WHERE: A lot of museums and other places on the Upper East Side of Manhattan
START: 72 Street subway station (Q train), fully accessible
FINISH: Madison Avenue and East 96 Street (bus transfer)
DISTANCE: 2 miles (3.2 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy footpathmap.com.
Route of this walk, reading from bottom to top.
Many cities have clusters of museums and other cultural institutions that are an easy walk from one another. This is true in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and certainly in New York. So many museums are located along Fifth Avenue across from or within Central Park that this aggregation has been nicknamed “Museum Mile.” The actual distance is more than that, from East 70 Street to East 105 Street, but it’s a catchy name. This fully accessible walk took in all of Museum Mile except the two institutions at the very northern end, the Museum of the City of New York (between 103 and 104 Streets) and El Museo del Barrio at 105 Street.
The walk started off Museum Mile, at the 72 Street subway station on Second Avenue, walking west on East 70 Street toward Fifth Avenue. The first block, to Third Avenue, is the steepest portion of the walk. East 70 Street is quiet and tree-lined, and I had the impression that a lot of the inhabitants of this area were out of town on this Saturday in high summer. At the corner of Park Avenue is the Asia Society, perhaps best known to the public for its exhibitions of Asian art. Its present home was designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and Associates and opened in 1981. According to its website, “The Asia Society’s purpose is to navigate shared futures for Asia and the world across policy, arts and culture, education, sustainability, business, and technology.”
Continuing toward Madison Avenue I passed The Explorers Club. Founded in 1904, according to its website, “Headquartered in New York City with a community of Chapters around the world, The Explorers Club has been supporting scientific expeditions of all disciplines, and uniting our members in the bonds of good fellowship for over a century.” The Club has events that are open to the public. The Explorers Club has had its home at 436 East 70 Street since 1965, when it moved into the former Stephen C. Clark House, built in 1912. Clark was a member of the Singer sewing machine family.
The Explorers Club.
Continuing on to Fifth Avenue and turning right, on the Central Park side is the monument to architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827 - 1895), who designed the Fifth Avenue entrance hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, and much else. The sculptor was Daniel Chester French, who was the sculptor of the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The monument was unveiled only three years after Hunt’s death, in 1898.
Richard Morris Hunt monument. Flanking the sculpture are the names of some of the buildings he designed.
Directly across Fifth Avenue from the Richard Morris Hunt monument is one of New York’s pre-eminent art museums, The Frick Collection. This was built in 1913 - 1914 as a private home for industrialist Henry Clay Frick and his wife Adelaide Childs Frick, and their substantial art collection, which he thought would be more suitably housed in New York than in Pittsburgh. It was designed by the firm of Carrère and Hastings, which also designed The New York Public Library. In the 1930s the house was converted into a public art museum, the designer for which was John Russell Pope, who designed the West Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The Frick is closed to the public until late 2024 while renovations continue. One happy aspect of the Frick is that no one under 12 years of age is admitted.
The Frick Collection. Image courtesy https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrihDvADpNmSyg6z0KWnIlQ;_ylu=c2VjA2ZwLWF0dHJpYgRzbGsDcnVybA--/RV=2/RE=1720942400/RO=11/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.arnabontempsmuseum.com%2ffrick-collection-one-of-new-yorks-most-popular-art-museums%2f/RK=2/RS=7cCunFrzvq1QrekT_hq1itqBoOw-
At East 71 Street I switched from the west (Central Park) side of Fifth Avenue to the east side, owing to the unevenness of the pavement on the west side.
Fifth Avenue along Central Park is arguably the most elegant street in New York. It came as no surprise that the French Consulate is on Fifth Avenue between 75 and 76 Streets, featuring an awning that gave me a chuckle.
Le Consulat-Général de France, Neuf Cent Trente-Quatre (934) Fifth Avenue.
The block between 78 and 79 Streets is occupied by three former mansions. At the corner of 78 Street is the Duke Mansion (1909 - 1912), now New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. That’s Duke as in Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and a tobacco fortune.
In mid-block is the former mansion of Payne Whitney and Helen Hay Whitney, built 1902 - 1909 and designed by Stanford White. The Whitneys were at the top of the New York upper crust. Payne Whitney was a noted philanthropist, and the gymnasium at Yale University is named for him. Since 1952 the mansion has been used by the French Embassy to the United States for its cultural services, and its gallery and bookstore are open to the public.
At the corner of 79 Street is the former Isaac D. and Mary Fletcher house (1897 - 1899), since 1955 home to the Ukrainian Institute of America. According to the Institute’s website, “The Ukrainian Institute of America, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the art, music and literature of Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora. It serves both as a center for the Ukrainian-American community and as America’s ‘Window on Ukraine,’ hosting art exhibits, concerts, film screenings, poetry readings, literary evenings, children’s programs, lectures, symposia, and full educational programs, all open to the public.”
Image courtesy The Ukrainian Institute of America/Pavol Roskovensky.
On the Central Park side of Fifth Avenue, between 80 and 84 Streets, is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the world’s great art museums with holdings from all over the world, from over 4,000 years. It is a very well-visited place; consider going on a weekday morning outside of high tourist season and avoid the temptation to “do the Met.”
The original part of the building opened in 1880 and the Museum has grown in all directions since. The original façade is visible only from inside. The Beaux-Arts front on Fifth Avenue hides the many additions to the Museum, not least of which is the Sackler Wing at the north end, housing the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur, and the American Wing at the south end. The additions to the Museum are more visible from inside Central Park. The Museum will not expand beyond its present footprint, so future improvements will be within the existing space.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image courtesy concreteplayground.com.
At the corner of 86 Street is the Neue Galerie, whose focus is on Austrian art, including art stolen by the Nazis when Germany annexed Austria in 1938.
Between 88 and 89 Streets is another great New York institution, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. This was one of the late works of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 - 1959) and opened shortly after his death. Wright ostentatiously hated cities but enjoyed himself living in the Plaza Hotel each year while the Guggenheim was under construction.
Wright’s design was criticized for being not “in keeping” with the bland phalanx of Fifth Avenue high-rises. To me that is one of the Guggenheim’s strengths; like the Frick, it opens up the streetscape but does so differently. The rotunda represents Wright coming full circle in his career. The workshop attached to his home in Oak Park, Illinois (1889) is an octagonal shape with a skylight. When I stood in that space I thought to myself, “Wow! I’m seeing the rotunda of the Guggenheim 70 years earlier.”
I have found the Guggenheim to be both an excellent place, and a flawed place, to view art. The exhibition spaces along the spiral favor smaller-scale work that draws one close. This is good. But this amazing building overshadows much of the art inside it.
The Guggenheim Museum. Image courtesy of the Museum.
At 91 Street is the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. This was built between 1898 and 1903 as a home for industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. When it was built it was well to the north of other Fifth Avenue mansions, allowing for a bigger house and a garden. Carnegie’s widow Louise lived here until her death in 1946. The Cooper and Hewitt families bequeathed their collections in the decorative arts to get the new museum going. The Smithsonian Institution took it over in 1974. One of the great exhibitions I have seen there was in the late 1990s, a retrospective of the work of industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904 - 1972). Dreyfuss designed the New York Central’s premier train, the Twentieth Century Limited, in 1938 and again in 1948, as well as the familiar round Honeywell thermostat, the Princess telephone of 1959, and much else.
At the corner of 92 Street is the former mansion of financier Felix Warburg and his wife Frieda, built 1907 - 1908, now the Jewish Museum. It is a Loire Valley château dropped on Fifth Avenue, and it is magnificent. This museum is notable for its interesting and ambitious art exhibits and exhibits on Jewish life, history, and culture.
The Jewish Museum. Image courtesy tripadvisor.com.
At the corner of 94 Street is a former museum. The neo-Georgian mansion at 1130 Fifth Avenue was built for Willard and Dorothy Straight from 1913 - 1915. For years it housed the International Center of Photography (ICP). ICP sold the building and moved first to Midtown and then to the Lower East Side. It is now a single-family house.
Former Willard Straight house. Image courtesy ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This walk ended at Madison Avenue and East 96 Street. There was so much to see and so much else to write about; surely there will be another walk up here. To go from the route of this walk back to an accessible subway station:
At East 84 Street and Fifth Avenue take the M86 SBS bus to Second Avenue (86 Street station, Q train).
At East 96 Street and Fifth Avenue take the M96 bus to Second Avenue (96 Street station, Q train).
At East 97 Street and Fifth Avenue take the M96 bus to Broadway (96 Street station, 1, 2, 3 trains).
On Madison Avenue between East 95 and East 96 Streets, take the M3 bus to 125 Street station (A, B, C, D trains).
Bus routes M1, M2, M3, and M4 run downtown on Fifth Avenue and uptown on Madison Avenue.