May 18th, 11
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Maybe hippies really should run the world. Because if empty urban lots were all turned into lush oases like the 6BC Community Garden, who’d need drugs? The whole city would look like a mushroom-induced fantasy. While the counterculture that built them on nearly every block in Alphabet City in the 70s and 80s has faded, the gardens endure with vegetable plots, plastic chairs, and found objects. Unlike some of its scruffier neighbors, 6BC is gorgeously unkempt: vines climb the walls, brick walkways weave between clusters of native flowers, and lily pads bob in a gurgling pool. Benches beneath an arbor, cool as lemonade, welcome Sunday idleness.
East 6th Street between Avenues B and C. Map. Open May-October, Wednesday evenings and Saturday and Sunday afternoons, or when luck will have it.
How to get there F to Second Ave; 6 to Astor Place
Eat Ropa vieja and Cuban sandwiches at Cafe Cortadito, 230 E. 3rd Street between Avenues B and C.
While there East Village walking tour
More info Background on community gardens from Metropolis.
Mar 1st, 11
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On the shady patrician blocks of Brooklyn Heights, your thoughts don’t often turn to escaped slaves. The slope down to the East River shows no tracks of the Underground Railroad. But when the waterfront teemed with northbound trade in the 1840s and 1850s, Plymouth Church, just up the hill, gave runaways a place to turn. Vehemently anti-slavery, it was led by Henry Ward Beecher, whose fiery sermons made headlines and drew visitors like Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. He even staged mock auctions to buy slaves’ freedom, giving his 4,000-strong congregation a rare look at the face of slavery. Passing by the church’s blooming courtyard in spring, you’d never imagine any of this now. But take a tour with church historian Lois Rosebrooks and antebellum New York comes alive. She may even show you the ring Beecher put on slave girl Pinky in 1860, “wedding” her to freedom.
Tours by appointment, 718-624-4743. Free.
Corner of Hicks and Orange Streets. Map.
How to get there A/C to High Street; 2/3 to Clark Street.
Eat Jack the Horse, 66 Hicks Street at Cranberry.
More info NYTimes
Jan 25th, 11
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There’s a dip in the floorboards in front of pews in Eldridge Street Synagogue, the dark pine lightened like worn leather. Here pious heels once rocked back and forth to an Orthodox cantor, whose voice filled the airy Moorish hall with the prayers of home. Outside, one of the largest Jewish populations in the world—half a million people—lived in cramped squalor. To them, this 1887 building, with its rose window, chandeliers, and ornately carved wood, must have seemed otherworldly. Now engulfed by Chinatown, it still does. After falling into disrepair, it was restored to its original magnificence in 2007. But they kept the floors furrowed, so the chants still echo.
12 Eldridge Street. Map. $10. Free on Mondays.
How to get there F to East Broadway, B/D to Grand Street.
Eat Xi’an Famous Foods, 88 East Broadway
While there Lower East Side Jewish landmarks; Tenement Museum
More info Review of renovation; neighborhood immigration history; street scene
Nov 21st, 10
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“Fulton Street on a Saturday night was like Broadway, hundreds of people—you could hardly walk,” jazz pianist Ed Stoute says of Bed-Stuy in the 1950s and 60s. “There were clubs everywhere: the Blue Coronet, the Continental, Corona Cafe. You could hear a set at one place and go across the street to hear another.” African piano great Randy Weston came of age here, Freddie Hubbard recorded Night of the Cookers at La Marchal, and John Coltrane tore down the Coronet with an hour-long “My Favorite Things.” Nights on Fulton Street are quiet now, except on Friday nights at Jazz 966. Held in a bare senior citizens’ center decorated with posters and colorful plastic tablecloths, it keeps the flame alive. Most of the chatty crowd remembers the old days and loves straight-ahead bebop, nodding along to the likes of Houston Person and Lou Donaldson onstage. Before dispersing, everyone holds hands and sings “Lift Every Voice,” the Black National Anthem. It’s hardly the Blue Coronet, but nobody’s complaining.
966 Fulton Street. Map. $15-$20 suggested donation.
How to get there A/C to Clinton-Washington
Eat Rustic Italian spot Locanda Vini e Olii, 129 Gates Ave.
More info Brooklyn’s jazz history, by Brooklyn College’s Jeffrey Taylor; attempts to resuscitate Brooklyn jazz; the new wave, NYTimes
Nov 4th, 10
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It’s shocking to think that Grand Central could have vanished: the gold-leaf constellation, 60-foot windows, marble-and-brass information booth—and with it all glamour of arriving in New York. You can’t imagine Cary Grant passing through the dungeon halls of Penn Station. But 40 years ago, we nearly lost it to more lucrative development. Such things happen in cities, we get used to them, and forget what was. The Municipal Art Society, which helped save the station along with Jacqueline Onassis and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, makes sure we remember this close call, telling its cautionary tale every Wednesday in a free architectural tour. Taking it, you discover details usually rushed by, like the tiny black rectangle in the northwest corner that was left as a reminder of what the ceiling looked like before its 1998 restoration, or the acorn embellishments on the water fountains. Simply spending 90 minutes in Beaux Arts splendor makes for an enjoyable visit, and you leave all the more glad it exists.
Tours Wednesday at 12:30. Meet at central information booth. $10 suggested donation.
42nd Street and Park Avenue. Map.
How to get there 4,5, 6 to Grand Central.
Eat Macchiato Espresso Bar, 141 East 44th Street.
While there Midtown walk
More info The terminal’s secrets, Gothamist; history, NYTimes.
Oct 8th, 10
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If you haven’t been to the New York Marble Cemetery, it’s not because of distance: Just behind Second Avenue, it’s right on the way to Whole Foods or Anthology Film Archives. You’ve probably walked by dozens of times without peeking through the wrought-iron gate and down the alley to the manicured lawn at the end. But it’s rarely open: Only fourth Sundays, April through October, from 11 to 3. Incorporated in 1831, the cemetery holds 156 marble vaults, with the dead remembered not with headstones but plaques on the surrounding stone wall. Like the former potter’s fields of Washington Square and Bryant Park, it has become a grassy oasis with ivy, trees, and folding chairs. If only we could take sun there more often.
41 1/2 Second Avenue, between E 2nd and 3rd Streets. Map.
How to get there F/V to Second Avenue; 6 to Bleecker Street.
Eat A wealth of healthy, cheap options at Atlas Cafe. 73 Second Ave between 4th and 5th Streets.
More info Good overview and pics from Scouting NY; other hidden cemeteries (including one around the corner) from Forgotten NY.
Sep 5th, 10
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The vertical tour of St. John the Divine takes you twelve spiral storeys up a buttress, past soaring Gothic arches, stained-glass windows, and airy views across the nave. It ends on a roof overlooking brown apartment blocks, and after the chiseled perfection inside the city looks slapdash and drab. However majestic, the cathedral can still feel ersatz. The tour stops at the second-floor bishop’s walk, where medieval travelers would have spent the night and the sick were quarantined. This was little use even in 1892, when the cornerstone was laid. But as an editorial that year said, the building itself is more important than what is done in it: It would become “the nucleus of a new quarter, withdrawn from the roaring commercial town and devoted to charity and culture.” It was to show that New York cared to invest not only in business, but in beauty.
Tour Saturdays at 12 and 2pm. $15. 112th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Map.
How to get there A, B, C, 1 to 110th Street.
Eat Sunny outdoor tables at Community Food & Juice, 2893 Broadway near 113th St.
While there College walk
More info NYTimes; annual animal blessing, Gothamist
Aug 16th, 10
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You’d think a city of New York’s size would have a large daily indoor market like Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal or Seattle’s Pike Place. The modest Essex Street Market is as close as we come. But it’s still a fun place to shop: You can pick up salted chocolate or plantains, fresh chèvre or Goya beans, get breakfast from the crotchety Shopsin. Stalls cater to both yuppies and immigrants, reflecting the neighborhood’s changing demographics. Jeffrey’s Meats, which has been in the neighborhood since 1920, might offer both $2.99 and $12.99 steaks, sold with a flourish by its grandiloquent owner. Opened in 1940, the brick market building replaced the pushcarts that had crowded Lower East Side streets since the early 19th century—picturesque to nostalgists, unsanitary to the mayor—and originally had 475 stalls. Now down to 25, Essex is a link, however tenuous, to life in the old Lower East Side. And a colorful place to buy kielbasa.
120 Essex Street at Delancey Street. Map.
How to get there F, J, M, Z to Delancey Street.
While there Hester Street Fair is a new market with historic lineage; other neighborhood vestiges.
More info Pictures of the old pushcart peddlers; background on the market’s regeneration.
Aug 5th, 10
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The children’s book The Little House tells the story of a rural house surrounded by apple trees that gradually gets swallowed up by the city, eventually sandwiched between skyscrapers. Wyckoff House’s transformation is almost as drastic. The oldest structure in New York City (1652), it once sat on Pieter Claesen Wyckoff’s rolling farm in Canarsie Indian territory. Now just a small grassy plot remains beside tire dealerships on busy Clarendon Road. It’s easy to drive by without noticing the wood shingles, Dutch-eaved roof, or low doorway leading to its few bare cold rooms. But walk around, and you begin to imagine what early New York was like. The farm has actually been partly resurrected: Volunteers cultivate flowers, herbs, and vegetables on the land, sold at the house’s Sunday afternoon farmer’s market from June to October. They even plan to plant an apple orchard.
5816 Clarendon Road at Ralph Avenue. Map. Grounds open Tuesday to Sunday, 10-4.
How to get there The best way is by bike. Or 2 or 5 train to Newkirk Avenue, then B8 bus to Beverley Road at East 59th Street; or B47 or B7 bus to Clarendon Road.
Eat Nearest options are on Cortelyou Road in Ditmas Park. Purple Yam is a homey brunch and dinner spot. $10-$15. 1314 Cortelyou Road near Rugby Road.
While there Combine a visit with a bike ride of other colonial remnants: Flatlands Reformed Church, Wyckoff-Bennett House, and Lefferts Homestead. Map.
More info Video from Thirteen.org. A description of suburban growth, 1884.
Jul 26th, 10
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Urban gardens, as opposed to parks, offer quick escapes, and in the best ones the city falls away within steps of the gate. Central Park’s six-acre Conservatory Garden drops you into a world of relaxed elegance that feels closer to Paris than New York. Built by Robert Moses in 1937 on the site of a Victorian greenhouse, it has three distinct sections in French, Italian, and English styles. The latter, to the south, is most welcoming: knotty tree limbs curl around hidden benches, Magnolia petals blanket paths, and a sculpture of children crowns a lily-filled fountain. Lush flowerbeds, packed with thousands of bulbs, lilacs, and hyacinth each spring, seem impossibly fragrant. You emerge refreshed.
Fifth Avenue between 104th and 106th Streets. Map.
How to get there 6 to 103rd Street.
Eat $9.50 prix fixe weekend brunch at Mexican Itzocan Bistro, 1575 Lexington Ave near 100th St.
While there Top-of-the-park walk; Museum of the City of New York across the street.
More info Historical background; good things Robert Moses did; other great gardens
