Lexington Avenue Love Affair

Long before I attended Hunter College I fell in love with Lexington Avenue. As a boy I regularly drifted over there for no reason at all. This intimate stretch is my favorite Manhattan walking avenue, especially at night when the streets are clear. Better, in the snow. Lexington was not part of the original 1811 Street Grid. It’s insertion as a narrow avenue allows it to retain an old world feel. It’s easy for me to imagine Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz moving into the Shelton Hotel at 49th Street in 1925. Their love for the avenue influenced their work and flows through their art. I never walk passed the 67th Street Armory without thinking about Douglas MacArthur being laid out there in 1964 when he died, and the picture of the crowds in The New York Daily News first seven cent edition. The newspaper was a nickel the previous day.

I walked the avenue last week and took some pictures of the armory, Hunter (the original school building facing Lexington turns 100 next year) and the storefronts (my father sold his miniature furniture out of two Lexington stores). Here are pictures and a link to a small photograph album of Lexington, Park Avenue and a couple of side blocks. The painting here is by Georgia O'Keefe and the b/w photo is by Alfred Stieglitz.

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The next City Stories: Stoops to Nuts storytelling show at the Cornelia Street Cafe is Tuesday, October 11th @ 6pm. This month’s artists: Tricia Alexandro,Kambri Crews, Nick Danger, Timothy O'Mara, Thomas Pryor, Barry & Brian Stabile. Admission is $7 and that includes one free drink. It will be a marvelous night for a Moondance.

Lexington Avenue ~ My Little Town

As a boy I was pushed along, then pulled along all of Manhattan's avenues with no exceptions.

We had no car, like Barney Rubble we visited our neighbors using our feet.

My earliest memory of Lexington Avenue was going to the Lenox Hill Clinic on 76th Street to get a vaccination. I remember being impressed with the buildings on both sides of the street. Burnished dirty stone right on top of me. Lexington is the most narrow avenue in Manhattan. This means a lot when you are small and want to relate to objects, and the closer they are to you, the easier it is to decide whether they are good or bad.

When we strolled along Lexington, I began to think about girls, and thinking about walking along Lexington with a girl, holding her hand, feeling the buildings on both sides of the street watching us and giving us passage, and thinking about how Lexington made me feel like I was in my little town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa62m5cl0LU

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