By Caitlin Hawke

The idea of blogging a year in pictures -- old pictures -- came to me early this year.  I thought it would be an enjoyable way to populate this blog with regular posts.  After all, if a block association isn't about place, it doesn't really exist.  Ours thankfully is about place and people.

I do not have an official duty within the management of this block association, so it is easy for me to toot the horn for these volunteers who bring regular events and vibrancy to our streets.  And before these good neighbors, there were legions of others.  This blog's "Throwback Thursdays" is a tribute to this place and those people.  You can see the full collection of about 40 images here with further comments, dates and notes.

So, in the spirit of all the mainstream media hunger for "Year in Photos" sort of lookbacks, I offer here my answer.  A simple impressionistic gallery of darlings from the year's worth of posts.  The ones I could never cut.  Culled from many sources and spanning over 100 years in Bloomingdale, UWS, Manhattan, NYC, NY, USA, Planet Earth. In one solar system out of perhaps 500 or more.

These pictures are unique to our neck of the woods.  They come from me to you with a huge tip of the hat to NYC institutions such as the Museum of the City of New York and the NYPL's digital collections.  With commendations for putting means into preserving and making available your fine collections.  A darn good use of taxpayer and donor funds to my way of thinking.

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I welcome crowd-sourced images from the neighborhood for posts in 2016 -- as old as possible and before 1990, for sure.

In anticipation of your own photos, may 2016 be a year of urban palimpsests for you as 2015 was for me, walking our streets and seeing all the wonders that came before.  Happy New Year, denizens and neighbors of Bloomingdale.


P.S. If you like what you see, click through to the full Throwback gallery.  There's a lot more where these came from.  Subscribe here to receive future posts directly by email.

By Caitlin Hawke


Because, let's face it, many of us have a complicated relationship with this time of year.  And because there is nothing complicated about how I feel about keen observer of human nature Loudon Wainwright III, bard of Bloomingdale.

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For you, the clock is ticking. Just a few short hours remain until our itinerant, honorary neighbor François -- AKA Tree Man -- closes up his tree stand and is northward bound to Québec.

As many Bloomingdalers know, tree vendor François has been coming to the northeast corner of Broadway and West 102nd for the past decade, nailing up his two-by-fours, battening them down with tarpaulins, and tarting his temporary Chez Lui up with garlands of lights.  The fellow couldn't be more congenial or more wry if he tried.  If you are thinking, what I am thinking, yes!  He has a little St. Nick in him.  A lot, really.

How do I know this?  Some I know from the resonant and intimate documentary that neighbors Jon Reiner and Brad Rothschild (yes, they are Jewish) made.  Part exploration of NYC subculture-hidden-in-plain-sight, part love letter to Bloomingdale, this film delves as deeply into François's existence as he will allow.  He "moved" here for the same reasons you and I did.  But he's a private man who just wants to do business on our quiet stretch of sidewalk and get back to his family in the Great White North.  And yet he welcomed the filmmakers into his life and participated in what will become an annual must-see for neighbors.  It is, of course, not all about the trees.  In fact, the trees are window dressing. 

Sal's grandson, Lou, who bears the torch for this local business has a small part in the film, but it's the tipping point. Here "Tree Man" becomes bigger than the sum of its parts and moves into the realm of parable.  It's a gold nugget of a film about place and about lives colliding in that place.

In case you missed "Tree Man" when the Block Association joined forces with BAiP and the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group to cosponsor a screening with Hostelling International thanks to Paul Lindberg, you still have two chances to see it this season on successive Sundays at Symphony Space.

But to return to the trees, I am chagrinned to have missed out on this special neighbor who has left a mark on people that is deep enough for them to haul back to the catchment from deep inside Queens to buy the perfect pine at his stand.  Since moving to NYC, I have not been a tree sort.  My first quirky living situation was an apartment share with an unknown roommate. I moved in around Thanksgiving one year, just around the time she was putting up her tree.  I thought: "Charming!  This single Upper West Side woman knows how to lean into the holiday and make it hers."  But then the tree didn't come down on Twelfth Night. The cat chewed regularly on its needles, and I won't saddle you with a mental image of the result.  That tree was still up for Valentine's.  And as Easter approached early that year, I began to fret that the tree would be there until the Summer solstice.  I moved out.  But the scars endure.

Until François. He makes me want to buy a big, fat, juicy Douglas and stick it right in the middle of my living room.  And if you are smart and lucky enough to live nearby, you'll get your tree at François's stand since this man knows his firs.  He is a decent, hard-working neighbor.  And he is Bloomingdale's adopted son.

Cap on head, suit that's red
Special night, beard that's white
Must be François, must be François!

P.S. In the spirit of ecumenical holidays -- and Jewish filmmakers and their paean to the Broadway tannenbaum -- I offer but two Robert Zimmerman odes to Christmas.

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By Caitlin Hawke
h/t to the West Side Rag and thanks to reason.tv

"What was once a rundown dying section of the great city of New York has been recreated..."  This, of course, depends on your definition of "rundown" and "dying."

Despite its richness, the neighborhood around Columbus Avenue and West 98th and 99th Streets was considered blighted and declared a slum in 1951 under the banner of "urban renewal" effectively plowing over a vibrant neighborhood.  Robert Moses, head of NYC's slum clearance committee, had, according to biographer Robert Caro, an egregious hand in its destruction through the sale of these blocks to a developer who envisioned "Manhattantown," which ultimately made way for Park West Village, which is now surrounded by "Columbus Square." This 21st century envisioning of neighborhood living is for historians to evaluate in the years to come.  And one needs to dig ever deeper for the savory dressing in this urban "Turducken."

Why do I say that?  Because, the very premise upon which this plan for "urban renewal" hinged was false. The condemned village, now known as the Old Community, was not a slum. Yes, it was modest.  But it was home to an integrated community of artists and families.  Moses infamously said, "Someday you’ll thank me for these projects and forget about these people.”

Thanks to neighbor and filmmaker Jim Epstein, Moses is wrong (again): we will not forget these people, our neighbors.  Featured recently in the West Side Rag, Jim's film "The Tragedy of Urban Renewal: The Destruction and Survival of a New York City Neighborhood" is today's Throwback Thursday. A local neighborhood goneby but not forgotten, the Old Community is filled with unforgettable faces and stories.  Moses supposes erroneously.

For further information, see this piece by Kevin Baker.

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By Caitlin Hawke

Unveiled exactly 100 years ago, on December 6, 1915, she still sits tall in the saddle: our Upper West Side Joan of Arc.

There's lots of information about how she came to be part of the richness of our neighborhood, thanks in large measure to researcher Valerie Thaler who has spoken on the topic around town and at the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group series..

One particularly interesting historical tidbit: Mrs. Thomas Alva Edison did the unveiling!