Urban Gadabout: A fall gadding preview

With Wolfe Walkers update: Oh no, it's the final season!


Yes! On Oct 22 Jack Eichenbaum is doing another of his day-long explorations of a single NYC subway line -- this time the L train.

by Ken

With the Municipal Art Society's Sept-Oct schedule already up and open to registration and with early (members-only) registration for the New York Transit Museum's fall schedule having begun this morning, we're already late for a fall gadding preview if we're ever going to do one. We'll get back to them, but I want to start with what for me is the fall highlight, another of urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum's all-day excursions built around a subway line, this time the L train, especially timely as its Manhattan-to-Brooklyn link is about to be shut down for 18 months for rehabilitation of its Sandy-damaged East River tunnel.


JACK EICHENBAUM

Jack, who's the Queens borough historian, always calls his day-long exploration of and along the #7 (Flushing) line his "signature tour" (you may recall that he recently did a wholly revamped version), but I've also spent days with him on the J train and the Q (Brighton Line). So I whipped out my checkbook when he announced this to his mailing list (which you should sign up for on his website, Geography of New York with Jack Eichenbaum):

[Click to enlarge.]

Life and Art Along the L Train
Sat, Oct 22, 10am-5:30 pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route which traverses three boroughs. We explore the West Village and meatpacking district -- including a portion of the new Highline Park -- and on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods, stimulated by the movement of artists.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $49. For a complete prospectus, email jaconet@aol.com. The L train will soon be shut down for repairs; join this tour prior to that.

Note that Jack is also doing a half-day outing on the J train:

A Day on the J
Sat, Sept 17, 10:30am-1:30pm

The J train enabled the crowded masses of the Lower East Side to move to Brooklyn and Queens. Elevated from the Williamsburg Bridge crossing until Jamaica, the ride provides diverse views of industrial and bucolic landscapes. This tour concentrates on the portion of the J train within Queens. Walks take place in commercial and historic downtown Jamaica, residential Victorian Richmond Hill and residential Woodhaven ending at historic Neir’s tavern, NYC’s oldest bar. At Neir’s enjoy a prix fixe lunch or drink and eat as you wish.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $25. For a complete prospectus, email jaconet@aol.com.

In addition, as usual Jack has been doing Wednesday-evening tours in Queens this summer. Still to come are:

Wed, Aug 24, 6-8pm, Corona Circuit
Wed, Sept 14, 5-7pm, Roosevelt Island Bridge and Four Freedoms Park

Check out the "Public Tour Schedule" page on Jack's website.


JUSTIN FERATE -- WOLFE WALKERS

For some time now, the peerless Justin has been doing most of his public tours with Wolfe Walkers, and he just sent out an advance notice of the fall season that's about to be announced. When it is announced, it should be findable on the Wolfe Walkers page of his website, but the surest way to get up-to-date info is by being on Justin's mailing list. As I point out frequently, Justin's mailing list is an indispensable (free) resource for information not just about tours but about goings-on generally in NYC. He sends out a lot of stuff, but I can say that I never ignore one of his pass-alongs.

Meanwhile, here's the schedule as Justin sent it out in his advance notice (but see the UPDATE below):

Sunday, Sept 18, 3-6pm: Williamsburg -- The Land of the Chasidim (Rabbi David Kalb of the Jewish Learning Center of New York, with Justin on hand)
Saturday, Oct. 1, 10am-3pm: Fordham Museum of Greek, Roman and Etruscan Antiquities + Fordham University + Belmont (Arthur Ave. Little Italy)
Sat, Oct 8, 9:40am-2pm: United Palace Theatre and the New High Bridge
Sat, Oct 22, 11am-4pm: Broad Channel (Queens) and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (with Justin and Don Riepe, director of the Northeast Chapter of the American Littoral Society)
Sat, Oct 29, 7:45am-6pm: BUS: City Island and Bartow-Pell Mansion (with lunch at the Lobster Box on City Island)
Sun, Nov 6, 11:30am-2:30pm: Socrates Sculpture Park and the Isamu Noguchi Museum (Astoria, Queens)
Sun, Nov 13, 9:45am-6pm: Upper Montclair (NJ) Historic District and Stained Glass Tour (with Justin and Ron Rice)
Sat, Dec 17, 12n-3pm: Holiday Brunch at Pete’s Tavern, with Stanford White lecture by Justin

UPDATE: Justin has now sent out the Wolfe Walkers Fall 2016 brochure, and I've added the schedule information to the above listings. You can download a pdf of the brochure here.

The startling news (startling to me, at least) comes at the end of the brochure, where there's a full-page "Personal Note from Justin" followed by a two-page history of the Wolfe Walkers. In the "personal note" Justin tells a much fuller version of a story I first heard him tell when he suddenly realized that he'd been doing Wolfe Walkers longer than Gerard Wolfe. He tells how the dark depression he was experiencing over what was seeming an ill-advised move to New York City was turned around by his first contact with Professor Wolfe and the Wolfe Walkers. The part I especially love about the story is that it turned on Justin's habit-- and I can't tell you how much I love this -- of sending a thank-you note whenever he enjoys a book by a living author, on the theory that the author will have endured plenty of carping and nitpicking.

It was his discovery of the Wolfe Walkers, Justin says, that led him to fall in love with New York, "and I owe it all to Gerard Wolfe." He continues:

I have never been able to fully thank Gerard for the many, many years of pleasure he instigated for me. When Gerard left New York, his followers were bereft, so they asked me if I would continue in Gerard’s footsteps (literally). I’ve never regretted doing so.

The Wolfe Walkers have provided me with decades of warm, embracing, and exciting adventures. Hopefully, I’ve been able to provide the Wolfe Walkers with many of those same qualities in the countless tours I’ve created over that time.

Now, time continues in its steady pace. In January, I will be moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico. It will be
difficult to say “Goodbye.” As most of you know, my love for New York City is palpable.

He goes on to thank Gerard "for your countless gifts" and "all of you Wolfe Walkers for joining me in our many, many adventures over the decades."

And all I can think -- once past the "Oh no, say it ain't so" stage -- is: No, thank you, Justin.

With the schedule heads-up Justin sent out earlier, I was able to juggle my schedule, with no idea that this would be the final Wolfe Walkers season, to be able to do all but two of the events -- one of them I've already done but would happily have done again if I didn't have a schedule conflict. (That's the Broad Channel/Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge tour with Justin and probably the best-known Jamaica Bay preservation activist, Don Riepe.) So my registrations are in the mail. Now I have to figure out how I thank Justin for everything I've learned thanks to him.


MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY (MAS)

There is, as usual, a tremendously broad assortment of offerings -- at $20 for members, $30 for nonmembers. Remember that with your modestly priced membership (starting at $50 for an Individual Membership, $40 for seniors over 62), you also get a voucher for a free tour, so membership -- in addition to supporting an invaluable civic organization -- should be pretty much self-recommending.)

It's probably just me, but the tour that really popped out for me is Exploring the Hunts Point Peninsula, Sept 10, with Jean Arrington. Jean is best known as the ranking authority on the citywide deluge of schools built by the legendary C.B.J. Snyder but is also known to step out to interesting areas of "her" borough, the Bronx. Thanks to Open House New York I've been able to tour several of the big Hunts Point food markets, and couldn't help wondering what else goes on on that peninsula sticking out from the South Bronx.

Check out all the listings, but I can say that I get itchy if I go too long without doing a tour with Matt Postal, who's doing Lower Manhattan Skyscrapers, and Brooklyn's Waterfront, Oct. 13, and of course the tours of Tony Robins, Mr. Art Deco, like Art Deco of Central Park West, Oct. 16, are self-recommending. I call attention, especially for people who've never done a walk in the company of that amazing sweetheart Joe Svehlak, to his Atlantic Avenue (Brooklyn), Sept 3, and Nassau Street (Manhattan), Oct 30.

You don't have to remember the MAS Tours link; just go to mas.org and click on "Tours." These Sept-Oct tours still had openings as of writing.

every Fri and Sat, 12:30pm: Tour34: Empire to Penn (with the 34th Street Partnership)
Sat, Sept 3, 10am: Historic Atlantic Avenue (Joe Svehlak)
Fri, Sept 9, 12:30pm: Reflecting Absence: The 9/11 Memorial (Judith Pucci)
Saturday, Sept 10, 2pm, Exploring the Hunts Point Peninsula (Jean Arrington)
Sun, Sept 11, 2pm: Downtown Brooklyn, Part 1: The Department Store District (Francis Morrone) [Note: Part 2, on Oct 23, is already sold out, like Francis's other Sept-Oct tours. I'm surprised there'a still space for Part 1, and wouldn't expect this to remain for long.]
Sun, Sept 11, 2pm: The Theaters of Greenwich Village (Laurence Frommer)
Sat, Sept 17, 11am: Vanderbilt Mansions (Jason Stein)
Sun, Sept 18, 2pm: Jewish History of the Lower East Side (Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy)
Sat, Sept 24, 11am: Before the Code: Lower Manhattan Skyscrapers (Matt Postal)
Sun, Sept 25, 12n: Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York (James and Karla Murray)
Sat, Oct 1, 11am: The Arc of the Beat: From West to East Villages Across Six Decades (Ron Janoff)
Sun, Oct 2, 2pm: Public Art of Lower Manhattan: An Outdoor Gallery Hiding in Plain View (Patrick Waldo)
Sat, Oct 8, 11am: Exploring Historic Jackson Heights (Meredith Toback)
Sun, Oct 9, 2pm: The Italian South Village (Laurence Frommer)
Sat, Oct 15, 11am: Preserving Brooklyn's Waterfront (Matt Postal)
Sat, Oct 15, 1pm: Subway Art Tour 2 (Phil Desiere)
Sun, Oct 16, 2pm: Art Deco of Central Park West (Anthony W. Robins)
Sat, Oct 22, 12:30pm: Exploring City College (Dalton Whiteside)
Sun, Oct 23, 2pm: Pre-Halloween Prospect Park South and Flatbush (Norman Oder)
Sat, Oct 29, 2pm: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: American Cultural Primacy and the Preservation of Our Architectural Treasures (Deobrah Zelcer)
Sat, Oct 29, 11am: Walk the QueensWay (Trust for Public Land and Friends of the QueensWay)
Sun, Oct 30, 11am: Downtown Manhattan's Nassau Street (Joe Svehlak)


NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM

As noted at the outset, registration for the fall schedule is already in progress for members. Information and registration now happen on NYTM's own brand-ew website. Find program information, beginning with the Aug 27 all-day nostalgia ride "To the Rockaways by Rail," on the "Programs" page. Note that some NYTM tours, like the ever-popular "Jewel in the Crown: Old City Hall Station," are members-only.

On offer for fall, at various dates:

Jewel in the Crown: Old City Hall Station (members only, some dates remaining)
Transit Walk: A Trip to Coney Island
Behind the Scenes: Jerome Avenue Yard (members only, all sold out)
Evening Ride to Woodlawn Cemetery, Oct. 29, 4-9pm
Underground Inspiration: from Art to Artifact


OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK (OHNY)

OHNY, whose mission is to give New Yorkers access to noteworthy sites not normally open to us, and also increasingly to give us peeks at the process by which new projects in the city are planned and executed, has events going on around the calendar, aimed mostly (but not exclusively) at members, so keep an eye on the website and get on the mailing list. (Check here for "Upcoming Programs," and check out membership info here.)

Of course OHNY is best known for the annual OHNY Weekend, when zillions of events will be scheduled all around the city at minimal cost, setting the stage for the opening-gun melee that is OHNY registration. As I always say, the most popular events -- the ones everyone will be gunning for -- are by no means necessarily the most interesting, and the interest level is deep enough that the sane people among us can generally come away happy with our fifth or sixth choices.

So by all means mark the dates: Sat-Sun, Oct 15-16, and keep an eye on the "Weekend" page of the website (link above). The tricky thing is that the full schedule isn't announced until barely before the actual event. (a slight advance look at the schedule is members' only advantage here.)

One interesting option is to offer service as a volunteer. OHNY has just put out a "Call for Volunteers":

2016 OHNY WEEKEND
Call for Volunteers

Are you passionate about architecture, design, and history? Want to share your love for New York City with others? Open House New York invites you to join our team of more than 1,000 volunteers who help make Open House New York Weekend one of New York's most exciting events!

Every year, OHNY Weekend opens the doors of hundreds of incredible buildings and sites across the five boroughs of New York City, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve New York. Through the unparalleled access that it enables, OHNY Weekend deepens our understanding of the importance of architecture and design to fostering a more vibrant civic life, and helps catalyze a citywide conversation about how to build a better New York.

OHNY Weekend volunteers are integral to the festival's success. Volunteers are assigned to one of more than 250 sites or tours and provide support by welcoming visitors from around New York and around the world, assisting with check-in, managing lines, and acting as a representative of Open House New York. Volunteer for one shift (typically four hours) and receive a 2016 limited edition OHNY Weekend t-shirt, as well as a volunteer button that gives you and a friend front-of-the-line access to sites that do not require reservations throughout the Weekend.

Sign up today to volunteer for Open House New York Weekend on Saturday and Sunday, October 15 and 16, 2016! For more information visit www.ohny.org or email us at volunteer@ohny.org

(Note: As the volunteer link reminds us, OHNY is also on the lookout for volunteers for its programs year-round.)


STILL TO COME --

Myra Alperson's Noshwalks (as noted) plus a couple more tour purveyors I meant to include here.

#

Read More

Maybe the best reason to spread word of Nancy Reagan's first home is that she doesn't seem to like people knowing

Justin's caption: "Though this modest 2-story frame house with yellow siding at 149-14 Roosevelt Avenue, between 149th Street and 149th Place, remains unmarked by a plaque or medallion of any kind, this is the home where former First Lady Nancy Reagan spent the first two years of her life."

by Ken

The other day I promised to return to what sounds like a fairly routine question: Where was Nancy Reagan born? What makes the question rather more interesting is that it seems to be a touchy subject for Mrs. Reagan, and suggests in turn that Mrs. R has a relationship to reality reminiscent of that of her late husband, the sainted Ronnie, whose most enduring legacy to the country seems to me the lesson, now totally absorbed by the Right, that reality is whatever you want it to be -- or, to put it another way, whatever makes you feel best.

Now of course "feeling best" doesn't necessarily mean "feeling contented." For right-wingers, in fact, it often means what seems like the opposite: feeling mad as hell. We just need to remember that one of the things they like best in life is feeling outraged, aggrieved, betrayed, and so on. And of course the people who treat the unwashed rubes like brainless puppets know this better than anyone, and know how much return there is to be gotten from getting the pathetic, otherwsie-useless, doody-kicking legions of right-wing saps hopping mad at the usual targets. Thus the ease of spreading psychotic delusions about, say, Hillary Clinton, or Planned Parenthood, or indeed anyone with a working brain and an ounce of decency or humanity.


IF YOU WERE TO LOOK NANCY REAGAN UP --

You would find in Wikipedia, for example:

She was born in New York City. After her parents separated, she grew up in Maryland, living with an aunt and uncle for some years.

And that first sentence, "She was born in New York City," is true -- as far as it goes. But it's also a little odd. For most people, "New York City" is a peculiarly nonspecific designation for a birthplace. Here, for example, are the relevant bits from Wikipedia bios of some other New York City natives, in alphabetical order:

• soprano Maria Callas': "According to her birth certificate Maria Callas was born Sophia Cecelia Kalos at Flower Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center), at 1249 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan . . . ."

• novelist E. L. Doctorow: "Doctorow was born in The Bronx . . . ."

• actress-comedienne Fran Drescher: "Drescher was born in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, New York . . . ."

• Nixon aide Jeb Magruder: "Jeb Stuart Magruder was born and grew up on Staten Island, New York . . . ."

• Vermont Sen. (and presidential candidate) Bernie Sanders: "Sanders was born in Brooklyn, New York . . . ."

Do you see the difference? Nancy Reagan, however, or born Anne Frances Robbins, as she was named at birth, was born in "New York City."

In fact, that pretty house pictured up top, at 149-14 Roosevelt Avenue, between 149th Street and 149th Place, is in the historic north-central Queens neighborhood of Flushing -- or Vlissingen, as it was called by the Dutch, after the Dutch town of that name (its origin pronounced "unclear" by Wikipedia). Our Vlissingen was thus one of the earlier European settlements in North America. It became Flushing when the English took over the colony of New Netherlands, because, well, you know how the English deal with those funny foreign names. To the English, after all, pretty much anything that isn't English is funny. In fact, they were already referring to the original Dutch town as Flushing.


WHY'S OUR NANCY SO TOUCHY ABOUT HER BIRTHPLACE?

Who knows? Maybe because it's such a funny name? Maybe because it's an "outer borough"?

In fact, though, Flushing truly is a historic place -- the birthplace, for one thing, of the concept of religious freedom and tolerance in North America, dating back to the Dutch colonial period and the governorship of Peter Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant himself could hardly have been less tolerant when it came to religion, tolerating a grand total of one religion, what we know as the Dutch Reformed Church. But when Flushing resident John Bowne fell victim to the governor's religious persecution in 1662 and was banished to Amsterdam (even though his heritage was English, and he had no Dutch connections). As long as he was there, Bowne appealed to Stuyvesant's masters, the Dutch West India Company, who in 1663 sent him back to New Netherlands armed with a letter to the governor instructing him, essentially, to accept the terms of the Flushing Remonstrance, the appeal that had been delivered to him in 1657 by a group of 30 English residents of "Vlishing," which concluded:

The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sonnes of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, soe love, peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war and bondage. And because our Saviour sayeth it is impossible but that offences will come, but woe unto him by whom they cometh, our desire is not to offend one of his little ones, in whatsoever form, name or title hee appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them, desiring to doe unto all men as we desire all men should doe unto us, which is the true law both of Church and State; for our Saviour sayeth this is the law and the prophets.

Therefore if any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences, for we are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man. And this is according to the patent and charter of our Towne, given unto us in the name of the States General, which we are not willing to infringe, and violate, but shall houlde to our patent and shall remaine, your humble subjects, the inhabitants of Vlishing.

Stuyvesant had responded to the Remonstrance by doing whatever he had to, on up to cases of brutal imprisonment, to "persuade" the signers to recant. It's hard not to think of the Flushing Remonstrance as one of the foundational documents of our American republic.

The heretics who especially drove Peter Stuyvesant crazy, by the way, were Quakers, who had a thriving community in Flushing. Although none of the signers of the Remonstrance themselves were apparently Friends themselves, they all had to ties to them. John Bowne's wife, for example, was a Quaker, and one of the ways he got himself in hot water with the governor was by offering his family's home for worship services.

In 1694 a Friends' Meeting House would be built, and significantly expanded in 1716-19. It's the second-oldest Friends' meeting house, and with its 300-plus years it is reckoned to be the oldest house of worship in continuous use in New York State. It was one of our stops on Saturday's tour, and I had once again found it one of the most simply beautiful and inspiring places I know of in the city. (I had first visited it during last year's self-guided Flushing Historic House Tour, and while some of the stops left me grumbly, not so this very special place. (This year's 28th Annual Holiday Historic House Tour is scheduled for Sunday, December 6. You can keep an eye on the Queens Historical Society's Public Programs page for updates.)



A lot of people would be proud to hail from a place as historic as Flushing. Not our Nancy, though. Of course she also has her own view of the date as well as the place of her birth. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that the actual year was 1917. Our Nancy, however, has always preferred the year 1921.


IF YOU'RE WONDERING HOW THIS CAME UP --

It so happens that a group of us had the good fortune  last Saturday to do a six-hour marathon Wolfe Walkers tour of "Offbeat Flushing Landmarks" led by that peerless NYC tour leader Justin Ferate. In the tour prospectus Justin had promised us, as a "final stop," the first home of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, noting: "While Nancy Reagan rarely (if ever) acknowledged her Queens roots, she was decidedly a daughter of Flushing. The house is one of the few frame dwellings remaining on Roosevelt Avenue." In fact, it was to be a mere walk-by following out last real stop, at the Volcker-Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary, and Victorian Garden, where we were finally able to relax and eat the lunches we'd been instructed to bring in the aforementioned Victorian garden in addition to enjoying a tour of the place. (The Voelker Orth is remarkable first and foremost, Justin noted, simply as a carefully preserved specimen of a middle-class house of the period.)



We wound up missing it. We walked the block from 38th Avenue to Roosevelt Avenue, from where we began the walk down Roosevelt Avenue back to the Main Street Flushing terminus of the No. 7 train. But as Justin explained, we should have looked for the house right away on Roosevelt Avenue (it's on the same block as the Voelker Orth, between 149th Street and 149th Place), but he remembered it being closer to the subway, and by the time he realized the error, he "thought everyone would be too tired to backtrack," as he put it in a follow-up e-mail.

As you learn when you do tours with Justin, they aren't necessarily over until they're over, and this one brought that follow-up e-mail, on the subject of Nancy Reagan's house. Some of us had actually seen it, Justin pointed out. We had in our group another inveterate NYC walking-tour-taker, with whom I've done probably a million walks, who was born and raised in Flushing. When our itinerary took us past the Flushing Free Synagogue, at the corner of Kissena Boulevard and Sanford Avenue, Mike noted it as the site of his bar mitzvah "not quite 50 years ago," with an accent on the "not quite." When we reached Roosevelt Avenue on that final leg of the walk, Justin pointed out, Mike had described the group of houses that includes 149-14 "as being what he remembered of 'old' Flushing."

In addition to reestablishing the basic facts of the site, Justin added this capsule history:

Officially, Ann Frances Robbins was born on July 6, 1921 at Sloane Hospital for Women in NYC to Kenneth Seymour Robbins and actress Edith Luckett. (In years past, Nancy Reagan’s birth date was always posted as July 6, 1917. After the White House website posted a “younger” birth date, the 1921 birth date has become  accepted as “official.” One can only intimate that one of the privileges of being First Lady is the right to shave at least four years off your age.)

Kenneth Seymour Robbins and Edith Luckett divorced in 1928. When Edith married neurosurgeon Dr. Loyal Davis, 14-year old Ann “Nancy” took on his last name. The family moved to Chicago and Nancy Davis later attended Smith College in Massachusetts. She was bitten by the acting bug and made it to Broadway before embarking on a succession of B-films in the 1940s and 1950s, including “Hellcats of the Navy” with husband Ronald Reagan.

Nancy Davis met Ronald Reagan because, in 1949, her name appeared on the Hollywood blacklist of suspected Communist sympathizers. As it turned out, the “Nancy Davis” on the list was another actress with the same name.  To clear her reputation, the later First Lady enlisted the assistance of the then-president of the Screen Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan. The two hit it off and were married until Reagan’s death in 2004.

Nancy Reagan now lives in retirement in California.

Nancy Robbins Davis Reagan as a young
girl with her mother Edith (Luckett) Davis.

THE REMAINING FALL WOLFE WALKERS TOURS

At the moment we're two events into the eight-event Fall 2015 Wolfe Walkers tour schedule. So far, in addition to Flushing, we've visited the contiguous Brooklyn neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. I've always had a difficult time keeping them sorted, and thanks to Justin I finally understand why: They are in fact historically a single neighborhood, known in the day simply as "The Hill." The separation came, oddly, when are residents prepared a formal application to the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission for a new historic district, which the LPC wound up cutting more or less in half, designating a Fort Greene Historic District in September 1978 (the Designation Report is here; there's also a small historic district around the Brooklyn Academy of Music); a portion of the originally proposed district was then designated in November 1981 as the Clinton Hill Historic District (the Designation Report is here).

Here's the rest of the schedule:

E. L. Doctorow in the Bronx
Walking tour with Jean Arrington
Saturday, October 10, 1:30pm to about 3:30/4pm

A Journey to Historic and Revitalized Harlem
Saturday, October 17, 1pm to about 4pm

Snug Harbor, Chinese Scholar's Garden + National Lighthouse Museum (Staten Island)
Saturday, October 31, 9:45am to about 3/3:30pm

The Roebling Museum and the Village of Roebling, NJ (bus and walking tour)
Saturday, November 7, 8am to about 6:30pm

Old and New Pennsylvania Station + the Houdini Museum
Saturday, November 14, 1:15pm to about 3:45pm

Wolfe Walker Brunch + "The Ziegfeld Club" with Laurie Sanderson
Saturday, December 12, 12n to 3pm

My general principle with regard to tours that Justin schedules is: If he thinks there's something worth seeing there (wherever!), I'm going, barring schedule conflicts. Unfortunately, I'm conflicted out of the Harlem, Staten Island, and Penn Station tours, but I'm looking forward to the others.

I'm especially pleased, having missed the Municipal Art Society version of the Bronx tour that Jean Arrington has put together around sites included by Bronx native E. L. Doctorow in his 1985 novel World's Fair, so I'm delighted to have a second crack at it. For MAS Jean often does tours of select groups from among the originally 150 or so NYC public schools built by the legendary C.B.J. Snyder (1860-1945) during his time (1891-1923) as the NYC Board of Education's superintendent of school buildings.

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: Is Jane's Walk Weekend coming up where you are? Plus some additional NYC-centric gadding notes

No, you can't click on anything here, or type anything in. But you can by going to janeswalk.org.

by Ken

Just some quick updating, mostly occasioned by the upcomingness of a favorite weekend of the year in this space, Jane's Walk Weekend. For us in New York it means, once again, a generous calendar of incredible walks (and also some bicycle rides) -- free events -- overseen by the Municipal Art Society, which knows a thing or two about walking tours, except that this year the calendar includes a pretty full schedule on Friday as well as Saturday and Sunday, May 1-3.

New Yorkers can go directly to the New York City page. In theory there are filters that should enable you to sort the total schedule to fit your particular needs and wishes. I guess it's my contrariness that make those filters really not terribly helpful for my purposes, making it necessary to scan repeatedly through the whole schedule. But then, wouldn't I have wanted to peruse the whole schedule anyway? (New Yorkers may also check out the recent MAS blogpost, "Jane's Walk Weekend Is Back -- and Bigger than Ever.")

I know we're getting close to the actual dates. All the more reason to find the appropriate Web page for your locality and see what whets your exploring appetite. It's a great tribute to that great urbanist Jane Jacobs, one of the foremost champions of cities and one of the most revealing students of the way cities work, or don't.


"WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN"

One other Urban Gadding note I can pass on is that urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum, the Queens borough historian, has scheduled a new edition of what he calls his "signature" tour, The World of the #7 Train, an all-day extravaganza that consists of six mini-walking tours along with an exploration of the #7 train from Manhattan to its terminus in Flushing, Queens. Here's how Jack describes the outing on the "Public Tours" page of his website:

THE WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN
Saturday, June 13, 2015, 10am-5:30pm

This series of six walks and connecting rides along North Queens’ transportation corridor is my signature tour. We focus on what the #7 train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service in 1914. Walks take place in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Flushing, Corona, Woodside and Jackson Heights and lunch is in Flushing’s Asiatown. Tour fee is $42 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) The full day’s program and other info is available by email: jaconet@aol.com The tour is limited to 25 people.

MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY

As it happens, I've just done a couple of MAS tours with Jack: a couple of weeks ago a fascinating walk along Woodside Avenue in Queens, and just yesterday the East Side version of his Manhattan "Conforming to the Grid" tour, which focuses on the disruptions to the Manhattan grid created in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 caused by pre-existing development of the area north of present-day Houston Street between Broadway and the Bowerie. Jack will be doing Part 2, the West Side version, looking at the grid disruptions caused by the pre-existing settlement of then-"suburban" Greenwich Village along the Hudson River, is coming up Sunday, May 31, at 11am. The day before, Saturday, May 30, Jack will be doing Part 2 of his MAS series "What's New (and Old) in Long Island City.

For more information on both, and to check out the rest of the current MAS schedule, go to mas.org and click on "Tours" -- or this link will take you directly to the "Tours" page. Right now MAS is coming up on the final month of the current March-May MAS schedule. Watch for the announcement of the next schedule -- which one might guess will cover June-August -- sometime in mid-May. It's worth checking for the new schedule in a timely fashion, because for some time after it's announced, it's possible to register for any darned tour you want, including the ones that are "never available." Well, they're not available if you wait till they're filled!


NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM

Registration has already begun for non-members as well as members for the Transit Museum's busy summer schedule. For more information go to the "Programs" page of the Transit Museum website, and click through to the link for any date that looks interesting to you to see what the current availability is.

I was going to recommend the two additional outings of a tour that Mike Morgenthal offered for the first time in the last schedule, "Ghosts of the Elevated: A Walking Tour," a walk through the Lower Manhattan risings of the old Second and Third Avenue els, which I enjoyed enormously. But I see that both dates are sold out! On the plus side, this suggests that the tour will continue to be offered!

One thing you know will be available is the Transit Museum's 2015 schedule of ever-popular "Nostalgia Rides," which happen on tenderly cared-for vintage equipment from New York City Transit's collection. Two outings are scheduled for summer: "Beach Bound: Coney Island," on Saturday, July 18, and "Orchard Beach by Rail and Bus," on Saturday, August 8. I can recommend both from personal experience, and may do the Orchard Beach outing again, hoping for better weather than we had the last time we set out there. In addition, we have advance news of another outing I can recommend from personal experience, a fall "Evening Ride to Woodlawn Cemetery," on Saturday, October 24.


WOLFE WALKERS with JUSTIN FERATE

Again there's a new schedule in progress, but there are still a lot of terrific-looking programs to come: "Summer Mansions of Astoria" (Saturday, May 9, 10am-12:30pm), "Kleindeutschland in the East Village" (Saturday, May 16, 1-4:30pm), "An Offbeat Day in Staten Island: Tottenville and Conference House" ("by ferry, foot, and overland railway," to the southern tip of Staten Island; Sunday, May 31, 9:15am- 3:30pm, "possibly later"), and two of Justin's famous grand bus outings: "Hyde Park: Val-Kill, Springwood, FDR Library, and Vanderbilt Mansion" (Sunday, June 7, 6:45am-7:30pm) and "New Paltz and Hurley: 17th and 18th Century Stone Houses of the Hudson Valley" (Saturday, July 11, 7:45am-6:30pm).

I'm doing all of the above except the Tottenville excursion, and that's only because of a schedule conflict. The first tour I ever did with Justin was a version of the all-day Tottenville outing he did for MAS some years ago, in admittedly dreadful weather -- looking out over the Arthur Kill, which separates southern Staten Island from New Jersey, we could barely make out the city of Perth Amboy opposite. What's more, we weren't able to go inside Conference House itself, which has now been refurbished and just been reopened to the public.

But my abiding memory of the Tottenville trip is that as soon as Justin got our group safely organized on the Staten Island Ferry he started talking, and about eight hours later, on the return trip, he took a breath. My official policy became that if Justin thinks there's something worth seeing someplace, I'm going, as long as I don't have a schedule conflict. In the case of the above-mentioned "Summer Mansions of Astoria" tour, I'm going even though I had a schedule conflict. As I've mentioned I've been reading Edith Wharton, including the Old New York quartet of novellas, and I'm not going to miss that!

Download the Spring 2015 Wolfe Walkers brochure for more information, including the registration form.

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: Check out the Spring 2015 schedule of Justin Ferate and Wolfe Walkers

This time Justin's hardy Tottenville explorers will get inside Conference House. (Click to enlarge, and download a pdf of the Wolfe Walkers Spring 2015 Brochure here.)

by Ken

Just about every time I take a walking tour (or bus-and-walking tour or train-and-walking tour) with the amazing Justin Ferate, I have occasion to tell the story of the first tour I ever did with Justin, back when he still occasionally did tours for the Municipal Art Society. It was a pretty much all-day affair to Tottenville, at the southern edge of Staten Island, and it was, well, amazing. As I always say, as soon as Justin got us grouped on the Staten Island Ferry at the Manhattan terminal, he started talking, and all those hours later when we arrived back at the end of the ferry terminal terminus of the Staten Island Railway, he came up for breath.

The weather was dismal, raining on and off, with mist so heavy that when we got to Conference House Park, at the southern tip of the island, we could barely make out Perth Amboy, New Jersey, across the Arthur Kill. Nevertheless, the whole day was magical, and I was inspired to return to Tottenville on my own. And of course I was inspired to take as many tours with Justin as I've been able to.

Nowadays those tours are mostly in spring and fall seasons of the Wolfe Walkers, the venerable band of urban gadders originally gathered together by Prof. Gerard Wolfe when he was teaching at NYU. As Justin noted last year, though, he sudenly realized that he has now been doing the Wolfe Walkers walks longer than Gerard.



And in the brand-new Spring 2015 Brochure that Justin just passed along, I see that he's doing a new verson of the Tottenville expedition on May 31, which I would have signed up for in a heartbeat if I didn't have a schedule conflict. (This time the group is promised access to the inside Conference House.) I had a couple of other schedule conflicts with dates on the Spring 2015 schedule, but one of them I'm blowing off, in order to do the ever-so-Edith Whartonesque Summer Mansions of Astoria, Queens. (I've been reading a lot of Edith Wharton, including the Old New York novellas, for which the tour should practically be a required field trip. I had my registration form and check -- for both bus tours, the "Titanic Memorial Tour," "Summer Mansions of Astoria," and "Kleindeutschland" -- sitting in the mailbox across the street in time for the next pickup after I received the brochure.

Dear Friends,

Another Spring Season awaits! Responding to several requests, we are offering a walk of Spiritual Sites along Central Park West [Sunday, April 12] that will include (among other locations) a private tour of Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue. Three tours celebrate the New York waterfront: Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights with a tour of Plymouth Church [Sunday, April 26]; Summer Mansions of Astoria, Queens [Saturday, May 9]; and the charming waterfront village of Tottenville, Staten Island [Sunday, May 31] -- including a tour of Conference House, where attempts were made to resolve the issues of the American Revolution. (Needless to say, the Conference was unsuccessful.)

We’ll explore the history and remnants of “Kleindeutschland” or “Little Germany” on the Lower East Side [Saturday, May 16]. On our bus trip to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Hyde Park [Sunday, June 7], we’ll travel to Springwood, the Roosevelt Mansion. A special treat will be a visit to Eleanor Roosevelt’s unusual snuggery, Val-Kill Cottage as well as the FDR Presidential Library. The Hyde Park trip will also include a tour of the Frederick Vanderbilt Mansion, designed by McKim, Mead and White.

A very exciting offering this year will be a day of 17th and 18th Century Stone Houses in the towns of New Paltz and Hurley [Saturday, July 11]. The New Paltz houses form a National Landmark district and the houses are maintained in a protected museum environment. The houses of Hurley date back as far back as 300 years and are currently residences today. This is the only day of the year that these private homes are opened for public visitation. A rare treat!

Come join us for another exciting season!

In addition to the above tours, all led by Justin, there's a Saturday-evening Titanic Memorial Tour (April 18) led by Dave Gardner, "a gold member of the Titanic Historical Society."

You can find a pdf of the Spring 2015 Brochure here. The brochure includes the registration form (it's page 2), but if you want to download just the registration form, you can find it here.

And while you're on Justin's "Tours of the City" website take a look around, and if you have any interest in what's going on in and around New York, you should sign up for Justin's mailing list, which will land you an ongoing cornucopia of information. As I always say, I always read Justin's pass-alongs, and have been tipped to all manner of fascinations.

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: Coming up -- Wolfe Walkers spring walks, World of the #7 Train, Jane's Walk Weekend

The No. 7 train to Flushing here has its most dramatic head-on view of the Manhattan skyline. Jack Eichenbaum is doing this year's version of his "signature tour," the all-day "World of the #7 Train," on May 31 (see below).

by Ken

I mentioned recently that I did a pre-Passover tour with Justin Ferate to the heart of Chassidic Brooklyn -- to the worldwide nerve center of Chabad Lubavitch, on and around Kingston Avenue below Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights South. It was the first tour on Justin's Wolfe Walkers Spring 2014 Calendar. (You can download the Spring 2014 brochure here.) When our utterly engaging tour guide from the Chassidic Discovery Center, Rabbi Beryl Epstein, asked us all to introduce ourselves and explain briefly how we had come to take that day's tour, I was tempted to offer as my reason that Justin had scheduled a tour there, and if Justin thinks it's worth visiting, the odds are awfully good that it is.

Which is pretty much my governing principle in attacking each Wolfe Walkers brochure when it becomes available. Next up on the schedule (and I don't know if there's even still space) is:

ROOSEVELT AVENUE: "TASTES OF THE WORLD" FOOD TOUR
Walking Tour with Queens Food Specialist Jeff Orlick
Saturday, April 26, 2014, 1:30pm-approx. 5pm
(Note: The start time is a half-hour earlier than is indicated in the brochure. Justin just sent out this change of time late tonight, as requested by Jeff, "to ensure that we are given ample time to savor the experience.")

Here’s the tour you’ve been asking for! Join the noted Queens food specialist Jeff Orlick on this very special food discovery tour of perhaps the most diverse area in the world: Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. Experience the cultural enclaves of Jackson Heights, Woodside, and Elmhurst in one afternoon. Get an insider’s view to as many as nine cultures such as Tibetan, Nepalese, Filipino, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Colombian, Thai and more in one afternoon. In neighborhoods noted for their complex array of cultures and ethnicities, we’ll taste our way across the globe to demonstrate Jeff’s ultimate premise: Food is the greatest medium for communication and connection.

On this special 3-hour tour, created just for the Wolfe Walkers, we'll travel from Little Manila to Little India, then the Himalayan Heights to Bogotá through Bangkok, exploring only the most authentic foods not made for tourists. In between bites, we'll stop at some of Jeff’s best-kept secret shops for clothing, jewelry, and other authentic ethnic wares while we work up our appetites. The tour will be tailored to our needs and interests, so we’ll share our interests with Jeff and be ready for an amazing afternoon. This promises to be a one-of-a-kind experience – unlike anywhere else in the world. This isn't a lecture; it’s an insider’s experience to the most culturally rich and diverse place in the world.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages are included. The world is ours!

Limited to 15 participants. Fee: $75, advance registration only (includes tour guide, food, and non-alcoholic beverages)

There's usually an all-day bus extravaganza on the Wolfe Walkers schedule, with lunch included. For Spring 2014 it's a trip up the Hudson River to the Gomez Mill House Museum (the house, built in 1714, is the oldest Jewish dwelling in North America and the oldest home in Orange County), then back for lunch at the Buttermilk Falls Inn ("a delightful country hideaway that includes a renovated 1680 home on a 70-acre estate on the banks of the Hudson River"), stopping next at Wilderstein ("a remarkable 1852 house and estate that was owned by three generations of the Suckley family"), with a final stop at the bridge across the Hudson River from Poughkeepsie, the old Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge, whose 1.3-mile span was reopened a couple of years ago as a recreation area, the Walkway Over the Hudson, now "the world's longest (and tallest) elevated footbridge," with "expansive vistas" over the river.

GOMEZ MILL HOUSE, BUTTERMILK FALLS,
WILDERSTEIN, and WALKWAY OVER THE HUDSON
Bus and Walking Tour with Justin Ferate
Saturday, May 10, 2014, bus leaves promptly at 8:15am, returns approx. 7pm

There's a much more detailed tour description in the brochure.

Limited to 40 people. Fee: $115, advance registration only (includes bus, admissions, guided tours, luncheon, and gratuities)

Farther along the schedule are:

* WHAT'S UP IN BROOKLYN HEIGHTS?
Saturday, May 24, 10am-1pm, $25 in advance, $28 on-site

* CHURCHES OF MONTCLAIR, NJ
Sunday, June 1, 10am-3:30pm (from and to Manhattan), $25 in advance, $28 on-site, plus bus fare
Tour led by John Simko, director of the Nutley Historical Society Museum (a splendid tour guide who led us through the museum on our Wolfe Walkers visit to Nutley last year)

* MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
Saturday, June 15, 10am-1pm, $25 in advance, $28 on-site

Wolfe Walkers advance registration (which you'll note is required for some tours) is by mail only, by check only -- you can download just the registration form here; of course it's also included in the PDF of the complete spring brochure.

I have no idea whether there's still space (it's limited to eight people), but there's also a (free) bicycle tour with the Belgian journalist Jacqueline Goossens, who has lived in New York for a couple of decades now and is one of the smartest and most charming and funniest people you'll meet. The spring ride is CENTRAL PARK, HARLEM, AND A BIT OF THE BRONX, and it's Saturday, June 21, from 10am to about 3:30pm.


JACK EICHENBAUM PRESENTS THE 2014
EDITION OF HIS "SIGNATURE TOUR"

I've mentioned this famous tour a lot, but it's been a few years since I actually did it, but I'm doing it again this year. Jack, an urban geographer who for some years now has been the Queens Borough Historian, has been talking about updating some of the mini-walking tours that make up the whole adventure to take note of changes that have been taking place in those areas, so it should be even more interesting.

THE WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN
Saturday, May 31, 2014, 10am-5:30pm

This series of six walks and connecting rides along North Queens’ transportation corridor is my signature tour. We focus on what the #7 train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service in 1914. Walks take place in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Flushing, Corona, Woodside and Jackson Heights and lunch is in Flushing’s Asiatown.

Tour fee is $40 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) The full day’s program and other info is available by email jaconet@aol.com

The tour is limited to 25 people.

Jack's public tour schedule is here, and there's also a link to sign up for Jack's e-mail list. One walk I'm especially looking forward to is a Municipal Art Society tour that has been rescheduled from last summer, when Jack wasn't able to do it. It's of WILLET'S POINT, the patch of terrain in northern Queens between Citi Field (home of the New York Mets) and Flushing, a sort of Land That Time Forgot. Jack describes it as "a sewerless, hardscrabble area of auto junkyards and related businesses that has twice beaten back attempts at redevelopment." Now, with developers lurking again, Jack aims to help us "understand the area’s important setting, confront ecological issues and learn why “Willets Point” is a misnomer." It's Sunday, May 25, 4pm-6pm, $15 for MAS members, $20 for nonmembers; for more information or to register, use the MAS link above.


MARK THE DATES FOR JANE'S WALK
WEEKEND: IT'S MAY 3-4 (SCHEDULE TBA)


The birthday of that late great urbanist Jane Jacobs provides a good clue to the timing of each year's celebraton of her visions of cities that work for their inhabitants, now celebrated widely around the world -- you can check online to see what festivities (free!) may be offered in your area.

In New York, since the Municipal Art Society took over the planning and operation of Jane's Walk NYC, it has become one of the great urban gadding weekends of the year. This year it's May 3-4, and I'm itching for the schedule of events myself. You can keep track at MAS's Jane's Walk page, where you can also sign up for updates.

AS FOR THE REGULAR MAS TOUR SCHEDULE --

There are still a fair number of tours that have space in the remainder of the March-May schedule (or just remember mas.org and click on "Tours"). The new schedule should be posted sometime around May 15, and while it's true that some tours will fill up well before they take place, if you start doing your registering when the schedule comes out, you'll be able to register for any tour you want.

#

Read More

For the Sandy anniversary, those within reach of the afflicted NY-NJ-CT coastal area are invited to "Light up the shore!"

Blacked-out lower Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, looking northeast, with the tower of the Empire State Building poking up in the background

by Ken

It's an anniversary that has been looming ominously for, well, going on a year.

As it happened, yesterday I was in New Jersey's "Mile-Square City" of Hoboken, on the mostly flatland lip of land below the southern end of the bluffs that rise above the state's Hudson River shoreline, on a wonderful 5½-hour Wolfe Walkers walking tour with the incomparable Justin Ferate, and wherever we went -- at least until we finally reached the high ground overlooking the river where the Stevens Institute of Technology was built, with those spectacular vistas across to Manhattan and up and down the river, and on to the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge -- there were tales of the horrendous flooding from Superstorm Sandy.

In many cases, happily, the flooding stories were accompanied by subsequent stories of gradual restoration and/or rebuilding and reopening. But there were also the cases of not-yet-restored, including the very start of our Hoboken excursion, where the beautiful Erie-Lackawanna Railroad and Ferry Terminal designed by Kenneth Murchison, where connection was once made between trains running to the west and the ferry link to Manhattan. The terminal, which now connects NJ Transit's light-rail lines with the nearby Hoboken station of the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) subway line, remains largely closed, including the famous vaulted Waiting Room.

As Justin pointed out in the course of the walk, big storms plowing the Northest tend, for reasons of local geography, to pass over the stretch of coast surrounding New York Harbor, producing the double whammy of a storm like Sandy -- inflicting damage, yes, but not of a kind we're accustomed to.

This scene of course plays out all through the New Jersey-New York-Connecticut coastal region, and of course with special severity in the unprotected shore areas that took the hardest hits, where loss of life was highest and rebuilding has been a maybe-yes, maybe-no proposition, with the prospect of permanent changes in land use and lifestyles.

I thought of sharing some of my memories of the storm days and the aftermath weeks, but they're so much milder than the fates suffered by the hardest-hit folks that somehow they don't seem appropriate. So I was pleased to see an e-mail this morning from the Municipal Art Society with information about a remembrance tomorrow which is called either "Light the Shore" or "Light Up the Shore," depending where you look.

Join Sandy-Impacted Communities to Light Up the Shore!

On Tuesday October 29th -- the anniversary of Superstorm Sandy -- groups from across the region will be lighting up the coastline to acknowledge the impact of the storm and the on-going resilience challenges we collectively face. Groups in Staten Island, Red Hook, Lower East Side, in Connecticut and all down the Jersey shore will join together with flashlights and candles along the coast. The goal is to have the entire Sandy-impacted coastline illuminated!

All communities are welcome to join their friends and neighbors and line the coast in solidarity for a resilient future!  Information about specific community meeting spots and times are shown below:

MANHATTAN, LOWER EAST SIDE

Time: 6:45pm to 8:15pm

Where: East River Park
• 10th Street (GOLES) will be meeting at 10th Street and Avenue D at 6:45pm to walk to the East River.
• 6th Street (Henry St.) will be meeting at BGR on 6th between FDR and D to walk over at 7ish to the East River.
• Houston Street (FEGS) will meet at Houston and Avenue D at 6:45pm to walk over.

BROOKLYN

Time: Meeting at 6:30pm, candle-lighting at 7:45pm

Where:
• Brighton Beach: Shorefront Y, 3300 Coney Island Ave.
• Canarsie: Canarsie Park 84th & Seaview (6:30pm -- interfaith service; performance by local elementary school and gospel talent; 7:45pm -- candle-lighting)
• Coney Island: West 8th Street & Riegelman Boardwalk (by NY Aquarium, on boardwalk side). Contact: OHEL / Project Hope Rachel Heller,  rlh290@yahoo.com
• Coney Island (2): Stillwell Avenue & Riegelman Boardwalk Point
• Coney Island (3): Coney Island Pier, W. 21st Street & Riegelman Boardwalk
• Coney Island (4): Kaiser Park Pier, W. 33rd St. & Bayview Ave
• Dumbo: corner of Main Street & Plymouth @ entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Point of contact: Alexandria Sica Email: alexandria@dumbonyc.org
• Gerritsen Beach: Meet at 7pm at the end of Gerritsen Avenue, on the Shell Bank Creek shoreline. Candle-lighting at 7:45pm
• Red Hook: Coffey Park, Verona St. between Richard St. and Dwight St.
• Red Hook (2): IKEA, 1 Beard Street (join Portside and friends at the water’s edge)
• Sea Gate: Sea Gate Association Beach 42 and Surf Avenue. Contact: 917-586-7006 or merrie5017@gmail.com
• Sheepshead Bay: 2801 Emmons Avenue

STATEN ISLAND

Time: 7:45pm

Where: Light a candle with your neighbor in the closest waterfront to your community in Staten Island.

[See the link for information about an earlier Walk Along the Boardwalk, Community Supper, and Interfaith Servic of Remembrance.]

LIGHT UP NEW JERSEY

Time: 6:00pm

Where:
• Raritan Bay Waterfront Park, 1 Kennan Way, South Amboy (NJ 101.5 with Raritan Bay Federal Credit Union)
• Keansburg (NJ 101.5)
• Asbury Park Boardwalk: Keansburg 9/11 Memorial , Main Street and Beachway (NJ 101.5 with CentraState and First Atlantic Federal Credit Union)
• Jenkinson’s in Point Pleasant, 300 Ocean Ave. Point Pleasant Beach (94.3 The Point with United Teletech Financial and Zarrilli Homes)
• Bradley Beach, 900 Ocean Ave. (94.3 The Point)
• Seaside Heights, 800 Ocean Terrace (105.7 The Hawk with NJ Outboards and Walters Homes)
• Chef Mike’s ABG in Seaside Park, Island Beach Motor Lodge, 24th and Central Ave, South Seaside Park (92.7 WOBM with Chef Mike’s ABG, Jersey Shore Crawlspace Enhancement, Classic Kitchens,Island Beach Mortor Lodge, Marine Max and DelPrete Construction)
• Mud City Crabhouse, Long Beach Island, Manahawkin, 1185 East Bay Ave. (105.7 The Hawk with Modular Factory Homes Direct)
• Lucy the Elephant, Margate, 9200 Atlantic Ave. (Lite Rock 96.9)
• Ocean City Music Pier, Moorlyn Terrace (Cat Country 107.3 with South Jersey Gas)
• Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, 2500 Boardwalk (97.3 ESPN / WPG 1450 with Atlantic City Electric and Xfinity)
• Laguna Grill & Rum Bar in Brigantine, 1400 Ocean Ave., Brigantine (SoJO 104.9 with Prudential Fox & Roach Real Estate, the "LePera Team"

(Note: No information is provided about Connecticut events, and with a quick search I couldn't find any. But whose to say that Nutmeg Staters can't follow the same prescription as Staten Islanders? "Light a candle with your neighbor in the closest waterfront to your community.")

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: World Tourism Day is this Friday -- so go someplace! (I have some NYC thoughts)

by Ken

No, I don't know anything more about "World Tourism Day," and I'm not interested enough to research it. But I do know what it means to me, and one thing it doesn't mean is booking a $10K fancy-pants trip to some exotic destination.

For reasons that probably wouldn't interest anyone but me, regular travel-style tourism isn't terribly workable for me, but as "Urban Gadabout" readers know only too well, I've become a firm believer in the "tourist in your own city" approach, and if I did have occasion to travel, I would probably try to do it the way I've been doing my local gadding. I expect that in more and more places there are more and more opportunities for walking and other kinds of tours that explore an area's past and present, appreciating what's there now and understanding how it came to be there.


LAST CALL FOR "BRIGHTON LINE MEMOIRS"

As I mentioned in my recent post "Catching up with Jack Eichenbaum," Jack -- who's the Queens Borough Historian -- had to postpone this tour from its original July date. People are probably more familiar with Jack's more or less annual "World of the #7 Train," a day-long trek along the subway line that goes from Times Square to Flushing. Awhile back he brought back his "Day on the J train," to Brooklyn and Queens, and now for the first time in a decade or so he's doing Brooklyn's Brighton line.

Brighton Line Memoirs meandering off the Q train

Saturday, September 28, 10am-5:30pm
This is a series of five walks and connecting rides along what was once the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island RR dating to 1878. Walks take place in Prospect Park, Brighton Beach, along Avenue U, in Ditmas Park and Central Flatbush. Lunch is in Brighton Beach where you can picnic on the Boardwalk. Tour fee is $39 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) Get the full day’s program and other info by email jaconet@aol.com. The tour is limited to 25 people. Don’t get left out!

As I also reported in that post, although the last I heard Jack still had a fair amount of space, "The way it often works is that there's a flurry of registrations as the date closes in, and people wind up getting closed out. You don't want that to happen to you, do you?"


MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY

I still don't know of any better place to start exploring the city than MAS's tours (what's posted now is the schedule through November), and while a bunch of tours for the coming weekend are already sold out, the last time I looked there was still space in:

Harlem Hike: 145th Street from Hotel Olga to Sugar Hill
Eric K. Washington
Saturday, 11am-1pm

Prowling the War of 1812 Seaport
Kathleen Hulser
Sunday, 11am-1pm

Note: I've done Eric Washington's 145th Street "hike" and loved it -- and also his "Harlem Grab Bag," of which there's another edition coming up Saturday, October 12.


ACROSS 57th STREET WITH JUSTIN FERATE,
PLUS "THE REAL GANGS OF NEW YORK"

I worried that I jumped the gun in providing a link for the fall 2013 Wolfe Walkers brochure, which I'd unearthed while doing my own Web rummaging, but Justin Ferate (who has been organizing the Wolfe Walkers program for some years now) finally attached the brochure to a list e-mail. (And if you're not on Justin's list, you're missing out on a wealth of information. Sign up now.) As it happens, there's hardly any time left till the first event on the agenda, "57th Street: Art! Music! Culture!," this Saturday the 28th at 1pm ("to approximately 4pm").

57th Street has long been a treasure trove of artistic, musical, and cultural delights. We discover the history, legends, and lore of this fascinating thoroughfare. Among the various sites will be Trump Tower, Tiffany’s, the Fuller Building, the Solow Building, Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, the Art Students’ League, and a selection of art galleries. Rediscover old friends, discover remnants of the street’s residential past, and view high-end new buildings. Tour will include several special interior visits.

Meet: Inside the entrance of Trump Tower, located on the east side of Fifth Avenue, between East 56th and East 57th Streets. A coffee restaurant and restrooms are available inside the building.

Fee: $23 on-site (by check to Hermine Watterson)

I've spent a lot of time on various stretches of 57th Street, and I'll bet it would be special to be able to see it through Justin's eyes, not to mention those promised "special interior visits." During the ominous weekend last October when the Northeast was girding for Hurricane Sandy, and the Municipal Art Society prudently canceled its tours, I found myself suddenly free to hook up with Justin's Halloween Greenwich Village "ghost" walk. I don't have much interest in ghosts, but I realized I'd never done a walk in the Village with Justin, and his view was bound to be different from any I'd experienced. It was, it was.

As it happens, this walk is scheduled on the same day as Jack Eichenbaum's "Brighton Line Memoirs," so I can't do it, but I'll bet that people who do won't ever look at this grand old street the same way. It's too late to take advantage of the discount for advance registration, so just show up at the meeting place (see above) with that check for $23 made out to Hermine Watterson.

Tomorrow Justin's giving a lecture at the Merchant's
House Museum on "The Real Gangs of New York"

It's a "19th Century Lifeways Lecture," "marking the 150th anniversary of the New York Draft Riots, the bloodiest urban insurrection of 19th Century America," tomorrow night, September 26, at 6:30pm. Justin will "examine the social pressures and misguided public policies that led to the powder keg that exploded in the streets of New York in July of 1863."

The Merchant's House Museum at 29 East 4th Street is a unique destination in its own right, not just for the survived 1832 Federal-style house itself but for the remarkable circumstance that a house worth's of furnishings and possessions from the family that lived there for almost a century has also been preserved. The lecture is free to museum members, $15 to others. For more information and registration, go to the museum's Calendar of Events.


GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY

One of the sites planned for Saturday's "Far Side" tour

Green-Wood is a reminder of the days before we had major parks, when cemeteries on the outskirts of the city were places where harried urbanites went for a day's outing in nature, and Brooklyn's Green-Wood was in fact the prototype for New York City's first great parks, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted's Central Park (Manhattan) and Prospect Park (up the Terminal Moraine a piece in Brooklyn). Green-Wood has an active tour and events schedule, and while Sunday's "Historic Trolley Tour" is sold out, on Saturday at 1pm there's an intriguing-looking trolley tour called "The Far Side of Green-Wood," which will visit "sites not included on many other Green-Wood tours."

*     *    *

That's just some off-the-top-my-head thoughts, and just for the coming weekend. Don't neglect to check these folks' ongoing schedules -- including that of one of my favorite tour sources, the New York Transit Museum.

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: Catching up with Justin Ferate's New York

The previously scheduled visit to Staten Island's in-development Freshkills Park had to be postponed because of Superstorm Sandy damage. The tour has been rescheduled for November 9.

by Ken

A couple of days ago I promised an update on the fall tour schedule of the Wolfe Walkers, now programmed by the peerless tour guide Justin Ferate. The brochure is available online now, with this introduction:

FALL PROGRAM: 2013

Dear Friends,

This Fall, we have an exciting selection of touring options. Our first tour of the season will view and explore a diversity of important and well-loved 57th Street landmark buildings and will also include brief tours of several art galleries. Our Autumn bus trip will take us up to Hartford, Connecticut. Here, we’ll take a private boat tour along the Connecticut River on the romantic old- time excursion boat, the Hartford Belle. (Reserved just for the Wolfe Walkers!) We’ll lunch at the highly acclaimed Italian restaurant Salute and end our visit to Hartford with a guided tour of the beloved Harriet Beecher Stowe House. To celebrate the Fall season, our intrepid bicyclist Jacqueline Goossens will be leading a special bicycle trip to Upper Manhattan and then will travel along the Hudson River toward Columbus Circle. We are also offering an often-requested walking tour of the “Mile Square City” of Hoboken, New Jersey. An unusual and special new tour will discover the multi-layered histories of Nutley, New Jersey – strolling the treasured waterfront greenbelt of Memorial Parkway (including a number of 18th and 19th century historic structures) with the Nutley Museum Director, John Simko. Speaking of greenbelts, we’ve also rescheduled the bus trip to Freshkills Park in Staten Island. Spaces are limited, so be certain to register right away! Finally, at our annual Holiday Brunch, Justin will present a lecture celebrating The Centennial of Grand Central Terminal. There are lots of options. We look forward to seeing you all!
The Wolfe Walker Committee

Here are abbreviated descriptions of the tours.

57th Street: Art! Music! Culture!
Walking Tour with Justin Ferate
Saturday, September 28, 2013, 1pm to approx. 4pm

57th Street has long been a treasure trove of artistic, musical, and cultural delights. Join noted Tour Leader Justin Ferate as we discover the history, legends, and lore of this fascinating thoroughfare. Among the various sites will be Trump Tower, Tiffany’s, the Fuller Building, the Solow Building, Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, the Art Students’ League, and a selection of art galleries. Rediscover old friends, discover remnants of the street’s residential past, and view high-end new buildings. Tour will include several special interior visits.

$20 in advance, $23 on-site

Hartford Belle Boat Cruise & Harriet Beecher Stowe House
Bus & Walking Tour with Justin Ferate
Saturday, October 5, 2013, 7:45am to approx. 7pm

Delight in the brilliant colors of autumn as we travel by motor coach through the leafy landscapes of Connecticut en route to the capital, Hartford. We’ll begin our visit with a private guided boat cruise up the Connecticut River on the intimate riverboat Hartford Belle. beautiful intimate riverboat reminiscent of simpler times. She has a mahogany-trimmed enclosed cabin. Our ever-gregarious Captain Brad Fenn likes to keep the windows open on sunny days to capture the autumn breezes. There is ample seating or some may want to stand on the bow to get the best views along the majestic Connecticut River! After lunch at the Italian restaurant Salute, a stone’s throw from Hartford’s centrally located Bushnell Park, we will travel to the Harriet Beecher Stowe House – an historic house and National Historic Landmark in an artistic neighborhood known as Nook Farm -- which was the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, for her last 23 years. We will take a special guided tour of the home.

Limited to 40 participants. Advance reservation only, $135 (no on-site registrations)

Upper Manhattan/Hudson River Bicycle Ride
Biking Tour with Jacqueline Goossens
Saturday, October 12, 2013, 10am to about 3-3:30pm

Join the Wolfe Walkers and the enthusiastic leader Jacqueline Goossens for our free autumn bicycle tour. This tour is conceived for those who want to take a leisurely ride to experience the varied New York environments through which we’ll travel. Meeting at Columbus Circle, we will ride along Central Park West to 110th Street. Continuing north along Frederick Douglas Boulevard, we’ll travel west to the Hudson River bike path. We’ll stop at Fairway Market to purchase lunch, which we can eat in Riverside Park. After lunch, we’ll ride south along the Hudson River, Riverside Drive, and south toward the Hudson River Boat Basin at 79th Street. The tour will end at 57th Street – near Columbus Circle.

Limited to 8 people, free

Hoboken -- "Mile Square City" or "Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken!"
Walking Tour with Justin Ferate
Sunday, October 27, 2013, 9:30am to about 1pm

Just a short trip across the Hudson River is the very vibrant and desirable suburb of Hoboken, New Jersey. New waterfront developments and immense loft conversions add a new vitality to this former working class Victorian community. Join our popular Tour Leader Justin Ferate as we rediscover the “Mile Square City.”

Take PATH to the restored Hoboken train station originally designed by architect Kenneth Murchison. Examine the new riverside housing and stroll the streetscapes of gracious 19th Century architecture. Learn of Hoboken’s history: from baseball to Stephen Foster; from steam railways to the first American brewery; from Maxwell House Coffee and Lipton Tea to “ol’ blue eyes,” Frank Sinatra.

$20 in advance, $23 on-site (plus PATH fare)

A Walk in the Park: Nutley, New Jersey
Walking Tour with John Simko (and Justin Ferate)
Saturday, November 2, 2013, 10am to about 12:30pm

A century ago a magazine editor living in what is now known as Nutley, New Jersey urged his friend Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) to pay him a visit. ''There isn't much that is prettier than this end of New Jersey,'' he wrote. ''It is all upland, tumbling into shallow valleys and bright sunny reaches along the Passaic River, and hillsides white as snow with daisies, and everywhere trees.''
Today, the Empire State Building is clearly visible from some of Nutley's highest points, but the pastoral serenity is preserved in the township's 100-acre park system that is sprinkled throughout this suburban community – a park system that is considered to be the “crown jewel” of all Essex County. We’ll walk about a mile, with many stops along the way. A list of possible luncheon destinations will be distributed on the tour. Celebrate Nutley history with a walking tour led by John Simko, the Nutley Museum Director.

$20 in advance, $23 on-site (plus bus fare)

Discover the Creation of Freshkills Park
Ferry & Bus Tour with Justin Ferate
Saturday, November 9, 2013, 9:15am to about 12:30pm (Manhattan to Manhattan)

Join Justin at Manhattan’s Staten Island Ferry Terminal to begin this discovery tour of the new Freshkills Park! In Staten Island, we’ll meet a special bus and a member of the New York City Parks Department who will take us on this very unusual adventure. At 2,200 acres, Freshkills Park will be almost three times the size of Central Park and the largest park developed in New York City in over 100 years. James Corner of Field Operations, the same firm that created the stunning landscape designs for the High Line, produced the master plan to guide the long-term development of Freshkills Park.

All tour participants will be required to sign a Department of Sanitation liability waiver. $20 in advance (no on-site registrations)

Holiday Brunch & Slide Lecture by Justin Ferate
Brunch at Pete's Tavern, E. 18th St. at Irving Pl.
Slide Lecture: Groundbreaking for a New New York City!
The Centennial of Grand Central Terminal
Sunday, December 15, 2013, 12n to 3pm

Share an end-of-the-year meal with other Wolfe Walkers at our long-time holiday venue, Pete’s Tavern. See the table where O. Henry wrote his beloved Christmas classic, “The Gift of the Magi.”

In 1903 – a little over 100 years ago – the New York Central Railroad was legally obliged to either “Electrify or Leave Town!” In response, the train company made an impressive and nearly inconceivable decision. Blasting an immense trench down the center of stony island of Manhattan -- from 42nd Street to 97th Street -- the railroad placed their newly electrified trains underground. Above the railroad tracks, the railroad then created an elegant, luxurious new thoroughfare named PARK AVENUE -- transforming one of the ugliest places on the planet Earth into one of the most world’s desirable residential addresses, which still remains exceptionally chic 100 years later. The centerpiece of this great “makeover” was Grand Central Terminal, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year! Justin Ferate shares a photographic history of the creation of Grand Central Terminal, Park Avenue, and the invention of Midtown Manhattan!

Brunch features an array of selections from which to choose, and includes one drink. Limited to 38 people. $25 in advance, $30 on-site if space permits

Registration is by mail only, and since it's handled entirely by volunteer labor, you don't get an acknowledgment. If you're unsure about whether you're registered, you can always call Mickie Watterson to check. Warning: The big events like the bus trip and boat ride to Hartford always book up, and usually pretty quickly, so if I were you, I wouldn't delay. Also, I did the Holiday Brunch at Pete's Tavern for the first time last year and had a swell time; people tend to remember about it as the day approaches, so again, it's wise to book ahead. -- Ken

#

Read More

Urban Gadabout: Have you checked out the Dec.-Jan.-Feb. Municipal Art Society walking-tour schedule? (Plus: Winter tour update)

MAS tours with Francis Morrone, Joe Svehlak, ???, and Matt Postal

by Ken

I should have mentioned sooner for the benefit of New Yorkers that the new Municipal Art Society walking-tour schedule -- once again covering three months, December through February -- is available online. As I've mentioned here before, in the two years I've been doing MAS tours, following my ridiculously late discovery that there are such things -- they really have changed my life.

I just did a quick count on my online calendar and see that I registered for something like 20 Municipal Art Society walking tours for the three-month period from September to November. I actually do quite that many, because I "better-dealed" one or two in favor of later-announced tours of other kinds which I couldn't resist, and I had four tours canceled in the two weekends just before and then after the arrival of Superstorm Sandy.

There's so much other tour activity going on in the metropolitan area, including activity involving a number of my favorite MAS tour leaders, activity I'm still just beginning to discover, that it's easy to take the MAS schedule for granted. Which I surely don't do! This time I'll be a little more cautious in registering for tours before other schedules have been announced (I'll try to keep my options open longer, focusing on registering on tours I know will be sold out if I wait too much longer), but by the end of February I expect to wind up doing about as many MAS tours as I've done in these last three months. More, actually, accounting for the tours lost to the storm in this cycle.

I think everyone has settled into the MAS registration system -- no longer so new -- by which all tours require preregistration. It simplifies the life of most everyone concerned, most obviously at the start of each tour, where it's no longer necessary to devote all that time to collecting money for tours that once allowed walk-up registration or doing check-ins for tours that were done entirely by preregistration. The one exception I can think of, and I have met people who fall into this category, is for folks who prefer not to have to plan well ahead.

The fact is that if you do your registration online you can register anytime up to the start of the tour -- provided, of course, that there's still space for the tour you want to do; if the tour is sold out, that's indicated online. (For tour-takers without online access, registrations can still be done by phone, but only during weekday hours when the MAS office is open.)

Even with the price increase that accompanied the new system, MAS tours are an amazing bargain -- a mere $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers. A couple of weeks ago I got an online notice informing me that my renewal was due, and I can assure you, I did my renewal within minutes by return e-mail! Even at the lowest membership level, $50 for individuals ($40 for seniors), you get one free tour each year -- since I had online access to the "free tour" code, I had it applied it to one of the new-season tours even before my new membership card arrived in the mail.

Maybe it was surviving those two weekends without MAS tours that has made me so conscious of paying them their due. Certainly it felt special doing my first post-storm walk, which was of the Madison Square area with Sylvia Laudien-Meo -- on Veterans Day, at the very spot where the Veterans Day parade begins, which added an element of hubbub. I've enjoyed all the tours I've done with the amazingly charming Sylvia, who's an art person, which I'm emphatically not, meaning that I often get a different kind of view of the tour areas, as was the case with a Lower East Side tour she led, which wound up bringing me for the first time ever inside the New Museum on the Bowery. (Sylvia has a tour of Chelsea art galleries scheduled for Jan. 19, and two more of her "family tours," presumably suitable for whole families but not limited to them: Grand Central Terminal on Dec. 8 and Rockefeller Center on Feb. 24.)

(And anyone who hasn't done a Rockefeller Center tour really ought to. I've done architectural historian Tony Robins's and thoroughly enjoyed it. During the holiday season he's doing it twice: on Christmas Day and on Dec. 30.)

WEEKENDS WITH MATT POSTAL AND FRANCIS MORRONE

Then these last two weekends, the schedule has been kind to me, with four tours led by three of my favorite tour leaders. Last week I had the second in a series of three led by architectural historian Matt Postal devoted to the area known to the City Planning Dept. as Midtown East, for which major zoning changes are being proposed which could bring drastic changes (this was actually scheduled as the last of the three tours, but the middle one was a storm casualty and has been rescheduled for Dec. 15); and then Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens with architectural historian Francis Morrone, the middle leg of a three-part series covering the adjacent neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Cobble Hill.

I've written about both Matt and Francis a lot here. Maybe the simplest thing to say is that depth and range of their curiosity and knowledge, I'd sign up, schedule permitting, for pretty much anything they're doing. If the subject of the walk is interesting enough to them to do, I now take for granted that it will: (a) connect pieces of my world that hadn't previously been connected, (b) teach me all sorts of things I had no idea there were to know, and (c) provide two hours' worth of wonderful entertainment. (Both Matt and Francis have all sorts of tours listed in the new schedule. Be warned that Francis's in particular are likely to fill up well before the tour dates.)

MORE FRANCIS M, AND JACK EICHENBAUM

This weekend again I had a pair of tours. For the day after Thanksgiving there was a walk through "Public Housing's Fertile Crescent," along the East River side of Lower Manhattan, an area I'd never actually walked through, with urban geographer (and the borough historian of Queens) Jack Eichenbaum. I've also written here frequently about Jack. No one has done more to help me see -- and often it is literally a matter of seeing -- how the development of regions and neighborhoods is shaped by geography, including transportation access and population patterns over time.

In the new schedule Jack is doing two of his standby walks, ways of walking north-south in Midtown Manhattan while "Keeping Off Midtown Streets" -- an East Side version (from Grand Central to Bloomingdale's, Dec. 29) and a West Side one (from the Time Warner Center to Times Square, Jan. 27). Also, it's invaluable to register for Jack's e-mail list for announcements of his MAS and non-MAS activities, which you can do on the "Public Tour Schedule" page of his website, "The Geography of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum."

Then today Francis Morrone concluded the "BoCoCa" cycle with Cobble Hill, and it was Francis at his best. I'm only sorry that I had to miss the Boerum Hill installment of this cycle owing to a schedule conflict, which was true as well for the "Heart of Flatbush" installment of a three-part series built around Flatbush's historic districts, which fell on the same day as Jack Eichenbaum's one-of-a-kind "Day on the J Train" tour, which I certainly wasn't going to miss! (Be sure to watch for Jack's "World of the #7 Train.")

I've actually done a terrific Boerum Hill walk with Joe Svehlak, another of my "old reliables," who sort of combines the geographical and architectural approaches in his masterful tours of less-walked-through neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn. I'm still waiting for a reschedule of his Bushwick tour, which I had to miss because I had to finish a "Sunday Classics" piece; I've loved Joe's tours of Ridgewood (straddling Brooklyn and Queens), Sunset Park (where he grew up), Cypress Hills, and Downtown Brooklyn. I also see Joe all the time on other people's tours, a tribute to the range of his curiosity; he was supposed to be with us, we learned from Jack Eichenbaum, on Jack's "Day on the J Train." I know Joe does a lot of Grand Central tours, so his "Grand Central During the Holidays" on Dec. 22 should be fun. He's also doing a Lower Manhattan tour called "Downtown Connections" on Jan. 20.

NORTHERN MANHATTAN, ATLANTIC AVENUE, AND MISC.

There are also a number of tours scheduled with the highly regarded historian of Harlem and Northern Manhattan Eric K. Washington: "Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery at Christmas," Dec. 23; "Manhattanville: Revisiting a Neighborhood in Flux," Feb. 3 (Eric has literally "written the book" on Manhattanville); and "Harlem Grab Bag," Feb. 23.

I might also mention "Explore and Shop: Wintertime in the Atlantic Avenue Bazaars" with MaryAnn DiNapoli on Jan. 5. I've done MaryAnn's "Churches of Cobble Hill" (which covers not just still-functioning churches but no-longer-existing as well as repurposed ones). It's always fascinating to tour areas with neighborhood residents, and MaryAnn grew up here. Which means she knows the Middle Eastern shops of Atlantic Avenue from longtime personal experience. In fact, the tour I took with her, having been scheduled on a weekday, was compact enough that she was actually able to take us inside several of the shops where she has shopped, well, pretty much forever.

I don't think I mentioned that the MAS schedule has a Green-Wood Cemetery tour with the cemetery's historian, Jeff Richman, on Dec. 15. And I don't know what all else I haven't mentioned. Oh yes, I'm hoping that this time I'll be able to do Linda Fisher's tour of "Manhattan's Civic Center," on Dec. 30. This is one of the tours I registered for the last time it was scheduled but "better-dealed" in favor of a tour I couldn't resist, a bus tour to the Usonia Houses communal-housing development in northern Westchester which was planned in good part by Frank Lloyd Wright, during which tour leader Justin Ferate, another of my all-time favorites, led us through two of the houses, one of them one that was actually designed by Wright.

AND SPEAKING OF JUSTIN FERATE . . .

He seems to be doing most of his tours these days as coordinator of the Wolfe Walkers tours, via which in just the past year I've been able to do amazing bus tours to the Mark Twain House in West Hartford as well as the Usonia Houses, and also visit such diverse locations as the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge, the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Uptown Manhattan (combined with the Audubon Terrace complex), and Chinatown.

An unfortunate casualty of the storm aftermath was a tour of Staten Island's under-construction conversion of Staten Island's Freshkills landfill into what will be NYC's largest park. But in turn one of the MAS pre-storm cancellations allowed me to do an extra Wolfe Walkers tour I hadn't expected: a Halloween-themed walk through Greenwich Village. I've done a number of Village tours by now, but I had a feeling that Justin's Village wouldn't be the same as anyone else's, and it wasn't! Still to come in the current Wolfe Walkers cycle is a tour of the Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park on Dec. 2, one of the tours I signed up for as soon as I saw the announcement.

By the way, as a source of information about fascinating tour goings-on in the NYC area, there's no resource quite like Justin's e-mail list. Justin sends out vast quantities of pass-alongs of events he thinks may be of interest, and I can say that I ALWAYS look at his pass-alongs. I've already done a whole bunch of events I wouldn't have known about otherwise. For that matter, Justin's website, "Tours of the City with Justin Ferate," is itself an invaluable resource. Here's the link to sign up for Justin's mailing list.

#

Read More