The brand-new United Nations Headquarters, built on 17 acres along the East River in 1949-1950, as depicted in a postwar technicolor postcard.
These are the only 17 acres in New York City that are considered international territory—under the jurisdiction of the United States, that is.
Today, a room at the 27-story Radisson Lexington Hotel, at 48th Street, would probably run you three or four hundred bucks a night at least.
But back in the 1930s, soon after this colossal structure was built, room rates were more like three or four bucks a night. That’s when it was known simply as the Hotel Lexington.
And look at the possible accommodations: two people, two twin beds, no higher than $8 a night!
See the hotel as it looks today here.
I guess the developer of this residential high-rise at 931 First Avenue and 51st Street deserves praise.
He could have bulldozed the entire circa-1892 Romanesque revival elementary school building located on this corner and put up his high-rise at street level.
Instead, he kept the beautiful facade in place and built a condo tower inside it.
It’s kind of the same story with this new New York University dorm, a sleek, 26-story tower in the East Village.
It was constructed behind what’s left of St. Ann’s, on East 12th Street near Fourth Avenue, which spent most of its life as a Catholic church. Put up in 1847, it started out as a Baptist church and even housed a synagogue in the 19th century.
When NYU made its plans for the dorm a few years back, they decided to preserve a portion of the church’s facade and the gothic tower.
In 1953, Swedish-born actress Greta Garbo purchased a 7-room apartment at The Campanile, a co-op at the eastern end of 52nd Street—a cul-de-sac beside the East River.
She lived there for the next 37 years, until her death in 1990.
Reclusive and uninterested in giving interviews, she was often seen going on long walks through her midtown neighborhood dressed unassumingly like any other New Yorker.
“I want to be alone,” she had said in one of her most famous movies, Grand Hotel.
And though paparazzi managed to get occasional shots of her strolling around the city, she mostly was.
Starting at the tip of Peter Cooper Village at East 23rd Street, Asser Levy Place runs just two blocks to East 25th Street between First Avenue and the FDR Drive. It’s named for one of New Amsterdam’s first Jewish settlers, who arrived in Manhattan with dozens of other refugees in 1654 after being chased out of Brazil.
Levy fought a law on the books at the time preventing Jews from joining the militia that patrolled New Amsterdam. He eventually became a prosperous, prominent citizen.
Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Szold Place is tucked away in the East Village between Avenues C and D, from 10th to 12th Streets. This neighborhood used to be called Dry Dock back in the late 19th century; the name survives at nearby Dry Dock Playground.
Henrietta Szold, the street’s namesake, wasn’t even a New Yorker. Born in Baltimore in 1860, she was a founder of Hadassah, a Jewish service organization, and an advocate of the Zionist movement.
This postcard of the Queensboro Bridge—also known as the 59th Street Bridge or the Blackwell’s Island Bridge in its early years—reveals a structure surrounded by industry and grit. It opened in 1909, linking Manhattan’s East Side to the factories of Long Island City.
The Queensboro still doesn’t get the appreciation the Brooklyn or Williamsburg Bridges receive. But it has fans who extoll its virtues.
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time in its wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”
And of course, there’s Simon and Garfunkel’s ode to feelin’ groovy: “The 59th Street Bridge Song.”
On the night of August 23, 1974, John Lennon and May Pang were hanging out in their small penthouse apartment at 434 East 52nd Street, a 1928 Art Deco building that’s part of the Southgate complex just before the East River.
After walking out on the balcony to catch a breeze from the river, Lennon suddenly shouted for Pang to come see something in the sky—a flying saucer.
As Pang recounted in her 1983 book, Loving John: “My eye caught this large, circular object coming toward us. It was shaped like a flattened cone and on top was a large, brilliant red light. . . . When it came a little closer, we could make out a row or circle of white lights that ran around the entire rim of the craft.
“It was, I estimate, about the size of a Lear jet and it was so close that if we had something to throw at it, it probably would have hit it quite easily.”
Pang said that she and John called the police, who told them to relax—other New Yorkers called in the UFO sighting too.
Did Lennon and Pang really see a spaceship? The object zipped out of view and was apparently never spotted again or explained by authorities. So who knows? Strange days indeed.
Nineteenth century New York had plenty of poor neighborhoods. But one of the worst was Dutch Hill, a shantytown of squatters and rag-pickers near 42nd and Second Avenue. This undated illustration gives the general idea:
In the 1870s the city razed the shacks and constructed tenements and brownstones. The housing improved, but it was still a poverty-stricken, predominantly Irish area ruled by gangs and composed of unpleasant industries like tanneries, breweries, and slaughterhouses. And the Second Avenue elevated train roared ahead all day and night.
But not for long. In the mid-20s the huge Tudor City complex was built on the site. A dozen apartment houses with more than 3,000 residences, plus shops, a hotel, and landscaped parks sprang up, all in the English tudor style popular in the 1920s. Tudor City was kind of a suburb within the city, and today, it’s a pretty, tranquil, non-trendy enclave.
There’s a good reason the apartments feature very few window facing East. Developers didn’t want prospective residents turned off by the nasty sight and smell of the factories along the East River that still existed when Tudor City was completed.
For more information on Dutch Hill and Tudor City, click here.
The American Museum of Natural History just launched its horse exhibit, which makes this a good time to consider the equine era in New York City. It’s only been 100 years or so since cars and trucks began to replace horses as a major mode of transit above ground. This photo is from 1888; check out the horses pulling streetcars (to Harlem!) at Bowery and Canal.
Reminders of horse power abound, like this equine water fountain under the 59th Street Bridge. It was built in 1919 for use in the open-air market that existed there at the time, a market likely packed with horse carts, which were still a common sight in the 1940s and even the 1950s.
I only know of two other horse drinking fountains in the city. One is on Central Park South just inside the park off Sixth Avenue; the other sits at the Southeast corner of the park. Both were presented to the ASPCA in the early 1900s. And they both still work!
Across from Serendipity 3, on East 60th Street, is the Ambassador Terrace, with their lovely 1950s-era (1960s?) vacancy sign. Anyone know what LO stand for? The only LO I could find was for LOuisiana in Canarsie.
