Rick's Guide to New York, Part 1

 

A Special Installment of “A Helluva Town”  

[Many years ago, I compiled a visitors’ guide to New York City.  I was going out of town for a short time, and the widow of one of my professors in undergraduate school was going to be staying in my Manhattan apartment.  I was going to leave town before she arrived from Virginia, so I wouldn’t be able to show her where I kept things or where to find stores and services in my neighborhood, so I decided to write up a guide for her.

[I focused on the apartment, the building, and the immediate neighborhood.  Over the years, I updated the guide and expanded it a little, in case I have another out-of-town guest when I wasn’t around.  That never happened, so I stopped keeping up the guide. 

[But I thought, if I brought it up to date now, and jettisoned the parts about the apartment and the building, it might be an interesting thing to share on Rick On Theater.  I live in the Flatiron District (which didn’t even have a name when I first compiled the guide!), and it’s an interesting neighborhood—and has even gotten better in some ways.  So, here’s the result of my revision.

[Even without the stuff about my apartment and my building, the guide was pretty long.  And in its original form, it was full of abbreviations, shorthand, and telegraphic prose.  When I expanded all that into proper English, the guide was too long to post all at once.  So, I’ve split the document into three parts, of which this is the first.  It’s a little haphazard, but it’s readable enough.  You all will decide if it was worth the effort.  So, especially those who aren’t from around here: Take a little bite of the Big Apple!] 

Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
To the Big Apple

Here are some things you might want to know about The City and the Borough of Manhattan:

General: “The Bronx is up but the Battery’s down.”  That’s true, but Brooklyn is also “down.”  New York City really doesn’t exist.  (The lyric’s from “New York, New York” from On the Town, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, 1944.)

The five boroughs are really quite separate, both physically and emotionally.  Note that the famous Dodgers were never the “New York Dodgers” but the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The Yankees, you’ll notice, are never called the “Bronx Yankees”—though they are known as the Bronx Bombers occasionally.  The Dodgers, of course, were just “The Bums”—or “Dem Bums” if you spoke the local dialect.  (The hapless Mets, just to complete the trilogy, play in Queens.)

Everyone knows that Manhattan is an island, and some people even know that Staten Island is part of New York City (although it’s nearer New Jersey and voted to secede in 1993).  But New York City is actually three main islands (and many smaller ones, not all of them inhabited, such as Roosevelt, City, Governor’s, Rikers, Ellis, Liberty, and North and South Brother).  Beside Manhattan and Staten, Brooklyn and Queens are actually on Long Island.  Only The Bronx is on the mainland. 

(The five boroughs of New York City are also counties: New York [Manhattan], Bronx, Queens, Kings [Brooklyn] and Richmond [Staten Island]; it is the only U.S. city so organized.)  Brooklyn was a separate city (and still claims to be the fourth largest city in the U.S.) until 1898, after the Brooklyn Bridge was built (1883) to connect it to Manhattan.  (Many Brooklynites are still miffed about this betrayal.) 

There are also several rivers, aside from the famous Hudson to the west (also known as the North River, its original Dutch name—Noort Rivier—where it runs along the Manhattan shore).  There are the Bronx River and the Harlem River, both in the north.  The Flushing River, also known as Flushing Creek, is in the Borough of Queens (on Long Island) and the Hutchinson River flows through the Borough of the Bronx and southern Westchester County to its north.

There are also many other streams that don’t rise to the level of a river (no pun intended . . . but I’ll take it).  Some, even if you’re not from the Big Apple, you’ve probably heard of: the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek in Brooklyn; Spuyten Duyvil Creek in Manhattan; and Fresh Kills on Staten Island. 

(Spuyten Duyvil and Fresh Kills, like Staten Island and Brooklyn, are names derived from 17th-century Dutch, though the exact translations are often lost due to corruption over the centuries, especially after the British took over New Netherland and New Amsterdam in 1664.)

The well-known East River, by the way, isn’t a river at all.  It’s actually an arm of the ocean—a tidal estuary or strait—is salt water, connects Upper New York Bay on its south to Long Island Sound on its north, and has tides like the harbor.  Because it’s narrowed by Manhattan Island on the west and Long Island, with the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, on the east, it looks like a river.

The following comment by Andrew H. Malcolm was published in the New York Times on 19 April 1991, Section C (“Weekend”): 20; it’s rather appropriate:

New York Survival Tips

One striking thing about New York City is its residents’ willingness to tell visitors where to go, whether recommending a good restaurant or responding to comments on their civility.

But here is a non-New Yorker’s advice for visitors who don’t know what questions to ask:

New Yorkers don’t actually think they are more important than anyone else.  They know it.  What else could explain why they came here?  And look at the geography: New Yorkers live where the Passaic River and the Gawanus Canal merge to form the Atlantic Ocean.  Enough about import.

New Yorkers are not happily ignorant about the rest of the country.  They recognize there are 50 other states.  They know the H in Ohio is silent so it comes out Iowa.

Next, something about city geography.  New York City is Manhattan, period.  The other three boroughs—Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx—were allowed in because the subways had to end somewhere.  Staten Island, which is trying to get out, was needed to keep New Jersey at bay and to support the wrong end of a bridge named for the explorer Verrazano, who left too.

Now about crime.  Some people think that a city where 5.5 people are killed on the average day should be called Detroit.  This is ridiculous.  New York is a fine name.  New York remains one of the region’s safest island cities.  And the New York Police Department, with the uniformed personnel equivalent to two full Army divisions, is determined to keep the city as safe as it already is.

Some fashion tips: wear running shoes everywhere, as New Yorkers do; yes, it looks funny, but so do life jackets.  Wear all luggage like bandoliers.  Do not take photographs; that’s what those nifty Big Apple postcards are for.  Wear jewelry only indoors.  For streetwear, don a Walkman; in groups, everybody don a Walkman.  If you run low on incense, go to Times Square.  Do not say hello to people, even if you know them; it’s too Des Moines.  And places like Idaho don’t even have subway cars to deface.  If someone says hello to you, use those shoes; he’s not from Des Moines.

Also, do not admit to possessing a driver’s license; it hurts the environment and New Yorkers oppose pollution unless it’s in the Hudson River.  Do not expect New York bus drivers to accept United States currency.  Walking in groups of 500 or more for safety requires a parade permit, which explains Fifth Avenue’s closure every 15 minutes.

Above all, do not try to trick these big-city people about the pigeons.  New Yorkers know they’re just grown-up sparrows.

(Andrew H. Malcolm (b. 22 June 1943 in Cleveland, Ohio) is himself not a native New Yorker.  He was educated at attended Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.  He then wrote for the New York Times (1967-93) as a correspondent in Chicago, San Francisco, Vietnam, Bangkok, Tokyo, Korea, and Canada.  After leaving the New York Times, Malcolm wrote for the Los Angeles Times from 2001 to 2011.  In between, he worked for the Governor of Montana (1993-99).  His current position is as a columnist for the conservative political blog RedState, whose parent company is based in Irving, Texas.)

The famous nickname: Let’s get to one of the most curious facts about The City.  (If you live here or anywhere nearby, New York is just “The City.”  To many, that means specifically Manhattan, and some New Yorkers from the other four boroughs speak of going “to the city” when they mean Manhattan.)

I’m thinking of the city’s world-renowned nickname, The Big Apple.  People worldwide recognize the name, but there are lots of stories about where the moniker comes from.  Many are apocryphal, and even the fact that the origin’s unknown or uncertain is no longer true.  (One false account that was popularly circulated had it that the name referred to an early-19th-century New York City brothel whose madam was named Eve.  The girls were “Eve’s Apples.”)

There are many interesting details about the nickname, but the basic story is fairly simple.  It started to show up in a column by John J. FitzGerald (1872-1952) in the New York Morning Telegraph in the 1920s. It was at first a term used in horseracing circles—New York was a big racing town in the early and mid-20th century, as Damon Runyon (journalist and short-story writer; 1880-1946) would affirm (consider “Fugue for Tinhorns” from Guys and Dolls (1950; music and lyrics by Frank Loesser [1910-69] and book by Jo Swerling [1897-1964] and Abe Burrows [1910-85]): “I got the horse right here”)—particularly among the African-American stable hands.  

The moniker meant that New York was the center of the racing business, where the crowds were large and knowledgeable and the bettors well-healed and avid.  Running in the Big Apple was the horseracing equivalent of playing the Palace!

By the ’30s, the name had been appropriated by the jazz world, which had the same relationship with New York City as the horseracing world did—it was the best place to have a gig.  Heading for the Big Apple was climbing to the top of the jazz pyramid.  (In 1937, a song called “The Big Apple,” recorded by Tommy Dorsey among others, became a hit.)  From that usage, continuing into the ’40s and ’50s, the nickname spread and became permanent.

In the 1970s, New York City’s official tourist and marketing bureau began promoting the city as “the Big Apple,” marking it as the semi-official name for the city, and in 1997, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (b. 1944; 107th Mayor of the City of New York: 1994-2001) approved the designation of the southwest corner of 54th Street and Broadway, near where FitzGerald lived his last years, as “Big Apple Corner.”  So, the Big Apple we are, and the Big Apple we shall ever be!  Now, go buy a T-shirt.

(By the way, the town of Manhattan, Kansas, population 52,000, likes to call itself “The Little Apple.”  Minneapolis, Minnesota, has apparently taken to calling itself “The Mini-Apple” (get it?).  A coupla fellow-travelers, if ya ask me!) 

History of New York City: In the pre-colonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by various bands of Algonquian tribes of Native Americans, including the Lenape.

An Italian, Giovanni da Verrazano (explorer in the service of King of France; 1485-1525) discovered New York Harbor in 1524.  In 1609, English explorer and navigator Henry Hudson (b. ca. 1565, disappeared, 1611), sailed up the Hudson River. 

Then in 1624, the Dutch founded the first permanent trading post.  In 1626, the first governor, Pierre (Peter) Minuit (born in present-day Germany of Walloon parents; 1580-1638; Director and Governor of New Netherland: 1626-31), bought the island of Manhattan from the Lenape people for what’s been historically estimated as the equivalent of $24. 

(This is a guestimate by a 19th-century historian who based it on the then-current value of 60 guilders, the value placed on the goods by the Dutch settlers who made the trade for the land.  The figure had never been adjusted for inflation, nor is there an accurate inventory of the traded goods in order to appraise their probable worth—to the Europeans, let alone the Indians.)

The Dutch built a little town on the southern tip of Manhattan Island.  It was called New Amsterdam and it flourished by selling skins.  The settlers sold otter, beaver, mink, and sealskins.  However, New Amsterdam was a tiny town with only about 1,500 inhabitants in the mid-17th century.  In New Amsterdam buildings were, at first, made of wood but in time houses of stone or brick were erected.  

In 1647, Petrus (Peter) Stuyvesant (Dutch; c. 1610-72; Director-General of New Netherland: 1647-64) became governor of New Amsterdam.  In 1653, Stuyvesant established a municipal government for New Amsterdam based on those of Dutch cities.  

However, in 1664, an English fleet arrived.  Fearing the English would sack the colony, Stuyvesant surrendered.  The Dutch briefly recaptured New Amsterdam in 1673, but they lost it to the English again in 1674.  This time, it was renamed New York in honor of James, Duke of York (1633-1701), brother of King Charles II (1630-85). 

By 1700, New York had a population of almost 5,000 and it continued to grow rapidly.  By 1776, the population was about 25,000. In 1800, New York City had about 60,000 inhabitants.

During the 18th century, amenities in New York improved.  The first newspaper, the New York Gazette began publication in 1725.  The first theater in New York, the New Theatre, opened on Maiden Lane in 1732.  King’s College (now Columbia University) was founded in 1754, the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the tenth-oldest in the United States.

On 16 November 1776, George Washington (1732-99; Commander in Chief of the Continental Army: 1775-83) withdrew from New York, leaving the British army to occupy it.  Then on 21 September 1776, New York was struck by a great fire, which destroyed hundreds of houses.  Altogether, about one quarter of the city was destroyed.  

The British continued to occupy New York until the end of the war.  Though not all New Yorkers were committed loyalists during the Revolution, New York had a higher percentage of loyalists than any other American colony.  Washington didn’t reenter New York until 25 November 1783, when the British evacuated the city.  

Elected President of the United States on 6 April 1789 and inaugurated on 30 April, Washington (presidential term: 1789-97) took his oath of office at Federal Hall.  New York City was the first capital of the United States from 1785 to 1790, first under the Articles of Confederation (1781-89) and then under the United States Constitution (ratified: 1788; effective: 1789).

At first, New York City grew in a haphazard way.  However, in 1807, Daniel D. Tompkins (1774-1825), Governor of the State of New York (1807-17), appointed a commission to draw up a plan for the city. The commission reported in 1811.  The plan proposed that new streets should be laid out on a grid pattern.  There would be 12 avenues running north to south and 155 streets running east to west.  As New York City grew, the grid pattern spread north across Manhattan.

By 1820, New York had become the USA's largest city with a population of 123,000.  It continued to grow rapidly. The population of New York City in 1830 was 202,589, the first time a city in the United States had a population of over 200,000.

However, in 1835, fire destroyed much of the old district of New York.  It was soon rebuilt, and by 1840, New York had a population of 312,000.  By 1860, it had 813,000 inhabitants.

From the 1830s, horse-drawn buses ran in the streets of New York.  The first elevated railway in New York was built between 1867 and 1870 by Charles T. Harvey (1829-1912), a civil engineer.  It began carrying passengers in 1868.  It was soon followed by many other elevated railways or “els.”  The first line of the New York subway, the largest system in the world and the only one that operates 24/7, opened in 1904.

In the early 20th century, Broadway became famous for its theaters.  Meanwhile, the Statue of Liberty was unveiled by President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908; 22nd and 24th President of the United States: 1885-89 and 1893-97) on 28 October 1886.  

In the mid-19th century, many Germans and Irish came to live in New York.  In the late 19th century, many Italians arrived and in the 1890s, many Eastern European Jews came to New York.  In 1892, the United States Immigration Station opened on Ellis Island.  Between 1892 and its closure in 1954, almost 17 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island.

The island is now the site of the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration and the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital and other unrenovated sites, the Abandoned Hospital Complex, are open to the public through guided tours.

Meanwhile, in 1898, the five boroughs of New York City were united under a single municipal government.  The City of New York had a population of 3.4 million.

In the 20th century, New York City continued to grow.  By 1980 New York had a population of 7 million.

Many famous buildings were built in New York City in the early 20th century.  The Flatiron Building, one of the city’s most iconic and immediately recognizable structures, was built in 1902.  New York Public Library, the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress and the fourth-largest public library in the world, opened in 1911.  

The 55-story Woolworth Building was erected in 1913.  The same year, 1913, Grand Central Station opened.  The Chrysler Building, 77 art-deco stories, was erected in 1930 and the 102-story Empire State Building, the world’s tallest building until the first tower of the World Trade Center was topped out in 1970, was erected in 1931.  Also in 1931, the General Electric Building (50 floors) was built. The Rockefeller Center, 19 buildings covering 22 acres in Midtown Manhattan, was built in 1932-40.

World Fairs were held in New York in 1939-40 and 1963-64.  However, in 1965 there were also race riots in Harlem.  Also, in 1965, New York suffered a power blackout.  Another blackout happened in 1977 and in 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused flooding that brought on another city-wide power failure.

In 2001, tragedy struck when the World Trade Center was destroyed in a terrorist attack on 11 September (9/11).  However, New York recovered from the attack, and today, New York is still a busy port, the third largest in the United States and the largest on the East Coast.  

It’s also a major industrial and financial center.  New York City is, of course, an important tourist destination. Today, the population of New York City is 8.3 million, with another 2 million in the city every day for work, business, tourism, and play.

Some directions:  In Manhattan, uptown is north (street numbers get higher), downtown is south (street numbers get smaller until 8th Street, then all hell breaks loose!). 

Though the areas with pre-grid street layouts have irregular traffic directions, within the grid, streets and avenues generally alternate northbound or southbound and eastbound and westbound.  For instance, 6th Avenue is northbound/uptown, 5th Avenue is southbound/downtown, Madison Avenue is northbound, and so on.  The same for the streets: 15th Street is westbound, 16th is eastbound, 17th is westbound.

There are some streets that are two-way roadways, such as Park Avenue (which is divided by a landscaped median) and 3rd Avenue.  The two-way east-west streets are major crosstown thoroughfares: 8th Street, 14th Street, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 59th, 72nd, 79th, et cetera.

5th Avenue (a south-bound street) is the middle: the East Side runs to the East River (isn’t it neat!) and includes 4th (which becomes Park Avenue South at 17th Street and then Park Avenue at 34th Street), 3rd, 2nd and, 1st Avenues, and Avenues A, B and C (known as “Alphabet City” to the cynics). 

York Avenue, a southbound roadway, runs from 59th to 92nd Streets through the Upper East Side, to the east of 1st Avenue and is an extension, with respect to the address-numbering system, of Avenue A.

Madison Avenue (northbound) starts at 26th Street (Madison Square) and splits the block between 5th and Park Avenues.  Lexington Avenue (southbound) starts at 23rd Street (Gramercy Park) and splits the full block between Park and 3rd Avenues (both mostly two-way roads). 

The West Side includes 6th (uptown) through 12th Avenues (two-way traffic)—though down where I live, in the Flatiron District, there isn’t anything beyond 10th Avenue except the West Side Highway and the Hudson River.)  As the island widens going north, 11th (southbound from 24th to 34th Streets; elsewhere, two-way traffic) and 12th Avenues appear, as does Riverside Drive (two-way), which generally parallels the Hudson River and Riverside Park from 72nd Street north.

Broadway (two-way traffic from its northernmost point, then south of Columbus Circle/59th Street, one-way southbound) cuts across Manhattan on a diagonal, starting at Bowling Green, below the Financial District, running up the Lower East Side, crossing 5th Avenue at 23rd street into the West Side and continuing roughly parallel to the Hudson River to Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan.

In the middle of its run, whenever Broadway intersects with a major crosstown street, there’s a square (and one circle) adjacent to the crossing point.  At 14th Street and 4th/Park Avenue is Union Square (home of the infamous Tammany Hall).  At 23rd Street, it crosses 5th Avenue and Madison Square is nearby. 

(It doesn’t quite fit the paradigm, but it’s close: at 8th Street and Broadway, there’s a gap between the intersection and 3rd Avenue to the east, but in the area between Broadway/8th Street and 3rd Avenue is Cooper Square/Astor Place.  That’s the location of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (see Part 3), a higher-education institution for architecture, the arts, and engineering, and the Public Theater, the city’s busiest theatrical producing house.)

On the West Side at 6th Avenue and 34th Street, the intersection of Broadway is next to Herald Square.  When it meets 7th Avenue at 42nd Street, Times Square is adjacent.  (Father Duffy Square—recently dubbed “Actors’ Square”—with the statue of George M. Cohan and the TDF TKTS booth is the north end of Times Square.)  At 59th Street and 8th Avenue/CPW, Columbus Circle, the city’s only traffic circle, is formed.

(Visitors and others not familiar with the actual New York City should note that Times Square doesn’t really exits.  There’s no park like Madison Square Park or Union Square Park, for instance.  Times Square isn’t even geometrically a square; it’s closer to two triangles emanating north and south from West 45th Street, where north-south Seventh Avenue intersects northwest-southeast Broadway): formed by the intersection of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and West 42nd Street.

(With adjacent Duffy Square at the northern end of the “square,” Times Square is a bowtie-shaped space five blocks long between 42nd and 47th Streets, with Duffy Square as the northern triangle of Times Square bowtie, bounded by 45th and 47th Streets, Broadway, and Seventh Avenue, known for the TKTS reduced-price theater tickets booth run by the Theatre Development Fund.)

Distances: In Manhattan, 20 numbered street blocks = 1 mile (e.g.: 14th Street and 6th Avenue to 34th Street and 6th [Herald Square] is one mile).  The long blocks between avenues are about seven to the mile; however, the exact number can vary depending on where you are, due to variations in block lengths across the island.

(Since Madison and Lexington Avenues bisect blocks, they don’t figure into the estimated distance-measuring along the grid.  Calculate only from 5th to Park Avenues or Park to 3rd Avenue, ignoring Mad and Lex.  Got that?)

[Well, that’s the beginning.  I’ll have the next installment on Monday, 2 December.]