By Caitlin Hawke

This is the second in what you might think of as a diptych of posts. My last Throwback post digging into the story of the Beastie Boys' genesis in the Grimm Building led me down a long rabbit hole of fascination for the structure. If you didn't see that one, click here to read the nitty gritty Beastie story.

For part two now, here in images from 1867 to present is a documentation of that remarkably unchanged site, the NW corner of 100th Street and Broadway.

​It's rare that a building is so well documented over the years, so the gallery was great fun to pull together.

Recall in my prior post that this site does not enjoy landmarked status thanks to the gimme carveouts all along Broadway -- see the map on the prior post to understand what this means.

I don't know. Maybe I am just too in love with the past. But it defies any sort of reason or logic that our preservationists wouldn't protect this special building. Before the wonky land use and real estate savvy folks start to get impatient with me, I do get that it has been altered over the years, and that the Metro owners put a lot into it to bring it back from decrepitude.  But so many readers have a huge place in their Bloomingdale hearts for this one, it just seems like a no-brainer that we, as a community, might go the extra mile for this nigh on 150 year-old structure.

​Enjoy the picture show below.  

To navigate this photo gallery, click on the arrows or press the play button.
Note: If you are reading this in an email subscription, you may have to click on the
blog post title to view the gallery, or click here.

By Caitlin Hawke

A good while back, when I posted a quizlet on the architectural detail seen here, many readers replied quickly. Of course Pam Tice got it in a heartbeat, as did Lorne Sharf, Anthony Bellov and others. Anthony wrote that the Grimm building (aka 2641 Broadway, home of the Metro Diner) is "definitely the oldest remaining building on the Upper West Side - period." 

The wooden structure was built in 1871 and run for a few years by Henry Grimm as a grocery, with apartments above. Grimm was foreclosed on and the building soon became The Boulevard House, a respite for travelers, reflecting the slow to develop state of upper Broadway (then known as the Boulevard).

Anthony also shared that, "in 1894, a German immigrant named Peter Doelger, a brewer who owned many saloons, bought the building. The bar was in front and a respectable restaurant in back. He lived at 280 Riverside right down the street. The saloon closed with Prohibition and became a seller of ladies' finery and then even a theater."

Interesting side note from the wonderful Forgotten New York: Peter Doelger was Mae West's uncle. So she may have lifted a pint or two there.

For more on Doelger, see this great post from the Daytonian in Manhattan.

At the time of the quizlet, neighbor Elizabeth del Alamo also quickly chimed in that the Grimm building is reputed to be the last wooden building in Manhattan. I haven't fact checked that but am sure she's right about it being the oldest on the UWS. Elizabeth recalled that the Grimm building was the subject of a New Yorker cartoon, probably from the early 1980s. I failed to find the cartoon and would love it if a reader would send it to me at [email protected].

Emily Berleth told me that when she was a youngster, there was a pottery studio on the second floor where the salon is now.

I, of course, remember it in the late 1980s as La Tacita d'Oro. The album cover above and below depict Tacita faithfully. And I'd give anything to have their café con leche in my little golden cup again. The Metro Diner replaced it in 1993, and I recall that Tacita moved south before it shuttered completely about 12 or so years ago.

All these are great tidbits, but Jim Henderson topped them all with his tip off that this was where one of the first (white) hiphop supergroups -- the Beastie Boys -- had their inaugural concert on August 5, 1981, in founding member and guitarist John Berry's father's building on Adam Yauch's 17th birthday. John's father, also John, was a "1930s-style left-leaning intellectual with a serious work ethic" who was editor in chief of Library Journal" (p. 52 Beastie Boys Book). As a single dad, he gave his son a lot of leeway in terms of band practice but when he got home, the band stopped playing in deference to his intellectual downtime after work.

The bassist had his buddies over to practice in his third floor bedroom, and, according to Rolling Stone, the "first Beastie Boys shows took place at Berry’s old loft...where a small crowd gathered to hear the fledgling hardcore/punk band." The site popturf.com reported that that same evening "Dave Parsons of the Rat Cage record store said that he wanted to start recording bands, and asked the Beastie Boys if they were interested. They said yes, and the Polly Wog Stew EP was the result" and the Rat Cage label was born for what that is worth to music historians.

A great description appears in the new Beastie Boys Book:
"How do I even begin to describe this place? Start with the fact that it was an old, squat, three-story wooden structure in the middle of a concrete jungle, like someone had forgotten to tear the place down when they were building the rest of the modern city. Also, for a wood building, it was ancient, literally a hundred years old; it had been a saloon in the late 1800s -- before the streets up here were even f*&*ing paved -- and the place looked and felt like it hadn’t been touched since. It was a dilapidated, sagging, slant-roofed structure of rotting wood, parked in a sea of concrete, brick, and steel. At that point there was a greasy Cuban-Chinese restaurant on the ground floor (that’s right Cuban Chinese). John and his dad lived above the restaurant. John's bedroom, where we practiced, was the building's third-floor loft; the second floor was a single open room, but not like a glamorous designer loft. Large windows were set in rotting and splintered wooden frames. Fading and chipped paint covered the clapboard. Every piece of furniture looked like it had been found on the street.... Framed picture of Che Guevara, books on Lenin and Trotsky, and pamphlets about the IRA lay around the house.... Upper Broadway at that time was like a multicultural mixtape. Salsa blaring on one block, a JVC boombox playing rap outside a housing project on the next, sounds of AM broadcasts from Panasonic clock radios coming out to the opened windows on the next. Across 100th Street from John's place was the large residential hotel -- politely known as an SRO (single-room occupancy) building, and impolitely known as a flophouse....The constant hubbub across the street worked out well for us...because it allowed us to play music as loud as we wanted....We were pretty far down the precinct to-do list. So we'd just set up and practice after school on the third floor....When we weren't actually practicing, our whole cast of characters just hung out and played music full blast... [For the inaugural 1981 makeshift concert] maybe two dozen people showed up. Us. the Bag Ladies, a few of Yauch's oldest friends, and Dave Parsons and his girlfriend, Cathy, from a newly opened and really cool downtown record store called Rat Cage." (pp. 51-55, Beastie Boys Book)

Berry was sometimes credited for coming up with the name for the group which, perhaps tongue-in-cheekily, was said to be an acronym for "Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence." Other early members included Kate Schellenbach, "Mike D" aka Michael Diamond, and "MCA" aka Adam Yauch. "Ad-Rock" (Adam Horovitz) joined later after the departure of Berry and Schellenbach.

The Grimm building was also the location where, again thanks to the Berrys, Beastie side-project Big Fat Love formed in 1984. The structure in all its wabi-sabi greatness was featured on their album "Hell House" in an illustration on front and in a photo on the back. An homage to the building (was it in fact the hell house?) appeared in the album's liner notes:

"Big Fat Love's sound is unlike any other Beastie Boys side-project and may take a few listens before one gets into it or out of it, as the case may be. The music though is a wonderful document to just how creatively diverse this group of musicians could be. When people ask about this period in the band's history, Thomas Beller described it best in the liner notes: "Big Fat Love was organized around a particular living space, in this case a house, where several of the band members lived and where, in the mid-80's, an amorphous and slightly derelict group of people spent time. Big Fat Love didn't move to the house as a band, they just sprung up out of the house the way that, in the right conditions, a random bit of plant life springs up from a crack in the sidewalk." (Quoted from the site Beastiemania.com; also more here.).

Sadly John Berry died at the age of 52 in 2016.

If you weren't a Beasties fan, you might at least recall their top Billboard hit "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)" in 1987.  Their place in rap history was sealed forever by the success of the album "Licensed to Ill" which was the first rap album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. 

If you were a fan, you might enjoy the audio embedded below from the NPR radio show "Wait wait...don't tell me" that I heard on December 22. It seems the surviving members have a new book out. The last of the beasts now tamed, the boys have turned to men, less anarchic and ever so slightly more capitalistic, now packing a license to shill.

Times change. The Grimm building has remained, but the scary part is that this wooden relic is not landmarked. So, stay tuned for next week's continued homage to the Building Grimm.

The Metro owners put a lot of cash and TLC into the refurbish they did before opening in the early 1990s. Thankfully, the diner seems to be going strong. But, incredibly, the Grimm building site was included in the controversial Broadway carveouts and didn't make the cut in the 2015 landmark ruling that protected so much of the area west of Broadway.

I hope the Grimm building will endure given the New York miracle that it's pushing 147 years old without landmark status.
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Many thanks to all the above readers for chiming in. Clearly, this building has captivated many of us, if not the powers that be at LPC!
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Note: If you are reading this via an email subscription, you'll have to click on the blog post title to listen to the radio audio.

By Caitlin Hawke

Well, neighbors, we’re coming quickly to the end of 2018. And I don’t know about you, but it sure flew by for me. I remember last year’s polar vortex like it was yesterday. 

Taking stock, I can measure the year in the number of blog posts I've gotten up, despite that I have such a backlog of potential posts. It puts me in a perpetual state of disappointment that I don’t have more time. Still, I looked at the log and see a grand total of 85 posts in 2018. That’s the most in one year since I started maintaining the site in April 2014. But the guilt persists, and I will try to roll out some of the treasures sitting in my desktop folder ominously marked "Blog To Do."

As I often write, our neighborhood is a very inspiring muse. Like Bob L. or John K. and so many others of you who love to “noodle” in different neighborhoods, I always enjoy a good city walk — looking for a bit of old New York. Or at least authentic New York. It’s getting harder to find, but it’s there in pockets. And those walks, no matter where, always remind me how much I love my home turf: bookended by two great parks, sleepier than the now mall-like UWS, relatively low-lying in terms of the architecture, and so luminous. Bloomingdale has it all.

Add to that the great history, and that’s what makes it so satisfying to chronicle.

Bloomingdale also has a tradition of community -- from the "Old Community" supplanted by Park West Village whose spirit truly lives on (and gave rise to the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group), to the community fostered by this Block Association with half a dozen events and four newsletters each year, to the communities that our neighboring block association and the one Bloomingdale Aging in Place has built over the last 10 years. That's just four quick examples, and there are many micro-communities in between, too.

When I reflect on what at times seems to be the electronic and political dystopia taking hold, I have to say all this community-building that has come naturally in Bloomingdale gives me quite a bit of hope going forward -- especially if new neighbors will join in, roll up sleeves and take up the tradition.

As part of my ongoing love letter to our piece of the Manhattan pie, I wanted to offer back up some of the slices from the year gone by — posts that have received great traffic from readers together with the ones I most enjoyed writing. It's far from an exhaustive list of the 2018 posts. But it's perhaps the cream.

Have a look at the links below and then perhaps you’ll write with your favorites to [email protected] or in the comments section of this post.

In any case, I appreciate that you read along throughout the year, and I send best wishes for an excellent 2019.  If you know nearby neighbors who would enjoy the blog, send them this link where they can subscribe.

And now to the Year in Blog Favorites....


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To read each post, click on the corresponding image at left or the hyperlinked text. If you are reading this post in an email subscription, it may be easier to view directly on the website.

​• Bob on Broadway: Dylan's Powerful Residency at the Beacon
Then if you want, gild the lily with a post to honor his 77th birthday here.
Yes, a bit of a stretch for the Bloomingdale catchment, but I'm counting on you to humor me. It took all I had to refrain from writing about The Public's Girl from the North Country and its superb cast including the luscious drummer in red, the boxer, and Mare Winningham -- three actors who stole the show. Look for Girl on Broadway soon.

​• Beautiful Block of Riverside Drive: Seven Beauties in Our Midst
Author Dan Wakin digs into the history of 330-337 Riverside Drive.
Pictured at left: Bennie the Bum with the sawed-off leg, not pictured!

​• Women's Suffrage & Bloomingdaler Harriot Stanton Blatch
Elizabeth Cady Stanton's remarkable daughter Harriot (a babe in arms at left) lived right here. Read more about the fight in NYC to get women the vote, including the effort to get Columbia's men to the polls.

​• Nightmare on 102nd Street
Always a blog favorite, the annual Block Association Halloween Party "Ghouls' Gallery", replete with a visitation from King George the Wee. The party is just one offering of the Block Association; for other B.A. event coverage in 2018, see this link.

​• Estelle Parsons: Triple Threat of a Neighbor
What do I love about Miss Parsons? Everything!
Her intensity and her energy are her superpowers that allow her to thieve every scene she's in. Catch her in this Bloomingdale walkabout. Probably the year's most-viewed blog post!  The lady has a legion of fans.

​​• Manfred Kirchheimer's Time Encapsulated
​What do I love about filmmaker Manny Kirchheimer? Also everything!
​A Bloomingdaler for five and a half decades, he's chronicled the city in his contemplative documentaries along with the odd fiction such as the film "Short Circuit" at left, shot entirely in our neighborhood.

​​• Throwback Thursday Spotlights 1920 Victrola Store
​Throwback Thursday: Bloomingdale Edition is the section of the blog where I feature historical pictures and tidbits. A trove of these await publication, time permitting in 2019. Emanuel Blout's Victrola store, circa 1920, was my favorite this year. Have a TBT favorite? Let me know in the comments.
You can view all TBT: BE posts here.

​​• Throwback Thursday: The Divine Tight Line & Philippe Petit
​This TBT: BE post comes in a close second place.
​Discover the neighborhood feat of the great tightrope walker Petit, high on Amsterdam Avenue. And divine as ever.

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​​• JFK Impersonator Vaughn Meader on the UWS
​JFK would have turned 101 in 2018 and in his honor this post unearths the wonderful two albums that comedian Vaughn Meader turned out before the stars fell down and the curtain closed on Camelot.

​​​• Catching Up with Hedy Campbell
​Four years and 330 posts ago, Hedy asked me to write for the blog. The idea was to pick up where the creators had left off and fill in the gaps between quarterly Block Association newsletter issues. Without breaking a sweat, Hedy has turned out the publication since 1987 -- a massive feat if ever there was one. The blog is child's play by comparison. I end the highlights of 2018 with Hedy because she is a neighborhood jewel whose efforts have helped build and sustain a community feeling now for over 30 years. It's a team effort to be sure, so this hat tip goes to all folks who value this organization.

And now is your chance to help sustain it!
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Join us by becoming a member here.


Catch you in 2019 for more Throwbacks,
more Hyper Local Eats, more Bloomingdale,
and, yes, probably more Bob Dylan.
​Thanks for reading.

By Caitlin Hawke

Spearheaded by neighbors Nancy Macagno and Pam Tice, the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group have pulled together a program "Bloomingdale Blocks" featuring the history of how block associations got started in these parts with help from the Citizens Committee for New York City. Note the groovy detail from our June 15, 1972, newsletter showing the then-directors of this BA looking like they stepped right out of the musical Hair.

David Reich, Mort Berkowitz and Jean Jaworek all will present.Details in the flyer below.

​Come on out on Tuesday and give thanks.

In the meantime, a very happy TG to you all!

By Caitlin Hawke

It's late on a Thursday so you'll have this throwback on Friday. But do come travel with me in time to just about two months after Black Tuesday, 1929. The new year 1930 has been rung in, it's good and cold, the Great Depression has begun. But unemployment won't peak for three more years in the city. 

And the great bellowing lung of our neighborhood, Straus Park, pays it all no heed. For here is a town square where folks of all ages come to inhale the fresh, crisp air and to entertain one another. An era before TV, the golden age of radio shines by night, but by day by golly the folks are out.

Fortunate in many ways, but in one we are not: we lack a town square. We lack that knowledge that you can fall out on a daily basis into the local pocket park and meet all your neighbors. It's why I love the yard sales that the Block Associations put on.  It's why BAiP's community-building mission is so needed.

We have forgotten how to commune in our own backyard.

The video below is extraordinary for its quality, its crystal clear sound, and the uncanny you-are-there feeling. See Straus Park -- less green, ok -- but more vibrant than you've ever seen it before. See all modes of 1930s transportation, including a rollerskater and a period pram. Get a good gander at Broadway looking north from its intersection at West End Avenue. And get a peep of the back of "Memory" -- far from the star of this movie.

It's perfection. A talkie of a time capsule. And it's yours if you click on the image above since if you are reading this in an email subscription the video won't play.

​Enjoy!

h/t to the West Side Rag comments section for bringing this beaut to the surface.

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

First, I want to note the kindness of Chris Brady who gave me permission to illustrate this post with his technicolor photos of the Movie Place (TMP), the way it was. I found them at Chris's photo feed here a while back, and they stopped me cold, for the love of a place I remember so well. I've been saving them for you.

Incredibly, gone for 12 years already, the Movie Place hasn't come close to being replaced around here in its role as a neighborhood hub drawing from north, south, east and west. Never mind its mom-and-pop-edness.

The last owner of TMP was Gary Dennis, who is equally known for his efforts to get Humphrey Bogart his due by the dubbing of W. 103rd Street for him, replete with a ceremonial appearance of Bacall. Yes, right here in Bloomingdale.

I wrote a piece about that here last year. 

Now I love Bogie and Bacall as much and perhaps more than most. But it takes a force of nature like Gary to move city elements -- NYCHA et al -- get the naming done. So I want you to remember that when you are walking the block between West End Avenue and Broadway on 103rd staring at a "This is Us" rerun on your smartphone. Look Up! For the love of the silver screen, look up. Look up from your big sleep and appreciate that you trace Humphrey DeForest Bogart's footsteps as he left his home at 245 W. 103rd St. and padded over to the Trinity School. He lived there from about December 25, 1899 until he enlisted in the navy in 1918.

But I digress.

I still see Gary around from time to time. At a Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group meeting last year, he gave a great presentation on the neighborhood as portrayed in films. Many chase scenes later, he had the audience eating out of his hands.

He used to keep a wonky blog on lost cinema houses. And I think he still gives tours.  Bloomingdale born, Gary grew up loving movies. Ironic then that when it was a novelty, everyone said his was the voice that used to animate the old "Moviefone" reservation line. And that amused me. You remember the Moviephone? It's the line you dialed that responded in a quasi-human voice: "Hello, and welcome to Moviefone! Using your touchtone keypad, please enter the first three letters of the movie title now."

If you don't know the voice I am talking about, here's a fun clip. It's not, spoiler alert, Gary Dennis. But he sure coulda been a contender.

TMP lasted in situ for 22 years, and it is now gone for 12. Together, that's more than the full lifespan of the Betamax.

Yes, 12 years ago, our mecca of movies closed, and it was noteworthy enough for the New York Times to weigh in. If you never had the pleasure of pushing through the door into the high-ceilinged space bustling with first dates, lonely hearts, groups of buddies and old couples riffling through bins of movie titles, you haven't lived.

Sorry, but it was a thing.

People came from many neighborhoods away to partake. To feast in the selection.  And to go home with armfuls of movies. To come back three days later and do it all again.

It wasn't just the selection. It was the connoisseurship. The guys and a couple of gals behind the counter each had a specific taste. You could ask anyone anything and with just a few hints at what you liked, out poured 5 or 10 suggestions of other films to watch. An algorithm in flesh and blood. It's called a brain and memory, actually. And it worked.

Yet it wasn't just the connoisseurship, it was also the place.  Patina would be a nice way of describing the layers of this loft-like store. Grime would be a bridge too far. Let's call it wabi-sabi.

If the Movie Place were a rock star, it would have been Keith Richards.

Yes, technology has transformed our world since then.  And yes many don't even feel the need for a screen bigger than an iPad to enjoy a film, old or new. And yes, I'll even cede that streaming a movie is more convenient.  But algorithms will never replace synaptic encyclopedias like the brain that is Gary Dennis's or that of the employees, some of whom, thankfully, still live in the neighborhood with their dogs or their now-grown kids. And for what the human touch is still worth, you can't get that kind of prickle online. Or snark. Or voice. Or, truth be told, that warmth.

Starbucks will never replace the town-square feeling that was the Movie Place on a Friday night.  And Tindr will never be as electric with possibility as browsing the Nouvelle Vague section over a handsome guy's shoulder.

Seek no more the ghost of the Movie Place, let loose to wander since 2006. For it is here. And this one from the vault of Block Association newsletters is a David Reich original. Scroll all the way down to read it.

Enjoy!

By Caitlin Hawke

Thanks to the considerable efforts of a load of brave people of the female persuasion like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her daughter and Bloomingdaler Harriot Stanton Blatch, Susan B. Anthony, and Gertrude Foster Brown, it was 101 years ago tomorrow that New York State accorded women the right to vote, helping to pave the way three years later for the 19th Amendment. And by New York State, I really mean New York City, because if you look at the county by county breakdown (scroll all the way down), our urban forebears padded the 80,000 vote margin of victory.

The day that women's suffrage was on the ballot, 12,000 women stood on corners throughout the city encouraging people of the male persuasion, aka the then voters, to grant women the vote.

They were angry women. Docile women. Black women. Chinese women. Uppity and arrogant women. Handsome and plain women. "Women who knew their place." Working women. Moms and daughters. Religious women. Temperate women. Righteous women. Organized women. Women who loved men. Women who loved women. Women who persisted.

And lo! That day nearly half a million men voted with -- and really for -- them all.

The NYC Women Suffrage Party was looking for twice that turnout in support. They advertised in Columbia's Spectator the day before shooting for a million-man team. But I can't fault them for dreaming big.

In and among all of this rich history of suffering for suffrage, there's a gem: the overlooked story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, is one my readers will relish. Harriot, according to Douglas Feiden writing in Our Town New York for last year's centennial, was an inveterate upper west sider who  lived at 250 Riverside Drive, right here at W. 97th Street.

Harriot had the distinction of living through most of the battle for women's suffrage, beginning as a babe in the arms of her mother, the battle's field marshal. Harriot grew to be a force to be reckoned with in Manhattan as the battle waged on to its glorious end on November 6, 1917.

Says Feiden: "Among [Blatch's] triumphs: In 1907, she founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, which trained working-class women to campaign for suffrage and was “open to any woman who earns her own living, from a cook to a mining engineer. Then in 1910, she organized the city’s first blockbuster suffrage parade, a march down Fifth Avenue climaxing in a giant rally in Union Square. Blatch and thousands of like-minded activists transformed virtually every nook and cranny of Manhattan — its streets, salons, townhouses, tenements, clubhouses, concert halls, vaudeville houses, boarding houses, hotels, parks, pools, auditoriums, alleyways and office buildings — into a living, breathing operational base for the suffrage movement."

New York was far from the first state to let women into the voting club. But that's a digression. What's important is that the ultimate change came through the grassroots of the states. And that it took a long, long time. Ohio voted women's suffrage down on that same day. But New York's upvote cranked the motor hard.

Vagaries of our 'states rights' vs. 'federal rights' dynamic are evident throughout our legal system, from managing voting, to our banking system, to the electoral college to name only a few. These will likely persist, thanks to our country's reverence for its founding documents. And anyone who rides the subway knows the vagaries of state-controlled city budgets despite larger urban tax bases and headcounts.

What the story of 1917 tells us is that our populousness in the Big Apple matters. It matters to the state. And it matters to the federation. Our votes do count. History bears that out.

Today, I am grateful to those excellent women, like the ones above, who got out there 100+ years ago in each neighborhood of NYC. The women who patiently organized for decades. The people who made up the Women's Suffrage Party. And to the half million male voters of New York State on November 6, 1917 who just plain did the right thing.

Tomorrow, five score and a year later, the country will be looking to New Yorkers again.

Find  your poll. Tip your (big, black, feathered) hat to the Stantons, mère et fille.  Grab your umbrella. And hit the street, thinking about what corners all across the city looked like 101 years ago: 10, 15, 30 women deep. Recall for a moment those men who voted to enfranchise at long last their wives, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts and lovers in the great state of New York.

And make your way to cast your vote as if someone else's suffrage depends on you.
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By Caitlin Hawke

What I would LOVE is for some kindly neighbor at the Broadmoor somewhere up top to try to capture a modern day image looking west southwest out toward West End Avenue and the river over the rooftops.

This picture is a gem for, really, how much has remained so. The east side of West End Avenue both north and south of W. 102nd Street should be familiar to viewers as should be 855 West End Avenue dead center with its nearby neighbors, just as you'd see them now. I love it for the way 299 Riverside at the south corner of W. 102nd Street and Riverside Drive dominates the view. And for the absence of 300 Riverside Drive. You'll note that William Foster's second mansion sits where 300 Riverside Drive is today at the north corner of W. 102nd Street. Scroll down for an image of that house, built in 1888 by the glove mogul, and read more here, in Gary Dennis's blog, about the two Foster mansions that occupied that lot.

Of course, 865 West End as we know it today hadn't yet gone up, and the shot is remarkable too for a rare shot of the row of houses at the northwest corner of 102nd Street and West End.

Ah, but look at Jersey!!

Enjoy these nearly contemporaneous 1912 Bromley maps from the Atlas of the Borough of Manhattan.

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: [email protected]

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!!