The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

This one from the vault makes a nice diptych with last week's post about the Roerich Museum.  There's no end to my appreciation for the rich history of 310 Riverside.  In fact, you don't have to go far to get elbow-deep in the Horsch archives if you are inclined.

 By Caitlin Hawke

A heads up on two events for you this week.

First, on Monday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m., librarian Fred Michel from our local library branch would like you to know that author and civil rights activist Susan Burton. Winner of the 2017 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Social Justice Book Award, Ms. Burton will be discussing her memoir Becoming Ms. Burton with special guest and Pulitzer Prize Winner James Forman, Jr., a professor of law at Yale Law School. Her book deals with the devastating impact of mass incarceration and identifies the structural changes necessary to restore the lives of formerly incarcerated people. The free event is co-presented by Goddard Riverside, The New Press, and Book Culture and will be held in Goddard Riverside's Bernie Wohl Center at 647 Columbus Avenue (at W. 92nd Street). For more information, click here.

Then, on Tuesday, October 16 at 6:30 p.m., our friends at the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group have a program on the architects of our beautiful buildings! This takes place at Hosteling International New York, 891 Amsterdam Avenue (at W. 103rd Street). The flyer is below.  Here's more:

This presentation focuses on the most influential architects in the Bloomingdale neighborhood from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th--Richard Morris Hunt, Rosario Candela, Schwartz and Gross and others.

Before the  presentation begins, the first annual JIm Torain award will honor Peter Salwen. The Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group has established this award to honor the memory of Jim Torain, a neighbor who worked tirelessly to preserve the legacy of the Old Community where he grew up. The Old Community is the name given to the African American neighborhood that flourished on West 98th and West 99th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue--a neighborhood that was destroyed in 1955 as part of the city's urban renewal plan. Without Torain’s work, the history of this vibrant neighborhood, once home of so many talented and accomplished people, may have been lost to time.

I've written about Jim Torain and the old community on this blog here and here.

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

Born 144 years ago today in Saint Petersbourg, Nicholas Roerich is part of our neighborhood history. In the 1990s living just one block away, I learned of the Roerich Museum from a cousin visiting from Budapest who was horrified I'd never been not to mention never even heard of it!

Suffice it to say, this little-known pocket of culture dedicated to the painter, spiritualist and theosophist is worth checking out. Roerich's connection to Louis Horsch is a whole other saga.  It was Horsch in 1921 who financed The Master Institute of United Arts, which in 1929 became the site of magnificent deco 310 Riverside Drive, known as the Master Apartments! 

Read more below and here.  Spoiler alert: it doesn't end well for the Master mystic.

By Caitlin Hawke

I couldn't resist posting this 1934 ad from the Columbia Spectator beckoning neighborhood dancers from, wait for it, 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. What, may I ask, is even open anywhere at all on Broadway at 3 a.m. nowadays?

A cocktail for 20¢. No cover. No minimum Dancing all night. To my mind, it's pretty much what we could all use to take our minds off "other things."

For long time blog readers, you'll recall Old Algiers from these posts here and here. It replaced the famed Archambault where Mexican Festival now sits.

Clearly, they knew how to get around the longstanding Cabaret Law that was finally repealed last year.

By Caitlin Hawke

I've written again and again on the blog about the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group. They've adopted a tag line that really encapsulates their raison d'être: "discovering, preserving and sharing the history of our neighborhood."

Make no mistake: these folks hardly need any help filling their auditorium when it comes to their excellent public programs -- all free and all organized with deep love of history if not just of Bloomingdale but of all the Upper West Side.

Now, on September 27, comes a special treat: social and architectural historian John Tauranac with stories from his new book about Manhattan's mysteries and secrets, one of which, you will learn, involves the re-purposing of some stones taken from a French donjon.

Tauranac is best known as something of a mapper, and you know his legacy as chair of the MTA's 1979 map committee if you've ever seen this map!

If you go to the talk, here's a tip you'll thank me for unless you like the floor: get thee there early!

If you can't find the info you need on their site, you can reach the BNHG at (212) 666-9774.

By Caitlin Hawke

If you've been watching and waiting for the great reveal at the seemingly stalled-out five-plus year reno of the Schinasi Mansion (sold for $14M in 2013) currently on-going at 351 Riverside Drive at W. 107th Street by a former Goldman Sachs "honcho", then perhaps this will come as a diversion.

It's the building that occupied a site just one block north at 355 Riverside Drive, the Samuel Gamble Bayne mansion, named for the eponymous -- and fascinating -- Donegal-born oilman and banker.

Below depicted circa 1893, the trophy mansion utterly dwarfs the well-dressed man sitting on the right of the steps to the main entry.  The Bayne mansion's story was told admirably by Daytonian in Manhattan here. It lasted only 30 years and by 1921, Bayne sold the site to a bloke by the name of Harris Uris who hired Bayne's son-in-law, British architect Alfred Charles Bossom, to design what now stands at 355 Riverside. Bayne had lost his wife Emily ten years earlier and was tired of padding around the mansion alone. In an act of human resilience, once the Bossom building was complete at 355, he planned to occupy the 14th floor penthouse for a bird's eye view from his same beloved plot. He died in 1924, a resident of the Wyoming at 853 Seventh Avenue, a Bloomingdaler at heart if not in body.

By Caitlin Hawke

This image is courtesy of Terence Hanrahan, and it comes from unearthed signage of The Master Apartments now on display at the Master, 310 Riverside Drive. I have a lot more coming on this unique building. But for now I just wanted to post this as having been seen in the neighborhood in all its glory.

If you see special, quirky things as you wander, feel free to send along a picture to me, and I'll post the gems.  Email to: blog@w102-103blockassn.org

By Caitlin Hawke

Easily my favorite facade in our neighborhood, the Alimar stands at the northwest corner of W. 105th Street and West End Avenues. It's another story of buildings in these parts that have names and I will have to dig on this one. But for now, behold the Haussmannian beauty of this grande dame. Her copper bays and sumptuous detail. I have often wondered if she's prettier from the outside than from the interior. Maybe if you are a neighbor there, you will comment about the Alimar below.

By Caitlin Hawke

A little slice of life on Broadway and a nod to the Mom & Pops of yore!

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of Block Association newsletters for the benefit of new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read other pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

I am tagging this as both "One from the Vault" and a "Throwback Thursday" because it's that delicious.

First, a big shoutout to Ginger Lief for the feature, a charming, well-researched March 2006 piece from the Block Association's newsletter vault offering up names -- many long since lost or forgotten -- of the neighborhood's buildings.  Ginger's research reveals not only the names but the reasoning behind several of them. Often harkening to places in Europe, the names tell a story about who the neighborhood's builders were, and how they left their mark.

Having done a little research, I can add to Ginger's work about the building referred to in her newsletter piece below as the "Standoche" at 855 West End Avenue.

855 West End was established as the "St. Andoche," and the name came to be mashed up into the "Standoche" in various real estate ads and municipal documents.

But the actual name is two separate words, and its significance is connected to the builder of 855 West End, a famous Civil War era actress, Maggie Mitchell. Mitchell made her fortune in the play "Fanchon the Cricket," a stage adaptation by Augustus Waldauer of George Sand's novel, La Petite Fadette.

The second act of the play takes place during a festival, the feast of St. Andoche. Mitchell's shadow dances in the play, and particularly in the second act, were adored by theater-goers and garnered her fame from Louisiana to Massachusetts and beyond.

In 1895, three years after retiring from the stage at the age of 60, Mitchell bought the parcel of land on the southwest corner of W. 102nd Street and West End Avenue and built the building that stands there -- solid as a rock -- today. Since the role helped Mitchell earn her considerable fortune, it's not a leap to understand why she tipped her hat by naming her building for it.

Click on "St. Andoche" in the list below for more.

Like 855 West End, some buildings have been featured in my Throwback Thursday posts, and you'll find those links are clickable in the list immediately below. Others are still to come. I'll update this list down the line.


Our Buildings' Names
Broadmoor: 235 W. 102nd Street at the northwest corner of Broadway
Clearfield: 305 Riverside Drive at W. 103rd Street
Friesland: 235 W. 103rd Street at the northwest corner of Broadway
Haworth: 239 W. 103rd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue
Magnolia: 240 W. 102nd Street at the southwest corner of Broadway
Hotel Marseilles: 230 W. 103rd Street at the southwest corner of Broadway
Hotel Alexandria: 250 W. 103rd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue
Ideal: 315 W. 102nd Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue
The Master Apartments (originally The Master Institute): 310 Riverside Drive at W. 103rd Street
Rockledge Hall: 299 Riverside Drive at the south corner of W. 102nd Street
St. Andoche: 855 West End Avenue at the southwest corner of W. 102nd Street


If you are a Block Association resident and your building has a name (or had a name), yet you don't see it, contact Ginger, send me an email, or leave a comment below!  Crowdsourcing comes to Bloomingdale.

Enjoy!

By Caitlin Hawke


Manfred Kirchheimer has lived in our neighborhood for 54 years and his days of glory seem just to be getting going. Manny is an 87-year-old independent filmmaker. His documentaries are direct, personal, and driven by an aesthetic sense that can find narrative, meditative beauty, and social commentary in the claw of a huge excavator or a klatch of coffee-drinking friends.

Manny is a documentarian who received a Guggenheim at the age of 85, and a year later, in 2017, was honored by MoMA with its first retrospective of his films. The series unfurled over nine days with two screenings of each of his films and a world premiere of his film “My Coffee with Jewish Friends.”  The MoMA reviews were great.

The retrospective was the brainchild of Jacob Perlin, a sort of guardian angel of cinema. Jake is the artistic and programming director down at the Metrograph, now in its second year.

A little digression here about the Metrograph, which if you don’t yet know it, is worth the trek to 7 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side. Yes, you have to be able to tolerate its chi-chi side with a hipster restaurant-bar, not to mention the concessions stand which you just have to see and judge for yourself.

These revenue drivers, I suppose, are part of the business model to keep it afloat in today’s real estate market. But at its heart, the Metrograph is about cinephilia, screening archive-quality 35 mm films as well as new releases on state-of-the-art digital equipment. Quirky seating was made from reclaimed pine harvested from the now-demolished Domino Sugar factory. It’s a minimalist, gallery-type setting but that doesn’t stop the two-screen movie house from conjuring up the littlest film houses in Paris’s Latin Quarter, where you slip in and fall back in time.

The Metrograph has screened several of Manny’s films. “Tall,” Manny’s documentary about the American skyscraper and architect Louis Sullivan, ran there for five weeks and kept reeling them in.

The Metrograph-MoMA-Manny bridge is Jake Perlin. Jake became a celebrator of Manny’s work a while back and Manny now refers to him as his “agent.” The Jake-Manny story began when a cult classic of Manny’s film, “Stations of the Elevated,” went out of print from 1995 to 2014. It is known as the classic graffiti documentary.  Now a precious time capsule, it was shot over three weeks in 1977, released in 1980, and is somewhat surrealistic according to Manny. It forms a diptych with “SprayMasters,” which is about four graffiti artists in their 50s. Separated from “Stations” by 28 years, “SprayMasters” (2008) combines footage left over from the former with recent interviews of the artists.

VHS copies of “Stations” have circulated for years fueling its cult status, most recently on platforms like YouTube. Like all underground cult classics, it needed to ride again, but one major hurdle blocked it: the prohibitive cost of music rights. The score included Charlie Mingus and Aretha Franklin. To rerelease it meant to cough up $30K. That’s budget enough for two or three films, the way Manny works. So Jake rose to the challenge, got the rights, and “Stations” is back in circulation.

Perlin eventually found his way to Manny’s Broadway and W. 101st Street living room to see the documentaries on real film –- projected as they were meant to be. He quickly pulled in Josh Siegel,  MoMA's film department curator and, together at Manny’s home, they screened film after film. The idea for the retrospective was hatched and the rest, as they say, is history.

I caught up with Manny a few months ago and interviewed him. How was it to have this late career recognition? “It’s absolutely wonderful to have this moment,” he told me, “and it wouldn’t have happened at 40 years old. You have to live a long time!”

Manny retired from the School of Visual Arts in 2017 after teaching there for 42 years. He has taught for much of his career at places like CCNY, Columbia, NY Institute of Technology, and Philadelphia College of Art. But his movie-making days are far from done. “Dream of a City,” a tone poem about construction and other city phenomena, will be released soon.  He is currently editing his new film, “Middle Class Money, Honey,” based on conversations with friends and acquaintances –- from millennials to octogenarians –- about earning, spending, and their relationship to money as they live in NYC.

Manny emigrated to the U.S. at the age of five. Early on, he lived in upper Manhattan, including Marble Hill and Washington Heights. After a short decade in Rego Park, he moved to the UWS in 1964 where he raised his two sons with his wife Gloria, a partner in crime when it comes to the documentary-making family trade. For example, following Manny's documentary film "We Were So Beloved," which dealt with the history of the Jewish community in which he was raised, Gloria edited and annotated the interviews and these became the book "We Were So Beloved: Autobiography of a German Jewish Community" co-authored by the couple.

Before coming to our neck of the woods, the Kirchheimers had been looking for a new place for two years. At the time, Manny was filming “Claw” on the Upper West Side. It was Gloria who found the new apartment. Manny recalled that their original rent for seven rooms was $233, including electric. Suffice it to say, they snapped it up.

I asked him how he keeps his enterprise nimble and manageable. The secret, he says, is that he stays close to home. Because financing takes years, he keeps sets and travel to a minimum. He has a devoted crew, some of whom are his former students, and shoots only on digital these days. He can film for about $5,000 before getting to the sound mixing; that costs another $3,000. He edits the films himself -- generally a one to two-year process.

He filmed “Short Circuit” -- a rare fiction in his catalogue and dating to 1973 -- in and from his W. 101st Street apartment, much of it straight out his window. From there, his camera filmed westward straight down 101st Street to the undeveloped Jersey side of the Hudson, and south down Broadway with a good look at several old-time storefronts. Like the shot at the top of this post, the images of the neighborhood are excellent. And the documentary-style footage is remarkable for both how integrated Broadway is and the degree to which people on the street engaged with one another -- something that has been completely displaced by cellphone usage. The story is also one about complexities of race relations and socioeconomics. The following description comes from the Union Docs website where the film was shown in 2014:

"In his apartment on the corner of 101st Street and Broadway, a documentary filmmaker begins to question his interactions to the white family and black workers he shares his daily existence with. Staring out his window he begins to drift and fantasize a parallel life, which turns into a complex sound and image montage of street photography depicting a long­ since vanquished Upper West Side. Full of doubt, a lifelong city resident looks at his liberalism and doesn’t like what he sees. Constructed reality and documentary fiction, an unclassifiable masterpiece of ideas and technique that by all rights should be considered a landmark, had it not been virtually impossible to see."

One of his most well-known films, “Canners,” (2017) was largely shot on the Upper West Side. It’s about the industry begat by the 5-cent deposit on soda cans and water bottles. It’s social commentary and anthropology and art, rolled into one.

I asked Manny about the retrenchment of west side cinema, dwindling into oblivion before our eyes. He fondly remembered the 1986 screening of “We Were So Beloved” at the Metro, right around the corner from his place. And he recalled Dan and Toby Talbot, their New Yorker theater having been torn down, moving to the Metro for some years. The Talbots of course went on to build the Upper West Side's taste for foreign and independent film at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. There, this past fall, one of the last films Dan chose –- not knowing it would be Lincoln Plaza Cinema’s swansong -- was Manny’s “My Coffee with Jewish Friends,” which ran until the very last day of LPC, opening shortly after Dan passed away.

I asked him to reflect on his body of work. Like children, how could Manny point to his favorite of his films? He hedged by telling me that by financial measure, the most successful so far have been “We Were So Beloved” with “Stations” incredibly only in second place. I suspect that might change with more time.

But, he softened and replied, “Claw” was his favorite. Asked why, he explained “I think I sank my heart into it and then it came out so nicely. It’s a good film.”

You can have a look at a series of Manny's film trailers here. And keep your eye open for the next chance to see these in an art house.

Right under our noses lives Manny Kirchheimer, a filmmaker who is part of the city’s history, recording it, making it, while instructing aspiring filmmakers as to the ways of observing, commenting and documenting.

Until there’s a new house or Lincoln Center picks up on Mannymania, I guess I’ll have to say “See you at the Metrograph!”

I am embedding above a very short film on Manny made by one of his SVA students, Bianca Conti. If you are reading this in your email subscription, click on the blog post title to view this directly on the blog.

By Caitlin Hawke

The Alexandria was built as a hotel in 1916-17 and later converted to apartments. It's hard to make out but the awning below has "Hotel Alexandria" atop it in big letters -- well visible for travelers exiting the 103rd Street subway. The area had numerous hotels and the Alexandria was just paces away from the Hotel Marseilles built 11 years earlier to its east at the southwest corner of W. 103rd Street and Broadway.

The Alexandria is a 14-story classical revival stone and brick construction by architects William L. Rouse and L.A. Goldstone whose elegant work may be seen in many other buildings in these parts (Chesterfield, Allendale and Stuyvesant, to name only a few).

Live in the neighborhood and enjoy these occasional blog posts? Spread the word by telling a friend or neighbor to subscribe. There's a lot more in store!

By Caitlin Hawke

My guess is you'd have to have been born by 1960 or earlier to hear the name Vaughn Meader and begin to chuckle.  An old-time Bloomingdaler, Manhattan Mark, turned me on to this comedian and JFK impersonator whose 1962 album "The First Family" captured everyone's attention and won the Grammy for best album of the year.

It is hilarious. Good, clean, spoofing fun is made of JFK, Jackie, Bobby, Teddy, the kids and members of the kitchen cabinet.  Kids listened with their parents.  Adults popped it on the turntable after dinner parties. It flew out of stores as the fastest selling album ever with 1.2 million records sold in the first fortnight.

It was such a sensation that Kennedy quipped at one function that Vaughn Meader wasn't able to make it so he had come instead.

If you listen to the full first album at the bottom of this post (email subscribers, click on the post's title to listen to it on the website), you'll see Meader's spot on mimicry of Kennedy's accent and cadence and even the JFK wit.  It's so innocent and so clean by today's standards you'll be charmed.  And it plays as a very interesting counterpoint to contemporary comedians' take on the current POTUS.

To get to the UWS connection, the second volume, which Meader released in 1963, includes an adorable on-site interview with 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders at the Alexander Robertson School at 95th Street and Central Park West.  The first video below is teed up to take you right to the kids (you can rewind to listen to the whole record).  Make sure to listen to the first album when you have time -- the second video below.

The timing of the Volume 2 release was not felicitous, arriving in stores just a few months before Dallas. Meader's soaring popularity and lighthearted appeal had no place in the darkness and aftermath of JFK's assassination. The second album was withdrawn from stores. Meader's career never recovered, and he said that he himself also died on November 22nd.

That part of his career did go away, but Meader lived on through the tumult of the Sixties and had a few more turns to his career. He died in October 2004.

May 29th is the 101st anniversary of JFK's birth, and this is my nod to the legend that lives on.  And to a comedian whose timing was both excellent and terribly bad.

Above is an excerpt from Volume 2 featuring Vaughn Meader's visit to an elementary school on Central Park West and 95th Street circa 1962/3.  (To stream this in your browser if you are reading this via email, click here).

Above is the entire recording of "The First Family" -- Vaughn Meader's knockout comedy album of 1962.  (To stream this in your browser if you are reading this via email, click here).

By Caitlin Hawke

Note: For readers who prefer me to keep it hyper-local here on the Block Association blog, please indulge me today. It's a New York story, with traces of the Upper West Side. But it's a special occasion.


Losing Philip Roth is a body blow. I haven't processed his death yet, but I mention it because of the joy his writing has given me. Sentences that go on at the length of mini-novellas. Laugh-out-loud humor impregnating even the darkest of novels. Stories so imaginative, prophetic, true.

The magnetism of his narrative voice and sheer force of his imagination was singular.

And yet, as he'd announced and then enacted the halt of his writing career, I'd grown used to the idea that he was done producing and had chosen the Upper West Side as his home away from his Connecticut home. Over the last couple of years, there were many sightings of Roth near the American Museum of Natural History (he lived at 130 West 79th Street). And at 85, I thought hopefully, he still had a long time here with us. That comforted me.

When the Nobel brouhaha erupted recently, suspending the literature award this year, I thought: 'Philip hang in there old chap, 2019 is yours.' 

Alas, no.

Sort of like a Bizarro universe version of the Lance Armstrong Tour de France "victories" which now all have asterisks and blanks where his name once appeared, I propose that we ink in Roth for the 2018 Nobel-that-cannot-be and be done with it. Like swearing in Merrick Garland at the next possible chance. Because it's the right thing to do.

I know this is a very roundabout way of getting to Bob Dylan. And some readers may spontaneously link the two by way of the Nobel. Many felt Roth should have gotten it the year Bob Dylan did, figuring the prize committee would not name back to back US laureates. Some were outright scandalized that Dylan got it at all.

Not me. But it smarts that Roth's chances are now done.

Philip Roth and Bob Dylan are filed in the very same drawer of my brain right beside each other. Send me to a desert island and that's who I am taking. Just me and my American boys.

Their work provides a roadmap for our society. Rosetta stones decoding what it was to be American-born in the 30s and 40s. Creative consciences for when we'd veered off course. Commenters on hypocrisies peddled by politicians. And unabashed patriots whose Americanism defines them.

They are also wordsmiths unlike any others, Kilauea-like in productivity.

And so onto Bob who turns 77 today. I felt in the mood to celebrate him rightly.

I'm not asking you to like his voice. But it deserves a second listen. I'm not asking you to understand why he's not surrendered his personal life to the relentless tabloid consumer. But it merits respect and contemplation in an Instagram world, where Kardashians rule. I'm not asking you to sweep aside his 1960s self in favor of his post-Time Out of Mind full-bodied smoothness. But you could consider it. Nor would I insist you revisit the wrongly-reviled Gospel era. His born-again phase has already been born again with critics exalting it. If you live long enough, you see everything. And "Trouble No More" has been at long last deemed worth the trouble.

Bob Dylan contains multitudes, but he couldn't be what he is without his epic rise during his New York years.

Marguerite Yourcenar wrote that "the true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself."  What makes Bob one of us is that his true birthplace is New York City.

This I know.

At his post-9-11 concert at Madison Square Garden, we -- all 19,000 of us -- were broken, shellshocked sleepwalkers. No matter which song Dylan chose the night of November 19, 2001, he found a way to comment on what the city had just been through, how we felt about NYC, how senseless the attack was, how we mourned the victims. His lyrics are that encompassing. But the songwriter also chose his setlist carefully. "Waiting for the Light to Shine," "Lonesome Day Blues," "Searching for a Soldier's Grave," and finally "Things Have Changed." There were lines like the following pouring out of those songs, resonating against the 9-11 backdrop:

"Folk lose their possessions, the folks are leaving town." "I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'." "If the bible is right, the world will explode." "Some things are too hot to touch, the human mind can only stand so much." "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke."

With Ground Zero still smoldering and the spate of anthrax attacks fresh on everyone's mind, things were quite raw. And that night at the Garden, it was his references to our hometown and Dylan's own demeanor that were tenderest. With Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton alongside him and the rest of one great Dylan touring band, he launched into "Tom Thumb's Blues" with its "I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough" earning a collective roar. And then nearing the end of his performance, in acknowledgment of the roomful of pain, Dylan pronounced: 'No one needs to tell me how I feel about New York City.'

This provoked a catharsis because Dylan had just made it very personal, a rare glimpse of the flesh and bones behind the song and dance man. There are other wonderful memories of that night, but I'll keep it about New York for now. And New York Town's 77 year-old son.

In his honor on this day, I give you below Bob Dylan in a New York state of mind.

(Email subscribers: you'll have to click on the blog post title to see the videos on our site).

"Hard Times in New York Town," 1962

"Talkin' New York," live at Town Hall, 1963

"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," 1965-66

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," 1965 - One interpretation says this was Dylan slamming the door on the city's folk and protest singer scene. That of course could be disputed. I'm including it because it's hard to top.

"Visions of Johanna," 1966 - a slowed down live version from a Sheffield concert. The song references the D train.

I include these last two not for New York reference, per se, though the one immediately above is Bob's star-studded 30th Anniversary Concert at Madison Square Garden.  I'm posting these two renditions of "My Back Pages" as a birthday mantra: "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...."

Happy Birthday from New York Town.

By Caitlin Hawke

This is really a Throwback Thursday post, but I am putting it up a bit early because it is pegged to an event today, Wednesday, May 23, that I wanted you to know about. But first the facts.

Yes, in the photo above, that is famed tightrope walker and master of mystery Philippe Petit walking a line to St. John the Divine on September 29, 1982, to fete the construction of a new tower. If you look closely at the grainy newspaper image below from the Columbia Spectator, you  can just about make out a trowel on his belt that he was symbolically delivering across Amsterdam Avenue -- 150 feet in the air -- to the cathedral and its Bishop. A flourish to inaugurate construction of the south tower of the cathedral's west elevation.

So, the photo above depicts an authorized -- orchestrated! -- walk to the cathedral. You don't have to imagine it because there's film of it (if you are receiving this message by email, make sure to click on the blog post title to view the video on our website). And indeed the trowel is looped on his belt as he makes his way across an unbelievably taught rope in his deacon purple stockings, pausing once to kneel on the wire and once to do a stork pose, then bowing deeply over the edge of St. John's roofline to the applauding crowd. One incredulous spectator shakes her arms over her head saying "Oh boy am I glad that's over!"

Great, yes. But let's just say it was not Petit's first walk at SJTD. That was in 1980, and he went stealth that time as was his wont.

Many a New Yorker knows Petit was a guerilla walker extraordinaire. In 1974, his clandestine operation and magnificent stroll between the two unfinished World Trade Center towers on a 131-foot cable suspended 1,300 feet above the construction site by his merry cabal was first one for the law enforcers; and then one for the history books; and finally one for the spiritual coda of those two towers whose fate we all remember too, too well. I've included two snaps at the bottom of that walk, one where he has an ear-to-ear smile, presumably elated or high on height. And the other of him lying down on the rope. He also danced on the wire that day in '74. Giddy, lollygagging about, and perhaps toying with the powers that be who had no way to get to him. That walk was an act of hubris, insanity, and majesty rolled into one.

In short, so great was Petit that his 1980 tightrope walk, which was inside St. John the Divine, led officials there to name him as one of the first Cathedral Artists-in-Residence. Better to have him with you than against you, you might suppose they reasoned. But actually, the Dean of the cathedral was all for the interior walk. He just couldn't get his board to sign off on it, presumably for liability reasons. Petit, characteristically undeterred, went ahead with the 1980 nave walk. The cops cuffed him on his way down from the wire that day for trespassing; but the Dean, James Parks Morton, intervened and thinking quickly informed the police that Petit couldn't be trespassing because he was, um, an artist in residence, right, that's the ticket.

To this day, the funambulist retains his resident artist title. And he's walked a wire many a time since including once after the terrible fire that broke out in the gift shop to help heal and herald a new beginning.

In a 1999 New Yorker piece by Calvin Tomkins, Petit was quoted as saying:

“When you think about it, wire walking is very close to what religion is. ‘Religion’ is from the Latin religare, which means to link something, people or places. And to know, before you take your first step on a wire, that you are going to do the last one—this is a kind of faith.”

Dean Morton told Tomkins that Petit was "one of the most religious people [I know]....Sometimes very unusual people turn out to be the most religious....I think of this as God’s joke.”

I do believe he believes. Just not in terrestrial authorities.

I love that he has this connection to our neighborhood. Since 9-11, Petit to me is an anthropomorphic poem. He's our living link to the towers he owned for a mid-seventies day. Religare.

In Bloomingdale, we live in the shadow of SJTD, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, or if you prefer, one of the five largest church buildings in the world. You'll agree that its secrets -- like the Petit tales -- and its history are poorly known.

One place to rectify that is with the romp of a Bowery Boys podcast episode devoted to the cathedral -- I'm embedding the audio below. (If you are receiving this by email, please click on the title of the blog post to view the video on our website.) And if you can go to SJTD tonight, May 23, for $125 you can celebrate with the Bowery Boys the 125th anniversary of the ground breaking.

Probably tickets are sold out for the birthday bash. But tell me you weren't tempted!

Replete with peacocks, Greek revival remnants of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum of 1843, and the little rope-walking giant, the cathedral is a neighborhood gem, a work in progress, ours to cherish, and ours to divine.

The link above is to the Bowery Boys podcast #262: Secrets of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. You may not love their style, but stick with it for lots of great historical information.

By Caitlin Hawke

This year's Block Association's Spring Planting Day got me thinking (click the link to see the gallery if you missed it). Where and when did this tradition all begin?

I did some digging and found an interesting piece in the NYT that seems to explain pieces of our history I'd never heard. Specifically, that our Block Association began in 1967 on West 103rd Street with a planting and beautification initiative. West 102nd Street was rolled in quickly and about four years later, the Block Association as we know it formally launched, as can be seen in our first newsletter in 1971 here.

Going back all the way to June 25, 1967, 51 years ago, the Times article below recounts how four local mothers had recently come together, mailed out letters to neighbors asking for funds for the improvement of West 103rd Street between Riverside and Broadway, and collected $1201 to buy London plane trees -- the then-favorite trees for our streets because it "grows fast and withstands city pollution."

So there you have it in a nutshell. Our Block Association's raison d'etre: the planting of trees to improve our environment. It's just second nature to the B.A. Hence the twice-yearly tradition of beautifying tree wells, of gently coaxing residents out to assist, of collecting funds to make it possible, and of liaising with the city to keep the greening going when a tree is lost or maimed.

In retrospect, it's pretty great that by the 1971 inaugural issue of the B.A. newsletter, the association already boasted 400 contributing members and had raised enough dough to plant 45 trees! Not too shabby at all.

So when you are walking around enjoying the leafing-out season, consider any tree that looks about 50 years old, and whisper an ode of gratitude to that founding crew -- starting with those four moms -- who planted and planted and planted. They made this such a beautiful neighborhood. And many continue today in their spirit, also thanks to the groundwork they laid in establishing the W. 102-103 Streets Block Association.

If you haven't stepped out or up to help the Block Association this year, it isn't too late. You can join anytime right here.

Because the image below is a little blurry, I am including a pdf file above that you should be able to click on and download.

Live in the neighborhood and enjoy these occasional blog posts? Spread the word by telling a friend or neighbor to subscribe. There's a lot more in store!

By Caitlin Hawke

Our friends over at the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group have yet another great talk in store for this week. Eliza Jumel (as in Morris-Jumel Mansion) is the subject, and there are few as fascinating in the back pages of Upper-upper West Side history. I don't want to put out any spoilers, but trust me that her life is chock full of gobsmacking tidbits.

I'll offer up just one: she married Aaron Burr who was 19 years her senior and within four months realized her fortune might be at risk and then separated, choosing Alexander Hamilton, Jr. as her attorney. Their divorce was finalized on the day that Burr died in 1836, yet Eliza lived on nearly another 30 years, reaching the age of 90 in 1865. And that wasn't the only time she saved her fortune.

See, I told you!

But that's nothing. Her father was a sailor and her mother was an indentured servant. She spent part of her childhood living in a brothel. That's the rags from which she rose. She took to the stage, met the merchant Stephen Jumel, became a francophile and amassed a tremendous art collection and ended up as one of the richest women in New York City.

I know, I know. You're coming to the talk.

It takes place on Thursday, April 19, at 6:30 p.m. at Hostelling International NYC (891 Amsterdam Avenue at W. 103rd Street). It is presented by art historian Margaret Oppenheimer, author of The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel: A Story of Marriage and Money in the Early Republic will discuss Mme. Jumel’s art collection — over 240 paintings acquired in Paris at the beginning of the 19th century.

A word to the wise: get there early. You can never get a seat anymore!!

By Caitlin Hawke

This Saturday, the Friends of Straus Park will hold a remembrance for the victims of the April 15, 1912, sinking of the Titanic. The flyer below gives the details; everyone is welcome to attend.

You've gone by Straus Park hundreds of times. We forget how the community came together to beautify this triangle and dedicate it to the memory of Ida and Isador Straus (co-owner of Macy's) who were aboard the RMS Titanic when she went down.

I've written in prior posts about how the triangle was first named for Philip Schuyler in 1900. Just fifteen years later, the park was dedicated to the memory of this local couple, who perished aboard the Titanic. (I wrote about that dedication here in a post with beautiful "Throwback Thursday" pictures.)

Since then, the park has of course been home to our resident statue of Audrey Munson, the sculptor's muse extraordinaire. Munson posed for the allegorical sculpture of "Memory" by Henry Augustus Lukeman. "Memory" is uncommonly photogenic as memorials go.

Fast forward a century and the park is our neighborhood respite seated at the trivium of Bloomingdale. Dramatic in snow and exuberant in spring, it's a haven for workers, neighbors, children and parents, bus drivers, and other passersby. As Manhattan pocket parks go, to my mind, it's second only to Gramercy Park. And you don't need a key!

Last May, I was walking through and came upon the beautifiers in hortico flagrante, so I grabbed my camera. The shots in the gallery below were some of the images I captured, and all around the border of the part, people were perched on benches enjoying that one particularly fine day.

From icebergs spring allium where Memory now persists.  Safe in her haven, she sleepily points us back to the unsinkable great ship that went down and those who lost their lives 106 years ago.

By Caitlin Hawke

Readers seemed to have loved the reference to Childs in my last Throwback Thursday post.  Some of you still remember the actual restaurants.  But Jimmy Roberts wins the prize for pointing out the Rogers & Hart reference to the chain in "I'll take Manhattan."  I am including it at the bottom of this post as your lagniappe...you know the drill if you're reading this in an email subscription: you have to click here or on the post title to see the video.

You got me all curious about the SE corner of West 102nd Street and Broadway again.  You'll recall the recent post of the matchbook covers from the Childs' restaurant "Old Algiers" here. That then led to this post about the corner where Mexican Festival is that used to be home to both Old Algiers and its predecessor, Archambault.

My menschy friend, author and postcard collector Michael Susi,  kindly sent the images below. Black and white versions of these appear in his wonderful book of postcards, The Upper West Side. It's a book you've seen and leafed through and a book worth having -- not necessarily for the images alone!  His captions pack a wealth of historical detail into just a line or two.  And that's where I first discovered the Archambault.  Michael tells me that the eponymous Mr. Archambault also owned the Hotel Belleclaire which is having a renaissance now.

Again, if you haven't read Pam Tice's piece on dining out back in the day in Bloomingdale, you will enjoy it. She also references the restaurant at 102nd Street.

Michael says that a postcard image of Old Algiers' exterior will be hard to come by since its time falls outside the golden age of these postcards.  But behold these two beauties. 

I want to say just meet me there tonight for dinner.

Here's a side by side just for the kick of it.  Thanks, Michael!

Above is a clip from "Makers of Melody," the short 1929 film featuring Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart's first blockbuster, "Manhattan," as in We'll have Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, too....

It was their first hit song and quickly became part of our DNA. In the film, Ruth Tester and Allan Gould play a "boy and goil" in love, and if you listen closely at the 2:02 mark, you'll hear the reference to the Childs restaurant chain, courtesy reader and musician Jimmy Roberts.  (The Childs connection to the SE corner of W. 102nd Street and Broadway is explained here.)

Excerpt from the song "Manhattan" by Rogers & Hart

We'll go to Yonkers
Where true love conquers
In the wilds.
And starve together, dear,
In Childs'.
We'll go to Coney
And eat baloney
On a roll.
In Central Park we'll stroll,
Where our first kiss we stole,
Soul to soul.
Our future babies
We'll take to "Abie's
Irish Rose."
I hope they'll live to see
It close.
The city's clamor can never spoil
The dreams of a boy and goil.
We'll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy.

By Caitlin Hawke

Back long ago, there was the Old Vienna and then the New Vienna -- both restaurants once right here in the catchment that I featured in a Throwback post a couple years back.  I've been digging around to find more on those and in the process, I landed square in Old Algiers!  Thanks to these matchbooks below, I feel sure that back in the day, all an armchair traveler had to do was make a quick call to ACademy2-3263 for a reservation at this place which conjures souks and ceiling fans, spice markets and hookahs, mezze and grillades.  Then, too, there was the dancing and the open-all-night appeal.

Pam Tice did yeoman's work on dining in the neighborhood over the decades here at the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group.

By Caitlin Hawke

A little over a year and a half back, thanks to this blog, I received a message from New York Times journalist and editor, Daniel J. Wakin. Virtually a lifelong Bloomingdaler with the exception of two stints abroad for the Times, Dan told me he had a book in the works about our neighborhood that he was researching. I was captivated by his conceit: to bring to life the seven buildings along Riverside Drive between W. 105th and 106th Streets by telling the tales of the people who lived there.

I knew the block well as I had my first and only prime lease in one of these "Seven Beauties" as Dan calls them. So I quickly connected Dan to Gil Tauber and Jim Mackin, two pillars of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group (for more on BNHG, see below).

From one of his walking tours, I knew Gil had traced Nina Simone to 336 Riverside (though additional information has been elusive in confirming her residency). Many people know that Duke Ellington lived for a time at 333 Riverside with his sister Ruth and his music company was based there as well. His son Mercer lived next door at 334. This explains the origins of Duke Ellington Boulevard, aka W. 106th Street.

So while some of the characters of this beautiful block were known to me (Julia Marlowe, Marion Davies, Saul Bellow), I'd never heard of Bennie the Bum -- Bernard McMahon -- a bootlegger who worked with Legs Diamond and holed up right here at 334 Riverside Drive with a maimed knee after a $428,000 cash heist from an armored car at the Rubel Ice Company. Given the title of Dan's book, I will leave to your imagination what becomes of Bennie.  But let's just say he never had much use for boots again.

I wrote a little about Dan's book "The Man With the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block" here, and Dan kindly agreed to sit down with me for an interview just as his book was set to publish on January 23. What follows is my exchange with this son of Bloomingdale. What I didn't know was how in sync I would feel with Dan's love of the layers of our streets.  In some parts of the interview, had I not known he was describing our neighborhood, I would have recognized it all the same.

If you are interested in encountering these long-gone neighbors of yore, grab Dan's book here. It's a wonderful read for anyone who loves to imagine both what lies behind these beautiful facades and, of course, who came before us.  You'll also find Dan lecturing for Landmark West on February 21.

Enjoy!

An Interview with Bloomingdaler Daniel J. Wakin
Author of "The Man With the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block"

Caitlin Hawke: I know you grew up on W. 106th and then moved away. So, can one go home again?
Dan Wakin: You can if home is an amazing, variegated, vibrant neighborhood in a city that half the world wants to come home to. Can you go home again to your childhood house? Yes, with emotional complications.

I was born in 1961, moved away for college and returned to the neighborhood after graduation. I lived on 109th and Amsterdam then 113th between Amsterdam and Broadway (commuting to Newark, N.J., where I was covering the federal courts). I was then assigned in 1992 as a correspondent to the Rome bureau of The Associated Press, spent six years there and then became news editor for southern Africa, based in Johannesburg. We moved back to my childhood home on W. 106th in 2000.

Caitlin: What appeals to you about the neighborhood and how did you deal with returning to your childhood home to live as adult?
Dan: I like living in a neighborhood that is a place people come home to after work, but is still a truly commercial, vibrant, urban scene with big institutions and diverse populations. It's both cul-de-sac and destination, a zone apart yet a hub of its own. It's a fundamentally unpretentious place that will never successfully put on airs, where comfortable dowdiness and frayed elegance exist side by side with tenement life, strivers and college students. Riverside Park is our back yard and you can see the river, a reminder of our island city status. (Peace, Bronx.) Sadly though, many of the apartments are way beyond the means of middle class people. By neighborhood I'm talking RSD to CPW and 96th to 116th.

I solved the melancholy of nostalgia for my childhood by reveling in the great life my boys were making for themselves as they grew up here.

Caitlin: Yes, I size you up as a fairly nostalgic person. That can be a dirty word in the boom-boom times of NYC real estate. Do you really think of yourself as nostalgic - even for a day that preceded your time on earth such as the times you write about in your book?
Dan: I wouldn't say I'm a nostalgic person. As journalists, we're very un-nostalgic - always looking for the new or the unknown or the unrevealed. But I do have a strain of nostalgia, which helped make this book something of an escape from the day-to-day. And I do feel pangs when a favorite store or building disappears. Then, when I realize how quickly you forget those old places, and the new becomes part of the scenery, I realize I'm not as nostalgic as I thought. Development vs. preservation is one of the major storylines of New York City. I'm not an activist nor an investor, but an observer fascinated by the duet. I also love sunlight and air and historical rootedness. Often when I think about wanting to live in another time on earth, I wallow briefly but then I think back to how lousy it was for large classes of people and then I'm not so nostalgic.

Caitlin: How do you feel about the changing architectural profile of the UWS?  
Dan: This is hard to answer - the development on Columbus Avenue in the high 90s is so different from the high rises popping up in the 70s and 80s, for example. The architectural profile of the UWS has always seemed a glorious corned-beef hash to me. Some glass towers in the mix are not terrible. Though I'd hate to lose all the tax-payers on Broadway.

Caitlin:  What do you miss most in the neighborhood from the time you were growing up?
Dan: Again, hard to answer. I was a kid then, and an adult now. Those are two very different kinds of people. If I can project myself into childhood now, I'd say I'd miss the passel of kids that hung around on the sidewalk after school or during the summer and played street games or demonstrated an enjoyable idleness.

Caitlin: Let's talk a little about your book. I wanted to congratulate you on the publication. It reads to me as very much as an ode to Bloomingdale, and in particular to that beautiful block of Riverside Drive from 105th to 106th Street.
Dan: Thank you!

Caitlin: You gave a standing-room-only talk on January 17 for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group, and something struck me: you showed very few pictures of the bricks and mortar. This book is not an architectural romp through time, it's about the flesh and bones that inhabited these grand buildings over a certain era.
Dan: Yes, good point. I am deeply fascinated by this stark contrast: between permanent structures of brick and stone, eternally there, standing in the same spots from my childhood to my middle age to long after I'm gone, and the countless generations of human beings who have lived, died and disappeared from memory inside those walls. Soft, evanescent flesh vs. hard, permanent bricks. Memories, stories, experiences vs. urban topography with its own meaning.

Caitlin: Yes, what a wonderful idea to dig into the insides of buildings. We tend to fixate on the exteriors since we can access the architectural and construction details more easily. What historical, governmental, archival or other records did you find most useful for the physical history of the buildings?
Dan: The City Register, Department of Buildings web sites, The Real Estate Record (at Columbia University and online) and newspaper electronic archives.

Caitlin: And for the personal histories of the "characters"?
Dan: Private archives, published memoirs, corporate histories, court and government records, census records, city directories.

Caitlin: What was the hardest part of getting to the people who inhabited or passed through your buildings?
Dan: Except for famous names like Duke Ellington and Marion Davies, they were not quite at the level of fame to have much preserved about them or biographies written. Although I was just contacted by a researcher - after my book was published - who said there is an unpublished memoir by Lothar Faber, of the pencil family, that mentions 335 RSD!! Oh well.
 
Caitlin: Yes, you have to eventually go to press. But I know what you'll be reading soon! So what most eluded you or bedeviled you in your research? And what darlings did you have to kill for lack of flesh you were able to recreate?
Dan: Some of the characters were just not super fascinating. I mean, how many of us are? I'm bedeviled by the feeling that if I had just spent more time digging, scrounging, reading, etc., I could have provided a fleshier picture. But you have to cut off the hunt sometime. Biggest footage on the cutting room floor is more detail about the works of the poor artist Michael De Santis, who painted portraits of Columbia professors and died destitute, a boarder at 337 RSD. I left out details of my mini-tour of the sites where his pictures remain, and the paintings that Columbia has in storage, and efforts to restore some of them. My smart editor also had me cut excessive detail about minor criminal characters. The cast of extras just got too large.

Caitlin: So which of the "Seven Beauties" is your favorite on the outside?  And which had the best characters on the inside?
Dan: River Mansion at 337 Riverside Drive. I feel a real connection from my childhood, because I grew up a few doors away from it. In some weird way, I connected it with Miss Havisham's house from "Great Expectations," a book I loved growing up. It's also the most interesting building of the bunch, with the stark contrast between the limestone ornamentation and red brick.

Caitlin: I agree and having lived right next to it, I often imagined how beautiful it must be inside. So who were the best characters in your research?
Dan: Marion Davies who lived at 331 Riverside was a live wire. Michael De Santis, the artist, in 337 Riverside makes me feel melancholy. And the gangsters of 334, of course, are the juiciest.

Some of the "characters" who have lived in the Seven Beauties on Riverside Drive:
Actresses Julia Marlowe and Marion Davies and Nobelist Saul Bellow (Credit: R. Meek)

Caitlin: And of all the people you researched, who do you most wish you could hang out at Henry's with for a beer and an interview?
Dan: That would be Jokichi Takamine, the Japanese scientist who overcame opposition from rivals and anti-Japanese sentiment and isolated adrenaline. How could he fire his mother-in-law, who helped set him up in the U.S., as president of his company? How did he feel living three doors away from the mistress of the man [newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst] whose newspapers so atrociously whipped up fears of the "yellow peril?" Is it true he denied partial credit for his adrenaline discovery to his long-suffering assistant?

Let me also say that meeting one of the great musical figures in American culture - Duke Ellington - would be incredible. And I'm sure Henry's would have been particularly delighted to have him there.

Caitlin: Yes!  The ghost of Birdland would approve, too.  So as we near the end of our interview, I wondered if you would reflect.  Your book focuses on a pretty tiny slice of New York City. Does it tell us anything about the city as a whole?

Dan: I think it does. You could dig deep into lots of individual blocks in New York and find some pretty interesting stories. But the mix of people in these particular townhouses really does get at the essence of what makes the city so great. Here you have manufacturers from a century ago who made stuff we still use today living next to actors, writers, builders, inventors and a gang hideout. They all came to this place to make a buck or make a mark, and did it living shoulder to shoulder. Surely their paths crossed directly, and sometimes without them even knowing it. That amazing mix is really the essence of New York. And we living in this town are all part of that mix, and can rightfully claim that history as our history. Gangsters? Inventors? Famous actors? Heiresses? Indigent artists? They're all just our neighbors.

Caitlin: With this book and your NYT byline, you've now left a trail of electronic breadcrumbs for a future researcher to write about at least one of inhabitants of your building. Can you give me some stories that a researcher could never find about your family, growing up on W. 106th, the mark you hope you'll have left?
Dan: At this point, I'll retreat to the journalist's stance and say I'd rather tell the story than be part of the story. But thanks for asking!

Caitlin: OK, so "Game On!" for the next generation of researchers. Many thanks both for your time and for giving Bloomingdalers this great new source. I don't go by those buildings anymore without thinking of Legs Diamond's boy Bennie the Bum, Bellow, baking powder, and the Duke.



Note: I wrote recently about Dan Wakin's January 17 talk presented by our good neighbors at the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group. If you don't yet know the group, you might be interested in their self-described pursuit:  Discovering, preserving and sharing our history. The tend to concentrate on the neighborhood known as Bloomingdale but sometimes they toss in a too-good-to-pass-up talk on some aspect of Upper West Side history. You'll see their upcoming events right on the BNHG home page.

By Caitlin Hawke

Oh, Bloomingdalers! You are in for a treat.  Journalist and author Daniel J. Wakin will be presenting at the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group's meeting on Wednesday, January 17th, at 6:30 p.m. at Hostelling International New York.  For several years now, he's been researching his obsession: Bennie the Bum, a bootlegger and associate of Legs Diamond, and virtually every other person he could find who occupied space in one of the townhouses in this picture. Located on the stretch of Riverside Drive between W. 105th and 106th Streets, the stunning buildings are familiar to so many neighbors. Dan simply calls them "The Seven Beauties."

A son of Bloomingdale, Dan has written this block's history like each house was a living, breathing neighbor with untold secrets to offer up.  Associated with one of these demure dames was a heist, a getaway, an amputation, another amputation. Well you get the picture. Everyone has their back pages, as Bob Dylan would say.  And Dan is revealing them all in his book "The Man with the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block."

Neighbor and resident historian Gil Tauber told me that Nina Simone lived on that block. I hope Dan has something to say about what happened with Miss Simone.  I've often wondered if she was one of Duke Ellington's tenants.

I'll be writing more about the book as soon as I get my hands on it.  But come out and hear Dan speak on January 17th.  And make sure to scroll all the way down for a lagniappe.  (If you are receiving this via an email subscription, remember to click on the title of the post to get to the video).

Ok, now for the lagniappe.  In honor of the Seven Beauties above and the one beauty below and in anticipation of MLK's birthday commemoration on Monday, I give you a live recording of the most excellent Nina Simone and one powerful song.  It's hard to pare down to just one of hers since I can't think of any I don't want to hear.  She was an American jewel and her work's relevance lives on for many reasons, not all good.  That she was also a Bloomingdaler just about ices the cake for me.  But then again, she had me at hello.

Click here to see images or videos that don't come through when you read this post in an email.

Ok, because one Nina is never enough...below is one for the road. RIP Leonard Cohen (who so far as I know has no connection to Bloomingdale whatsoever but feel free to prove me wrong!).

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive posts directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

Love the blog? Spread the blove.

By Caitlin Hawke

I am going to keep it simple today.  December 8th is seared into many a New Yorkers' mind.  I got a chill looking at the front page above. The GOP was prepping a transition to the White House.  There were Russian hijinks on the international stage.  A man was shot in New York City.

John Lennon. Gunned down outside the Dakota.  If you were a New Yorker, you can't forget it. If you weren't yet a New Yorker, you know exactly where you were when you heard the news 37 years ago.  It doesn't matter. We were all New Yorkers that day.

I don't want to get too heavy. But we still need elegies in the face of senseless violence. I am reminded of a statistic I read in the paper: since the song below was written in '68 we've lost more Americans to gun violence than to the battlefields of all the wars in our history. Then again I suppose it's all in how you define "battlefield."

In remembrance of 12/8/80, I offer up an extremely rare gem: Clydie King and her husband Elston Gunn (aka Blind Boy Grunt, aka Robert Zimmerman) covering Dion's 1968 hit "Abraham, Martin and John" by Dick Holler.  A stripped down, harmonic, elegiac duet.  I mean for it to stop us all in our tracks.

On this raw day, thirty seven years late, I give you a power couple and a song I dedicate to the memory of a long lost neighbor.   

Roll on, John.


[If you are reading this post in an email subscription, to load the video you'll need to click on the photo or go directly to the blog page.]

By Caitlin Hawke

You've stumbled on wet-behind-the-ears and heavily-back-packed Europeans wandering out of the W. 103rd Street station trying to figure out whether to go left or right down the side street, desperately in search of "the hostel."  I quickly approach them and say with big eyes and nodding head: "Youth Hostel? Is that what you are looking for?"  Often they are relieved, sometimes shocked that a New Yorker has broken the fourth wall.  But I remember my days of hostelling, juggling backpack, map, and new-city angst.

But how many of us have actually wandered the halls of this landmarked building, currently inhabited by Hostelling International?  How many know the story of its preservation after a spectacular fire gutted it in the mid-1970s? And who knows its place in neighborhood history?

In the latest issue of the Block Association newsletter, I wrote about the building and its current community-minded owner, HI NYC -- a neighbor that with luck we'll all get to know better and better over time.

The Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group is going to jump-start us on that with its October 4th panel. All the info is below and more in the newsletter article above.


So, on Wednesday, come on out and say hello to the folks at HI NYC.

And keep marking your calendars because BAiP's art groups will be having a clothesline show of their work depicting the neighborhood on October 14th from 2-4 p.m.  I'll post the flyer for that shortly!

By Caitlin Hawke

This one speaks for itself, and it's relatively local.  Check out "Harlem in the 1960s: Civil Rights & Black Power" on Saturday, September 9th at 11 a.m. at the Harry Belafonte branch on 115th Street.  Find details in the flyer below. Hope some of you get to go!

Reason #973 to love the NYPL would be this month's announcement that the library is now streaming a huge back catalogue of films.  Learn more here.  You need a library card and an internet connection.