West Harlem Walkabout on A Frigid Friday ~ 1.20.12

Four weeks ago, I attended a funeral service at St. John's Pentecostal Church at 132nd St & Lenox Avenue. A brilliant cold  morning. After the viewing, I walked south on Lenox  to Marcus Garvey/Mount Morris Park. Went to the top to visit the old fire watch, a sister to the fire watch in Central  Park, "The Belvedere Castle." NYC's earliest fire alarm system, manned towers at distant intervals. The Castle was built on the same summit where a traditional fire tower stood until it was demolished in the late 1860s. Fire Towers became obsolete when the telegraph became the premier fire fighting communication tool.

Notice the heavy Dutch influence on West Harlem's architecture. Some of the stretches reminded me of Delft and Vermeer. 

Here is a link to a bunch of photos from my walk.

Left park and headed towards Lexington going south towards Yorkville. East Harlem pictures to follow in a few days.

If you love the city and wonder what you are missing and you are doing nothing about it.  Get in a car, ride a bike, use the subway, take a bus, or just put on your shoes and walk. Yes, the city is ever changing and old things go down overnight and new things pop up and change a neighborhood’s point of view. But if you get out there, and do it now, you’ll still see the template laid down a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, the bench markers are everywhere.

For example, in Central Park there are stakes driven into marble rock indicating street intersections that were planted by the 1811 City Street Grid surveyor, John Randel Jr. well before the area was chosen for New York City’s Great Park. 

Another John Randel Jr. article.

Go find one of these stakes and photograph it. That is my holy grail for the next month.