Coming out of the subway station at
59th Street and Lexington, turning east, I see the north sidewall of
Bloomingdale’s and my mind skips to the past. Just the name of the store lights
up the part of my brain that listened to all the stories told to me or around
me when I was a boy. At Third Avenue, I turn north and I begin to get it, fresh
again, like I’ve never felt this before. I ascend a hill all the way to 65th
Street that tapers off between 66th St and 67th
Street. Standing on the corner of 65th
I am within a block where British military records indicate Nathan Hale was
captured near “The Dove,” an inn situated near the five-mile stone, a mark from
lower Manhattan. On the top of the hill, I spin in all directions and see a strategic
high point that had a stunning 360-degree view. Of course, this is where you would
rest your horse, hitch your coach, eat, drink ale and repose before you travel
on to Harlem or other points north. This is where the military would stake its
grounds and easily see intruders.
On a cold Sunday morning last week,
I took photos from the corner of 59
th Street, into the 70s where
there are old stable houses and other shots into the sky at the Bloomberg
building. Yorkville’s past still haunts and presents its timeworn self in interesting
ways. Certain avenue frontages retain their low-rise tenement charm. Two blocks here:
“Bark Place” my friend’s pet
& grooming store at 1371 First Avenue between 73
rd & 74
th
Street and stretch of three story buildings on York Avenue at 81
st
Street.
Here is
a link to a Facebook photo album from my walk.
Monday night @ 8pm, I'm telling a story @ Bar 82, part of We Three Productions Bi-weekly Reading series. Here's a piece I wrote on We Three's last show at Telephone Bar.
Tuesday @ 6pm, I'll be at Cornelia Street Cafe @"City Stories: Stoops to Nuts," this month hosted by the incomparable Barbara Aliprantis, co-founder of second Tuesday storytelling at the Cafe.
"Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts" storytelling show is coming back to Ryan's Daughter on Wednesday, April 3rd.
Last fall we had a standing room only crowd that cheered us on and it's time to do it again.
Our artists: Michele Carlo, Abbi Crutchield, Luke Thayer, Eric Vetter, Adam Wade and other persons of interest. Ryan's Daughter is located at 350 E. 85th Street, fun starts @ 7pm.
Here is a link to a public album of Yorkville Full Moon photos from last week.
Please drop by Cornelia Street Cafe to see my photo exhibit "New York Scenes from a Bicycle," on view through March 31st. Framed work and my book "River to River: New York Scenes from a Bicycle," are for sale at the Cafe, my prints are for sale at Thomas R. Pryor Photography, my book is available online through Amazon.
The section below was written in 1898 by an author unknown about an 1858 fishing trip
he made north up Manhattan’s east side that took him through Yorkville:
Speaking of old buildings reminds
me that I have received a friendly criticism, by post, for not giving more details
of the Third Avenue, through which I passed on my stolen fishing excursion of
forty years ago. At that time, after leaving Astor Place, there was nothing
compact in the way of buildings until we reached Bull's Head Village, which
extended from Second to Fourth avenues and from Twenty-third to Twenty-seventh
streets. Here was the great cattle mart of the city, and here it had been for
twenty years. But soon after it was removed to Forty-second Street, and thence
to Ninety-fourth Street, from which point it was transferred to the Jersey
shore a few years since. The people of old Bull's Head Village worshipped in
the Presbyterian Church, now standing in Twenty-second Street west of Third
Avenue; at the Twenty-seventh Street Methodist Church, and at the little
Episcopal Chapel of St. John the Baptist, on the east side of Fourth Avenue,
near Twenty-third Street, which was demolished thirty years ago on the
completion of the fine church of the same name at Lexington Avenue and
Thirty-fifth Street.
After leaving Twenty-seventh
Street and Third Avenue the traveller was in the country. There was no other
settlement until Yorkville was reached, nearly two miles beyond. Scattered
farmhouses, distant villas, green fields, and bits of woodland made up the
landscape. The commodious country-seat of Anson G. Phelps on the East River was
reached from Twenty-seventh Street. In the vicinity of Thirty - second Street
the inhabitants imported from the river the name of Kip's Bay, and lent it to
the Thompson and Henderson homesteads thereabout, and to the grocery store that
was for many years owned and conducted by a brother of Peter Cooper, a very
worthy gentle-man, who died not long ago, having passed his ninetieth birthday.
Sunfish Pond, famous for its eels, as well as sunfish and flounders, occupied
the site of the Fourth Avenue stables at Thirty -second Street, and extended
westward to Madison Avenue. From this pond a brook ran to the East River,
following very nearly the line of Thirty-second Street. The brook was almost dry
in summer, but, in times of freshets, it overflowed its banks and spread from
the foot of Rose Hill at the South to Murray Hill on the north. When it was in
a desperately angry mood, the residents of houses that are still standing could
reach the avenue only in boats.
The residence of Peter Cooper-of
rare and blessed memory always in this city of ours-stood then and still stands
at the south-west corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street. It was a
plain and unpretending structure, and yet substantial withal, as befitted its
builder. In front of his residence the Eastern Post Road passed to nearly the
present line of Lexington Avenue, which it continued to follow until near
Forty-second Street, when it joined Third Avenue. On its western side stood several
large and fine residences owned by opulent Knickerbockers, embowered in
gardens, half hidden by trees, and buried in deep lawns-the realization to
weary travellers of an earthly paradise. On Third Avenue there were no
dwellings until we reached the point at which the old " Cato " Road
stretched out towards Second Avenue from Forty-third Street to Fifty-first, and
thence circled around to the " Turtle Bay "region and the famous
hostelry kept by Cato. Tradition does not tell whether he had any other name
besides Cato. A great cloud of witnesses, principally gray-haired; still
survive to testify that his dinners and suppers were simply incomparable.
Everybody who owned or could hire a "rig" drove out there at least
once a week and feasted himself. Burnham, on the Bloomingdale Road at
Seventy-fourth Street, was Cato's only rival, but a formidable one.
At Forty-ninth Street and Third
Avenue was a tiny hamlet known as Odellville, which owed its patronymic to Mr.
Odell, who kept a country tavern at the corner first named, and with whom life
agreed so well that he nearly lived out a century. Just across Third Avenue and
above Fiftieth Street was the old potter's field, which next followed those of
Washington and Madison squares; and, strange to say, not far from its northern
borders was a spring of soft, pure water which was extensively carried away in
carts to supply the distant city. This water readily commanded two cents a
pail, and its sale was not discontinued until some time after the introduction
of Croton water-many old people having a preference for it as. Well as a
decided distaste for new-fangled aqueducts and water brought in pipes. Between
Odellville and the Five; mile public -house at Seventy-second Street there were
a few scattered country-houses, many fields, some considerable forest tracts,
and then came the village of Yorkville. Half a century ago this was quite an
extensive settlement, reaching from Eighty-third to. Eighty-eighth streets,
compactly built on both sides of Third Avenue and to Second and Fourth avenues
on the intersecting streets. The village must have numbered more than a hundred
houses, with three or four churches and a dozen stores. It never was a pretty
place, but down towards the East River, and facing that picturesque stream,
were some superb country residences in those days-such as the Schermerhorn
mansion at the foot of Seventy-third Street, and the Riker homestead at the
foot of Seventy-fifth Street. Elegant lawns stretched down to the riverfront,
and from the ample piazzas the scene was a panorama of beauty.
The Six-mile Tavern awaited the
thirsty pilgrim at the corner of Ninety-seventh Street and Third Avenue. Our
excellent forefathers always placed a milestone and a tavern together, by a
gracious instinct which held that the dust of which our mortality is composed
needed moistening at the end of a mile's march. It was a good doctrine to stick
to. The newest imported idea allows three saloons upon a single block on our
busiest avenues. But our progenitors were be-hind the times--good men, but they
did not under-stand human nature. They believed in a man owning as much land as
he could manage comfortably, and only taking as much drink as was good for him.
The new doctrinaires deny man's right to own any land, and insist that he shall
impose no restriction on his own or his neighbor's right to drink all that he
wishes. Thus we live and learn. But this is a digression. From the Six-mile
Tavern we begin to descend the valley towards Harlem. It is a rough road. To
the left is an abrupt stone ledge that runs up into Mc-Gowan's Pass; to the
right are the marshes of Harlem Commons, through which the East River extends
up to the avenue for the distance of a mile. There was not a house to be seen
until One Hundred and Second Street was reached, at which point a lane turned
down to the celebrated Red House at First Avenue and One Hundred and Sixth
Street, where a trotting course called together the owners of fast horses,
especially on Sunday afternoons.
“Love is a hurting thing” played on the transistor radio pressed to my ear as I waited for the Q60 bus. Leaning on the wall outside Eduardo’s Italian restaurant, I wasn’t in love with any particular person but totally related to Lou Rawls words in the tune. It was September 1967, the previous month my family moved from Yorkville to Sunnyside for a bunch of ridiculous reasons that had nothing to do with my life. I was 13, and spending as much time as I could back on York Avenue but I had an 11:30 pm curfew on weekend nights. My father was an amazing pain in the ass – his stone look made me beg silently, “please hit me, and get it over with.” Earlier this week, I walked from an appointment on 38th Street back to Yorkville past the New York Daily News Building, Tudor City, the Chrysler Building, and a row of old law tenements on 51th Street and Third Avenue that my grandfather saw from his third floor window across the street in the apartment he was born @ 1900.
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