But before the project could be completed and brought to whatever form it might have taken, the grad center moved -- not that far, to its present location in the gorgeous, landmarked former B. Altman building at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, but far enough that the "club district" was now judged to be out-of-neighborhood. The project was shelved, leaving Matt with all that work expended and all those reams of files.

On earlier MAS tours with Matt, I've gotten to see the inside of the Players Club (on Gramercy Park South) and the Century Association (on 43rd Street just west of Fifth Avenue). A number of the city's most prestigious architects designed those club buildings, and setting foot inside them also carries the feeling of stepping into another era.


CONTINUING THE CLUB THEME

On a recent MAS tour with Francis Morrone, part of a series exploring the "side streets" of Midtown, our group had spent time at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 54th Street, onl partly sheltered from the rain, looking at the extraordinary pile of a building on the northwest corner, McKim, Mead and White's University Club of 1899.

Which gave Francis the opportunity to mention that on March 3rd he will be giving this year's 14th Annual McKim Lecture, co-presented by the Institute for Classical Architecture and Art and the University Club (in the form of the 1 West 54th Street Association), in the club itself. It was a date he suggested we might mark on our calendars, though he warned that they charge a really lot of money.

I actually remembered to do some Web searching, and was able to confirm the March 3rd date, but for details and reservations In was instructed to check back later. Perhaps inspired by the upcoming Yale Club tour with Matt P, I remembered to check back, and sure enough the full information is now available, including this:

The topic of the lecture will be “The City Beautiful and the Urban Landscape in America.” The talk will explore the movement to beautify America’s cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the impact and legacy of that movement, its relevance today, and the many misconceptions about it (including that of Jane Jacobs). All of this will be discussed with specific reference to the contributions of McKim, Mead and White.

I know from my recent experience of (finally) reading Jane Jacobs's storied Death and Life of Great American Cities, and from doing bunches of tours with Francis where her writings have come up, including one last August devoted specifically to "Then and Now: The West Village of Jane Jacobs," that he's one of the few people who invoke her work who's actually familiar with what she wrote. So I'm especially psyched for the promised corrective to her view of the City Beautiful movement, which could most politely be described as scathing.

Beyond which, in my experience Francis takes his public presentations very seriously. Like when his latest book, Guide to New York City Urban Landscapes (written with Robin Lynn), had a festive do of a public book-launch party in the historic chapel of Green-Wood Cemetery, at a time when many authors would coast on the labors of book-writing now comfortably behind them, Francis seemed to have devoted as much effort to the presentation he gave as most people would devote to actually writing a damned book. The way he tied Green-Wood itself into the first of the successive eras of NYC urban landscapes it had a lot to do with settiing in motion (starting with two of the city's still-greatest urban landscapes, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted's Central Park and Prospect Park) was, in a word, masterful.

Beyond that, there's the sheer thrill of penetrating the mighty exterior of the University Club. Here are a few paragraphs from a post by Scott on the IWALKED Audio Tours website:

As it is likely that most of us will never see the insides of the University Club let me share what I have been able to learn of its interiors from my research. The highlight of the building is the library on the second floor which you can sometimes get a glimpse into from street level. The library is said to contain vast vault ceilings with murals painted atop its ceiling by Henry Siddons Mowbray that emulate the Vatican Apartments. Also amongst the interior is an extensive art collection, including a series of portraits by Gilbert Stuart, and a series of swimming pools allowable for usage with either swimming or birthday suits (at least in the male-only pool).

Speaking of male-only, the University Club underwent an overhaul of its membership policy in 1997 due to the passage of the New York City Public Law 63. Public Law 63 required all fee-collecting clubs with members greater than 400 (of which the University Club has over 4,000 members) to begin allowing the membership of women, or else the club would be forced to alter its charter.

The University Club has been located within this nine-story Italian High Renaissance Revival building since 1899. The Club which took on a series of temporary homes since its founding acquired a lot that was formerly owned by St. Luke’s Hospital to build on this site. They then hired the famed architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White to construct themselves new quarters for the sum of $1 million. McKim, Mead and White’s unique design integrates pink Milford granite on its exterior, along with a series of twenty-five feet columns that grace each side of the front entrance. Also integrated above each of the building’s windows are crests that are representative of various prominent universities. Perhaps the most intriguing element, however, is the deceptive appearance of the building’s exterior. By glancing at the outside of the building it seems apparent that there are no more than three levels, when in actuality the interior maintains nine.

You'll notice that phrase of Scott's, "as it is likely that most of us will never see the insides of the University Club," well, that's what I was thinking too, that day when we stood in the rain looking at the building's exterior. Well, I put that all together, swallowed hard, and -- reminding myself that a good part of the money goes to the worthy causes represented by the prsenting institutions -- shelled out the $75 they're asking for just the cocktail reception preceding the lecture and the lecture itself. That'll get me inside the building and into Francis's lecture. I didn't give serious consideration to the higher-priced option, which adds on a dinner following the lecture, at a jacked-up total of $150. It occurred to me afterward that maybe I should have really gone hog-wild, if only to see the dining facilities of the club.

I know enough from my club tours with Matt to know that the dining facilities of these places are a key feature of their design. Maybe I should have thought of the extra $75 as a fee for on-site inspection, with the meal as an added bonus. I'm not sure I could have sold myself on that, though, and anyway it's done, though I suspect an upgrade wouldn't be entirely impossible. Probably if I called the phone number listed for reservations, and mentioned that I've already registered for the recpetion and lecture, and wondered if I might still be able to tack on the dinner. . . . Oh no, now I've planted a bug in my head!

These are, of course, decisions each of us has to make for him/herself. And I just thought some of you might want to know about this. There aren't a lot of people I'd seriously consider shelling out the basic $75 for, but put Francis in a package with the University Club itself, and I'm already kind of glad I overcame my habitual cheapness.


For information about current and future Municipal Art Society walking tours, go to the MAS website, mas.org, and click on "Tours."

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: Curiosity (Plus news from OHNY, MAS, the NY Transit Museum, and Jack Eichenbaum, including another trek on the No. 7 train)

On Saturday, September 6, Norman Oder leads the MAS walking tour "Long Island City, Queens in Flux: Court Square and Hunters Point." I've done at least six or seven tours with Norman now, and they've all been tremendously rewarding.

by Ken

If you look among the newly announced September, October, and November walking-tour offerings of the Municipal Art Society at the description of Francis's Morrone's September 28 tour, "Then and Now: Jane Jacobs and the West Village," you'll see that it --

looks at the life and work of Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities so sharply and logically articulated many people's inchoate misgivings about the city rebuilding of the preceding decade and the orthodox notions of city planners. (The book, not least a literary masterpiece, is highly recommended reading for this tour.)

I think the tour should be pretty much self-recommending. I've already registered. (And contrary to the incessant complaints about certain MAS tours, like Francis's, being impossible to book, the fact is that if you take the trouble to look at the schedule early in the registration period, they're all available.) In addition, since I'm embarrassed to say that I have never in fact read The Death and Life of Great American Cities, I've ordered myself a copy of the 50th Anniversary Edition.

Which I bring up because of that phrase Francis uses in the description: "highly recommended reading for this tour." This is a stepped-back version of a formulation Francis experimented with awhile back, which again I'm embarrassed to say I flunked on my very first opportunity. It was a tour, naturally down in the Old Seaport region of Lower Manhattan, devoted to Herman Melville's and Joseph Mitchell's New York, and I must have decided to register for the tour without properly reading the description, which contained a notice that two pieces of the legendary New York-centric New Yorker writer, at least the opening section of "Old Mr. Flood" and the story "Up in the Old Hotel," both of which bear directly on what we now think of as the South Street Seaport area.

Francis mentions Joseph Mitchell pieces frequently on his walks, for the obvious reason that Mitchell explored New York City the old-fashioned shoe-leather way, and listened to the people he met -- in places that fancy writers rarely venture to -- for a sense of who they were, who they had been (and where they had come from), and who and what they wanted to be.

Not long afterward, while doing another walk with Francis (Greenpoint and Williamsburg open spaces, as I recall), I confessed my guilt but told him I had been doing my remedial Joseph Mitchell reading and brandished my copy of the lovely immense Mitchell anthology -- four books in one! -- whose name was taken from none other than Up in the Old Hotel. Which prompted a story from Francis. I've never seen anything yet that didn't prompt a story from Francis.

He mentioned that for his upcoming tour of Brooklyn's Boerum Hill neighborhood, which has seen barely imaginable gentrification since the '70s, he had included more required reading in the description which had simply vanished from the published version. A couple of us who were registered for the Boerum Hill tour asked what that was. It was, he told us, two Joseph Mitchell pieces, "The Mohawks in High Steel" (from 1949, when the neighborhood included a packed enclave of those Native American daredevil ironworkers from upstate New York, whose union had its headquarters on Atlantic Avenue, on the northern edge of the district), and -- are you ready for it? -- "Up in the Old Hotel," plus a novel by Jonathan Lethem.

We'll come back to the Lethem novel in a moment, but having just read "Up in the Old Hotel," which deals primarily with the proprietor of a humble South Street eatery that, much against his will, had come to be called Sloppy Louie's, I puzzled initially at the Brooklyn connection. And then I remembered Louie's story of the restaurant in Brooklyn where he had learned the business as a waiter, and been drawn into the social history of the city.

As to the Lethem novel, I had to trust to memory, despite the enormous risk of trusting to my memory these days, since that day I wasn't carrying anything to write with. So imagine my chagrin when, back at the computer, I discovered that Lethem, whom I'd never read, is a Brooklyn boy, and the novel in question could have been either of his early novels Motherless Brooklyn (1999) or The Fortress of Solitude (2003). I figured it wouldn't kill me to read both, and naturally -- since this is the way my mind works -- I attacked them in chronological order

I loved Motherless Brooklyn, a grisly story told from the perspective of a grunge-level detective who suffers from Torrrete's syndrome, which is built into the fabric of the book and the way the story unfolds. But I had a feeling it wasn't "the" book, since the office out of which the narrator worked was in the sort of no man's land between Boerum Hill and adjoining Cobble Hill. It's a sensational book, though, and I was delighted to have been led to it, however accidentally. The result, though, was that by the time the tour came round, I was only about two-thirds of the way through Fortress of Solitude, which does in fact deal directly with Boerum Hill pre-, mid-, and post-gentrification.

(And the Francis story about Jonathan Lethem? When a German TV company was doing a piece on Brooklyn, they choose as their experts on the subject -- Jonathan Lethem and Francis Morrone! And I gather they've kept in touch.)

Do I have to tell you how much those readings enhanced my sense of what we saw on that Boerum Hill walk? Because the tour description hadn't included the "required reading," Francis took the time, while we were standing opposite the site where the restaurant Louie had worked in once was, to read a passage from "Up in the Old Hotel," which gave a sense of what the location and the people had meant to Louie while he worked there and took his lunch breaks in the area.

Later still, when Francis scheduled his Cobble Hill walking tour, he included as required reading a novel whose name and author I've forgotten, but which I bought and read, even though while I was deciding whether to do that walk again (I had found the Cobble Hill tour one of my most enjoyable with Francis, but as a result I thought maybe I remembered it too well for the time being), it sold out! So I wound up doing the required reading without doing the tour -- but it was a remarkable book, and not just an on-point Brooklyn book, with a chillingly icy slant on our supposedly closest relationships. (I'll think of the name.)

On a tour not long ago, I finally asked Francis what had happened to those reading assignments. The problem, he said, was that nobody was reading them. He reflected a moment, then said he should probably get back to that.

And he should. I've come to understand that it isn't so much the tour leaders' knowledge that I'm looking for on these tours, although the good ones are overflowing with it. It's their curiosity I treasure -- the curiosity that has driven them to acquire the knowledge they've acquired and the ways they've found to satisfy and further stimulate it. They're very different people, people like Francis and Matt Postal and Justin Ferate and Jack Eichenbaum and James Nevius, but in the few years I've been doing this, I've tried to walk in the path of their curiosity -- and learned more than I could have imagined on my own about the world around me.


AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

It's the time of year when everyone is announcing fall plans.

Before we get to actually announced plans, I should mention that the 12th Annual Open House New York Weekend is scheduled for October 11-12. "More than 300 sites and tours. 75,000 visitors," the Facebook page says. The website says:

Celebrating the city’s architecture and design, the 12th Annual Open House New York Weekend will once again unlock the city, allowing New Yorkers and tourists alike access to hundreds of sites, talks, tours, performances and family activities in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. From private residences and historic landmarks, to hard hat tours and sustainable skyscrapers, OHNY gives you rare access into the extraordinary architecture of New York City, while introducing you to the people who make the city a vibrant and sustainable place to live, work, and play.

Please note: Sites and tours for the 2014 Open House New York Weekend will be announced in early October. Be sure to check back in October for the 2014 list or follow us on Facebook or Twitter for updates.

MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY

As I mentioned up top, the September-November MAS schedule is posted now (or you can just go to mas.org and click on "Tours"). I have it on the authority of a source whose judgment I respect immoderately that this is the best MAS schedule he's ever seen. That's not quite my response, but then, that's just me. No doubt you'll find an enormous range of offerings covering a large chunk of NYC. And the last time I looked, every one of them was still available for registration.


NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM

The fall schedule of programs and off-site tours is here. As always, there's a two-day pre-registration period exclusively for NYTM members, on August 20-21, beginning at 9am, with registration thrown open to all on August 22.

Remember that two popular tours are open only to members:

• The visit to the long-abandoned, ornate old City Hall subway station ("The Jewel in the Crown: Old City Hall Station," offered at 1:30pm and 3:30 pm on Sunday, October 12)

• And a walk through the old subterranean space, now contemplated as a possible underground version of the High Line, that once housed a busy trolley terminal leading out onto the Williamsburg Bridge ("Trolley Ghosts: The Terminal Under Delancey," offered at 6:30pm on two Thursday evenings, October 23 and November 6).

Yes, you can register in time to use the early-registration period. For membership information, check here.

Among the tours open to all are:

• An evening fall Nostalgia Ride, for Halloween season, to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx

• A look at the Flushing Meadows site of the 1939 and 1964-65 World's Fairs considered from the standpoint of their transit options, with the always-interesting Andrew Sparberger, whose Transit Museum offerings I try never to miss (Sunday, October 19, 1pm, or Saturday, November 15, 2pm). Note: Andy will also be doing a free program at the museum on Wednesday evening, December 10, 6:30-7:30pm, in connection with the publication of his new book, From a Nickel to a Token ("a microhistory of New York's transit system," which "examines twenty specific events between 1940 and 1968, book-ended by subway unification and the creation of the MTA").

• A "behind the scenes" visit to the Bergen Sign Shop, "New York City Transit's only locale for sign production (Saturday, October 18, or Sunday, December 6, at 10am or 12n either day)

• A Staten Island bicycle tour, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Verrazanno Narrows Bridge, from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal to Fort Wadsworth and the anchorage of the bridge, with a stop-off at the Alice Austen House (Saturday, September 13, 11am-3pm)

• "Power Play: Steampunk and the Transit System," an after-hours event at the museum on Thursday, October 2, 7-9pm, held in conjunction with Atlas Obscura, in which "we examine the marvel of engineering that transformed the city from steam to electric at the dawn of the twentieth century"

Among the mostly free (but reservations recommended) programs at the museum are:

• A "Bus Bonanza!" clustered around NYTM's 21st Annual Bus Festival (Sunday, September 28), held in conjunction with the always-lively Atlantic Antic on nearby Atlantic Avenue, 12n-6pm, celebrating its 40th anniversary, and including $1 museum admission

• "The MTA's Next Big Thing: Fulton Center" (Wednesday, October 29, 6:30pm; $10, $5 to NYTM members)

And several conversations with authors of bound-to-be-interesting new books:

• With former MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch (Thursday, October 9, 7pm), author of So Much to Do: A Full Life of Business, Politics, and Confronting Fiscal Crises

• With power super-whiz Joe Cunningham (another longtime NYTM tour favorite, Wednesday, October 15, 6:30pm), author of New York Power

• As mentioned above, with Andy Sparberger (Wednesday, December 10, 6:30pm), author of From a Nickel to a Token

Again, for the full list of events scheduled, check the NYTM "Calendar of Events" page.


JACK EICHENBAUM IS DOING HIS "SIGNATURE
TOUR," "THE WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN," AGAIN

I've written about Jack's "World of the #7 Train" a bunch of times, and was signed up to do it again on May 31, when disaster, aka New York City Transit, struck, with a last-minute announcement of the shutdown of the western half of the No. 7 line for that date. Jack was able to reschedule the outing for June, but I wasn't able to do the makeup date. I've already sent in my check for September 20!

THE WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN
Saturday, September 20, 10am-5:30pm

This series of six walks and connecting rides along North Queens’ transportation corridor is my signature tour. We focus on what the #7 train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service in 1914. Walks take place in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Flushing, Corona, Woodside and Jackson Heights and lunch is in Flushing with a great variety of Asian restaurants. Tour fee is $40 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address)

The full day’s program and other info is available by email jaconet@aol.com

The tour is limited to 25 people.

You can keep up to date on Jack's event plans on his website -- where you can also sign up for e-updates. The tour-info page is here. For his upcoming MAS tours, you'll be directed back to the MAS site for registration information. To bring this full circle, I've mentioned that Jack was the person who turned me on to MAS, when I took his "Three Transit Hubs" for NYTM!

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: Some highlights of the MAS March-May schedule

The only image I could find of Ada Louise Huxtable's 1961 book Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City, which Matt Postal points out is long out of print, was pathetic and unusable. So here's a really lovely photo of Ms. H.

by Ken

Talk about a happy coincidence! This weekend I have walking tours in three boroughs with three of my very favorite tour leaders, all of whom I've written about here frequently: Clinton Hill (Brooklyn) with Matt Postal on Saturday, and "New York in the Time of George Washington" in Lower Manhattan with Francis Morrone and and "The Transformation of Queens Plaza" with Jack Eichenbaum on Sunday. Matt's and Francis's walks are Municipal Art Society tours and long since sold out, but Jack's Queens Plaza walk is his own and is offered on a strictly walk-up basis. (See the section below on Jack's upcoming tours.)

I can't begin to describe how much I've learned from, not to mention enjoyed the company of, all three -- and I've spent a fair amount of time and space here trying. Matt and Francis are architectural historians but with different enough perspectives and eyes to be richly complementary. Jack's perspective is strikingly different as an "urban geographer," showing us how natural and man-made geography shape the development (and redevelopment) of neighborhoods. In the many walks I've done with Jack in four of NYC's five boroughs he has radically reshaped my way of looking at and taking in the city from large vistas down to small details. One thing Jack is proud of is that even when he's leading his groups through areas frequented by other tour leaders, his groups see things we're unlikely to see with anyone else.

I might note that Joe Svehlak's terrific walks through quintessentially NYC neighborhoods not often visited by tours -- places like Sunset Park (Brooklyn) and Ridgewood (straddling Brooklyn and Queens) -- always take into consideration the kinds of developmental factors Jack highlights. These have been some of my favorite MAS tours, though I'm not sure that the folks at MAS HQ value them as highly as I do. It still kills me that I had to miss Joe's Bushwick walk in order to finish a Sunday Classics piece; everyone I've run into who was on it loved it. I've been waiting hopefully for MAS to reschedule it.

On the new schedule Joe is repeating a tour that really intrigues me: through the remains of "Downtown's Lost Neighborhood" (May 11), the barely heralded Lower West Side. The last time Joe offered it, I got as close as the No. 1 subway entrance in front of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, with the assembling group in view across Peter Minuit Plaza, but it was pouring and I didn't even have an umbrella, so with great reluctance I shuffled back down the steps to the subway. (I only wish I could do that now. As we've noted, the relatively new South Ferry station was pretty much destroyed in Superstorm Sandy. The last I heard, the New York City Transit people planning the rebuild were still trying to determine what if anything could be salvaged.) And wouldn't you know, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it this time. I just hope it hasn't sold out by the time I know.

REGISTERING EARLY IS BECOMING MORE ADVISABLE

And the fact is that, now that everyone seems to have settled into the MAS system of preregistering for all tours (mostly online, but you can do it by phone when the offices are open), they do seem to be selling out more regularly, some of them pretty quickly. For example, it's already too late, and has been for a while, to register for Francis Morrone's annual tribute to and re-creation of MAS's very "First Tour," led by architecture critic Henry Hope Reed in Madison Square and Gramercy Park on April 8, 1956, when the idea was an astounding novelty. (Recommendation: Since you know when this tour is scheduled, watch for the announcement of the April 2014 tours and pounce. I can tell you that after doing this walk you'll never look at a flagpole the same way.)

I know that people who prefer short- to long-term planning, or are visiting from out of town, aren't entirely crazy about the pre-registration system, but it's also true that some tours may still be available as late as the-day-of. As far as I know, there's no cutoff for online registration as long as there's still space in a tour, which is clearly indicated. If you have nothing to do on a weekend, it's always worth checking the website to see if there's a tour you can slip into. Quite often the tours that don't attract waves of registrants are not only unusual but unusually interesting.

As I mentioned Wednesday, the recently posted listings cover March, April, and May (again, it's easy to remember: you go to mas.org and click on "Tours"), and the first thing that popped out for me is the pair of tours Matt Postal is doing, "Remembering Ada Louise Huxtable in Midtown" (March 2 and 16), based on the NYT's legendary architecture critic's 1961 book Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City.

Matt is naturally scheduled for a slew of other tours, which you can check out for yourself. Among those I've done recently enough that I don't need to do them again just yet is a pungent introduction to "Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal" (April 13). I'd love to do Matt's "East River Panoramas" (April 27), but I know I'll be out of commission for that. I hope, though, to be able to do his "New to New York: Downtown Brooklyn" (May 18), even though I've done walks in the area with Francis Morrone and Joe Svehlak -- they all have their own perspectives and emphases.

Francis in fact is also doing his "Downtown Brooklyn" (March 10) again, and also the "Park Slope South" leg (April 28), covering the more working-class southern portion, of his "Three Ways of Looking at Park Slope." Frustratingly, I won't be able to do the "St. Mark's Neighborhood" (April 21) installment of his East Village series, which I was previously registered for and managed to miss (an embarrassing story). I've already registered for Francis's "Irish Footsteps in Lower Manhattan" (March 17), but I have a schedule conflict (a Transit Museum tour of the 180th Street subway shop in the Bronx) for the Washington Square-centered "American Masters: Henry James, John Lafarge, and Stanford White" (March 24). Happily, I should be able to do "Walt Whitman's New York" (May 26); anyway, I've paid my $15.

I've also registered for Eric K. Washington's "Harlem Hike: 145th Street from Hotel Olga to Sugar Hill" (April 7), as a follow-up to his "Harlem Grab Bag," which I'm doing next weekend (that's sold out, but he's doing another version of it on March 31). Eric is known as a leading chronicler of Northern Manhattan, and has written the "Images of America" series volume devoted to Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem, and so I was really looking forward to his recent MAS Manhattanville tour -- so much so that I didn't realize I hadn't actually registered for it till it was too late -- sold out!

Eric is known in particular for knowing more than anybody I know of about Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery, and had a Halloween tour scheduled for MAS which was washed out by Sandy. I made a point of registering for his next MAS foray into the cemetery, the day before Christmas Eve, which synched up, for those who were so inclined, with the annual reading of "The Night Before Christmas" at the beautiful Church of the Ascension, at Broadway and 155th Street, which was for a long time a satellite of the all-powerful (in matters Episcopal in NYC) Trinity Church of Wall Street. I had previously been in the eastern half of the Trinity cemetery, on the east side of Broadway (which you'll recall includes the final resting place of Mayor Ed Koch), notably on an MAS tour that included the Church of the Ascension. But I'd never been in the wilder and more precipitous western half, on the other side of Broadway, which slopes steeply down toward the Hudson River. On that tour I learned that the otherwise-unconnected two halves of the cemetery were actually, for a time, connected by a suspension bridge over Broadway! (Eric had a picture to show us.) Eric will be venturing back into Trinity cemetery for MAS, with "Notable Women of Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery" (March 3) and a "Spring Tour" (May 12).

I've also already registered for architectural historian Tony Robins's "Art Deco on the Upper Upper West Side" (March 31), art deco being a special passion of his. (Tony has been all over the place lately with the publication last year of an updated edition of his 1987 book on the World Trade Center and now of Grand Central Terminal: 100 Years of a New York Landmark.) This time if Tony starts by asking us when art deco was born, I know it's a trick question. Tony's also doing "Landmark Battles of Midtown" (April 21) and "Central Park as a Work of Art" (May 2).

The Bedford Stuyvesant walks of Brooklyn architecture blogger Suzanne Spellen (Brownstoner.com's Montrose Morris, after her favorite architect) and architect and architectural historian Morgan Munsey have become an MAS staple, and April 14's "Bedford Stuyvesant" is actually focused on the heart of old Bedford Corners. The duo will also be touring "Brooklyn's Automobile Row" (in Crown Heights, Bedford Avenue between Fulton Street and Empire Boulevard; May 19).

SOMETIMES MAS TAPS SPECIFIC EXPERTISE

I had a great time on two such walks. Georgia Trivizas brings a native Staten Islander's special perspective to "Staten Island's Developing Waterfront" (March 23), a walk that's bound to take on some somber new tones post-Sandy, especially in the shoreline area to the east of the Ferry Terminal, where I'd never even set foot before the October walk with Georgia.

And federal court reporter Linda Fisher brings an insider's knowledge to "Manhattan's Civic Center" (April 13), which a hardy band of us did on a bitter cold day in late December (I don't think the temperature reached as high as 20 degrees that day). I'm seriously considering doing the walk again under more normal circumstances. And who knew anybody willing to endure the security screening can just walk into a courthouse and visit courtrooms? Of course most of the courts aren't functional on the weekends, but even on a Saturday the ground-floor courtroom in the Tombs where basically all Manhattan arraignments are handled will be open, because people are always being arrested in Manhattan, after all.

I'm assuming that Alexandra Maruri will be bringing similar special knowledge to the Bronx's "Little Italy on Arthur Avenue" (March 30), a tour I would love to do (as it happens, I've somehow never visited Arthur Avenue) but don't think I can since I'll be visiting Bayside (Queens) with Jack Eichenbaum that morning (see below), it's quite schlepp from Bayside to Arthur Avenue; I don't see how it can be managed in anything like the time available.

IT'S ALWAYS GOOD TO SEE ATTENTION TO THE OUTER BOROUGHS

And I don't think Brooklyn even qualifies anymore.

I expect to make the acquaintance of New School Prof. Joseph Heathcott, who's scheduled for "Queens Is the Future: Immigrant Neighborhoods Along the 7 Train" (March 9, already sold out! whoops, we all missed that one, but check out Jack Eichenbaum's "signature tour" of the "World of the #7 Train" below), "Sunnyside Gardens and Jackson Heights: America's First Garden Cities" (April 6), and "Queensbridge: America's Largest Public Housing Project" (April 27). This is territory I've covered a fair amount with Jack Eichenbaum, the Queens borough historian, but again, it's always interesting to see things through different eyes.

Speaking of Jack, though, as I've done so often here, I'm surprised to see that he's represented by just one tour. It's a terrific one, though: "Morisania: From Suburbia to the Grand Concourse" (March 24), which he did last year as the last of three northward-moving walks through the South Bronx. We got to see a staggering variety of urbanscapes sandwiched into the precipitous topography of the West Bronx -- old construction and new, the savage hatchet job inflicted on Bronx neighborhoods by Robert Moses's Cross-Bronx Expressway, the suburban enclave that has replaced the bombed-out Charlotte Street ruins once visited by Presidents Reagan and Carter, lovely Crotona Park, and the grandeur of the Grand Concourse.

Fortunately, Jack has a number of other projects coming up, starting with that Queens Plaza walk this Sunday which I mentioned at the top. More about those projects in a moment.

MY GOODNESS, THERE'S SO MUCH ELSE --

I feel terrible about all that I've left out, and tour leaders I've left out. I may need to do another post. Let me just point out, though, that there's a night-time tour, ""All Lit Up: Times Square at Night" (with Kathleen Hulser, April 20), and a tour in Spanish, "En Español! El Puente de Brooklyn: Política y Técnica" (April 14), a looks at the history and present of the Brooklyn Bridge and the cities (as New York and Brooklyn both were when the bridge was conceived and built) and the neighborhoods it connects, starting in Lower Manhattan and crossing over the bridge into DUMBO.


NOW, FINALLY, ABOUT JACK EICHENBAUM'S
UPCOMING PROJECTS

First off, if you don't know his website, The Geography of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum, you should, because it contains lots of great information in addition to Jack's schedule. On the "Public Tour Schedule" page you can also sign up for Jack's e-mail updates, which provide advance notice of plans before they make it onto the website. As it happens, Jack has just sent out a very newsy one indeed, which we'll get to.

The World of the #7 Train

Meanwhile, the splashiest news isn't brand new. Jack had already announced that this year's version of his "signature tour" will take place on April 27. I consider this one of the happiest ways an urban gadder can spend a day gadding about NYC. You not only see the full span of the IRT Flushing line (which in Queens is mostly above ground, so there's a lot to see out the windows), but do walks in six strikingly different neighborhoods along its path, including the lunch stop in Flushing's Chinatown. (Jack is a long-time Flushing resident.)

As usual, the tour will be limited to 25 people, and so requires preregistration, and can fill up in a hurry. Jack is still charging only $39, a steal in 2013 dollars. You can e-mail him (jaconet@aol.com) for "the full day's program and other info,", or just send a check. (The address is on the tour page of the website.) Or you can do both! A recent onsite note reports: "As of 2/15/13, there were 12 spots remaining." Be warned that spaces can fill up in a hurry.

Now for the big news: In October Jack offered his "Day on the J," and his new e-mail update contains the news that in June he will offer "Six Walks on the Number Six Train" -- the Lexington Avenue local train that continues on into the Bronx to the southwestern corner of the city's largest park, Pelham Bay Park. Further information is promised in the next update. Once again I expect to be writing my check the day the details are announced!

In other news, Jack reports: "In conjunction with the Grand Central centennial, I am trying to arrange Maps, Realities and the People’s Palace (scroll down at http://www.geognyc.com/?page_id=26) for a weekend date in April. This tour will require registration and I will post it ASAP." Here's the website description:

 Maps, Realities and the People’s Palace

 Tour Grand Central and Bryant Park, planned areas greatly altered since the Civil War. Then we will see how historical cartography captures the changing urban landscape in the splendidly restored Map Room of the New York Public Library.

And Jack also notes that he will be doing two walking tours as part of the third annual Long Island City Arts Open (LICAO, May 15-18), which will also include "performing arts, special gallery exhibitions, open artists’ studios, [and] a street fair," withe details to be posted at http://licartsopen.org/.

Now for Jack's other non-MAS tours:

The Transformation of Queens Plaza (this Sunday, February 17, 11am-1pm)

A look back at how this "nexus of early 20th century transportation improvements" (the Queensboro Bridge, Northern and Queens Blvds., lines of all three subway divisions, and the LIRR) set the stage for "NYC's largest and most modern industrial area," then went to seed with the exodus of industry from the area, and now has been transformed with amazing speed into something quite different.

It's $15, and we meet at the fare booth of the 39th Avenue station of the N and Q (Astoria) lines.

Flushing's Chinatown (Sunday, March 3, 11am-1pm)

As I mentioned, Jack is a longtime Flushing resident, and has watched the transformation of the area, which also experienced a period of deep decline, be reborn in mostly separate Chinese and Korean enclaves. Flushing's Chinatown, he says, "has come to rival its Manhattan antecedent. Taiwanese rather than Cantonese at its core, Flushing’s Chinatown plays host to a variety of overseas Chinese groups."

Also $15. Meet near the rest rooms on the second floor of the New World Mall on Roosevelt Avenue near the Flushing terminus of the No. 7 train. (There are more detailed directions on the website.)

My Childhood in Bayside (vs. What’s There Now) (Saturday, March 30, 2013, 10:50am-12:50pm -- the timing based on the scheduled arrival of the 10:18 LIRR train from Penn Station)

Every year Jack does a fund-raiser for the Queens Historical Society, and the ones I've done have been some of my all-time favorite walks. This year, in honor of his 70th birthday, on February 2 (sorry I missed your birthday -- happy birthday, Jack!), he's leading "a walk through old Bayside where I lived from 1943-1958. Most of the personal landmarks of my early life have vanished but there are threads of continuity and many anecdotes."

It's $12 for QHS members, $15 for others. (I'm a member, but I'm planning to spring for the full $15.) Meet in front of the post office on the south side of the LIRR stateion on 42nd Avenue. You can also get there via the Q13 bus from Flushing.)

And then there are these just announced in the e-mail update, and so not yet on the website:

Bowne St, My Street (May 4 or 5, time TBA)

As part of the annual Jane's Walks Weekend festivities, honoring Jane Jacobs (I reported on the 2012 schedule here), Jack will lead this walk "along the length of historic and multiethnic Bowne Street in Flushing where I have been living for 35 years." In recent years MAS has been organizing the NYC Jane's Walks, which are all free, and they've done such a good job that there are likely to be about 30 walks over the two days that I'll want to do. The listings should appear in April.

What’s New in Long Island City? (Friday, May 15, 5:45-8pm) -- a walk from Queensboro Plaza to the East River waterfront

Daylight Loft Buildings in Long Island City (Sunday, May 18, 10:30am-12:30pm)

In case you haven't gathered, Long Island City holds a special fascination for Jack, and these are new versions of walks of his that I think we can describe as popular "standbys."

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: Have you checked out the Dec.-Jan.-Feb. Municipal Art Society walking-tour schedule? (Plus: Winter tour update)

MAS tours with Francis Morrone, Joe Svehlak, ???, and Matt Postal

by Ken

I should have mentioned sooner for the benefit of New Yorkers that the new Municipal Art Society walking-tour schedule -- once again covering three months, December through February -- is available online. As I've mentioned here before, in the two years I've been doing MAS tours, following my ridiculously late discovery that there are such things -- they really have changed my life.

I just did a quick count on my online calendar and see that I registered for something like 20 Municipal Art Society walking tours for the three-month period from September to November. I actually do quite that many, because I "better-dealed" one or two in favor of later-announced tours of other kinds which I couldn't resist, and I had four tours canceled in the two weekends just before and then after the arrival of Superstorm Sandy.

There's so much other tour activity going on in the metropolitan area, including activity involving a number of my favorite MAS tour leaders, activity I'm still just beginning to discover, that it's easy to take the MAS schedule for granted. Which I surely don't do! This time I'll be a little more cautious in registering for tours before other schedules have been announced (I'll try to keep my options open longer, focusing on registering on tours I know will be sold out if I wait too much longer), but by the end of February I expect to wind up doing about as many MAS tours as I've done in these last three months. More, actually, accounting for the tours lost to the storm in this cycle.

I think everyone has settled into the MAS registration system -- no longer so new -- by which all tours require preregistration. It simplifies the life of most everyone concerned, most obviously at the start of each tour, where it's no longer necessary to devote all that time to collecting money for tours that once allowed walk-up registration or doing check-ins for tours that were done entirely by preregistration. The one exception I can think of, and I have met people who fall into this category, is for folks who prefer not to have to plan well ahead.

The fact is that if you do your registration online you can register anytime up to the start of the tour -- provided, of course, that there's still space for the tour you want to do; if the tour is sold out, that's indicated online. (For tour-takers without online access, registrations can still be done by phone, but only during weekday hours when the MAS office is open.)

Even with the price increase that accompanied the new system, MAS tours are an amazing bargain -- a mere $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers. A couple of weeks ago I got an online notice informing me that my renewal was due, and I can assure you, I did my renewal within minutes by return e-mail! Even at the lowest membership level, $50 for individuals ($40 for seniors), you get one free tour each year -- since I had online access to the "free tour" code, I had it applied it to one of the new-season tours even before my new membership card arrived in the mail.

Maybe it was surviving those two weekends without MAS tours that has made me so conscious of paying them their due. Certainly it felt special doing my first post-storm walk, which was of the Madison Square area with Sylvia Laudien-Meo -- on Veterans Day, at the very spot where the Veterans Day parade begins, which added an element of hubbub. I've enjoyed all the tours I've done with the amazingly charming Sylvia, who's an art person, which I'm emphatically not, meaning that I often get a different kind of view of the tour areas, as was the case with a Lower East Side tour she led, which wound up bringing me for the first time ever inside the New Museum on the Bowery. (Sylvia has a tour of Chelsea art galleries scheduled for Jan. 19, and two more of her "family tours," presumably suitable for whole families but not limited to them: Grand Central Terminal on Dec. 8 and Rockefeller Center on Feb. 24.)

(And anyone who hasn't done a Rockefeller Center tour really ought to. I've done architectural historian Tony Robins's and thoroughly enjoyed it. During the holiday season he's doing it twice: on Christmas Day and on Dec. 30.)

WEEKENDS WITH MATT POSTAL AND FRANCIS MORRONE

Then these last two weekends, the schedule has been kind to me, with four tours led by three of my favorite tour leaders. Last week I had the second in a series of three led by architectural historian Matt Postal devoted to the area known to the City Planning Dept. as Midtown East, for which major zoning changes are being proposed which could bring drastic changes (this was actually scheduled as the last of the three tours, but the middle one was a storm casualty and has been rescheduled for Dec. 15); and then Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens with architectural historian Francis Morrone, the middle leg of a three-part series covering the adjacent neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Cobble Hill.

I've written about both Matt and Francis a lot here. Maybe the simplest thing to say is that depth and range of their curiosity and knowledge, I'd sign up, schedule permitting, for pretty much anything they're doing. If the subject of the walk is interesting enough to them to do, I now take for granted that it will: (a) connect pieces of my world that hadn't previously been connected, (b) teach me all sorts of things I had no idea there were to know, and (c) provide two hours' worth of wonderful entertainment. (Both Matt and Francis have all sorts of tours listed in the new schedule. Be warned that Francis's in particular are likely to fill up well before the tour dates.)

MORE FRANCIS M, AND JACK EICHENBAUM

This weekend again I had a pair of tours. For the day after Thanksgiving there was a walk through "Public Housing's Fertile Crescent," along the East River side of Lower Manhattan, an area I'd never actually walked through, with urban geographer (and the borough historian of Queens) Jack Eichenbaum. I've also written here frequently about Jack. No one has done more to help me see -- and often it is literally a matter of seeing -- how the development of regions and neighborhoods is shaped by geography, including transportation access and population patterns over time.

In the new schedule Jack is doing two of his standby walks, ways of walking north-south in Midtown Manhattan while "Keeping Off Midtown Streets" -- an East Side version (from Grand Central to Bloomingdale's, Dec. 29) and a West Side one (from the Time Warner Center to Times Square, Jan. 27). Also, it's invaluable to register for Jack's e-mail list for announcements of his MAS and non-MAS activities, which you can do on the "Public Tour Schedule" page of his website, "The Geography of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum."

Then today Francis Morrone concluded the "BoCoCa" cycle with Cobble Hill, and it was Francis at his best. I'm only sorry that I had to miss the Boerum Hill installment of this cycle owing to a schedule conflict, which was true as well for the "Heart of Flatbush" installment of a three-part series built around Flatbush's historic districts, which fell on the same day as Jack Eichenbaum's one-of-a-kind "Day on the J Train" tour, which I certainly wasn't going to miss! (Be sure to watch for Jack's "World of the #7 Train.")

I've actually done a terrific Boerum Hill walk with Joe Svehlak, another of my "old reliables," who sort of combines the geographical and architectural approaches in his masterful tours of less-walked-through neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn. I'm still waiting for a reschedule of his Bushwick tour, which I had to miss because I had to finish a "Sunday Classics" piece; I've loved Joe's tours of Ridgewood (straddling Brooklyn and Queens), Sunset Park (where he grew up), Cypress Hills, and Downtown Brooklyn. I also see Joe all the time on other people's tours, a tribute to the range of his curiosity; he was supposed to be with us, we learned from Jack Eichenbaum, on Jack's "Day on the J Train." I know Joe does a lot of Grand Central tours, so his "Grand Central During the Holidays" on Dec. 22 should be fun. He's also doing a Lower Manhattan tour called "Downtown Connections" on Jan. 20.

NORTHERN MANHATTAN, ATLANTIC AVENUE, AND MISC.

There are also a number of tours scheduled with the highly regarded historian of Harlem and Northern Manhattan Eric K. Washington: "Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery at Christmas," Dec. 23; "Manhattanville: Revisiting a Neighborhood in Flux," Feb. 3 (Eric has literally "written the book" on Manhattanville); and "Harlem Grab Bag," Feb. 23.

I might also mention "Explore and Shop: Wintertime in the Atlantic Avenue Bazaars" with MaryAnn DiNapoli on Jan. 5. I've done MaryAnn's "Churches of Cobble Hill" (which covers not just still-functioning churches but no-longer-existing as well as repurposed ones). It's always fascinating to tour areas with neighborhood residents, and MaryAnn grew up here. Which means she knows the Middle Eastern shops of Atlantic Avenue from longtime personal experience. In fact, the tour I took with her, having been scheduled on a weekday, was compact enough that she was actually able to take us inside several of the shops where she has shopped, well, pretty much forever.

I don't think I mentioned that the MAS schedule has a Green-Wood Cemetery tour with the cemetery's historian, Jeff Richman, on Dec. 15. And I don't know what all else I haven't mentioned. Oh yes, I'm hoping that this time I'll be able to do Linda Fisher's tour of "Manhattan's Civic Center," on Dec. 30. This is one of the tours I registered for the last time it was scheduled but "better-dealed" in favor of a tour I couldn't resist, a bus tour to the Usonia Houses communal-housing development in northern Westchester which was planned in good part by Frank Lloyd Wright, during which tour leader Justin Ferate, another of my all-time favorites, led us through two of the houses, one of them one that was actually designed by Wright.

AND SPEAKING OF JUSTIN FERATE . . .

He seems to be doing most of his tours these days as coordinator of the Wolfe Walkers tours, via which in just the past year I've been able to do amazing bus tours to the Mark Twain House in West Hartford as well as the Usonia Houses, and also visit such diverse locations as the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge, the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Uptown Manhattan (combined with the Audubon Terrace complex), and Chinatown.

An unfortunate casualty of the storm aftermath was a tour of Staten Island's under-construction conversion of Staten Island's Freshkills landfill into what will be NYC's largest park. But in turn one of the MAS pre-storm cancellations allowed me to do an extra Wolfe Walkers tour I hadn't expected: a Halloween-themed walk through Greenwich Village. I've done a number of Village tours by now, but I had a feeling that Justin's Village wouldn't be the same as anyone else's, and it wasn't! Still to come in the current Wolfe Walkers cycle is a tour of the Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park on Dec. 2, one of the tours I signed up for as soon as I saw the announcement.

By the way, as a source of information about fascinating tour goings-on in the NYC area, there's no resource quite like Justin's e-mail list. Justin sends out vast quantities of pass-alongs of events he thinks may be of interest, and I can say that I ALWAYS look at his pass-alongs. I've already done a whole bunch of events I wouldn't have known about otherwise. For that matter, Justin's website, "Tours of the City with Justin Ferate," is itself an invaluable resource. Here's the link to sign up for Justin's mailing list.

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: On (and alongside) the waterfront

The Tribeca section of Hudson River Park: Hudson River Park -- which I just toured from the river as my City of Water Day trip -- is the subject of multiple walking tours by two of the Municipal Art Society's heavy hitters, Francis Morrone and Matt Postal.

by Ken

[Last night, writing about my City of Water Day river cruise along New York City's ever-developing Hudson River Park, I promised a rundown of some of the remaining summer tour activities focused on the New York-New Jersey waterfront. Here goes!]

Today I did the first tour in a series of walks the Municipal Art Society's Francis Morrone is devoting to "Walking the New Waterfront": "The New East River Waterfront." I didn't rush to mention it since I knew it was sold out. The MAS summer schedule includes the next two installments in Francis's waterfront series. (Some editorial help would have been in order to clarify that the August 18 walk is Part 2 of his waterfront series and Part 1 of a subseries devoted to Hudson River Park.) Francis mentioned today that there will be more installments in the next MAS schedule announcement, and also announced -- when he was pointing to Governors Island from a stop at the East River's Pier 11 that there will be a Governors Island tour in his waterfront series.

Francis, who has a book in the works on the subject, is fascinated by the revolution in landscape architecture on display in much of this new waterfront development, which he considers at the vanguard of such activity anywhere in the world.

Walking the New Waterfront: Hudson River Park, Part 1
Saturday, August 18, 2pm-4pm

The second in our series on the dramatically changing Manhattan waterfront with architectural historian Francis Morrone takes us to the West Side, where we will begin a series of walks up the Hudson shoreline as far as Riverside Park. The first of these walks begins in the northernmost reach of Battery Park City and moves north through the TriBeCa and Greenwich Village sections of Hudson River Park to at least Pier 45.

Walking the New Waterfront, Part 3: Brooklyn Bridge Park
Saturday, August 25, 2pm-4pm

Our third walk with architectural historian and author Francis Morrone exploring new waterfronts takes us to Brooklyn, where the ambitious Brooklyn Bridge Park is rapidly taking shape among the disused piers and other spaces between the Manhattan Bridge and Atlantic Avenue. Designed by the renowned firm of Michael Van Valkenburgh & Associates, this is the most talked-about recent urban landscape project in the country, after the High Line.

I should point out that this summer Francis has done the first parts of a pair of three-part series in Brooklyn:

* one devoted to Boerum Hill, which will continue with the bordering neighborhoods with which it's often linked, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens

* one devoted to Ditmas Park, one of three neighborhoods in "Victorian" Flatbush which contains a historic district -- still to come are walks in the others, Prospect Park South and Midwood

FRANCIS ALSO NOTED THAT MATT POSTAL
IS DOING HUDSON RIVER PARK AS WELL!

As I've pointed out a number of times, Francis can be very funny, and he usually doesn't telegraph his jokes. He also noted out that he and Matt did their first MAS tours in the very same week, and are the same age, so I guess it's a sort of MAS Hudson River Park throwdown. Matt has two Hudson River Park walks on the summer schedule:

Down by the River: Greenwich Village and Gansevoort
Saturday, July 21, 11am-1pm

Join Matt Postal, architectural historian and author, to visit the first section of Hudson River Park. Since they first debuted in 1999, the quiet blocks where Greenwich Village meets the Hudson River have attracted increasing attention. This walking tour examines how the decline of waterfront commerce in the 1960s set the stage for recent developments, viewing several early residential projects and conversions, such as the West Village houses and Westbeth, as well as a number of stylish new apartment buildings designed by Asymptote, Julian Schnabel, and FLAnk. We'll conclude in the Gansevoort Market Historic District, where the High Line starts and the future home of the Whitney Museum of American Art by Renzo Piano is now under construction.

Down by the River: West Chelsea and Hudson Yards
Sunday, August 12, 11am-1pm

This tour with Matt Postal, architectural historian and author, focuses on the once-gritty West 20s, where former freight facilities are being converted into luxury housing, public parkland, and commercial space. We'll discuss the present progress of the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, the next stage of the High Line, major historic structures in the West Chelsea Historic District, and visit Chelsea Cove, a particularly lovely section of Hudson River Park that includes gardens by Lyden B. Miller and a restored railroad float transfer bridge.

(I don't play favorites here. Yesterday I did Matt's "New to New York: Broadway's Cultural Corridor" tour, and today I did Francis's inaugural waterfront tour on the lower East River, and I'm registered for both of Francis's and both of Matt's upcoming waterfront tours.)


MAS'S JOE SVEHLAK IS ON THE WATERFRONT
THIS SUMMER TOO -- AND IN CYPRESS HILLS

Joe has a long history with Coney Island, and this summer once again is doing a walk there.

Saturday, August 11, 10:30am-12:30pm
Coney Island: What's Next?

Join preservationist and lifelong Brooklyn resident Joe Svehlak for a summer favorite as we explore America's first great seaside resort. We'll look for remnants of Coney Island's "honky-tonk" past, when as many as a million people would visit "Sodom by the Sea" on a hot summer day. Have a Nathan's Famous, view the popular ballpark, the new amusements, the historic rides, and enjoy the boardwalk as we discuss the struggle to designate landmarks and the future of the fabled resort. Wear your bathing suit if you want to go for a swim with Joe after the tour!

Actually the tour of Joe's I'm really looking forward to is the next in his series of neighborhood walks, pushing farther along the Terminal Moraine that separates Brooklyn and Queens from Bushwick (which unfortunately I wasn't able to do; I sure hope he does it again!) to Ridgewood and now to Cypress Hills (see below), and also Sunset Park (where he grew up, and also very much part of the Terminal Moraine story, since it sits atop and along the shoreward side of the all-Brooklyn section of the ridge) and Boerum Hill.

Joe has been doing a bang-up job of showing us -- not just telling but showing -- how each area came to be settled, and by whom, and how those original settlers either stayed on or (so often) moved on, and who replaced them and why, and accordingly how the neighborhoods have evolved.

Brooklyn Down East: Cypress Hills/Highland Park
Sunday, August 19, 10:30am-12:30pm

Join preservationist and lifelong Brooklyn resident, Joe Svehlak, in this area east of Bushwick on the Queens border known as the Eastern District home to some lovely and varied architecture. Fine civic buildings, grand mansions, interesting row houses, and even a church by Richard Upjohn are to be found here. The varied hilly topography due to the terminal moraine from the Ice Age, makes for a fascinating walk up and down the streets. At the beginning of the tour we will make a short visit to the Evergreens Cemetery, one of the city's first garden cemeteries (1849), whose park-like setting is the final resting places of some of Bushwick's finest citizens.

AND DON'T FORGET WORKING HARBOR'S
TOURS, NOW ON LAND AS WELL AS SEA

Of course there are now kajillions of cruises on the harbor these days -- morning cruises, afternoon cruises, evening cruises; dinner cruises, cheese-tasting cruises, hideous-entertainment cruises; etc. etc. etc. But most of them tend to focus on the narrowish band of water that can be comfortably covered in an hour or two from the lower Hudson to the lower East River, naturally including the Statue of Liberty. Now, however, there are all sorts of other harbor tours, and I've just begun to discover them myself.

I should probably have called more attention to this year's schedule of those wonderful "Hidden Harbor" tours the Working Harbor Committee does aboard the yacht Zephyr in conjunction with New York Water Taxi (Circle Line Downtown), and have neglected them only because I did all three last year. However, it's still possible to do all three. They're all two hours, and scheduled for Tuesday evenings, departing from Pier 16 at South Street Seaport, with sailings scheduled for 6:15pm in July and August, 5:30pm in September. Each tour normally features a harbor veteran as running commentator plus a guest speaker with a particular interest in the particular subject.

* Newark Bay, the one I really got worked up over last year ("Newark Bay or bust! (Is there anyone else whose pulse is sent racing by the prospect?)"), which has three more outings -- on July 24, Tuesday, August 21, and September 18

* North River (i.e., the Hudson River, the river that came from the north), on August 7

* Brooklyn (a view from the river of Brooklyn's western shore from the Queens border at Newtown Creek on the north all the way down to the Sunset Park waterfront), on September 4

Working Harbor also schedules all manner of other special waterfront events -- for example, a three-hour "intensive" tour of Newtown Creek with Newtown Creek Association historian Mitch Waxman ("Walking Dutch Kills with Mitch Waxman, 'Your Guide to a Tour of Decay'") on Sunday, July 22, 11am-2pm (which I can't do, because that's the day I'll be heading to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park on a New York Transit Museum tour). Definitely keep an eye on the WHC website and blog, and get yourself on their e-mail list.

I did, however, tell you about Working Harbor's new-this-year walking tours, both of which still have upcoming dates:

* Lower Manhattan, led by Captain Maggie Flanagan, on Saturdays, July 21 and August 11, 1pm-3pm, ending up at the South Street Seaport Museum

* Staten Island (from the St. George Ferry Terminal to Sailors' Snug Harbor, spotlighting the Kill van Kull separating Staten Island from Bayonne, New Jersey), led by none other than Mitch Waxman, on Saturdays, July 28 and October 13, 11am-1pm, ending up at one of my favorite places, the Noble Maritime Collection in Snug Harbor

#

Read More