New York City Trip 2019 is in the books.
The night before we were set to leave, my new Iphone 11 Pro arrived, because the Pixel 2 kept lagging and closing when I tried to take photos with my phone the prior few days and . . . NYC? Photo problems? This would not do.
However, when you get a brand new phone the evening before you leave the next morning, it does not occur to you that Apple has changed the standard photo format and all of your photos are going to be HEICs, not JPGs, which is going to cause all manner of problems when you are using the Google albums upload on your phone, expecting to be able to import them from your PC when you get home.
But I think I've worked it out, at least in terms of getting them sorted and uploaded for the blog.
Herewith, a photo tour of our 9 days . . .
Saturday Nov. 2
Sammi and I managed to get a row to ourselves!
now, see, this fun little shadow, in the phone album, is actually moving, which is cool, but is also way too big to have to deal with when you're talking about hundreds of photos, all doing the same thing.
(Plus, as it turns out, Google can't process the .mov video for the blog. Poop.)
We got to the room about 6:00 that evening, where Marci had already arrived earlier in the day and checked in. They put us in Room 803, which was the first time we'd ended up in a front of the hotel room instead of the back. We managed to change that Monday night.
The view of the street below. There is endless street noise.
we headed out past Times Square and took the subway over to Hudson Yards.
"The Vessel"
You can climb all 154 flights of stairs.
But . . . nah.
after grabbing a bite to eat and looking around at the shops and flower display, we were ready to call it a night and headed back the way we came.
Sunday, Nov. 3
So while Marci and Sammi kept sleeping, I kept my early bird hours and headed out to explore what Autumnal color might be left in Central Park.
I got there just before sunrise, thanks to the time change overnight.
When the sun got up, the leaves really started to glow
one last look from the subway staircase
deserted subway at 7:30 in the morning!
back through Times Square
where the furry rodents who roam looking for tips were just getting started. Despite me telling them I had ZERO cash, they took a photo.
the Showglobes just installed
After picking up the late sleepers, we embarked for adventures on our first full day of sightseeing.
pigeon face off
Breakfast at the Empire Diner
and then a stroll along part of the High Line Park, once an elevated train track, down to its end point at the Whitney Museum
this skybridge, no longer in use, was once to cross between the Nabisco bakery's buildings over 15th Street
when they say the High Line ENDS at the Whitney, they aren't kidding!
At that point, we needed to get back to Times Square for a bite of lunch before our matinee at the Schubert for Jeff Daniels' final performance as Atticus in Aaron Sorkin's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Jeff Daniels was in previews the last time Marci and I were in NYC, so when tickets had become available for November of this year, I snapped up three, with the hopes Sammi would be able to make the trip. Little did I know the Sunday matinee I chose would, months later, be announced as the final curtain call for him. No plays on Monday, and Tuesday, Ed Harris would be stepping into the role.
Monday, Nov. 4
Once again, since we were able to get to bed before 9, I was awake by 4:30 and left out again to catch the sunrise at Central Park, with stops around a completely empty Rockefeller Center. This would be the morning I would over do it, get completely turned around, and walk more steps before 8:00 a.m. than I usually complete in a day.
the line for Jimmy Fallon tickets -- I realized I would be particularly well suited to get on line for people since being up around this time is not a burden!
I loved the way the eastern light was reflecting off the bronze of the First Presbyterian
the Fifth Ave Cartier store was already wrapped for the holidays
in the crossing I could spot I was going to get to Central Park at just the right time
approaching the park, Pomona, the goddess of abundance and the General Sherman statue from 1903
and behind him . . . a new addition this fall, only sticking around for a year
The Horses (aluminum)
From the mall to Bethesda is how far I'd gone the morning before. This time, I kept going, past the fountain to the Bow Bridge, through the Ramble
I kept going north, up to Belvedere Castle, which was still closed for renovations last fall.
it was the leaving from Belvedere that got me turned around. I was aiming to hit the western side of the reservoir so I could cut out of the park to get to the 86th street station. This would mean I had walked from 45th to 86th.
However . . . when I hit the reservoir and looked across, I realized I was on the eastern-most side, looking across at the West Side iconic Dakota apartments. D'oh!
So when I turned around and then tried to cut out, I ended up at 90th -- a full 45 blocks (5 miles) from where I'd started the morning at the hotel.
I was still back to pick up Marci and Sammi, and check my step count just a little after 8:00!
This was poor planning on my part, as Monday was also the day I'd set aside to visit the cemetery where the Slocum memorial and my protagonist's family is buried way out in Middle Village Queens.
Before we set out, we stopped at the Clinton Street Baking Company for a good breakfast.
and then took the Delancey station M train all the way to its terminus at Middle Village, and luckily, right next to the All Faiths Cemetery.
In 1904, when the Slocum tragedy occurred, it was known as Lutheran Cemetery, but even in the charter, the bylaws allowed anyone of any faith to buy a cemetery plot there.
Since Manhattan had outlawed any additional cemeteries on the island 50 years prior, all of Little Germany had laid its dead to rest out here, passing over the Williamsburg bridge.
The cemetery is in two parts, split by a main road, so we went through the first part on the same side as the subway station first to find the large memorial to the unidentified dead (61) first
it had been unveiled on the first anniversary of the disaster by the youngest survivor, Adella Liebenow, who had been only six months old when her mother, her left side already on fire, leapt into the water clutching her baby with her right arm and was able to swim to the island. At 18 months, she dutifully sat on her mother's lap until it was time to pull the cord and reveal the memorial underneath. Her mother lost her other two siblings, two sisters, and two nieces. One of Adella's sisters was never identified and likely lies under this monument. The other option, sadly, was that some bodies were never recovered and washed out to sea.
I had this whole Slocum day planned and we had to cut out a good portion thanks to really aching feet. Here's what we did cover:
the bronze plate was stolen off the grave years later, and replaced by the etched marble later on.
Adella became the oldest living survivor, dutifully attending the Slocum memorial each June 15, even after it was moved back to Manhattan and the smaller memorial fountain in Tompkins park in the middle of the neighborhood of immigrants fated to sail on that Sunday School picnic voyage that killed 1021, 90% of them women and children.
The second survivor, who died a few years before Adella, also regularly attended these memorial days. Her name was Catherine Connolly and she was 11 years old when she boarded the Slocum, against her mother's wishes. Mother had been given tickets to take the younger siblings on the trip, but Catherine had returned to the grocer crying that there wasn't a ticket for her, and the grocer gave her one. Catherine lost her mother and siblings that day, the only one of the family to survive. She was packed onto the elevated train and sent home alone after surviving a ship filled with burning bodies and drowned corpses in the water all around her, to walk back to her home and be shouted at by her father and extended family asking what had happened to the rest of them.
Catherine died in 2002, at age 109. Adella in 2004, at 100.
The next place I wanted to pay my respects is to one particular family, whose 17 year old, Joseph, is the protagonist of a work that may never see the light of day, but that I continue to peck away at when I have the time.
The Vollmer family plot was in the north section of the cemetery, so we crossed the street and made our way over to the plot, thanks to online sleuthing.
This monument is quite large, suggesting a certain wealth of the family at the time of their demise. Joseph and his two baby sisters, called by Minnie and Maggie, ages 9 & 7, as well as his mother died on the Slocum. The father, also Joseph, left alone and bereft, killed himself a year later on the anniversary of their deaths. And the senior Joseph's brother, Fred, with whom he had owned a saloon that made the family's fortune, followed his brother a year later, in 1906, with his ashes spread over the grave of his family.
Joseph, Mother, Baby, and Minnie each have small bell shaped planters
and I don't know whose mausoleum this is, I just loved the copper door and red creeping vine
So when we got back on the train to get back to Manhattan, I had walked 9.3 miles so far that day.
therefore, the multi-block walk around the streets where so many of the 1021 lived was scrapped.
I did make it to the Vollmer's home at 123 First Ave, same building as when they lived there.
then we stopped for ice cream and sat in Tompkins park at the small memorial fountain, nearly worn away and generally forgotten.
That's it. The largest single disaster in the history of New York City until 9/11, and proportionally still the largest in terms of number of dead by population percentage, has exactly one small fountain in a park in the lower east side where very few visitors ever come.
We stopped in for coffee (and a bathroom) on our way to The Strand bookstore to cap off the day. The NutElla Fitzgerald was really good.
post Strand, on the way from Union Station back to the hotel
we we got back, Joey was at the front desk. Joey is the Brooklynite with whom I had shared some of the history of the place and spoken with on the phone about our stay before we arrived.
I asked him if we could possibly get a room at the back of the hotel, hopefully with softer beds.
He obliged. We threw everything in our luggage and moved it to Room 510 for the next 7 nights.
a few tokens from The Strand, and our aching feet had new socks to show off as we lounged on the softer bed
All told: 13 miles today.
Tuesday, Nov. 5
Thanks to the 13 miles the day before, this morning, I conserved what bit of leg strength I had left and got up with the rest of the crew.
We went to the upper east side this morning for a late breakfast at the Lexington Candy Shop & Luncheonette, one of the oldest diners still going.
Last time, Sir Paul McCartney came in.
Today, at the bar, were a couple of guys whose names the owner told me later, who are on CSNBC.
note the green blender behind the bar
one day, I'm going to make it here for lunch and a malted. They still use the 1948 Hamilton Beech blender that's been working for more than half a century.
from there, it was a short walk down 86th (the avenue I was trying to hit yesterday) to get to the Met
The Met is ginormous and impossible to take in. You have to pick a spot and just do that unless you want your brain on overload. We did the 19th and 20th century master painters.
a few random shots of pretty stuff as we strolled out
on the way back to the subway, we passed this lovely scene
and stopped in at the Red Flame Diner on 44th for a bite to eat
before returning to home base
Marci and I ran out to the Times Square M&M Store -- it's a massive two story place where you can design your own M&Ms and choose from every variety on earth.
(I wanted to get Joey something for helping us switch rooms.)
Marci got a bag of blue and white for her Cowboys colors.
Then we put our feet until Sam and I were out the door for Hamilton
Sam was a big fan of Pierre, Natasha, and the Great Comet of 1812, the Boradway musical of just one section of Tolstoy's War and Peace that ran 2016 - 2017. The woman in the part of Eliza (blue dress above) was Natasha on the soundtrack Sammi knows by heart.
Wed. Nov. 6
Wednesday Sam bailed on a bunch of morning walking before the theater, so Marci and I headed down to another diner staple, Eisenberg's Sandwich shop, since 1929
It's right across from the Flatiron building (1902, a year younger than our hotel) and Tiffany clock (1909)
Eisenberg's original counter is still in place
from 23rd, a selfie with the Empire State up on 34th
(P.S. the Avenues are five times the street blocks, so crossing east/west, 2 avenues is the same distance as 10 street blocks going north/south.)
The hippo ballerina (dressed as Renoir's ballerina you see above from our trip to the Met, and sculpted after the Disney Fantasia hippo) once held court at the Lincoln Center (where the ballet company calls home) but just relocated to 23rd last month.
We then caught the subway up to Grand Central Terminal
The $30 Million "bespoke" Pagani, with some its "lessers" ( between $18 - $28 mil) on display
The blue one, my favorite of course, was a bargain at only $24,000,000
we walked down 42nd to the Daily News building. As I have been going through every Daily News paper since it began in the summer of 1919 and have made it through 1931, I have watched as their building went up, as they advertised, and showed the beautiful globe in its lobby.
It is still there today, although the Daily News has new digs.
It was where they shot the 1978 Superman movie.
back out the 42nd and back to Grand Central, with the beautiful view of the Chrysler Building
we then sped over to the west side to Levain Bakery and the only Banksy mural in the city
their cookies are LEGENDARY
back to Times Square and over to Bryant Park, where the holiday shops and free ice rink have been set up for the season
That left us just a bit before Sammi and I were heading back out for the Hadestown show!
While waiting in line, we took in the garage rates that were posted
please note: no posted monthly rate, but if you have a luxury car (predominant among Manhattanites who might own a vehicle here), you will be paying an ADDITIONAL $337.91 a month.
Eurydice!
Orpheus!
The Contra-alto Fate!
Tim, who is 6'7, was kind enough to bend down
He is a member of chorus and Hades' understudy
and Hades himself, Patrick Page, showed up! (someday I'll remember which end of the phone the camera is on. Please note only Sammi knew.)
Thursday, Nov. 7
Since we got to bed earlier thanks to the matinee, I got back out for an early morning stroll around the area
close as I'll ever be to the NYE ball drop
We had tickets to enter the 9/11 Museum next door to the memorial before it opened, which meant Sammi and Marci were up really early and we were over at Ground Zero by 7:45 that morning, with time enough to find Dennis and Juliana (the little girl closest to Sammi's age) who was on her way cross country to Disneyland with her mom in the plane that was crashed into the second, South Tower, broadcast on live television and replayed, over and over, until it is seared into our collective conscious.
Dennis was my firefighter in the 9/11 stair climb at Red Rocks on the tenth anniversary
every single name inscribed here stood in the place Dennis' fiance stood after 9/11
nearly 3000 names, inscribed around the footprints of the two towers
Our tour was scheduled for 8:00 and we had the place to ourselves, all six of us with our guide, for the hour.
everyone remarked, looking back, on how blue the sky had been that morning, before the world changed. This photo was taken just minutes before the first plane struck the North Tower (the one with the antenna)
That blue, the memory of it, the way it could change in the telling, is at the heart of the large piece in the center of the museum. Every square is a different color of blue. There is a watercolor square for every person, 2,983 in total killed in the World Trade Center attacks.
a piece of the antenna, which I had taken of a photo of and apparently deleted by accident was a giant round thing I could step in and through, probably 6 feet around and 5 feet long. The illustration above shows how miniscule that section that survived was.
Stolen from the web
In the center of the museum, next to the slurry wall at left which has held back the Hudson river from the WTC for decades (reinforced during clean up to keep from drowning the workers) stands The Last Column. Throughout the clean up, it became a shrine and was treated as such.
the footprints of the towers underneath the memorial fountains above
At the end of the cleanup, in the pit
we dashed over to Chinatown for lunch at Joe's Shanghai
DUMPLINGS!!
and then we got back over to the Woolworth Building for our tour
photo of when the Woolworth building towered over everything else (at Starbucks next door)
Peppermint Mocha lattes for the subway ride back
The rain had settled in this evening, getting colder, no stage door, so after the play Sammi & I hit up the Disney Store before calling it a night.
Friday, Nov. 8
Marci & I headed north Friday morning for a late breakfast at Tom's. This was the day I regretted leaving the coat behind. All the other days, I'd ended up just having to carry it because I didn't need it. Today, I missed it. The wind was brutal.
I had to smile at our orders that included orange juice, which seemed like a great bargain until you saw the very tiny, but very cute, itty bitty glasses they were counting as your oj.
Right down the street was our tour destination of the day: the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine AKA St. John the Unfinished.
The Episcopalians wanted to keep up with the Jones, er, Catholics in Manhattan, so they set about planning a cathedral to rival St. Patricks.
In 1891 they purchased land formerly occupied by an asylum and started work in 1893. The first clue this wasn't going to go smoothly was the discovery that they had to excavate 70 vertical feet before they hit bedrock.
The needed bedrock as the plans called for the walls to be constructed around 8 gigantic, the largest in the world, single-turned granite columns. Each one weighed 130 tons and stood fifty feet high. They had to pay for a specially constructed barge to move them from Maine and just the column installation took more than a year. There is no steel used in the entire building -- it is stone on stone through and through.
The original architectural firm had designed a Romanesque styled cross building but when one of the two designers died in 1907, the trustees got into a squabble over changing the plans to be more Gothic in design. They ended up firing the remaining architect and brought in someone new to "Gothicize" the Romanesque design only partially completed.
The redesign still wasn't even open end to end until 1941 -- 50 years after the land purchase. And then World War II intervened and the church suspended any more work until it was over. Plans kept getting created, started, then scrapped. The dome was going to be replaced by a Gothic Tower, but it didn't happen.
There is a Gothic nave, a Romanesque Dome crossing, Gothic choir stalls, Roman arches and columns, and varying chapels done in French Gothic, English Gothic, Spanish Gothic, Norman, and Byzantine styles.
In 1982 they started work on adding a tower to the south, and used limestone instead of granite, so it doesn't match. It took them ten years to add the 55 foot tower, and then they left the scaffolding up for another 15 years until it was rusting away.
There are no plans to continue any other part of the building at the moment. The interior is undergoing a massive renovation due to a fire in the basement last year and the front portion is completely encased in scaffolding at the moment.
The bronze doors stand a massive 18x12 feet each, with 48 panels each depicting a different Bible story. Everything on the left door is from the Old Testament. Everything on the right is New Testament.
They were unveiled as "The Golden Doors" but the weathering from the elements means the gold is only still visible from the interior.
The Rose window, composed of more than 10,000 pieces of glass is also the largest in the world.
The Nave is 124 feet high and is the longest in the world. And our tour including climbing more than 12 stories on a tiny spiral staircase to the rafters above it.
Quite a few well-known names have had their funerals at St. Johns, from Dizzie Gillespie, Nikola Tesla, James Baldwin, George Balanchine, Mayor Laguardia, Jim Henson, and James Gandolfini.
the only portion of the altar visible above all the scaffolding is near the top of the dome.
The stained glass windows, though, are the real reason I am here.
To start, the Arts & Literature window over Poet's Corner
the full list of poets that have been included so far (they have to have been dead at least 25 years to be considered) and the line chosen for their marker (chosen by a Poet in Residence at the Cathedral)
we were there on a sunny (and windy and cold, but sunny) day so we were getting this great dappling on the interior
Fun stuff in the Communication window, from the telegraph to the electric poles, to radio and tv -- yes, that little framed thing he's looking at on the right is a television.
The spiral staircase on the start of the vertical tour. It got even more narrow at the top levels:
up and closer to the dappling effect from the sunlight through the windows
the rose repetition from the window through the interior panels
from the outside at the window level
note the differing use of color between glass makers: the warm tones on the left and the cool tones on the right
outside on the roof near the little rose windows
looking the other way, at Manhattan's skyline to the south
looking down on the grounds at the really weird sculpture (we'll get up closer later)
The final level, above the tiles in "the forest." It was in this part of the roof of Notre Dame that the devastating fire started.
From there, we hopped on the subway and went even further up north, all the way to the Metropolitan Museum's Cloisters.
And it is cloistered. You have to CLIMB to get to it.
On the top of a steep hill, is the Met's collection (over 5000 pieces) of primarily 12th-15th C Medieval Arts.
late lunch!
which gave us time to get all the way back down to Times Square and change for the Bavarian Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Saturday, Nov. 9
Last day! Marci and I headed out for breakfast before going to Roosevelt Island
on the tram, going up
the wavy building
peeking at the Chrysler
We walked to the south to check out the old Smallpox hospital ruins
Meeting our Rockette
the original seats
The tour was winding around the backstage areas, but since there was another Christmas show going on ahead of ours at 5:00, there were parts we did not go as we would obviously be in the way
the best treat was discovering one of the ladies on the tour with us was once a Rockette herself, in 1942! She is 97 years old
throughout the back halls are old costumes on display
we also got the see the tony Roxy Suite where the talents holds court before and after. It features 20 foot high ceilings covered in gold leaf (and 20 foot plush floor to ceiling drapes) and has hosted the likes of Samuel Goldwyn, Alfred Hitchcock, Olivia DeHaviland. It was original Roxy's apartment until his death in 1936 and has a kitchen, bedroom, and perfectly round dining room, designed so you can hear one another in an acoustically pleasing atmosphere, no matter what was going on in the gigantic theater below you.
Most everything in this room is original and unchanged since its design.
When the tour was finished, as had 5:00 show tickets, we were free to roam, since we'd already passed through security to get to the tour, and therefore would not have to go back outside to get on the long line to get in for the show.
the view from our 2nd Mezzanine seats was great!
everyone also got 3-d glasses for part of the show and Santa hats
the two organists at left and right of the stage would ride out before the start of the show, and then back in and out throughout the show. The white lights are snowflakes dancing around.
The stage itself is a marvel. The orchestra pits not only moves up and down, it can move under the stage and pop up from behind! The lights cover all of the ceiling and are used throughout.
The stage is 100 feet wide with four platforms that move on their own piston system, including the orchestra "bandwagon" which is its own self-propelled car, carrying the 35 piece orchestra and two grand pianos horizontally and vertically from front to back, going as far down as the subbasement level to above the stage.
After being dazzled for 90 minutes, we walked by the Rockefeller tree being set up, grabbed a bit to eat at an Irish pub, packed up most everything and then hit the hay.
Sunday, Nov. 10
So I snuck out early one last time and on my way out the hotel door, my foot kicked a rock, where it had been placed for some finder to discover. I tucked it into my pocket when I saw it was a painted rock, since without my reading glasses on, I thought I could examine it later. I didn't rediscover it until Tuesday when I put my coat back on to walk the dogs.
the lovely little sunflower with the sun and moon and the word "Yes" on the front
and on the back, just "Yes Stones" FB group
I looked them up, and this little rock travelled all the way from Scotland, to NYC, and now to Denver on its journey!
These light poles once lit up, but no more. They are diamond shaped, for the Diamond District. Walking down 47th street from Sixth to Fifth Avenue, nearly every storefront is selling diamonds and other jewels. It has its own synagogue! "The district grew in importance when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands and Belgium, forcing thousands of Orthodox Jews in the diamond business to flee Amsterdam and Antwerp and settle in New York City. Most of them remained after World War II, and remain a dominant influence in the Diamond District." (from Jackson's Encyclopedia of New York City)
ah, much better than among the mobs coming out of Radio City last night.
(But still surrounded by her scaffolding, which would be gone by the afternoon)
It had arrived Saturday morning, when the Today show crew was on hand.
The tree this year was planted in 1959 and is 77 feet tall and travelled from Florida
They will spend the rest of this month getting her decorated for her lighting ceremony on Dec. 4
a few other pre-dawn photos I took before heading back to the hotel:
And then a last few photos of the hotel
The final step tally average for the week came in at a solid 17k a day!
And, of course, a last look at the NYC skyline taking off from LaGuardia back home:
and the very last look, before she was behind us, I snapped this photo.
Because right down there under the Washington Bridge just out of sight, is the Little Red Lighthouse that we ran out of time to find.
Next time . . .
0 comments:
Post a Comment