Another Stop on the Trail of Religious Liberty

WHERE: The Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Photographs by Michael Cairl.

Map of Gravesend, courtesy Open Street Maps.

What is now New York City became home to two women for whom the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had no use. Leading bands of religious dissenters was bad enough, but having them led by women must have been more than the Puritans could stand. These women were Anne Hutchinson (1591 - 1643), who fled to what is now the Bronx, and Deborah Moody (1586 - 1659), who founded the community of Gravesend in the part of New Netherland now known as Brooklyn. I’ve wanted to walk around Gravesend for some time, and a typically excellent and fun video by Tom Delgado (featured at the end of this post) was all I needed to get going. So I picked a cold February day to go there.

From the website of New York Historical (also known as the New-York Historical Society):

Deborah Dunch was born in London, England in 1586. She was the daughter of Walter Dunch, the auditor of the Royal Mint, and his wife, Deborah. Her ancestors were loyal supporters of the British monarchy and the Church of England. She married Sir Henry Moody in 1606, becoming Lady Deborah Moody.

After the death of her husband in 1629, Deborah became an Anabaptist. The Anabaptists were a Protestant sect of Christianity who believed that baptism should not occur until a person was old enough to consent. In England, where the Church of England was headed by the king, Anabaptists were considered a danger to the stability of the nation. Women in particular were vilified for following this religion. When word of her new beliefs got out, Deborah was summoned to appear in court. Rather than face whatever punishment the government had in mind, Deborah gathered her wealth and set sail for the English colonies in North America. She was fifty-four when she arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639. The colony was run by Puritans, another Protestant sect that had been forced to flee England. Deborah probably chose it thinking it would be a place where she could practice her beliefs in peace.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was not the haven of tolerance that Deborah hoped for. Deborah originally settled in the town of Saugus, Massachusetts, before moving to a large farm in Swampscott, just outside of Salem. She conducted a lively correspondence with other people in the area who were not Puritans. This drew the attention of her closest neighbor, Reverend Hugh Peter. Hugh believed that the Massachusetts colony should have religious unity. He had already expelled another Anabaptist woman, Anne Hutchinson, two years prior to Deborah’s arrival. In 1643 Deborah was brought before the court for spreading religious dissent. During her trial, Puritan leader John Endecott described her as a “dangerous woman.” She was given the choice to change her beliefs or be excommunicated from the colony. Deborah chose excommunication, gathered her fellow Anabaptists, and set out once again to find a place where they could practice their religion in peace.

Deborah drew up the plans for her new community and named it Gravesend. It was the first New World settlement founded by a woman.

At the same time that Deborah was standing trial in Massachusetts, Director Willem Kieft of the Dutch West India Company was looking to recruit new settlers to the New Netherland colony. Willem had recently started a war with local Mohawk communities and wanted to increase the colony’s population to make it harder for the Mohawk to take back their land. Deborah was a woman with money who already had followers willing to help settle a new community. The Netherlands and its colonies practiced a greater degree of religious tolerance than England and Massachusetts, so Anabaptist beliefs were less worrisome there. Willem granted Deborah the southwestern tip of Long Island, territory that now encompasses parts of Bensonhurst, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn.

Deborah drew up the plans for her new community and named it Gravesend. It was one of the first settlements in the American colonies founded by a woman. She allowed the inhabitants of Gravesend to follow whatever religious practices they chose, so long as they abided by the laws of the colony. Gravesend was targeted by local Native American communities who were angry with the Dutch colonists settling their land. This was no minor threat—in 1643 another outlying settlement in New Netherland was destroyed because of the ongoing conflict. In spite of these very real dangers, Deborah and her followers chose to stay. 

As Deborah’s community grew, so did her influence in the government of New Netherland. In 1647 she was among the colony’s elite who greeted the new Director-General Peter Stuyvesant. In 1654 Peter called on her to mediate a tax dispute, and in 1655 she was called upon to nominate magistrates for Gravesend. Deborah lived in Gravesend until her death in 1659.

In the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776, British soldiers landed in nearby Gravesend Bay. This area was built up following the completion of two subway lines, in 1915 (today’s N train) and 1919 (today’s F train).

On the accompanying map, note the four square blocks that are offset from the street grid. These formed the village of Gravesend. I approached this area from the Avenue U station on the N train. Avenue U is a busy street whose businesses reflect, and cater to, many nationalities. At the northwest corner of old Gravesend is a nondescript triangle with a monument to Deborah Moody. Perhaps the triangle looks better in spring or summer than in February.

Lady Moody Triangle.

Deborah Moody monument.

From there I walked along Village Road North to McDonald Avenue and turned right. McDonald Avenue and its elevated subway structure (F train) bisect old Gravesend. From McDonald Avenue I turned right onto Gravesend Neck Road, known familiarly as Neck Road. On the south side of the street is the entrance to Gravesend Cemetery.

From the NYC Parks website:

The cemetery occupies a 1.6-acre portion of one of the quadrants formed by the historic street grid. Lady Moody died in 1659 and is believed to be buried there in an unmarked grave. She is memorialized by a monument located near the front entry gate. Other early pioneer settlers of the area are also buried in the cemetery, as are several individuals noted for their roles in the Revolutionary War.

How did this site become parkland?

The cemetery expanded several times through the 18th and 19th centuries. It appears that its transition to municipal land started when a portion was deeded to the town in 1847 by Garret Stryker and his wife. In 1875, two additional parcels were transferred from Samuel G. Stryker and his wife Ellen Stillwell and Court J. Van Sicklen and his wife Catherine Johnson. The Van Sicklen family maintained their own cemetery, which accepted interments from 1847 to 1992, and bordered Gravesend Cemetery.

In 1903, NYC Mayor Seth Low conveyed the property to a group of trustees set up to manage the cemetery. By the 1940s, burials had ceased and the group had stopped submitting annual reports to the city and maintaining the property. At that time a series of city agencies were assigned to care for the site over several decades. Gravesend Cemetery and the Van Sicklen Cemetery were designated New York City Landmarks on March 23, 1976.

In 2003, the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) transferred Gravesend Cemetery, along with another eight cemeteries, to NYC Parks.

Old Gravesend Cemetery currently contains approximately 379 gravestones, which range in date from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The material of the headstones is diverse, and includes brownstone, slate, marble, fieldstone, cast iron, and other media. A rich complexity of carvings is also represented, with the earlier stones depicting winged cherubs while many nineteenth-century stones picture urns, willows, and other classical motifs. A valuable reflection of the history of the locality, some of the gravestones bear inscriptions in Dutch.

In 2019, the headstones were conserved by the NYC Parks Citywide Monuments Conservation Program with assistance from Green-Wood Cemetery, and Boy Scout Troops 22 and 237 installed benches, a path, and a flagpole. Parks reconstructed the park building’s roof, created an outdoor pavilion for programs, reconstructed the sidewalks and fences, and connected the Gravesend and Van Siclen Cemeteries.

Across Neck Road from the cemetery is the Lady Moody - Van Sicklen house. From the Historic Districts Council via urbanarchive.com:

The Lady Moody-Van Sicklen House is a rare surviving example of an 18th century Dutch-American farmhouse and a reminder of Brooklyn’s agricultural past. In addition to being one of the oldest houses in Brooklyn, it is also the borough’s only extant house of its age and type to be built of stone. While it is unlikely that any part of the house dates to her ownership of the property, the house sits on a lot once owned by Lady Deborah Moody, an English settler who founded Gravesend and one of the first women to be granted land in the New World. The house features a gable roof with overhanging eaves and an end chimney, typical features of 18th century Dutch-American farmhouses. It is one of only two extant houses that adhere to the original four-square plan laid out for the colonial town of Gravesend. This plan is unique in New York City, consisting of 16 acres per square, and is still visible in the modern street grid. The house is, therefore, integral to Gravesend’s history and identity. Subsequent owners included the prominent Van Sickles family and William E. and Isabella Platt, who renovated the house in the Arts and Crafts style in the early 20th century, and advertised its association with Lady Moody. The house was named a New York City landmark in April of 2016.

Lady Moody - Van Sicklen House.

Around the corner, off Van Sicklen Street, is a private cul-de-sac called Corso Court. The street sign is of the style put up all over Brooklyn in the 1950s.

Also on Van Sicklen Street is this gorgeous 19th-century house with an unfortunate modern front fence.

This was a short, easy walk on a chilly day but it was worth the effort, with a lot of historical significance. The walk itself is accessible but the two nearest subway stations, Avenue U on the F train and Avenue U on the N train, are not accessible. The B3 bus is accessible and runs frequently along Avenue U. It connects with many bus lines.

To JFK Airport and home again - accessibly

For the first time since my stroke in November 2018, I went from my home in Brooklyn to JFK airport entirely by public transportation, and a few days later went home from JFK the same way, rather than taking a taxi or car service. Local bus to Atlantic Terminal, Long Island Rail Road to Jamaica Station, JFK AirTrain to the terminal. From boarding the bus to the departure gate at the airport, the whole trip was accessible, and the process was smooth. Plus, it was decidedly less expensive: $1.45 for the bus, plus $5.00 for the LIRR, plus $8.50 for the AirTrain = $14.95 total each way.

I’m celebrating this as a not-so-small victory. I planned every leg of the trip in advance and allowed enough time that I was never in a hurry. I can do this and will do so again.

Onward!

Drumthwacket!

WHERE: Princeton, New Jersey

START/FINISH: Princeton station (New Jersey Transit Northeast Corridor line and Amtrak, then New Jersey Transit Princeton Shuttle), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted.

Map of this walk, going clockwise from the Princeton station. Map courtesy footpathmap.com.

When the U.S. Mint began the 50 States quarter dollar series in 1999, the new quarters appeared in the order of their respective state’s accession to the Union. New Jersey was the second, and its design was one of the better ones. It bears the legend “Crossroads of the Revolution” and indeed New Jersey was, being situated between the largest city in the British colonies, Philadelphia, and New York.

Image courtesy PGCS CoinFacts.

Major military actions took place near Trenton (Washington crossing the Delaware River), Monmouth Court House (present-day Freehold), Morristown, and Princeton. Princeton has battle monuments, Princeton University, Albert Einstein’s house from when he was at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, and more.

All these would have made for a good trip, and the theme could have been Revolutionary Trails: Princeton. In 1681 William Penn purchased a large tract of land that includes present-day Princeton and its surrounds. Yet there is another thing about Princeton: the official residence of the governors of New Jersey, Drumthwacket. No, Drumthwacket is not an old-fashioned expletive, and it isn’t the name of a Charles Dickens character (think Hezekiah Drumthwacket). It’s a real place, visited on this walk.

This walk started at the Princeton railroad station, a 5-minute train ride from Princeton Junction on the Northeast Corridor. (Sidebar: Princeton Junction is an excellent place for trainspotting). Many mighty railroads are or were known by their initials: UP, PRR, and so on. The Princeton Shuttle, known locally as the Dinky, should be known as the PJ&B (Princeton Junction and Back).

I walked up a gentle hill past the Princeton Theological Seminary, founded in 1812.

Stuart Hall at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Passing the seminary, I turned onto Mercer Street heading toward no. 112, a simple frame house which Albert Einstein bought in 1936 and lived in for the rest of his life.

Albert Einstein’s house.

From there I walked up to Stockton Street (U.S. Route 206), which is the road to Trenton. It is a portion of the Colonial era King’s Highway from Newark to Philadelphia. After a short distance I came upon Drumthwacket. In 1697 William Olden purchased the land on which Drumthwacket stands.

Survey, dated 21 October 1696, of William Olden’s land purchase. Image courtesy The Drumthwacket Foundation.

In 1835 a descendant of William Olden, Charles Smith Olden, who gained his wealth in business ventures in New Orleans and an inheritance from an uncle, began construction of Drumthwacket in 1835. According to The Drumthwacket Foundation:

For its name, Drumthwacket was the estate of a hero in one of Sir Walter Scott’s popular historical novels, A Legend (of the Wars) of Montrose, published in 1819. It is believed that Governor Olden gave his new house this Scots-Gaelic name (which means “wooded hill”) upon reading the book. The original structure consisted of the center hall with two rooms on each side in addition to the large portico with detailed Ionic columns.

Drumthwacket seen from across Stockton Street.

Unfortunately, Drumthwacket was not open to the public this day, and the sidewalk is on the opposite side of Stockton Street. It has been the official residence of the governors of New Jersey since 1982 but is not lived in by the current governor, Phil Murphy. It is maintained by The Drumthwacket Foundation, whose website, https://drumthwacket.org/, has plenty of information about the history of the house and current programs there.

Walking back into town, I passed several splendid houses.

217 Stockton Street.

The Present Day Club, founded in 1898.

Near the beginning of Stockton Street is Morven, built in the 1750s by Richard Stockton (1730 - 1781), a signer of the Declaration of Independence whose land grant in Princeton led the College of New Jersey to move there from Newark in 1756. The College of New Jersey is now Princeton University. The house remained in Stockton family ownership until 1944, when it was purchased by New Jersey Governor Walter E. Edge. The sale was subject to the condition that Morven would be given to the state of New Jersey within two years of Edge's death. Edge transferred ownership of Morven to the state during 1954, several years before he died. Morven was the official residence of the governors of New Jersey from 1944 until 1981. The house is now a museum.

Morven.

A bit farther on is the Princeton Battle Monument.

Across Stockton Street from the Princeton Battle Monument is the stately Trinity Church (Episcopalian). From the church’s website:

Founded in 1833 by a group of local families, including architect and churchwarden Charles Steadman who built a stick-framed Greek Revival meeting hall for the congregation. Over the next forty years, Trinity prospered and in 1870 the original structure was replaced by a stone Gothic Revival church designed by architect Richard Upjohn. In the first two decades of the 20th century, architect Ralph Adams Cram was hired twice, first doubling the nave in length and later creating a small chapel in the north transept, a larger French Gothic chancel, and a significantly heightened tower accommodating a small carillon of ten Meneely bells. With some interior alterations, this is the church as it is today.

From there I walked down University Avenue toward the train station, not quite making it as I tripped and fell, and was taken to the emergency room at Princeton Medical Center. Fortunately the damage is not too serious, the worst of it being on my right knee. But I’ll be back walking soon and will definitely return to Princeton, as there is much more to take in.

Holiday display in front of a house on University Avenue. Moose in Princeton!

Two More Harlem River Bridges (Bronx and Manhattan)

WHERE: The Washington Bridge and the Broadway Bridge, both between the Bronx and Manhattan

START: 170 Street subway station (4 train), fully accessible

FINISH: 231 Street subway station (1 train), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 4.5 miles (7.2 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy Google Maps.

Route of this walk, reading from bottom to top.

Before this walk I had walked all the walkable bridges across the Harlem River except two: the Washington Bridge (not to be confused with the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River) and the Broadway Bridge. I decided to cross both of them in the course of one walk, which was the longest walk I had done for some time, on a clear, crisp Saturday afternoon. This included a good climb at the start along Macombs Road and the charmingly named Featherbed Lane. For some history of Featherbed Lane see the post entitled “West Bronx Mix 2” on the “Stair Streets” page. I’ve previously tackled many stair streets in this part of the Bronx.

A short distance into the walk was this apartment building, 1460 Macombs Road, with nice details.

From that apartment building almost to the Washington Bridge, the route was a steady, sometimes steep, uphill, but the climb was bracing.

The Washington Bridge opened in 1888, linking University Avenue in the Bronx and West 181 Street in Manhattan. At first it had two wide sidewalks; now, the sidewalks are not wide enough for two people to pass. I had to back up to the fence to allow people to pass. I’m glad to see that one of the Manhattan-bound car lanes has been converted to a bi-directional bike path.

Washington Bridge, circa 1900.  Image courtesy Columbia University Libraries.

Washington Bridge, looking toward the Bronx.   Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Washington Bridge, looking toward Manhattan.

The chain link fence is understandable but a bit depressing. Still, I was able to get a view up the Harlem River showing the fall colors.

At the Manhattan end of the bridge is McNally Plaza, with a monument to neighborhood residents who died in the World War (World War I, that is).

I walked north on Laurel Hill Terrace, abutting Highbridge Park and its steep drop toward the Harlem River.

At West 184 Street I noticed what looked like well-maintained stairs going down to the Highbridge Park footpath. I’m going back there.

When i got to St. Nicholas Avenue and West 190 Street, I had the choice of going to and down the very steep street called Fort George Hill, or taking the elevator down to the 3-block long tunnel street to Broadway. For me, walking downhill without a handrail is more challenging than walking uphill without a handrail. I chose the elevator and tunnel street, which link to the deepest subway station in the city, the 191 Street station (1 train). The tunnel was recently and somewhat controversially rehabilitated to cover over the graffiti and open the surfaces to local artists. The graffiti is starting to return. At the Broadway entrance to the tunnel is a set of stairs next to a ramp that is too steep for wheelchairs, pedestrians, or much else.

What were they thinking?

At Broadway I began the second part of this walk, through the Inwood neighborhood to the Broadway Bridge. Walking along Sherman Avenue, I was in the heart of a vibrant community of people with roots in the Dominican Republic. I saw a lot of businesses offering money transfer and shipping services, the latter for people to send appliances and other things “back home.” I saw men playing dominoes at a table on the sidewalk. Sickles Street is co-named Santiago Cerón Way, for the Dominican singer who lived from 1940 to 2011. Sickles Street is named for the Sickles family, which once owned a tract of land in this area.

And there’s this establishment at Sherman Avenue and West 207 Street. Mofongo, piano bar, bakery, sushi. They have it all. I should try it.

While in this area I was interested to see if there were any sign, even a historical marker, noting the Inwood African Burial Ground that was on 10 Avenue between West 211 and West 212 Streets. Sadly, there is none. From the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance’s website:

In March of 1903, various New York City headlines announced the discovery of rows of skeletons under unmarked stone markers during construction that revealed a slave cemetery. City contractors ultimately destroyed the site to continue leveling the ground for urban development. The remains were quickly analyzed by amateur archaeologists before the bones were first left uncollected, then discarded. Today, no sign of it as a cemetery remains except in historical records. … This block is currently occupied by various Auto Shops and P.S. 98 - Shorac Kappock’s faculty parking lot.

I walked up West 212 Street to Broadway, where I turned north. I soon came upon the place where I started my climbing of New York City’s stair streets, at West 215 Street. This stair street was one of many personal triumphs recorded on this blog.

Soon I passed Columbia University’s Wien Stadium and came within sight of the Broadway Bridge.

The present Broadway Bridge is a vertical lift span that opened in 1962, replacing a swing bridge dating from 1906. The bridge has a lower deck for motor vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians and an upper deck for the subway, as the 1906 bridge did. The bridge spans what was called the Harlem Ship Canal, built in the late 19th century to facilitate navigation on the Harlem River, in place of the winding Spuyten Duyvil Creek. An excellent history of this area, and the bridges preceding the Broadway Bridges, may be found at https://www.welcome2thebronx.com/2018/08/02/in-search-of-the-historic-kings-bridge-on-the-bronx-manhattan-border/.

Broadway Bridge. Image from flickr.com.

View from the Broadway Bridge to Marble Hill and the Marble Hill station of Metro North Railroad’s Hudson Line.

From here I walked north on Broadway to the elevated 231 Street subway station, following lunch.

On this walk, not only did I cross the two bridges I intended to, I saw a lot of interesting things and imagined others, where there was no trace of what came before. The steady uphill to the Washington Bridge was a good workout. All this on a picture-perfect day.

Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant (Brooklyn)

WHERE: Northeast Crown Heights, Stuyvesant Heights, and more

START: Crown Heights - Utica Avenue subway station (3 and 4 trains), fully accessible

FINISH: Herbert Von King Park, then B38 bus on DeKalb Avenue

DISTANCE: 3.3 miles (5.3 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy footpathmap.com.

Map of this route, reading from bottom to top.

I didn’t have a particular theme in mind for this walk, just some places I wanted to see, specifically the Weeksville Heritage Center and a lot of knock-your-socks-off late 19th-century architecture. I saw all that, and more, on this warm but pleasant day.

The walk started at the busy subway station at Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway, connecting to several bus lines and the hub of the Utica Avenue commercial corridor. Several peddlers set up shop by the subway entrance. Walking east on Eastern Parkway, it didn’t take long to get away from the commerce. Between Rochester Avenue and Buffalo Avenue, a couple of houses with front porches caught my eye.

I turned left onto Buffalo Avenue and walked north. Brooklyn has long been called the Borough of Churches (before 1898 it was the City of Churches). This walk took in many grand churches but on one block of Buffalo Avenue I counted four churches housed in humbler dwellings. This was one.

Between St. Marks Avenue and Bergen Street is the Weeksville Heritage Center. Weeksville was a community of people freed from slavery after slavery was abolished in New York in 1827. From their website:

Weeksville Heritage Center is an historic site and cultural center in Central Brooklyn that uses education, arts and a social justice lens to preserve, document and inspire engagement with the history of Weeksville, one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America, and the Historic Hunterfly Road Houses.

A handsome, understated modern building on Buffalo Avenue is the entrance to Weeksville. The grounds outside the building have sculptures, and a path follows the route of old Hunterfly Road. The old road was obliterated by the street grid in this part of Brooklyn. The Hunterfly Road houses were built around 1830. Weeksville became a thriving community that grew larger as African-Americans fled Manhattan during and after the draft riots of 1863. The AIA Guide to New York City, Fifth Edition, describes the houses thus:

Four simple wood houses occupied by James Weeks and friends (free black men) between 1830 and 1870. The architecture, in painted clapboard, is that of the 19th-century common man. It is the City’s oldest black residential landmark.

At the corner of Rochester Avenue and Pacific Street, Calvary Fellowship African Methodist Episcopal Church caught my eye. It’s small but commanding and offers a weekly soup kitchen and other community services.

To go from Crown Heights to Bedford-Stuyvesant one has to cross Atlantic Avenue. For most of its length, extending into Queens, it is wide, congested, and ugly. For most of its length the Long Island Rail Road runs beneath it or above it. On this walk I passed underneath it, continuing north on Rochester Avenue to Fulton Street, where I turned left, continuing to Stuyvesant Avenue, where I tuned right.

Brooklyn has several street grids. Crown Heights, both north and south of Eastern Parkway, has one. Bedford-Stuyvesant has another, slightly offset from the Crown Heights grid and extending to the west into Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. A number of east-west streets merge with Fulton Street at acute angles, as far west as Downtown Brooklyn. These streets are named for generals, admirals, and presidents, with two exceptions: Hancock Street and Lexington Avenue, about which a bit more later. The intersecting avenues were named for former governors of New York; some of those streets have been renamed.

Turning onto Stuyvesant Avenue, one sees beautiful houses on tree-lined streets. Again from The AIA Guide to New York City, Fifth Edition:

… where Bedford-Stuyvesant has distinguished architecture, it is very good. Its façades of brownstones and brickfronts create a magnificent townscape as good - and sometimes better - than many fashionable areas of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Parts of Chauncey, Decatur, MacDonough, and Macon Streets, and the southern end of Stuyvesant Avenue, are superb. Hancock Street, between Nostrand and Tompkins Avenues, was considered a showplace in its time (late 1880s) and has been lovingly restored in recent years.

Stuyvesant Avenue, north of Chauncey Street.

Two blocks on, I turned left onto Decatur Street. This was a part of my bike route from where I live in Brooklyn to Flushing Meadow - Corona Park in Queens, and this part of the street is full of beautiful late 19th-century houses. Immediately I saw some grand houses I never quite appreciated while biking along here.

At the corner of Decatur Street and Lewis Avenue is the stunning Mount Lebanon Baptist Church. Years ago, on a bike ride with friends, we stopped to look and were invited inside by the sexton to look at the sanctuary. I could do a whole walk devoted to the churches of Bedford-Stuyvesant and another of the churches of Crown Heights. Perhaps I will.

Sanctuary of Mount Lebanon Baptist Church. Image courtesy of the church.

I turned right onto Lewis Avenue, walking past Peaches Restaurant (I have to go there sometime), then left onto the next street of beautiful old homes, MacDonough Street. At the corner of MacDonough Street and Throop Avenue is yet another grand church, Our Lady of Victory (Roman Catholic), dedicated in 1895. The façade is Manhattan schist, which darkens when exposed to air (see also the original quad at City College in Harlem), with limestone encasements.

I then turned right onto Throop (pronounced “troop”) Avenue and then left onto Macon Street. Directly across Throop Avenue is Newman Memorial United Methodist Church. African-Americans founded the Newman Memorial United Methodist Church as a mission church in the Old Embury Church at Herkimer Street. The congregation moved into this building (dedicated in 1912 as the Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church) in 1945.

I walked west on Macon Street to Marcy Avenue and turned right. Just east of Marcy Avenue on Hancock Street is the former John C. Kelley House, built in the 1880s. Again from The AIA Guide to New York City, Fifth Edition:

A formal freestanding neo-Renaissance town house (in Rome it would have been a palazzo, in Paris a hôtel particulier) on a triple-width site (81 feet), built for Kelley, an Irish immigrant who made his fortune in water meters. Legend claims that the brownstone was selected piece by piece to guarantee quality. Lovingly restored as a bed and breakfast.

The former John C. Kelley House.

The houses immediately to the west of the John C. Kelley House are impressive too.

Fronting on Marcy Avenue between Putnam Avenue and Madison Street is the former Boys’ High School (1892). It and the nearby former Girls’ High School on Nostrand Avenue (1885) were probably the crown jewels of the City of Brooklyn’s public school system. In those days one went to school at a place that looked important.

Former Boys’ High School.

Continuing north, I passed Lexington Avenue. This street might be charitably described as nondescript, perhaps a legacy of Brooklyn’s first elevated transit line running above it from 1885 to 1950.

Lexington Avenue elevated, 1950. Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections.

At Greene Avenue I came to Herbert Von King Park. This was not my first time there. The park was bustling with activity: people picinicking, playing with Frisbees, listening to music, or just sitting and relaxing. Black, white, old, young, gay, straight, they all enjoyed Bedford-Stuyvesant’s town square. From The NYC Parks website:

Acquired in 1857 by condemnation, this park was one of the first established by the City of Brooklyn. It was originally named for Daniel D. Tompkins, an abolitionist who served four terms as governor of New York (1807-17) and two terms as vice president of the United States under James Monroe (1817-25). It was not until 1871, however, that the plan for the park was submitted by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, the designers of Prospect and Central Parks. Like most small parks of the time, Tompkins Park was planned as a public square used for ceremonies and military reviews. The designers provided for little more than border plantings of flowers and shrubs, claiming that trees and winding walks would result in the park being used, “for clandestine purposes by people of bad character.” 

Historical additions to the park reflect changing uses of the site. Space was cleared in 1915 to accommodate the large crowds who turned out for concerts performed by regimental bands.  A playground was built in 1927, and a public library that dates to 1915 was housed in the shelter building until it burned down in 1969. The group Tompkins Park Recreation and Cultural Association formed in the same year and mobilized to improve park facilities. Their efforts led to the 1973 opening of a new recreation center which houses the amphitheater, senior citizen and teen center, and an auditorium named after famed 20th century African American composer and musician of ragtime and jazz music, Eubie Blake. In the auditorium, a mural by artist Akwesi M. Asante depicts 50 African American icons, including Fredrick Douglass, Mayor David Dinkins, and the Jackson Five.

In 2011, the amphitheater was named in honor of Almira Kennedy Coursey (1914-1996), a lifelong educator and local resident who promoted the park’s transformation from a passive town square into a bustling center of activity in the heart of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

This park is named for Herbert Von King (1912-1985). King was called the “Mayor of Bedford-Stuyvesant,” and was an active community leader for over 50 years.

I cut diagonally across the park, exiting at Tompkins and Lafayette Avenues, then continuing to the end of the walk at Tompkins and DeKalb Avenues. Near the corner is Mount Pisgah Baptist Church, formerly St. Ambrose Roman Catholic Church (1907). This church was designed in an Italianate style with a façade copied from the Church of St. Prudentiana in Rome. The interior features a ceiling that reproduces that in the Cathedral of Pisa, with side decorations copied after those in the Cathedral of Ravenna.

Two views of Mount Pisgah Baptist Church.

There was so much to see on this walk, and so much that I missed. There were many block parties taking place on this fine day. Weeksville Heritage Center is definitely worth return visits, and I’m sure future walks will overlap this one. There was a great spirit in my city. And, last but not least, the whole walk was accessible.

East Bronx Ramble 2

WHERE: The eastern part of the Bronx, ending up in Pelham Bay Park and at the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum

START: Gun Hill Road subway station (5 train), fully accessible

FINISH: The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, then No. 45 Bee-Line bus to New Rochelle station (Metro North Railroad New Haven Line), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy footpathmap.com.

The Bartow-Pell Mansion.

Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx is a vast place, the largest park in New York City except for the Gateway National Recreation Area. It encompasses forests, salt marshes, athletic fields, a public golf course, and much more. Its history is tied to that of the Bartow-Pell Mansion, the endpoint of this walk. I had not been in the park in many years, and the one time I biked to the mansion, in the early 1990s, it was closed on the day I visited. So I mapped out two walking routes to the mansion, and settled on a walk from the subway in the northeast Bronx.

There is a Pelham Bay Park subway station, the terminus of the 6 train. Had I started there, I would have had a shorter walk to the mansion. Instead, I took the 5 train to the very nicely rehabilitated (and fully accessible) Gun Hill Road station. This station opened in 1912 as a local station on the New York, Westchester, and Boston Railway, closed on the last day of 1937, and reopened in 1941 with subway service.

Route of this walk, reading from left to right.

About a block from the subway station is a street sign reading Betty Brady Square. It’s actually a triangle and a somewhat neglected one at that, but never mind. Who was Betty Brady? According to the great chronicler of this city, Kevin Walsh, Betty Brady was a community volunteer and organizer associated with Holy Rosary Church. Follow Kevin’s walks and research at https://forgotten-ny.com/. There’s no plaque or sign in the triangle explaining who she was. I’m sure Betty deserved better.

Leaving the subway station, I turned right on Gun Hill Road, continuing east (downhill), crossing Kingsland Avenue, then crossing Gun Hill Road and continuing on Bartow Avenue. The first half of this walk was uninteresting: bland, low-rise, car-centric but with a lot of bus routes. Once I passed the New England Thruway (Interstate 95), I came upon Co-op City. The largest cooperative apartment complex in the world, this was built starting in the 1960s on the site of a failed American history-themed amusement park called Freedomland U.S.A. I visited Freedomland with my brother when I was five years old and remember being very disappointed that I couldn’t take part in putting out the re-enactment of the Chicago Fire of 1871 because I wasn’t at least six years old. Freedomland lasted for only five seasons, closing for good in 1964. After the park closed, a Newsday writer called Freedomland a "flop" and said of many of the opening day visitors: "They came. They saw. They left. And most never came back."

The AIA Guide to New York City, Fifth Edition, has such a good assessment of Co-op City that it is worth citing in full:

Out in the middle of nowhere, on marshy land that was once the site of an ill-fated amusement park called Freedomland, a group of government officials, union representatives, and housing developers dreamed the impossible dream. Today the dream may better be described as a coma, From out of the pumped-sand fill rises a mountain range of 35-story residential towers, 35 of them, plus 236 clustered two-family houses and eight multistory parking garages. In addition, there are three shopping centers, a heating plant, and an educational park consisting of two public schools, two intermediate schools, and a high school. In this total non-environment, largely designed by bureaucrats with not a scintilla of wit, live some 55,000 souls, many of whom vacated sound accommodations in the West Bronx (in many cases Art Deco apartment blocks) to move here.

Let’s be thankful for the landscaping. It’s the best thing at Co-op City.

Part of Co-op City, seen from the foot and bicycle path on the Hutchinson River Parkway.

Just beyond the Bay Plaza shopping center - generic late 20th-century shopping center design - is the entrance to the Hutchinson River Greenway, starting with a switchback rise to the drawbridge over the Hutchinson River. This is where the walk became pleasant. The path from this point to the Bartow Circle at Shore Road is in excellent condition, while noting that vegetation needs to be trimmed back.

The Hutchinson River and the parkway running along it are named for Anne Hutchinson (1591 - 1643), a religious dissenter who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in a dispute with the Puritans, fleeing to what is now the northeastern Bronx. Hutchinson and five of her children were murdered by local Lenape.

Entrance to the Hutchinson River Greenway and drawbridge, from Bartow Avenue.

A section of the Hutchinson River Greenway north of the drawbridge.

Whoever is in charge of such things, please replace this sign alerting motorists to the crosswalk on the greenway. Fortunately there wasn’t too much traffic.

At Bartow Circle, continue left onto the Mosholu-Pelham Greenway. This isn’t in quite as good condition as the Hutchinson River Greenway, but the whole greenway walk was a refreshing change from the first part of the walk.

The Mosholu-Pelham Greenway paralleling Shore Road, just north of Bartow Circle.

A short distance past the clubhouse for the Pelham Bay - Split Rock Golf Course, I crossed Shore Road to the entrance to the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum. From the museum’s website:

Originally inhabited by the Lenape since ca 1,000 A.D., Lenapehoking was acquired in 1654 by Connecticut physician Thomas Pell through treaty with five Lenni Lenape Sachem: Shawan Orochquot, Poquorum, Annoke, Wawhamkus and Mehumow that included 50,000 acres of what is today the Bronx and lower Westchester County. The property was passed briefly to the LeRoy family before Robert Bartow, a Pell descendant, and his wife, Maria Lorillard, purchased a portion in 1836 and completed the mansion by 1842. The Bartow family remained there until 1888, when the city of New York purchased the property along with many other acres that now make up Pelham Bay Park. In 1914, the city leased the site to the International Garden Club (ICG). The club hired the architectural firm Delano & Aldrich to restore the mansion and design the formal garden. The building opened as a museum in 1946, and in 2008 the ICG was renamed Bartow-Pell Conservancy.

Robert Bartow (1792 - 1868) and Maria Lorillard Bartow (1800 - 1880). Images courtesy mansionmusings.wordpress.com.

Maria Lorillard was a member of the Lorillard family, which made its fortune in tobacco. The Lorillard snuff mill, dating from the mid-19th century, still stands on the Bronx River in the New York Botanical Garden. Lorillard Place is a short street running south from East Fordham Road.

A copy of the 1654 treaty is on display inside the house. There is no record of the price Thomas Pell paid for the land. His copy of the Treaty says only that the sellers received “trou valew & just Satisfaction” for the land. Westchester Historian Thomas Scharf, however, reported in 1886 that the “Indians received, it is said, as an equivalent for their deed of the land, sundry hogshead of Jamaica rum.” Thomas Pell reportedly took symbolic possession of his estate “by burying his seal with his arms at the root of the oak”. Not the first time, or the last, that the rightful owners of property would be swindled by white people.

The house is designed in the Greek Revival style. The first and second floors are open to the public; owing to the lack of a handrail on the ascending side of the stairs, I limited my visit to the first floor. The house is grand but restrained, and is not huge.

Dining Room.

Part of the parlor.

The mansion is open to the public only on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and is well worth the trip so plan accordingly.

I’m glad I finally did this walk. The second half of the walk was well removed from the cityscape despite the sound of traffic and was a treat. Outlying parts of this city are rich in history and this area is no exception. I don’t recommend this route for an accessible trip due to some uneven sidewalks on the first half and some short, sharp grades along the way. The house itself has stairs leading to the entrance.

A Walker in the City

I had forgotten I had this book. When I found it, I dusted it off and had a hard time putting it down. It is the reminiscence of Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) growing up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in the 1920s and 1930s. Brownsville has always been where poor people live. Brownsville is not my community but I’ve biked or walked on many of the streets.

This book, first published in 1951, is more than just a story of one person’s youth. It is a keen-eyed look at the city and the people who give it life. Before parts of Brooklyn became “cool,” and since, there have been vast stretches of uncool Brooklyn, or never-was-cool Brooklyn, some like Brownsville and some not. Read this book.

Also set in this neighborhood is The Amboy Dukes, Irving Shulman’s story of a Jewish youth gang. With either of these books, think of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, at a larger scale and set not in Montréal but in Brooklyn.

It is my privilege to see the city at a slow speed, not cocooned in an automobile. There is so much to see, in the built environment and in the people.

The Stairs of Weehawken, Part 2

WHERE: Weehawken and Union City, New Jersey

START: Bergenline Avenue station (Hudson-Bergen Light Rail), fully accessible

FINISH: Palisade Avenue and 16 Street, Union City, then NJ Transit bus #123 to Port Authority Bus Terminal, Manhattan

DISTANCE: 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy Google Maps.

Route of this walk, reading from top to bottom.

On this walk, accompanied by my neighbor Michael, who is recovering from Guillain-Barre Syndrome and also has impaired mobility, I climbed the stairs in Weehawken, New Jersey I didn’t do a month ago. The walk started at the Bergenline Avenue station of Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. Bergenline Avenue is the busy commercial spine of Union City and neighboring West New York. We walked east along 48 Street to Boulevard East and then south, at the eastern edge of the steep cliff called Bergen Hill. I described Boulevard East in the post “The Stairs of Weehawken, Part 1” on this page. Just past Hamilton Park we dodged inland a bit and then downhill to the first set of stairs, at Jefferson Street.

Jefferson Street stairs from JFK Boulevard.

The Jefferson Street stairs are in very good condition except for the absence of a handrail on the right side, going up the bottom set of stairs. Total 74 steps.

Looking down from Jefferson Street.

Walking toward the Jefferson Street stairs we noticed this very old street sign.

From the top of the Jefferson Street stairs we had a short walk to the next set of stairs, 46 steps down from the corner of South Marginal Highway and Gregory Avenue to Park Avenue. These stairs are in excellent condition.

We then continued downhill on Park Avenue toward the Lincoln Tunnel entrance and the Shippen Steps, a continuation of Shippen Street. From Wikipedia:

In the past, the steps provided townspeople with access to Weehawken's original town hall, as well as the old police station, which was headquarter[ed] in the building at 309 Park Avenue. It was built in 1890, and the first floor features a jail cell where police operations occurred. The building was last used as the VFW post 1923 meeting place.In 2009, the town decided to renovate the building, which became the Weehawken Historical Society Museum. Across the street at the bottom of the steps is the granite wall which overlooks the art deco Lincoln Tunnel entrance. The Shippen steps have even been regarded as the haunted "Steps of Weehawken". In the mid-to-late 19th century, a pregnant woman fell down the steps, losing both her life and her child's, and in 1898, it was reported that a Shippen Street resident committed suicide at the head of the steps.

The lower set of the Shippen Steps, looking up from Park Avenue toward Hackensack Plank Road. Source: Theornamentalist, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

There are 100 steps up from Park Avenue to Hackensack Plank Road. A short distance from the top of these stairs in a second set of 39 steps up from Hackensack Plank Road to the end of Shippen Street. Both sets of stairs are in excellent condition.

Historical marker at the top of the second set of the Shippen Steps.

From the top of the Shippen Steps we walked west to Palisade Avenue, then south past Hackensack Reservoir Number Two to a good lunch at Fork Hill Kitchen in Union City. Entry to the restaurant is by way of 3 steps but it is accessible once inside. We were told they have a wheelchair ramp they can deploy.

Michael noticed that, in contrast to the stair streets in the Bronx, hardly anybody seems to use the stairs we climbed, that perhaps they were only for People Without Cars. It is true that in the Bronx the stair streets are generally well-used, fully part of the streetscape. The stairs in Weehawken are in excellent condition, except for the lack of a handrail at the Jefferson Steps and a missing section of handrail at the stair tower from Pershing Road to Boulevard East. It would have been nice to see more people using the stairs today. Nevertheless, it was a good walk, well worth doing through pleasant surroundings.

Lastly, a note of thanks to the driver of the crowded bus we boarded, who got the people sitting in the front seats to vacate them for us.

Steps climbed today: 213 up, 46 down, total 259.

The Stairs of Weehawken, Part 1

WHERE: Weehawken, New Jersey

START: Port Imperial station (Hudson-Bergen Light Rail), fully accessible

FINISH: Boulevard East and Hudson Place, Weehawken, then NJ Transit Bus #128 to Port Authority Bus Terminal, Manhattan

DISTANCE: 0.5 mile (0.8 kilometer)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy Google Maps.

Map of this walk, reading from top to bottom.

Directly across the Hudson River from midtown Manhattan, Weehawken, New Jersey is best known for two things: the duel in 1804 between Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and Vice-President Aaron Burr, and the western approach to the Lincoln Tunnel. Somehow I found out that Weehawken has a lot of stairs, so I went to see for myself and do some stair climbing. There are more stairs than I imagined, so after going up two stair towers with a total of 368 steps I stopped, choosing to do the rest another day.

The main part of Weehawken is up a very steep cliff from the flat lands on the riverfront. It was on these flat lands that the Burr-Hamilton duel took place. Hamilton, mortally wounded, was rowed back to New York to die. For over a century from the mid-1800s the lower part of town was taken up largely by passenger and freight railroad terminals, chief among them the West Shore Division of the New York Central. The image below shows what this looked like viewed from the top of the hill, at the intersection of Pershing Road and Boulevard East, around 1940.

Image courtesy pinterest.com.

The gabled building in the center of the image still exists; it is now a Mexican restaurant. And there is still a filling station where the Esso sign is.

Freight trains once transferred their cars to barges to be moved across the river and around the harbor. Passengers did the same, taking ferries to the foot of West 42 Street in Manhattan. The railroad terminals are gone, replaced by the Lincoln Harbor and Port Imperial mixed-use developments, parks, and the NY Waterway ferries to Manhattan. New Jersey Transit’s Hudson-Bergen Light Rail serves this area from Hoboken and points south. North of Port Imperial station, where this walk began, the light rail uses a portion of the West Shore right-of-way, including a tunnel under Bergen Hill that includes the only underground station on the system.

At the Port Imperial station there are stairs and a clean, working elevator to an overpass leading to Port Imperial on the east and a stair tower to Pershing Road on the west. The stairs are in excellent condition but the climb is arduous: a first flight of 11 steps followed by 11 flights of 12 steps each, for a total of 143 steps.

Port Imperial stairs, looking up.

Port Imperial stairs, looking down from Pershing Road.

From the top of the stairs I went downhill on Pershing Road’s narrow sidewalk to another stair tower, the Liberty Stairs. I was not prepared for what a climb this would be, and took a short break at each landing. But I made it up 225 steps to beautiful Boulevard East. These stairs are also in excellent condition, although a section of handrail is missing on one of the upper flights. Nice job, Township of Weehawken!

The Liberty Stairs, looking up from Pershing Road.

I biked along Boulevard East twice in the 1990s as part of a route from the George Washington Bridge to Hoboken and Bayonne. Then as now, the view of Manhattan was amazing and the houses with that view are enviable. Facing the river is lovely Hamilton Park, the centerpiece of which is Weehawken’s World War I memorial, flanked by smaller memorials to the Weehawken residents who died in World War II, the “police action” in Korea, and the Vietnam war.

Homes on Boulevard East across from Hamilton Park.

World War I monument.

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is visible in the distance.

Historical marker on Boulevard East describing a long-gone amusement park. Interestingly, a short distance north of here was Palisades Amusement Park, also at the top of the cliff, that ran from 1894 to 1971.

I picked a beautiful day for this walk. There is much more to see around here and more stairs to climb. Today, these two stair towers were enough. I’ll be back to Weehawken for more.

Allow me a sidebar on those new super-tall towers visible in Manhattan. I’ll leave aside my distaste for them (alright, they’re disgusting). When I’m not full of bile about them, they call to mind a town in Tuscany, San Gimignano, where in the Middle Ages the leading people in town competed with each other to build tall towers in a long-running game of one-upsmanship. Most of the towers are long gone but on a visit there in 1991 I got to climb to the top of one. The view of the town and the green countryside was worth the climb. I doubt the towers on “Billionaires’ Row” will last nearly that long.

By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea

WHERE: The Rockaway Peninsula, Queens

START: Beach 67 Street subway station (A train), fully accessible

FINISH: Rockaway Park - Beach 116 Street subway station (S train), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 2.75 miles (4.4 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl. Map courtesy footpathmap.com.

Map of this walk, reading from right to left.

The Rockaway Peninsula is a narrow spit of land, a barrier between the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay. If you’ve looked out the window of an aircraft arriving at or departing from JFK Airport, you’ve seen it. The different communities on the peninsula are known collectively as the Rockaways.

A part of New York City, the Rockaways have tidy, suburban-style houses, beach bungalows, apartment blocks facing the beach, public housing projects, and apartments built since Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Generations have lived in the Rockaways and called it home.

The Long Island Rail Road built a branch across Jamaica Bay to the Rockaways in the late 19th century. New York City took over this line after the LIRR abandoned it in 1950, rebuilt it, and converted it to subway service. It is not uncommon to see someone with a surf board on a train out to the Rockaways. It’s a long subway ride from the Rockaways to Manhattan, but people make that trip every day.

This walk began at the elevated Beach 67 Street - Arverne subway station, recently refurbished and made fully accessible. The accessibility project was unexpectedly difficult but overall it’s a good job. At street level, there is a surf shop.

From the late 19th century until World War II, Arverne was a community of beach bungalows. It was largely abandoned in the 1950s and 1960s. Various redevelopment schemes came to nothing, but starting in the early 2000s new housing took root. The Rockaways were hard hit by Superstorm Sandy but the area has been rebuilt, including the boardwalk that was most of this walk. It would be more appropriate to call it a promenade, as Sandy destroyed the old wooden boardwalk, long segments of which were so deteriorated as to be unusable.

Starting at the subway station, we made the short walk to the boardwalk, past someone renting surf boards from a van. The new boardwalk is a delight for riding a bike, as I discovered after it opened in 2016, but I did this walk with a runner who said the concrete surface isn’t good for running.

At Beach 91 Street there is a memorial to a local lifeguard, teacher, surfer, and fire fighter, Richie Allen (1970 - 2001).

The plaque on the wooden post to the left of the lamppost reads:

Firefighter Richie Allen

SON, BROTHER, UNCLE, FRIEND, HERO, ANGEL

The beach was Richie’s heaven on earth. He was a lifeguard and a talented surfer who loved the rush of catching a wave. In an amateur surfing film written by Richie, he states “Beach 91st Street is the best surfing spot in NYC. By some local surfers, it’s known as the arena where reputations are built and destroyed. Swells that have crashed on this beach have made this place legendary.”

On September 11, 2001, Richie heroically gave his life as a NYC firefighter.

In his memory, enjoy this beach, surf its water and live life to the fullest as that was and always will be … Richie Allen’s Way.

A Hui Huo Ohana

On these walks I’ve met many people. Richie seems one of those people I wish I had met. For more about him go to https://voicescenter.org/living-memorial/victim/richard-dennis-allen-richie.

From there we went to lunch at Happy Jack’s Burger Bar across from The Rockaway Hotel. This is a delightful place for locals. I’ll be back.

The rest of the walk was unremarkable except for this place whose name was so odd we had to cross the street to have a look. Sure enough, it’s a pour-your-own-beer joint. One could do that at home.

Cherry Blossoms in the Brick City

WHERE: Branch Brook Park, Newark, New Jersey

START: Branch Brook Park station (Newark Light Rail), fully accessible

FINISH: Bloomfield Avenue station (Newark Light Rail), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 1.4 miles

Photographs by Michael Cairl. Map courtesy Google Maps.

Until a couple of days ago I had no idea there were thousands of cherry trees in Newark, New Jersey, mostly in Branch Brook Park. I had biked along Bloomfield Avenue past this park but had never been in the park.

When I lived in Washington, D.C., cherry blossom time was a very big deal. Helen Taft, wife of the 27th President, William Howard Taft, spearheaded the planting of cherry trees along the Tidal Basin. Many thousands of people go down to the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms every year, These are delicate flowers and will not survive wind and rain. In the seven years I lived in Washington, only once did the blossoms last long enough for me to photograph them. Knowing full well how fragile these blossoms are, and knowing I could get to Branch Brook Park on the Newark Light Rail, I had no time to lose and had to see them for myself.

Newark Light Rail used to be called the Newark City Subway. Before it was converted to a light rail line in the early 2000s it was served by streetcars that converged from various points into a tunnel underneath Raymond Boulevard in downtown Newark, terminating at Penn Station. The one remaining line, from Penn Station to Branch Brook Park, had been built in the 1930s partly in the bed of the Morris Canal, which had been abandoned. New Jersey Transit has not obliterated the 1930s signs or artwork. A nice presentation on the artwork can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/historictileinstallationsn/nj_newark--wpa-morris-canal-murals. A detailed history of the City Subway/Light Rail, with a lot of images, can be found at https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Newark,_New_Jersey_Light_Rail/City_Subway. Here’s one of the mosaics at Penn Station, evoking the Morris Canal and Newark’s industry, and a directional sign in Penn Station. “Cars” refers to streetcars.

I worked on the extension of the Light Rail from Penn Station to Broad Street Station in 2005 - 2006.

From the Branch Brook Park station, I walked up the ramp to Heller Parkway and the park. Just past the intersection of Branch Brook Park Drive is a monument to tennis great Althea Gibson (1927 -2003), who lived for years in nearby East Orange. In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam event (the French Championships). The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals (precursor of the US Open), then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title.

Althea Gibson monument.

In 1898 the Essex County Park Commission hired the Olmsted Brothers firm; John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. were Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.'s nephew/stepson and son. While their work continued that naturalistic style of landscape design championed by their father, in Branch Brook Park they were required to incorporate the elements of Bogart and Barrett's plan that had already been constructed. This led to the Olmsted firm's design concept consisting of three divisions: the Southern, from Sussex Avenue to Park Avenue, incorporating elaborate "gardenesque" elements; the Middle, from Park Avenue to Bloomfield Avenue, which would be a transitional zone, mixing the exotic with the indigenous; and, as the culmination, the Northern Division, the largest and most naturalistic area of the park.

In 1928 Caroline Bamberger Fuld, of the family that owned Bamberger’s department store in Newark, donated 2,000 Japanese flowering cherry trees to a display in Newark that would rival that in Washington, D.C. Eventually the collection would grow to more than 3,000 trees. Had I decided to walk to the light rail at Park Avenue, not Bloomfield Avenue, I’d have walked past many more cherry trees than I did. Oh well. I saw plenty from the train between Bloomfield Avenue and Park Avenue.

Branch Brook Park is just beautiful. The footpath paralleling the park drive is paved with a bituminous material that has a bit of “give” to it and was a pleasure to walk on. Except for a few spots that need to be repaired, the footpath is in very good condition. The path up to Bloomfield Avenue does need to be rebuilt, though. The park drive was closed to cars and there was a bicycle race going on.

Along the footpath is a memorial to a Newark police officer killed in the line of duty in 1997, Dewey J. Sherbo III.

This park certainly merits a return visit and a longer walk, ending with a good meal at Hobby’s Delicatessen downtown or one of the many good Spanish and Portuguese restaurants in the Ironbound neighborhood, east of Penn Station. Newark has “good bones” and is blessed with excellent transportation and cultural institutions.

Route of this walk, reading from top to bottom.

Dumplings and Such (Manhattan)

WHERE: The Lower East Side of Manhattan, mostly

START: The corner of Fulton and William Streets (Fulton Street subway stations: 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J trains, fully accessible)

FINISH: Delancey and Essex Streets (F, J, M trains and M14A SBS and B39 buses)

DISTANCE: 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy footpathmap.com.

Route of this walk, reading from left to right.

I had advertised this walk on the blog as “Chinatown Dumpling Crawl.” Nobody else showed up and I have rescheduled it; see the Coming Events page. Still, it was a nice Saturday before Easter, so I decided to do part of the planned walk. A proper food crawl or pub crawl has to be done with others.

Coming out from the subway at Fulton and William Streets, I could not help but notice how the vista looking west was dominated by 1 World Trade Center.

I walked east on Fulton Street through an area that has seen a lot of change since World War II, admittedly a long time ago. The South Ferry branch of the Second and Third Avenue elevated lines used to run above Pearl Street, which crosses Fulton. Here is a “then and now” look south on Pearl from Fulton, the first image from 1936 by Berenice Abbott, courtesy The Museum of the City of New York via urbanarchive.org, and the second taken on this walk.

The construction of the World Trade Center started in the mid-1960s and changed Manhattan south of Canal Street profoundly. Many blocks of old commercial buildings were razed to make way for the World Trade Center and, along this walk, the Southbridge Towers apartment complex. Photographer Danny Lyon documented this in his great book The Destruction of Lower Manhattan (New York, powerHouse Books, 2005). This was the subject of an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York in 2005. One of his images from the area on this walk is below.

A bit farther on is Water Street and the entrance to the South Street Seaport, to which I might return on a future walk. I walked this way mainly to see the memorial to the people who went down with the Titanic in 1912. The plaque shown in the second image tells the story of the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse.

Before European settlement the shoreline of the East River was where Water Street is now. Starting in the 1600s the shoreline was extended with landfill; now Water Street is two blocks from the river.

Just north of Fulton Street, Water Street and Pearl Street merge and continue underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. From Pearl Street I turned right onto Madison Street, past the Alfred E. Smith Houses, a large public housing complex built after World War II. Madison Street was named for the fourth President of the United States, James Madison. The history of street names that follows is taken from that invaluable resource, The Street Book, by Henry Moscow (New York, Hagstrom Company, 1978). Until 1826, nine years before Madison died, Madison Street was called Bancker Street, but the area had deteriorated and the Bancker family requested their name be removed. I turned left onto Catherine Street which was named for Catherine Rutgers, part of the Dutch gentry in New York. One block on, I turned right onto Henry Street, which was named for Henry Rutgers, who donated two lots to the City for construction of a school, with the stipulation that it had to open by 1811. It opened in 1810.

At 25B Henry Street was my first dumpling stop of the day, Jin Mei Dumpling. It is truly a “hole in the wall” with all transactions handled at the front door. There is a table with two chairs outside. I had sesame pancake and fried pork buns that were excellent and inexpensive. An elderly couple in line ahead of me had come down from the northern Bronx to get a lot of dumplings and such.

Feeling happy and sated, I continued on to Market Street, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, and turned left at the First Chinese Presbyterian Church. This is not traditional Chinatown but it is certainly the heart of modern Chinatown.

The church house at the First Chinese Presbyterian Church.

East Broadway, looking west from Market Street.

Market Street was named for the Catherine Market, a wholesale food market established in 1786 between Catherine Street and Market Street, then known as George Street. Market Street is full of people and markets selling food and stuff.

From Market Street I turned right onto Division Street and beneath the Manhattan Bridge. At the corner of Allen Street is a large, oddly shaped brick building with various businesses on the extended street level and a lot of graffiti. This was built in 1900 as an electrical substation for the Manhattan Railway Company, which operated the elevated transit lines in Manhattan. The Second Avenue Elevated ran above Division Street and turned onto Allen Street, right past the substation. Division Street’s name came from it being the boundary between the 18th century farms of James de Lancey and Henry Rutgers. According to The Street Book, “the space occupied by the street was a kind of no-man’s land used for a rope walk, i.e. a place where hemp was twisted into rope.”

Manhattan Railway Company Substation No. 1.

Continuing on Division Street, I walked through an area that from the late 19th century was mostly Jewish and is now a jumble of ages and ethnicities, restaurants with outside seating and more than one tattoo parlor. Here are some random images.

I turned left onto Essex Street and stopped in front of North Dumpling. I’ll eat there on the dumpling crawl but I was still full from my feeding on Henry Street.

North Dumpling on Essex Street.

This short walk packed in a lot of interesting things to see and good food to eat. I saw a tour guide on Essex Street telling his charges about the area, I chatted a bit with a charter bus driver from Trois-Rivières, Québec who was fretting about how to navigate his bus through the narrow streets, and I saw a lot of people out and about, happy perhaps for yet another Spring.

Upper Grand Concourse to Kingsbridge (Bronx)

WHERE: The northern part of the Grand Concourse and Mosholu Parkway, the southern fringe of Van Cortlandt Park, and Kingsbridge, Bronx

START: Kingsbridge Road subway station (D train), fully accessible

FINISH: 238 Street subway station (1 train)

DISTANCE: 3.1 miles (5 kilometers)

Photograph credits as noted. Map courtesy footpathapp.com.

Route of this walk, reading counterclockwise.

This walk was inspired by historic preservationist Thomas Rinaldi and his photographs of buildings on and near the upper Grand Concourse. This was built up mostly after World War I, after the elevated subway opened on nearby Jerome Avenue (today’s 4 train). The pace of construction accelerated after the Concourse subway (today’s D train) opened in 1933. The upper Grand Concourse offers a pleasing vista of mostly mid-rise apartment buildings of more or less uniform height. The building facades differ in their details, giving the observant passerby a lot to enjoy and think about.

The walk started at the Kingsbridge Road subway station. Unusually, one has to go down from the platforms to the fare control area. Kingsbridge Road passes underneath the Grand Concourse. The subway entrance abuts what was a streetcar stop when the station opened. From the fare control area, stairs and an elevator go up to the street.

At the intersection is a park and Poe Cottage, the onetime country home of Edgar Allan Poe. For some history of the house see the post entitled “A Raven, A Ram, A Two-Headed Eagle, and Prosciutto Bread” on “The Stair Streets of New York City” page.

In front of Poe Cottage: Mark, Yours Truly, Dan, Michael, Paul, Nathaniel. Photograph by a kind passerby.

Walking north on the Concourse we saw a lot of attractive apartment buildings.

Photograph by Michael Cairl.

Who was Luke Nee? Someone I wish I had met. The New York Times printed short biographies of people who died in the attacks on September 11, 2001.

LUKE NEE Bronx in His Blood

As a boy, Luke Nee played all the games that a Bronx sidewalk offered to kids on Minerva Place, just off the Grand Concourse: stickball, of course, and off-the-point and street hockey.

Right out of Cardinal Hayes High School, he answered a help-wanted advertisement for people with math skills and landed a job at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Before long, a half-dozen guys from the block followed. It was a small world, he would say, but he would not want to paint it.

At Drexel, he met Irene Lavelle, and they were married Sept. 11, 1982. After he had shifted to Cantor Fitzgerald, he would chew through a couple of novels a week on the train ride from Stony Point, N.Y., said his brother, John Nee. His Bronx roots showed: he shared a ticket plan for Friday night Yankee games with boyhood friends from St. Philip Neri School.

Mr. Nee, 44, made the simple pleasures glow. ''He treasured Irene and loved bringing their son, Patrick, to ballgames,'' said his brother. On summer weekends, he, Irene and Patrick would jump in the car, pick up a few relatives and head for the beach. And on Sept. 11, he made a final call of farewell and love to his family.

''Luke was just a friendly, kind, peaceful, and unaffected guy,'' said Mr. Nee. ''Meatball heroes, watch a movie with Patrick -- that was a Saturday night.''

Photograph by Mark Foggin.

Photograph by Michael Cairl.

At the corner of Bedford Park Boulevard we stopped to admire the architectural details of 2939 Grand Concourse, one of which is pictured below. Nathaniel in our group asked what I saw in this detail. I responded that I saw that here was fine embellishment of an apartment building in the Bronx, not on Park Avenue, so my appreciation was sociological as well as aesthetic.

Photograph by Michael Cairl.

On Bedford Park Boulevard, just west of the Concourse, is an odd mishmash of old and new buildings.

Photograph by Daniel Murphy.

Here and there one could see houses and other buildings that had not been replaced by apartment houses. The cornerstone of St. Philip Neri Roman Catholic Church is dated 1899 and was something more than a humble country church in what was then a thinly populated area. This is how the church looked in 1928; it is little changed now.

Photograph courtesy The New York Public Library via urbanarchive.org.

From the Grand Concourse we turned east on East 205 Street. At the corner of Mosholu Parkway and Lisbon Place we saw a handsome modern apartment building from 2012 that one in our group said would not have been out of place in Southern California or Miami.

170 East Mosholu Parkway. Photograph by Michael Cairl.

From Mosholu Parkway we turned west on East 206 Street to St. George’s Crescent and saw some beautiful apartment buildings, one in particular, 185 St. George’s Crescent, built in 1938. This is just stunning and was built for the middle class.

185 St. George’s Crescent (the light-colored building). Photograph by Michael Cairl.

Photograph by Michael Cairl.

Photograph by Michael Cairl.

Photograph by Michael Cairl.

St. George’s Crescent turns into Van Cortlandt Avenue, on the north side of which are the Pickwick Arms apartments (1925), a grand courtyard apartment building in a sort-of-Tudor style.

Pickwick Arms, 1927, seen from the intersection of Mosholu Parkway (left) and Grand Concourse. Photograph courtesy The New York Public Library via urbanarchive.org.

Interior courtyard, Pickwick Arms, 1928. Photograph courtesy The New York Public Library via urbanarchive.org.

From St. George’s Crescent we turned east on Van Cortlandt Avenue, then north on Mosholu Parkway, on a footpath that is in only fair condition. We passed underneath Jerome Avenue and the grand Mosholu Parkway subway station, passed DeWitt Clinton High School, and turned left onto Sedgwick Avenue, then right onto Dickinson Avenue and left onto Van Cortlandt Park South.

Across from Van Cortlandt Park South, on the south side of Van Cortlandt Park South, are the Amalgamated Houses. This is the oldest limited equity housing cooperative in the United States, sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union starting in the 1920s. The older buildings have some beautiful details.

Photograph by Mark Foggin.

Photograph by Mark Foggin.

Photograph by Mark Foggin.

Photograph by Michael Cairl.

Just past Gale Place we descended the Van Cortlandt Park South stairs (81 steps), which I described in my post “3 South of Van Cortlandt Park” on “The Stair Streets of New York City” page. From there we went south on Bailey Avenue and west on West 238 Street to lunch at the Kingsbridge Social Club, which contrary to its name is not a private club but a place for pizza, pasta, and salad. The mirror in the washroom is a playful take on one of Kingsbridge Social’s specialties.

Photograph by Mark Foggin.

Lastly, some neat old signage seen along the way, described by photographer Mark Foggin as “Elegance in hyper-local advertising.”

This was a fine walk with a good group of friends, good exercise with plenty of interesting things to look at. Walks like this are my oxygen and the definition of fun and physical therapy.

At lunch at Kingsbridge Social Club, left to right Paul, Michael, Yours Truly, Joe, Mark, Dan. Photograph by one of the staff at Kingsbridge Social.