Tag: USA

We were expecting rain today and rain we got, a steady drizzle all day as well as being warm and humid.

A perfect day to be indoors so we headed to the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA to its friends. It is billed as offering the finest and most complete collection of late C19th and C20th art anywhere and was opened in 1929. It was busy but well laid out with lots of space and many paintings we were familiar with including The Starry Night which was a huge crowd pleaser and its daytime companion The Olive Trees.

I had worried that fitting four art galleries into our trip might have been pushing my luck, but instead by the time we got to MoMA Joanna was pleased to spot another flag and a whole room of Pollocks and Chris found another Hopper so everyone was happy.

Ready for lunch, we headed for the huge food court below Grand Central Terminal where between us we had a hotdog, a pretzel, a slice of pizza and a steak sandwich. Grand Central Terminal is designed in the Beaux Arts style and with 44 platforms, is the largest station in the world. The main concourse has a barrel vaulted ceiling painted with a winter night sky of 2500 stars and is huge.

The four-faced brass clock on top of the information booth is a popular meeting point and apparently conceals a secret spiral staircase that leads to another information booth on the lower level.

The Grand Central Market sells every gourmet food imaginable.

There is even a spot you can stand on the lower level 20m across from someone else and the acoustics of the ceiling enable you to hear each other whisper … so we had fun with that!

The striking marble fronted New York Public Library was next and we went for a wander inside.

The most important stop was the Children’s Reading Room, where Winnie the Pooh and his friends from Hundred Acre Wood have been living for over 30 years, all in all relatively recent immigrants!

We also saw the Periodicals Room, the main Reading Room and Astor Hall.

Last stop was the Chrysler Building which was briefly the world’s tallest building but today is more cherished for its amazing Art Deco beauty with car motif friezes, hood-ornament gargoyles and radiator-grille spire, not that you can see any of that from street level so we had to content ourselves with a peek in the lobby.

As we’ve been travelling round on the subway, we’ve noticed a fair bit of art, mainly mosaics, and here is a selection. I suspect there is a whole lot more but it will just have to wait till next time … along with everything else that we’ve missed as that is all we have time for this trip.

We returned to the B&B and later went for dinner just down the road at The Grange where Chris had an amazing curry roasted romanesco broccoli and Joanna and I had the best filet mignon ever. A great finale to our time in New York where we have seen so much, walked around 50 miles in six days and had great fun together.

We’ll go our separate ways after breakfast tomorrow … Joanna back to Sydney while we continue to Boston … but it is only 85 days till Joanna in home to England for a Christmas!

We took the subway to the tip of Manhattan, where New Amsterdam began and crossed Battery Park to Castle Clinton which was built to defend New York City and named after a mayor in 1815 … not the later President!

The view across the water was grey … again!

Nearby is the Charging Bull, not originally meant as a symbol of a bull market in the stock exchange when it was installed in 1989, but that is how it is seen today. Apparently it is lucky to stoke his balls …

In front is Fearless Girl who appeared in 2017 and quickly became a feminist icon, and although neither sculpture has a permit, they seem to have remained due to public support.

Wall Street follows the line of the defensive northern boundary of the original New Amsterdam.

There was a market here where securities traders met and it has been the home of the New York Stock Exchange since 1865. The Neoclassical facade has huge Corinthian columns …

… as does Federal Hall where George Washington was sworn in as America’s first president and his statue stands outside.

We looked back and saw Trinity church, built in 1846 and the tallest building for 50 years.

A short walk down Wall Street brought us to Pier 11 where we got the ferry to Brooklyn.

We landed at Brooklyn Bridge Park, a redeveloped waterfront of parks and playgrounds, then walked up to Brooklyn Promenade with great views. We took a little detour to check out the smart brownstone townhouses of Brooklyn Heights built in the early C19th, once the home of bankers and financiers, and later attracting writers, although many have now been converted into apartments.

The Fulton Ferry District was once the hub for steamboat traffic and there are old warehouses all around. We couldn’t come to the US and not sample a burger, and Shake Shack came highly recommended so Joanna and I sampled the ‘Smoke Shack’ Chris went for the portabella ‘Shroom Burger’ and they we all very tasty.

Thinking we should walk off our full tummies we headed to Dumbo which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Locals thought this strange nickname would deter developers, but it failed and many of the old warehouses have been transformed into very expensive condos, creating a surreal urban landscape of old and new juxtaposed with the angles of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

We went in search of the fab photo op at Washington Street … which everyone else knows about too, and waited for a lull in the crowd to get a snap.

Next, up to the Brooklyn Bridge. This bridge is almost as much of an icon to New Yorkers as the Empire State Building, especially as when built in 1883 it was the world’s largest and longest suspension bridge for 20 years. We walked along the central walkway, careful to avoid the cyclists whizzing along beside us, and got great views as we approached the Financial District of Manhattan.

We passed the gleaming white marble of New York City Hall and outside was Alice, a news reporter from CBS2, recording a news item on reducing disposable plastic bottles by giving NYC’s 320,000 high school students a free reusable, stainless-steel water bottle.

In 1913 the tallest building in the world was the Woolworth Building. It is apparently decorated with white terracotta tiles, whimsical gothic gargoyles and reliefs of Frank Woolworth counting out the very nickels and dimes that made his fortune … but it is so tall you can’t easily see the detail, and they didn’t want to let us in to peek.

Joanna wanted a stamp and we realised this smart Art Deco style building was actually a post office!

Once the location of the Twin Towers and Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, the new World Trade Centre at present comprises 3 of the planned 5 towers, the tallest being the One World Trade Centre.

The 9/11 Memorial contains two pools representing the footprints of the original towers, each around an acre in size surrounded by bronze parapets inscribed with the victims names and some 400 oak trees. There is an extensive museum but we chose not to visit.

The Oculus was our last stop, above ground a striking white edifice with spiky steel ribs and below a futuristic transport hub and shopping centre.

The day had continued brighter than most, so we decided to end with a ride on the Staten Island Ferry to say goodbye to the Statue of Liberty. Amazingly this free service takes around 30,000 people to work daily not to mention the extra tourists and the crossing takes around 15 minutes.

We walked up the hill to Borough Hall for murals that depict the history of Staten Island. These murals were painted as part of The New Deal, a huge programme of public work projects to aid recovery from the Depression by providing government funded work for the unemployed. This resulted in some 200,000 works of public art across the country, many remaining. The first two depict Giovanni da Verrazano and Henry Hudson’s ship arriving.

It was certainly worth the trip as the light on the Statue of Liberty made for a couple of great snaps.

We had passed Ellen’s Stardust Diner on an earlier evening and seen a huge queue outside, but thought we would look again and managed to be seated after only a short wait.

This is the home of the singing waiters … a diner where the wait staff are wannabes on Broadway … entertaining us through our dinner. It was a novel experience and great fun.

And here is our waiter … Patrick!

Exhausted after another 9 miles on our feet, we returned to Harlem.

Our busy schedule felt as though it was taking a toll, and having stayed up late the night before celebrating Joanna’s news that she was coming home for Christmas, we had a slow and leisurely start.

We began with B&H Cameras, a famed behemoth of the photography world, and probably the largest camera store in the western world! I’ve been having more problems with my little Panasonic which feels like it has been a lemon since I got it and I snapped up the offer of an early Christmas present from Chris. B&H takes up a whole block and is on several floors and we were directed to the right part of the store where the Canon expert helped us choose. The process then got more complicated as we took the print out of the camera we wanted, stood in a line till one of around 30 assistants was free and he input details in the computer. Ten minutes later, our order arrived by a conveyor belt in a big green box under the desk and he input the serial number and details. We thought we could then pay and go, but no … he sent our camera off in the green box to collections … and us to the cashier to pay! So we stood in a line till one of around 10 cashiers was free and paid. Finally, we stood in a third line until one of around 20 assistants was free to find our goods! The store was incredibly busy as they were only open till 1pm then closed for a Jewish holiday for a fortnight, and we left at 1pm.

A little delayed, we went straight to Greenwich Village, now often called West Village, and the artistic and bohemian heart of New York since the 1920s. Once home to the intelligentsia, these quaint streets of brownstones are now sought after by celebrities.

John’s of Bleecker Street has been making crispy pizzas in a coal fired pizza oven since 1929 and is still family owned. We shared a large pizza with mushrooms and olives and it was delicious … crispy on the bottom and tasty on the top so our New York pizza experience was definitely a hit.

We walked to the nearby Bedford Street to see some of the oldest buildings in the city – no 70 built in 1807 by a sailmaker and court officer called John Roome …

… the tiny No 75 which was built in 1873 on what used to be a carriageway entrance and No 77 next door, known as the Isaacs-Hendricks House which was built in 1799 before most of the Village streets had been laid out.

No 95 used to belong to J. Goebel & Co whose name and symbol is still displayed above the entrance with the 3 cups indicating he operated a crucible in the building.

We also passed this interesting wooden frame house …

… and across the street the building used for the exterior shots of the Friends apartment.

Christopher was surprised to find a street named for him … cool red shoes!

Time for some more art, this time the Whitney Museum of American Art which moved to its present location in a Renzo Piano designed building in 2015. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney began exhibiting the work of living American artists since 1914 and was the first to exhibit Edward Hoppers whose work we had come to see … all 8 of them, and here is Early Sunday Morning …

… and my nod to Hopper taken from the Whitney roof.

Others caught our eye like another Thomas Hart Benton …

… one of Jasper Johns flag paintings …

… this interesting image called Mount Vernon …

… and a Frank Stella of Brooklyn Bridge.

We took the subway back to the Rockefeller Centre for our booked ascent to The Top of the Rock. Unfortunately the weather was hardly in our favour, and we got more pics of a grey, moody city!

Once down again, we headed for Times Square, the heart of Broadway, for some shopping and the lights. It is even more spectacular at night with huge billboards, bright lights, entertainers and bustle.

We had thought about catching a show but with so many also available in London, we decided to give theatre going a miss. Close by is the Radio City Music Hall, a stylish Art Deco building nicknamed the Showcase of the Nation. We did check the listings but decided to pass on a Colombian singer we hadn’t heard of!

… before ending the 6.5 mile day with salads in Juniors for dinner.

Our first sunny morning, so here are some pics of San Fermin Apartment, and the neighbourhood.

Our morning began with a walk through Washington Square, remembered in the title of a Henry James novel and containing a marble triumphal arch celebrating the centennial of Washington’s inauguration as President.

The Lower East Side has always been an ethnic melting pot, but at the end of the C19th it was predominantly Jewish with many refugees from Eastern Europe. That can still be seen in the local food as we stopped for breakfast at Yonah Schimmel for knishes, small pies with flavoured mashed buckwheat or potato wrapped in a thin sheet of dough and baked. The knish is claimed by Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians and was a staple New York food that filled stomachs for pennies. Our verdict was that spinach won, broccoli was ok and the one with buckwheat was a little too grainy.

Next stop is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to take a tour of this 1863 building which has been restored and tells the stories of the immigrants who lived here. We visited the Levine family’s garment workshop and the Rogarshevsky’s Sabbath table at the turn of the 20th century, when the Lower East Side was the most densely populated place in the world and the tour was really interesting, but unfortunately couldn’t take photos.

Just down the street, we were drawn into a ‘Perfume Pop-up’ promoting a range of new fragrances … and Joanna was caught on camera!

Black Seed Bagels was our lunch stop … because I just had to try a bagel with cream cheese and lox … the Yiddish word for smoked salmon … although Joanna went for tuna and Chris for chopped egg. There was a fair queue outside which was a good sign but little seating so we sat in a small park to eat them … yummy!

Fortunately, we had some exercise ahead and a short walk brought us to Soho, the neighbourhood ‘south of Houston’ We are here to take a wander round, mainly to see the cast iron buildings dating from the end of the C19th. It was a kind of prefabrication with mix and match components moulded from iron which was cheaper than brick or stone and enabled buildings to be erected quickly and cheaply. Not that there is much metal on view, because the attraction for architects was that it could be disguised with a variety of decorative facades. Several of the buildings were designed by Isaac Duckworth, including the ‘Queen of Greene Street’, a French Second Empire confection …

… and the palatial ‘King of Greene Street’.

Finally, the Little Singer Building, once an office and warehouse for the sewing machine company is now occupied by Mango.

This stretch of Broadway is the home of pricey designer boutiques, so we had to pop into the visionary Prada boutique …

… and slightly more affordable, Bloomingdales.

Broadway is pretty much the only road which defies the grid system and stands out on a map because it follows the line of an original Native American trail diagonally down the length of Manhattan Island.

A short subway ride brought us to one of New York’s most famous buildings, The Flatiron Building with its distinctive shape, squeezed into a triangular plot right on a busy junction. Built in 1902, this 20-storey building was hung on a steel frame and was one of the city’s first skyscrapers and we spent a little while trying to find the best angle!

Having missed out on Central Park yesterday, we took the subway to the southern edge then took a kind of zig zag path through the park. We knew it was big, but walking through, it just seems to go on for ever!

Generally there is a charge for all museums and galleries in New York, but a couple have admittance by donation for a couple of hours and tonight it is the Guggenheim and we are here as much to see the amazing Frank Lloyd Wright building as the art displayed inside. It may be a beloved landmark today, but there were very mixed views when it was unveiled in 1959. Solomon R Guggenheim was one of America’s richest men and with an eye for a sound investment, he began collecting modern art which is displayed in the purpose built gallery, with circular galleries arranged around a central spiral staircase. Not that we got to see much art however, as they were in the middle of changing the installation so apart from one small room with paintings, all we saw was the building.

We got the bus across Central Park to Hells Kitchen to find somewhere for dinner, and ended up in an Indian restaurant with an array of curry … and most importantly very comfy chairs as we were all exhausted.

Back for an early night I think after another 9.8 miles walked!

We started with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the greatest collections of art treasures in the world with over 2 million artefacts spanning 5000 years and most civilisations on earth and also famous for the fab view of Central Park from roof. Our focused visit began with the Egyptian wing, through to the Temple of Dendur …

… then on to explore the American wing, up through 3 floors where the highlights were the Arts and Crafts ceramics …

… and the Tiffany glass. We happened upon one of the museum guides talking about his innovations in making glass with different colourations and textures and also the way he twisted the plants round the supporting framework of the glass.

We stopped at this famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware and listened to the guide explain it contains maybe more propaganda than truth but is still an image beloved of Americans.

Next we headed for Modern and Contemporary art where Chris sought out Edward Hopper and Joanna and I spent a long time looking at America Today, a room-sized mural comprising ten canvas panels offering a panorama of life in the 1920s by Thomas Hart Benton. The bright colours and dynamic compositions drew us in to look at the details of farming, industry and city life.

We had to check out the Impressionists as the museum has an amazing collection of well known paintings, too many to list, and lots by Van Gogh including Wheat field with Cypresses.

Finally up to the roof for the view …

With few green spaces, city elders saw the need to create a “People’s Park” in the expanding urban jungle. So, in 1856, the city purchased a large, desolate plot two and a half miles long and a half-mile wide and held a competition for a park design. Over the next 20 years, the swampy, rocky terrain was transformed into a bucolic haven, full of scenic environments that were as carefully-designed as stage settings. The park quickly became a popular retreat for New Yorkers—particularly after the subway made it easily reachable. The park suffered from neglect and deteriorated during the 1960s and 70s, when it was teeming with vagrants, drugs, and crime. But in 1980, the Central Park Conservancy was formed to restore and maintain the park and it’s done an incredible job of returning the park to its original glory.

In the end we spent a long morning in the museum and were ready for a sit down so found a great lunch spot serving dips and Turkish bread.

We had planned to spend the afternoon in Central Park, but that had to wait, as our tickets to the Met also gave same day entry to The Cloisters where European medieval art and architecture is displayed, including the Merode Altarpiece which would be one of the highlights of an art study day I’m organising next year for my local arts society, and I had to see it! The museum is lovely, made to look a medieval building incorporating reclaimed cloisters from Europe and set in a park north of Harlem, but after a long day we focused on just the one painting … this Northern Renaissance image of the Annunciation, once owned by the Merode family, and managed to eavesdrop as a NYU tutor explained the painting to her class.

The bus stopped just outside and took us back the the B&B. After a rest, we got a second wind, so headed back to the city for the evening, starting with huge American sandwiches in the Tick Tock diner …

… a bit of shopping …

… and then on to The Empire State Building to see the views.

It was a great time to go as the queues were short, and we wandered through the exhibit of history and photos on the way up … all the way to the 102nd floor. It was built in just over a year, hoping to sign people up quickly before the full effects of the depression kicked in. The ploy didn’t work, as the managing company took till the 1960’s to break even, and most of the income came not from rent but from people paying to go to the top.

We admired the sparkly lights in all directions and returned to the B&B … having clocked up another 9.2 miles!

We thought we would start with an easy day, especially as Joanna had a long journey yesterday.

There are lots of different tourist ticket schemes here, and we have New York Explorer Passes loaded with several chosen activities and first up, we stopped here at the Rockefeller Centre to exchange our voucher for a timed ticket to visit the Top of the Rock later in our stay.

We continued down 7th Avenue, passed all the huge billboards and hoardings to Times Square, which was pretty quiet this early.

It was also really a bit early to be tucking into New York Cheesecake, but we passed Juniors, one of the city’s oldest bakeries and picked up a couple of treats.

We continued to the shore of the Hudson River, to find the Circle Line boat which will take us for a cruise and give us our first taste of Manhattan from the water, and munched cheesecake while we waited for it to leave.

Chris went for brownie explosion and Joanna and I picked strawberry and blueberry. We were pleased we tried it, but the portions were very large, it was very sweet and quite solid and we probably won’t have any more! In fact it was so filling, we skipped lunch!

It was a shame the day was a bit grey as the photos have all turned out a little moody but the trip was great, helping us to get our bearings. As we set off down the Hudson River to to the tip of Manhattan, the Empire State Building was instantly recognisable and seemed to be in every shot.

Turning the other way we saw another Circle Cruise boat …

… and also Ellis Island which was the busiest US immigrant port and processed over 12 million immigrants from 1892 to 1954.

Next up, The Statue of Liberty came into view, standing with her torch in the air and has welcoming visitors to New York since 1886. She was created in Paris by a French sculptor called Bartholdi and is made of sheets of copper which were taken apart for shipping then reassembled over a framework made by Gustavo Eiffel.

And yes … we were all there!

Returning, we got a good view of Manhattan dominated by The One World Trade Centre which was built as a memorial to the Twin Towers and at 541 metres, the “Freedom Tower” is the tallest building in the Western hemisphere.

The bright orange Staten Island ferry setting out certainly brightened the photo!

We turned up East River to a parade of bridges. Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, and connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Next up is Manhattan Bridge …

… and the Williamsburg Bridge.

A shot of the Empire State incongruously caught between chimneys and then finally one with my favourite, The Chrysler Building which is another Art Deco landmark and held the record as tallest building for nearly a year before the Empire State Building was completed.

We turned and concentrated on the other bank as we passed DUMBO, which stands for ‘Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass’ with cobblestone streets and converted warehouses and we will be returning here on foot a day or so.

A pair of bridges – Manhattan and Brooklyn …

A final photo of the tip of Manhattan with Battery Park in the foreground and the Empire State peeking through behind.

Once back on dry land, we made our way to the Highline, an elevated urban greenway made from a disused freight railway which extends 1.45 miles above the district of Chelsea. An increase in trucking made it obsolete by 1980 but rather than being demolished, in 2009 it was reopened as a public space.

The first part circled Penn Station with the huge new Hudson Yards development above with a red structure in front. This is Vessel, created by Thomas Heatherwick, as a new kind of public landmark: engaging and interactive, meant to be climbed and explored. Comprised of 154 intricately interconnecting flights of stairs with 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings – ‘Vessel will lift the public up, offering a multitude of ways to engage with and experience New York, Hudson Yards’.

We admired the views and the art installations as we wandered along.

We stopped at Chelsea Market, housed in the old National Biscuit Company (aka Nabisco) factory and the legendary home of the Oreo cookie … today home to a huge collection of speciality shops and restaurants where you could probably buy any food your heart desired! We had a quick look round, but still weighed down by cheesecake, we didn’t linger.

With almost 8 miles walked, we headed back to the B&B for a rest and later found another local restaurant called The Edge for dinner. It was billed as cozy and rustic with a menu reflecting their British and Jamaican heritage, spiced up with a healthy dose of New York. It was exactly that with Joanna enjoying mussels, Chris a vegetarian pie and me delicious spicy lamb shank.