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Walking Off the Big Apple
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New York walking journal, neighborhood guides, maps, lists of affordable hotels, and art reviews with entertaining commentary on the cultural life of the city.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'neighborhoods'
A Cultural Guide to West 57th Street: A Walk and a Map
It began in 1891 with the opening of Carnegie Hall, the symbol of music world success that Andrew Carnegie paid people to construct on 7th Avenue between West 57th and West 56th Streets. A year later, the Art Students League moved into the new Americ...
My Augmented New York Unreality: Google Street View's Eerie Portrait of a New York Past
I'm experiencing a surreal and eerie flashback, because the images of Google Maps' Street View of my Greenwich Village neighborhood have become fascinatingly out of date. While opening Google maps the other day to update one of the self-guided walks ...
A Stroll Through the East 60s
The walk on the Upper East Side this past Saturday, the one in which I retraced Walker Evans and his photographs of a block on E. 61st in 1938, took me on a longer stroll. Thanks to the picture-perfect weather, I also walked through the small but lov...
Walker Evans, a Block on E. 61st Street in 1938, and a Visit in April of 2009
Walker Evans (1903-1975), a documentary photographer best known for his depictions of southern sharecroppers during the Great Depression, store signs and street signs in cities and towns, and the whole of American vernacular, spent a morning in the s...
"You Got the Wrong Broadway, Mister:" Exploring the Other Broadways, East and West
In lower Manhattan, in order to trap visitors into staying longer and spending tourist dollars in our shops and cafes, we have added two additional streets called Broadway to confuse everyone. On several occasions I have seen a group of visitors stan...
JFK: The Presidential Candidate from the Bronx, and Other NYC Sites Associated with the Kennedy Family
"Ladies and gentlemen: I said up the street that I was a former resident of the Bronx. Nobody believes that but it is true. I went to school in the Bronx. Now, Riverdale is part of the Bronx, and I lived there for 5 or 6 years. [Laughter and applause...
Exploring the East 70s between Park Avenue and 3rd Avenue
Many people explore the Upper East Side by walking through the east 70s closest to the park, near Fifth and Madison, but try venturing through the area east of Park Avenue. Lexington Avenue, along with 3rd Avenue, features a greater mix of stores and...
The New York of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth: Introduction to a Walk
From House of MirthAt the beginning of Edith Wharton's 1905 novel, The House of Mirth, Lily Bart strolls up Madison Avenue on the arms of Lawrence Selden, her most indecisive suitor, but toward the end of the story, she walks alone. It's an important...
Homage to Pâte à Choux: French Pastry South of 14th Street
I need a little break from New York of 1900, the subject of many recent posts, as I've been deep into research and buried under antiquarian books. So my thoughts naturally turn to pastry. The walking excursions into the École des Beaux-Arts and the ...
Henry James' Uneasy Homecoming to Washington Square
Henry James (1843-1916), author of many novels on the college reading list - Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, among them, and great stories such as "The Aspern Papers" and "The Turn of the Screw," was...
The Making of the Monumental Metropolis: New York and the École des Beaux Arts
My mission in writing about New York in the late nineteenth century has been to underscore the changes wrought in Old New York with the arrival of the 20th century and the radical remaking of its built environment, and to wonder, of course, about the...
Harvey Wiley Corbett and the E. 8th Street Apartments
When the scaffolding in front of the apartment buildings along E. 8th and University Place (4-26 East 8th Street) was removed recently, the restoration revealed a structure very different from the styles of other buildings around it. Standing out fro...
