Sunday morning we were out the door at 7:00, which is about the quietest time of the day you can find in NYC. Empty streets, few people, and that lovely blue light ahead of the sun.
It was also cold, and didn't get any warmer the rest of the day. We stayed bundled up in coats, hats, gloves, and scarves most of the day.
We cut up 6th to 46th in the shadows and this old building caught my eye, especially that little bay looking window at the top of the one on the right. Destined for the wrecking ball I would guess, as everything after it down to 5th has disappeared, flattened to the earth. 29 W. 46th was home to Irving Berlin between 1921 and 1930, when he wrote dozens of songs including "The Song is Ended," sung by everyone from Bing Crosby to Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole to Frank Sinatra. Fitting, I suppose.
My heart goes back to a heavenly dance
A moment of bliss we spent
Our hearts were filled with a song of romance
As into the night we sent
And sang to our hearts content
The song is ended but the melody lingers on
You and the song are gone but the melody lingers on
The night was splendid and the melody seemed to say
Summer will pass away, take your happiness while you may
There 'neath the light of the moon
We sang a love song that ended too soon
The moon descended and I found with the break of dawn
You and the song had gone but the melody lingers on
A piece the New York Times did more than a decade ago, before developers finally got going on the block is called "A Block That Looks as It Did About 1930"
I can't seem to find anything concrete (heh) on what's going in here, but it's apparently a long time coming and something of a mystery.
Ok, onward or I'm never finishing these posts.
So we set out from the hotel at 45th between 6th & 7th and walked over to breakfast at 3rd, between 50 & 51st. Five blocks north, but NOT three blocks east, because you have to remember after 5th, isn't 4th, it's Lexington, Madison, & Park Avenues before picking up again at 4th. (Don't ask me why.) So it's six blocks east.
Streets run east/west, Avenues are north/south, at least once you get north of the old part of the city before the grid system was set up. Once you are south of Houston street, get a map. Also, anywhere in the Village. I think they made that up as they went along.
Fifth Ave. is the dividing line for E./W. designations, with numbers at 5th in the hundreds and going up from there -- the higher the number, the farther east or west you go.
I always love the holdouts in the midst of the towering skyscrapers. If they don't have historical significance, the likelihood of their survival is minuscule over the coming decades.
Saks' Fifth Avenue is getting decked out in its holiday display already.
And across the street that little space known as Rockefeller Center was glowing in the morning blue.
Hotel Alley sprang up along Lexington after Grand Central Station converted to electricity and went underground. All that space once taken up by steam engines was finally prime real estate. Georgia O'Keefe painted The Beverly (now The Benjamin) from her hotel in 1929.
Crossing Park Ave., looking south, and now dwarfed by the MetLife (once PanAm) building behind it, is the Helmsley building with its copper cupola. Park Ave. runs through the arches at the bottom. It was originally built in 1929 to house the New York Central Railroad. Grand Central sits on the other side.
St. Bart's has been in its third spot in the city since 1916. The bronze doors sculpted in bas relief in the 1870s were moved from its second home on Madison Ave. to the current space.
We passed this Art Deco subway entrance, still standing outside the General Electric building (formerly RCA Victor) built in 1931.
Here's the top of the same building
and a clearer shot of the crown and its electric energy waves
Down much closer to the ground was our destination
worth noting: that long line you see behind me on the right is the line most tourists get stuck in. And, if you want a sandwich with egg, cheese, or anything else from the smorgasbord, you have to be there. But if you just want bagels & cream cheese, skip it and head to the back. No wait! There's nearly two dozen cream cheese flavors to choose from, too.
Up 3rd, we passed P.J. Clarke's, since 1884. Courtney and I squashed in here for dinner our first night in the city. Nat King Cole called his burger the "Cadillac of burgers" and Buddy Holly proposed to Maria Elena on their first date here.
next door to Serendipity is a 1910 building that caught my eye. For only $2975 a month I can have a one bedroom with private terrace. That's a fifth floor walk-up. No, no elevator.
Our second destination of the morning was Roosevelt Island and the views the tram ride over would afford.
inside a mostly empty tram
I was admiring the penthouse from the tram at 400 E. 59th on Sunday, 10/21
It hit the market three days later, 10/24, at an asking price of $5.5M if you want to take a look inside!
the other side of Queensboro bridge
around the campus of Cornell Tech, which just opened this year
Known as Welfare Island from the 19th century until it was renamed in the 1970s, it has housed asylums, a workhouse, hospitals for the poor and a Smallpox hospital, as well as a prison (until Riker's opened in 1935). We didn't have enough time to really get to see all the history here, but more reason to come back.
I had intended to take a photo, but hit the video by mistake.
Just in time for squirrel surprise attack!
We headed back via the tram and then grabbed the subway at Lexington to 5th to get to Central Park for our tour.
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