Back to the George Washington Bridge

WHERE: The north walk on the George Washington Bridge, from New York to New Jersey and back

START/FINISH: 175 Street subway station (A train), fully accessible; also several Bronx bus lines and the M4 bus

DISTANCE: 3.3 miles

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

Map of this route.

In 2021 I posted “The George Washington Bridge” about a walk I took over this bridge, from Manhattan to New Jersey and back. Earlier this year the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey re-opened the footpath on the north side of the bridge after years of improvements, including making it fully accessible. The Port Authority is now rebuilding the footpath on the south side, on which I did the 2021 walk. I took advantage of an unseasonably warm October Saturday to walk the new footpath and, incidentally, mark the 92nd anniversary of the opening of the bridge.

This walk started a few blocks from the bridge, at West 177 Street and Fort Washington Avenue, taking the elevator from the 175 Street subway station. One block north is the George Washington Bridge Bus Station, the terminal for many local New Jersey and New York bus routes and some longer-distance buses. This opened in 1963 and is a rare structure in the United States designed by Pier Luigi Nervi (1891 - 1979), an Italian structural engineer who was noted for the innovative use of reinforced concrete in construction. For more information about this engineering genius go to https://pierluiginervi.org/.

George Washington Bridge bus terminal. Image courtesy nycrc.com.

The entrance to the north footpath is at West 180 Street and Cabrini Boulevard, five short blocks from the subway elevator. Flanking the entrance is some seating to the south, which was most welcome at the end of the walk, and some tables and seats to the north.

Up the ramp and before the bridge is an area with an historical panorama of the bridge. It’s interesting and well done.

Once the south walk of the bridge is reopened, it will be primarily a bicycle path. In the meantime both bicycles and pedestrians share the north walk, which is wide enough to accommodate both groups comfortably. That is a good thing; on this day, while there was a good amount of foot traffic, there were a lot of cyclists. I was once one of them.

At mid-span the state line is clearly marked.

The day offered some spectacular views.

View from the New York side of the bridge, Barely visible in the distance is the new Tappan Zee Bridge, officially the Mario Cuomo Bridge, 17 miles away.

View from the New Jersey side of the bridge.

Just past the New Jersey end of the bridge is a serpentine ramp leading to Hudson Terrace in Fort Lee, and a set of 42 stairs for those wishing a shorter trip. Before the reconstruction of the north walk there was a footbridge over the ramp to the Palisades Interstate Parkway, with stairs on either side (to the bridge and to Hudson Terrace) and a metal channel bolted to the stairs so one could roll a bicycle up and down. The new stairs do not have or need this. There is another set of 10 stairs going up into Palisades Interstate Park. I went up into the park and walked a short distance along the Long Path. I had to walk very carefully to avoid tree roots and stones and the occasional muddy area. But this walk was rewarded by some nice views of the bridge.

Coming back to Manhattan I took advantage of the seating area and chatted with some cyclists who had seen me walking as they rode to New Jersey and back. One of them, Marcos, ended up being the interpreter as they were all Spanish-speaking. I keep running into kind and interesting people on these walks. I am blessed.

Kudos to the Port Authority for doing such a great job rebuilding the north walk! It was a pleasure to walk this. Maybe add some seating in the large open areas they added by the two towers.

And just throwing this in: a picture I took of the George Washington Bridge in 1988, from just south of Fort Tryon Park. Pure luck: right place, right time. 50 mm lens on a Canon AE-1, Kodachrome 64 film.

Eastern Parkway (Brooklyn)

WHERE: Eastern Parkway and a detour into the northern part of Crown Heights, Brooklyn

START: Eastern Parkway - Brooklyn Museum subway station (2, 3 trains), fully accessible

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

DISTANCE: 2.54 miles (4.09 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy gmap-pedometer.com.

Route of this walk, reading from left to right.

New York City has many streets called “Parkway” but only a few are broad, landscaped avenues, typically with a main road in the middle, landscaped malls on either side, and side roads.

Eastern Parkway, looking east from Rogers Avenue.

In the Bronx, Pelham Parkway, Mosholu Parkway, and Mount Eden Parkway fit this description. In Brooklyn there are Ocean Parkway, going south from Prospect Park, and Eastern Parkway, going east from Grand Army Plaza. These were planned and built in the late 19th century as part of an ambitious plan of civic improvements by the City of Brooklyn. Today’s walk connected two accessible subway stations on Eastern Parkway, starting at the Brooklyn Museum, on a cloudless Sunday.

When the Eastern Parkway - Brooklyn Museum subway station was rehabilitated, architectural artifacts from the Museum’s collection were put in the station mezzanine. It’s a nice collection. Here are two examples:

I’ve often said that if New York didn’t have the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum would be the City’s pre-eminent art museum. The present building, while large, is only about one-fourth its originally intended size.

The Brooklyn Museum as conceived in the 1890s. Only the front part and some of the interior were built. Image courtesy archimaps.tumblr.com.

The Brooklyn Museum has long had a renowned collection of ancient Egyptian art. My late father told me how much he enjoyed going to the Brooklyn Museum as a youngster to see its Egyptian collection. It has important holdings in other periods of art. In the mid-2000s the Brooklyn Museum added a modern front entrance. People either love it or hate it. I love it for providing a much better entryway to the museum and for its sitting stairs, oriented not straight ahead to Eastern Parkway but toward Washington Avenue just to the east, and to the rest of Brooklyn. This physical orientation coincides with the Brooklyn Museum doing a better job of embracing Brooklyn’s artists and being more a part of where it is. To me, the YO/OY sculpture out front encapsulates perfectly this sense of place, of the spirit of Brooklyn. It says something different depending on how one sees it.

From the Museum, walk east on Eastern Parkway on the pedestrian (narrower) side of the bike-pedestrian path. Along the pedestrian paths on either side of the main road are plaques honoring local men who died in battle in World War I. Here’s an example near Washington Avenue in honor of Private George A. Greb.

At Bedford Avenue look just to the right at the huge Bedford Union Armory, now called The Major R. Owens Health and Wellness Community Center, named after the late Congressman Major Owens. Opened in 1903, the former Bedford Union Armory served as a dirt-floored training facility and stable for the Army National Guard’s horseback units. After sitting abandoned for decades, redevelopment began in 2015 with the goal of creating valuable community space while preserving as much of the building’s irreplaceable, century-old architecture as possible.

Bedford Union Armory. Image courtesy curbed.com.

Continuing on Eastern Parkway, near the intersection of Nostrand Avenue is the former Loew’s Kameo theater, built in the mid-1920s, now a church. Note the terra cotta ornamentation.

On the opposite side of Eastern Parkway is the former Kings County Savings Bank, now Banco Popular, a sort-of-Art Deco structure from 1930. Quite a grand structure for a neighborhood bank branch, albeit at a major intersection.

At New York Avenue, one block east of Nostrand, the route crosses Eastern Parkway to go north. There are some fine old row houses on New York Avenue.

Many of the avenues intersecting Eastern Parkway are named for cities in New York State: New York, Brooklyn (a separate city until 1898), Kingston, Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Utica, Rochester, and Buffalo. Somehow, Syracuse was overlooked.

At the corner of New York Avenue and Park Place is an imposing structure that, despite its appearance, is not an orphanage. It is the former Brooklyn Methodist Episcopal Home for the Aged and Infirm, built in 1889 as housing for elderly members of Methodist congregations. In 1976 the Methodist Home moved to a new facility in the East New York section of Brooklyn that it still occupies. The old facility lay derelict for decades until it was acquired by the Hebron French-Speaking Seventh Day Adventist School. Much of the complex remains in disrepair, a sad outcome for this gloomy yet stunning place.

Turning right onto Park Place, walk on the side opposite the Methodist Home, as the sidewalk is in better condition. Turn left onto Brooklyn Avenue. On the opposite side is Brower Park, and in the park between Prospect Place and St. Marks Avenue is the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the oldest children’s museum in the world (1899).

Brooklyn Children’s Museum extension (opened 2006, Rafael Viñoly Architects).

Turn right onto St. Marks Avenue and then right onto Kingston Avenue, continuing the circuit of Brower Park. At the corner of Park Place is the magnificent Historic First Church of God in Christ. The congregation purchased this property in 1939 and transformed it from a bus garage.

Continue to and cross Eastern Parkway, then turn left onto Eastern Parkway. At the southwest corner is 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Lubavitcher Chasidic community. Across Kingston Avenue is the Jewish Children’s Museum (opened 2004, architects Gwathmey Siegel) with its outsized dreidel in front.

In front of 770 Eastern Parkway.

Jewish Children’s Museum.

Walk east on Eastern Parkway on the pedestrian (right) side of the pedestrian/bike path; it’s in better condition than the sidewalk. Continue three blocks to Schenectady Avenue, cross and turn right on Eastern Parkway. Finish the walk at the elevator to the subway station at Utica Avenue, across from which is St. Matthew Roman Catholic Church. Two other Catholic parishes, St. Gregory the Great and Our Lady of Charity, worship here.

Eastern Parkway offers a beautiful walk and much to look at along the way. It is an elegant boulevard through an ever more diverse community. The detour north of Eastern Parkway was rewarding for a look at buildings both magnificent and unexpected.

Lower Manhattan Old and New

WHERE: Battery Park, Battery Park City, World Trade Center

START: Bowling Green subway station (4, 5 trains), fully accessible

FINISH: Fulton Transit Center (2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J trains), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 1.9 miles (3 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy gmap-pedometer.com.

Map of this route.

Much of Lower Manhattan is built on landfill, the shoreline having been extended over the centuries. Water Street was once at the East River shoreline. This walk took in Battery Park, some of which is on fill, and Battery Park City, all of which is, before going past the World Trade Center.

This walk began at the Bowling Green subway station, in front of the old U.S. Customs House that now is home to the Heye Foundation - Museum of the American Indian (a unit of the Smithsonian Institution), and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Cross State Street and bear slightly to the left to see the Netherlands Monument, donated by the Netherlands in 1626 on the three-hundredth anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam.

From the Netherlands Monument walk back toward State Street and turn right. Directly ahead is the original (and still in use) entrance to the Bowling Green subway station, which opened in 1905. This is similar to other street-level control houses built for the first subway.

Continue walking along State Street, alongside Battery Park. At Bridge Street there is a memorial to John Ericsson (1803 - 1889), naval architect, engineer, and builder of the U.S.S. Monitor that fought in the Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862.

John Ericsson holding a model of U.S.S. Monitor.

Continue walking. At Pearl Street is a memorial to John Ambrose (1838 - 1899), whose vision and persistence resulted in the deep sea channel to New York Harbor, which improved the visibility of the Port of New York, making New York City the heart of commerce in the United States. This channel is named in his honor, as was the Ambrose lightship off Sandy Hook, at the entrance to the harbor. More about Ambrose can be found at https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=145669.

Just past the Ambrose monument, turn right into the park, passing a playground on the left and a carousel on the right. Passing a restaurant on the left, turn right onto the park path. Ahead is the World War II East Coast Memorial. From the Memorial’s website:

The World War II East Coast Memorial is located in Battery Park, New York City. This memorial commemorates those soldiers, sailors, Marines, coast guardsmen, merchant mariners and airmen who met their deaths in the service of their country in the western waters of the Atlantic Ocean during World War II. Its axis is oriented on the Statue of Liberty. On each side of the axis are four gray granite pylons upon which are inscribed the name, rank, organization, and state of each of the over 4,600 missing in the waters of the Atlantic. For names where an individual’s remains have subsequently been accounted for by the U.S. Department of Defense, a rosette is placed next to the name on the memorial to indicate that the person now rests in a known gravesite.

Photograph courtesy American Battle Monuments Commission

Continuing on past the World War II East Coast Memorial, we come to a monument to Admiral George Dewey, commander of U.S. naval forces that defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898.

Next is the Castle Clinton National Monument. This was built on an artificial island in 1812 as part of a network of defenses of New York Harbor, others being Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island and Fort Lafayette in Brooklyn, the latter having been demolished to make way for the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Fort Clinton was was never used for warfare and its cannons never fired a shot. In 1824, the New York City government converted Fort Clinton into a 6,000-seat entertainment venue known as Castle Garden, which operated until 1855. A popular Swedish opera singer of the 1850s, Jenny Lind (“the Swedish Nightingale”), performed here. Castle Garden then served as an immigrant processing depot for 35 years. When the processing facilities were moved to Ellis Island in 1892, Castle Garden was converted into the first home of the New York Aquarium, which opened in 1896 and continued operating until 1941. The Aquarium re-opened in Coney Island, Brooklyn in 1957.

Walk around Castle Clinton on the seaward side, then turn to the left on the path going back toward the water. To the left is New York’s Korean War Memorial.

Take the ramp down toward the promenade. On the left is City Pier A. It was built from 1884 to 1886 as the headquarters of the It was built from 1884 to 1886 as the headquarters of the New York City Board of Dock Commissioners (also known as the Docks Department) and the New York City Police Department's Harbor Department. Pier A, the only remaining masonry pier in New York City, contains a two- and three-story structure with a clock tower facing the Hudson River. The pier is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Until 1992 it was a fireboat station and was later redeveloped as a restaurant and events venue.

Cross Battery Place and turn left, passing the Museum of Jewish Heritage across the street. Continue to 2 Place and turn left, walking toward the river. Walk up to a 2-piece sculpture of African musical instruments and turn right. At 3 Place, turn left onto the Battery Park Esplanade, staying on it as it turns right to parallel the river.

Battery Park City, where we are now, is built on a large landfill where there used to be piers on an active waterfront. With the rise of containerized shipping after World War II, most of the port’s cargo traffic moved to New Jersey, leaving once-busy piers and adjoining areas derelict. The start of construction of the World Trade Center in the late 1960s provided the impetus to do something with the rotting piers. They were removed and the shoreline was expanded westward. The first apartment buildings arrived in Battery Park City in the late 1970s.

Continue on the promenade to where it turns right at the marina. On your right is the New York City Police Memorial. The names of police officers who died in the line of duty are inscribed on the wall.

Make your way to and into the glass atrium called the Winter Garden. It opened in 1988 as a public space that also hosts concerts and art exhibits. It was heavily damaged in the attack on September 11, 2001 and was rebuilt. The twelve live palm trees are a notable feature of the Winter Garden.

Walk past the grand staircase and exit the building, then proceed to the crossing of West Street to the left and cross here. Once across West Street, cross Fulton Street and turn left. One World Trade Center is on the left. On the right is the North Tower Pool, part of the 9/11 Memorial. This occupies the footprint of the north tower of the World Trade Center that was destroyed in 2001. Names of people who died in the attack are inscribed on the parapet surrounding the pool. Linger around the memorial or continue along Fulton Street past Greenwich Street (restored with the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site) and Church Street. Continuing along Fulton Street, St. Paul’s Chapel (1770) and churchyard are on the left. Cross Broadway and finish the walk at the Fulton Transit Center.

There is so much history on this walk, and outstanding views of the harbor. Most of the walk is off city streets. I did this walk on a very pleasant day. Pick a nice day and do it yourself.

Making a Guilder, a Pound, or a Buck

WHERE: Broadway and the eastern part of the Financial District in Lower Manhattan.

START: Fulton Transit Center: Fulton Street subway station (2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J trains), fully accessible

FINISH: Bowling Green subway station (4, 5 trains), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 1.25 miles (2 kilometers)

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

Route of this walk, going from top to bottom.

Some early arrivals in what is now New York City fled religious or political persecution - Deborah Moody in Brooklyn and Anne Hutchinson in the Bronx - and people still come to the city fleeing persecution. But New Amsterdam was founded by people seeking to make a few guilders, followed by the British wanting to make a few pounds, and after independence by people wanting to make a lot of dollars. This walk takes in some of that history. That seeking of riches came not only in the buying and selling of goods and financial instruments but in the buying and selling of human beings.

Starting at the Fulton Transit Center, turn left onto Broadway and walk south. This is the start of the “Canyon of Heroes” where dignitaries and celebrities have been treated to waste paper (ticker tape) being thrown out of upper story windows, an odd New York tradition, before arriving at City Hall to be presented with keys to the City. Stockbrokers used to get news of stock trades and prices on continuous strips of paper generated by “tickers.” Stock tickers are long out of use and ticker tape has to be specially ordered for these events. Every so often in the sidewalk you will see the commemoration of an individual or group that was treated to this sort of confetti, and the date on which it occurred.

Cross Liberty Street. Across Broadway is Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street staged a protest against economic inequality for 59 days in 2011. In front of you and to your left is 140 Broadway (1967) and Isamu Noguchi’s sculpture The Cube, whose tilt and red color play well against the smooth black skin of the building.

Turn left on Liberty Street. Across the street, near Nassau Street, is the former New York Chamber of Commerce (1902). The Chamber of Commerce moved to a somewhat less opulent location in Midtown Manhattan in 1979. The Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York was founded in 1768 as the first organization of its type in North America, and was granted a charter by King George III in 1770.

Cross Nassau Street. On your left is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1919 - 1924), by far the largest and most influential of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks. This building looks like it would take an Act of God to knock it down.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is uniquely responsible for implementing monetary policy on behalf of the Federal Open Market Committee and acts as the market agent of the entire Federal Reserve System (as it houses the Open Market Trading Desk and manages System Open Market Account). It is also the sole fiscal agent of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the bearer of the Treasury’s General Account, and the custodian of the world’s largest gold reserve. Aside from these distinct functions, the New York Fed also performs the same responsibilities and tasks as the other Reserve Banks do, such as supervision and research. Once in a while there are special exhibits there; take advantage of them if you can.

Continuing past the Federal Reserve Bank, cross William Street to the triangular park on the opposite side. This is Louise Nevelson Plaza, home to several large sculptures by Louise Nevelson (1899 - 1988). Their Cubist forms contrast nicely with the surrounding buildings, notably the Federal Reserve Bank. Grab a seat and take it all in.

At the apex of Louise Nevelson Plaza, Liberty Street converges with Maiden Lane. According to The Street Book by Henry Moscow (New York, Hagstrom Company, 1978), the namesake was “a footpath beside a pebbly brook that ran from Nassau Street to the East River.” And, “Although the path (Maagde Paetje is Dutch for Maiden Lane) was a favorite strolling place for lovers, the name had a less romantic origin: the gentle grassy slope of the brook’s bank provided an ideal spot for washing and bleaching clothes, a chore assigned to young girls in most families.” Continue on Maiden Lane, crossing Pearl Street and Water Street, then turn right on Water Street.

In Colonial times Water Street was the East River waterfront. A landfill program began in 1692; Front Street (one block east of Water Street) and South Street (two blocks east) were built on the fill.

Continue to Wall Street. In the park on your left is a marker noting the site of New York’s slave market. Ships carrying human cargo docked at the wharf that was on this site. The slave market itself was established by the city one block inland, at Wall and Pearl Streets, in 1711. The slave trade was a major source of income for the Dutch West India Company, and the buying and selling of human beings continued in New York after independence. The city directly benefited from the sale of enslaved people by levying taxes on every person who was bought and sold there. Slavery was abolished in New York State only in 1827, but according to the NYC Parks website:

… complete abolition came only in 1841 when the State of New York abolished the right of non-residents to have slaves in the state for up to nine months. However, the use of slave labor elsewhere for the production of raw materials such as sugar and cotton was essential to the economy of New York both before and after the Civil War. Slaves also cleared forest land for the construction of Broadway and were among the workers that built the wall that Wall Street is named for and helped to build the first Trinity Church. Within months of the market's construction, New York's first slave uprising occurred a few blocks away on Maiden Lane, led by enslaved people from the Coromantee and Pawpaw peoples of Ghana.

In the above passage, “after the Civil War” refers to enslavement in other countries and to “sharecropping,” another name for indentured servitude, in the United States.

For more history of slave trading in New York City and the pro-slavery sympathies of New York’s business elite, go to https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/06/29/slave-market.

Image courtesy New York Public Library,

Cross Water Street and walk west (uphill) on Wall Street. Wall Street gets its name from a wall, fortifications, and a ditch that were constructed at the northern boundary of New Amsterdam for defensive purposes, by white settlers and enslaved Africans. The wall and its fortifications were removed in 1699 as the city had grown beyond the wall.

On the Wall Street side of the building at the northwest corner of Pearl Street is a plaque noting that it was the site of the home, from 1784 - 1795, of Edward Livingston (1764 - 1836), who held many government positions, including that of Mayor of New York City, from 1801 - 1803. Without crossing Pearl Street, turn onto Pearl Street, walking north one block to Pine Street, then turn left. On your right is 70 Pine Street, which opened in 1932 as the Cities Service Building. Cities Service was an oil company that re-branded itself as CITGO in 1965. 70 Pine Street would be the last “skyscraper” to be built in Lower Manhattan until One Chase Manhattan Plaza opened in 1960. Until the construction of the new One World Trade Center, it was the tallest building in Lower Manhattan following the attack on September 11, 2001.

70 Pine Street, 2013. Photograph by Janine and Jim Eden.

At 60 Pine Street is the home of the Down Town Association. Built in 1887, this was the first purposely built private clubhouse in New York City. The membership has included the leading businessmen of New York, including many who went on to careers in public service. Women were not admitted as members until 1985.

Turn left on Nassau Street and continue to Wall Street. On your left is Federal Hall National Memorial, built on the site of New York’s first City Hall (1704), enlarged and renamed Federal Hall when New York was the capital of the United States (1788 - 1790) before moving to Philadelphia. The first two sessions of the First U.S. Congress met here. George Washington took his first oath of office as President here in April 1789. The present building opened in 1842 as the U.S. Customs House and later became the Sub-Treasury Building. There is an accessible entrance on Pine Street; go inside and look around.

Federal Hall National Memorial, 2019. Photograph by Ajay Suresh (Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Across Wall Street on the left is the former headquarters of J.P. Morgan and Company (1913). In a grim precursor to September 11, 2001 this was the site of an anarchist attack in 1920 when a wagon load of explosives was ignited on the street, killing 33 and injuring some 400. Looking across Wall Street, down Broad Street on the right is the New York Stock Exchange (1903). Before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 there was a visitors center in the Stock Exchange that had a gallery looking out to the trading floor.

To your left on Wall Street is 40 Wall Street (1930), built as the headquarters of the Bank of the Manhattan Company, one of the predecessors of the present-day JPMorgan Chase and now called The Trump Building. This building was in a competition with the Chrysler Building to be the world’s tallest office building. After it was topped out the Chrysler Building’s distinctive spire was hoisted into place, giving it top honors. Just past 40 Wall Street is 48 Wall Street (1929), the former home of the Bank of New York, a corporate predecessor of the present-day BNY Mellon. On the facade is a tablet that marked the site of the United States Branch Bank in 1797. The Bank of the United States was established in 1791 to serve as a repository for federal funds and as the government’s fiscal agent. The Bank was based in Philadelphia with branches in eight cities.

From Federal Hall go uphill on Wall Street toward Broadway. On the left corner of Broadway is One Wall Street (1930), former home of the Irving Trust Company. If you can, get a look at the spectacular lobby. Across Broadway is Trinity Church. This, the third home of Trinity, was dedicated in 1846. Trinity received a land grant from Queen Anne in 1705 that covered Manhattan from modern-day Fulton to Christopher Streets and from Broadway to the Hudson River. Trinity has sold much of its granted property but retains a lot of it. Step inside the church and look around.

Trinity Church. Photograph courtesy bdcnetwork.com.

Continue south on Broadway: left from Wall Street, right from Trinity Church. Alongside Trinity churchyard there is a pair of original (1905) cast iron subway entrances.

Turning right on Rector Street, halfway down the block is a plaque marking the site of the first home of King’s College, founded in 1754, now Columbia University.

Farther down Broadway in the Charging Bull statue. Installed in 1989, it depicts a bull, the symbol of financial optimism and prosperity, leaning back on its haunches and with its head lowered as if ready to charge. It has been the occasional object of protests and vandalism, and has been likened by some to the Biblical golden calf. Children love to climb on it.

Photograph courtesy superiorwallpapers.com.

Just beyond is Bowling Green, New York City’s oldest park. Bowling Green was first designated as a park in 1733, when it was offered for rent at the cost of one peppercorn per year.  Lessees John Chambers, Peter Bayard, and Peter Jay were responsible for improving the site with grass, trees, and a wood fence “for the Beauty & Ornament of the Said Street as well as for the Recreation & delight of the Inhabitants of this City.”  A gilded lead statue of King George III was erected here in 1770, and the iron fence (now a New York City landmark) was installed in 1771. After the reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776, a mob that included Alexander Hamilton (King’s College class of 1776) pulled down the statue and melted down much of it for musket balls. The king’s crown from the statue resides to this day in the Trustees’ Room at Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library.

Linger in the park. Think of all the history that is all around you. From here take the elevator or stairs down to the Bowling Green subway station.

City Hall Loop

WHERE: A loop around City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan.

START/FINISH: Fulton Transit Center: Fulton Street subway station (2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J trains), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 1.1 miles (1.8 kilometers)

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

Map of this walk, starting and finishing at lower left.

Lower Manhattan is where New York began, with the settlement of New Amsterdam, founded by the Dutch West India Company in 1626. In 1664 Britain took over, the Dutch trading post became English, and it acquired a new name, New York. Until well into the 20th Century Lower Manhattan was the business center of the city - it is still called the Financial District - and it remains the location of many city, state, and federal government functions. Yet many older office buildings have “gone residential” or been converted to hotels or other uses. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many large offices migrated to newer buildings with large floor areas. Arguably there was too much office space before the pandemic, and the future of office work is unsettled. Yet Lower Manhattan evolves.

Start at the Fulton Transit Center, at the southeast corner of Broadway and Fulton Street. This was built in the years following the attacks on September 11, 2001, to improve connections among, and bring accessibility to, the four subway stations there. The Fulton Transit Center is a qualified success; transferring from one station to another is certainly clearer than it was, and numerous elevators and escalators make the whole complex more easily navigable. It is also connected, by a passageway underneath Dey Street, to the World Trade Center transit hub (1, E, R subway lines and PATH trains to New Jersey). But the four subway stations, which opened in 1905 (4 and 5 trains), 1919 (2 and 3 trains), 1931 (J train), and 1933 (A and C trains), were never designed to connect easily with each other. The placement of the J train station in particular makes the whole complex still problematic. Nevertheless, it is much better than it was.

Exiting the Fulton Transit Center, cross Fulton Street and walk north on Broadway. On the left is St. Paul’s Chapel, built between 1764 and 1766 as an outpost of Trinity Church a few blocks south on Broadway. Its wooden steeple was buiilt betwen 1794 and 1796. It is the only extant pre-Revolutionary building in the original city of New York. Miraculously, St. Paul’s had only minor damage from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, and was a gathering place for rescue workers. President George Washington worshipped here.

The steeple of St. Paul’s Chapel with the World Trade Center in the background, 1981.

Cross Ann Street and Park Row (going diagonally to the right), continuing to City Hall Park, then turn right. In pre-Revolutionary times the space occupied by City Hall Park, City Hall, and the area between City Hall Park and Chambers Street was known as the Commons. The AIA Guide to New York City, Fifth Edition (2010), notes “Buildings, seemingly for random purposes at random locations, occupied pieces of this turf from time to time.” The park itself was the site of the General Post Office from 1871 to 1938. The fountain in the park is a reproduction of the fountain that was moved to Crotona Park in the Bronx to make way for the Post Office. We will note the locations of other such random buildings along the way.

Park Row was not only the eastern boundary of the Commons, it was also the southern end of the Boston Post Road, which for most of its length is U.S. Route 1. At Spruce Street, cross Park Row to see the statue of Benjamin Franklin, noting his work as a printer and dating from 1872. The intersection of Park Row, Spruce Street, and Nassau Street is known as Printing House Square, and the east side of Park Row used to be known as Newspaper Row as severtal of the city’s newspapers had their offices and were printed there.

Cross Park Row back to the City Hall Park side and turn right. On the left you’ll see Steve Flanders Square, named for the reporter (1918 - 1983) from radio station WCBS who covered City Hall for decades. City Hall dates from 1812 and has been altered several times. When built it was near the northern edge of the city, and while the southern facade was clad in marble the northern facade was constructed of less costly material. Today, the facade is uniform (limestone) all the way around. The most ornate room is the Council chamber. The Mayor doesn’t always work from City Hall; Michael Bloomberg, when he was Mayor (2002 - 2013) worked from the Tweed Courthouse directly behind City Hall.

Continue past the entrances to the Brooklyn Bridge - City Hall subway station. Notice an ornate entrance to the elevator leading down to the subway station. This is a reproduction of the shelters, known as kiosks, over the stairways to the stations on the first subway, which opened in 1904.

Across Park Row is the Brooklyn Bridge. At one time the view of the bridge was obscured by a terminal for Brooklyn elevated trains. Immediately north of that terminal was the City Hall terminal of the Second and Third Avenue elevated railways. Both terminals were demolished in the 1950s. There has long been a lot of transportation at this location.

In the park on the right there is a stone marker noting some of the structures built in the Commons in the 18th century: the Almshouse for the poor, military barracks, the New Gaol (British spelling of “jail” with the same pronunciation) on the site of the marker, and another prison called the Bridewell, facing Broadway.

From Archaeology Archive:

The New Gaol, erected in 1759, was built in response to New York City’s growing crime problem. The three-story masonry building in the northeast of the Commons was originally intended to house convicted criminals, but served multiple functions throughout its history. The new building was soon used for debtors and prisoners-of-war during the French and Indian War. Its location next to the Almshouse and its growing use for debtors soon led to the appellation “the debtor’s prison.” A continuing rise in crime and the resultant overcrowding of the New Gaol led the city to begin construction of the Bridewell in 1773, where some felons were moved two years later. During the Revolutionary War, the Gaol was crowded with American prisoners. After the War, the building was returned to its earlier function of housing felons and debtors, the latter of whom paid for their own clothing, food, and fuel. The Gaol continued to house prisoners until 1824. It was slated for demolition, but was eventually refurbished and converted to a Hall of Records for the city in 1830. The building was torn down in 1903, at which time it was the oldest civic building in New York City.

The Hall of Records, formerly (without the classical portico) the New Gaol, demolished in 1903. In the foreground is the overpass to the Brooklyn Bridge terminal. In the right background is City Hall. In the left background is the General Post Office, demolished in 1938. Photo courtesy New York City Municipal Archives.

Constructed in 1775, the Bridewell was meant to be a debtor’s prison and workhouse. However, for the duration of their occupation during the Revolution the British used the building as a prison for American prisoners of war. During the War of 1812, the occupying British again used the Bridewell as a place to house prisoners of war. It was only after the War of 1812 that the Bridewell returned to its original purpose as a general city jail.

The most famous inmate at the New Gaol was William Duer, known as the first Wall Street villain and a key figure in the Panic of 1792. The Bridewell got its name from a jail of the same name in London.

To your right, across Centre Street, is the Municipal Building, which opened in 1914 and houses many city offices. It straddles Chambers Street, and through the archway one can see the headquarters of the New York Police Department, One Police Plaza (1973). Atop the colonnade in front of the Municipal Building is inscribed NEW AMSTERDAM MDCXXVI. then MANHATTAN, then NEW YORK MDCLXIV. Look up.

Cross Chambers Street. On your left is the Surrogate’s Court, which opened in 1907. In New York State the Surrogate’s Court is sometimes referred to as “widows and orphans court” and adjudicates disputes concerning estates. Cross Reade Street. To your right is Foley Square, around which are state and federal court houses on the east side, and the Federal Building and Court of International Trade on the west side.

Surrogate’s Court.

Turn left onto Duane Street. At the corner of Elk Street is the African Burial Ground National Monument. During the construction of the Ted Weiss Federal Building in the early 1990s, over 400 sets of human remains were discovered. This area had been a burial ground, just north of the old city limits, for over 20,000 “Negroes” in the 17th and 18th centuries, Read the interpretive signage. then walk through the monument. This is a moving memorial and tells a chapter of this city’s history that is not known enough.

Two views of the African Burial Ground National Monument. In the upper image, the inscription reads “To all those who were lost, For all those who were stolen, For all those who were left behind, For all those who were not forgotten”

Turn onto Elk Street and walk the two short blocks to Chambers Street, then turn right. The first building on the right is the former Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank (1908 - 1912), now an exhibition space called Hall des Lumieres. Across Chambers Street is the former New York County Courthouse, better known as the Tweed Courthouse (1861 - 1872). The construction “cost” was over $14 million, exorbitant for the time. The de facto mayor of New York, William Marcy (“Boss”) Tweed, who headed the New York County Democratic organization (Tammany Hall), pocketed some $10 million of that total. Today the building is used as municipal offices.

Continue walking toward Broadway. On the right is a white-painted building that was built as the A.T. Stewart Dry Goods Store (1845 - 1846), the first great department store. Stewart is perhaps better known for developing Garden City, Long Island in the 1870s. Stewart’s store was taken over by the New York Sun newspaper, which installed the ornate clock on the corner of the building that reads “The Sun It Shines for All.” The building is now occupied by the New York City Department of Buildings.

Cross Chambers Street onto the east (park) side of Broadway. In the park near Warren Street there is a set of foundation stones. These are what is left of the Bridewell, which stood on this site. In the sidewalk there is a plaque noting the location of the British army barracks.

Continue walking and on the left is a plaque pointing to a flagpole erected to commemorate the five Liberty Poles built in the Commons during the Revolution, as a rebuke to the British occupiers.

Liberty Poles plaque, foundation stones of the Bridewell to the left.

Across Broadway at Park Place is the Woolworth Building (1913). When it was completed, and until the completion of 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building in 1930, it was the world’s tallest office building. It was the longtime headquarters of the now defunct F.W. Woolworth Company and was known as the “Cathedral of Commerce.” If you ever get the chance to take a guided tour of the lobby, do so.

Continue down the same side of Broadway to end at the Fulton Transit Center, or relax in City Hall Park, or take a moment for quiet contemplation in St. Paul’s Chapel.

This short walk packs in a lot of architectural and historical interest and begins a look at the exploitation of African-Americans, something to which we will return on future walks.

Gowanus Zigzag (Brooklyn)

WHERE: The bridges across the Gowanus Canal at Union Street, 3 Street, 9 Street, and Hamilton Avenue, Brooklyn

START: Union Street subway station (R train)

FINISH: Prospect Avenue subway station (R train)

DISTANCE: 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers)

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

Route of this walk, reading from top to bottom.

The Gowanus Canal is a narrow, polluted waterway, in fact a Superfund site, that snakes its way from New York Harbor into Brooklyn. During the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776, George Washington led the retreat away from what is now Prospect Park, past the Old Stone House in what is now Park Slope, across the Gowanus Creek and then to Manhattan. The Gowanus Creek was turned into a navigable waterway in the mid-ninetenth century and was lined with industry. Pollution was a problem early on, and the smell was so bad that the canal earned the derisive name “Lavender Lake.” Early in the twentieth century a water tunnel was built to connect the north end of the canal with the harbor, and a flushing mechanism was installed at the north end to circulate water through the canal. In recent years the flushing mechanism, long out of service, was rebuilt and its capacity was increased.

In the mid-1990s local businessman and civic activist Salvatore “Buddy” Scotto (1928 - 2020) led a walk through the Gowanus neighborhood that I took part in, where he expressed his vision of a Gowanus Canal that would be revitalized like the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas. A lot of people then thought Buddy was crazy but he held fast to his vision and lived long enough for the first bits of it to fall into place. Interestingly, Buddy was a vociferous opponent of the Superfund designation, fearing it would deter development. New buildings have sprouted anyway. The grittiness of Gowanus is not so slowly disappearing and perhaps can be seen as a logical consequence of new apartment towers lining once shabby Fourth Avenue and in Downtown Brooklyn.

A personal reminiscence of Buddy Scotto: He was one of those civic activists I could hug and strangle in the same sentence. We tilted swords more than once but we could disagree without being disagreeable. In 2012 he and I were among the honorees as “Kings of Kings” (as in Kings County), hosted by a local media company. At the awards ceremony (it was at a catering hall in the Mill Basin neighborhood called El Caribe) I stood next to Buddy as he was being interviewed. He asked the interviewer, “Why am I here?” I said, “Because you’re you, Buddy.”

This walk took in the four walkable bridges over the canal. A fifth, the Carroll Street Bridge, is closed to all traffic “until further notice” for repairs. Starting at the Union Street subway station, there is a new apartment tower on 4 Avenue where there was an empty lot next to an old municipal bathhouse that has been repurposed. For years an old Philadelphia streetcar lay in the empty lot. I do not know how or why it ended up there. On the northwest corner of Union Street and Fourth Avenue, what was the site of a filling station has an apartment block going up. Walking west on Union Street, I passed the Dinosaur Bar-b-Que, the Brooklyn outpost of Dinosaurs in Syracuse and Rochester, then a Holiday Inn Express that has become a shelter for asylum seekers, and a store selling African drums. As I walked by I enjoyed the sight and sound of two men drumming away on the sidewalk.

Crossing 3 Avenue and then Nevins Street, I came to the first of this walk’s bridges, the Union Street Bridge. This is a very short double-leaf draw bridge. The last canalside industrial user, the Bayside Fuel Oil depot just north of the bridge, closed and that site is being redeveloped. I doubt the Union Street Bridge and the very similar 3 Street Bridge will ever have to be opened again, except in connection with the Superfund cleanup.

View south on Nevins Street south from Union Street, toward apartment towers under construction.

View north from the Union Street Bridge, toward the former site of the Bayside Fuel Oil depot.

View south from the Union Street Bridge toward the Carroll Street Bridge.

Once across the Union Street Bridge, I turned left onto Bond Street, going for two blocks to Carroll Street. The little Carroll Street Bridge opened in 1889 and is one of two retractable bridges in New York City, the other being the Borden Avenue Bridge in Queens, described in my post “Newtown Creek Walk #1” on this page. It is closed “until further notice for repairs” and I only hope it is repaired and brought back to life. A retractable bridge does not swing up, or pivot in the center. The draw span moves on rails into a berth alongside, an elegant solution for a very narrow waterway.

The Carroll Street Bridge in 2020, before it was closed. The sign to the right of the yellow clearance sign, a re-creation of the original. reads “By Order of the City, Any Person Driving Over this Bridge Faster Than a Walk Will Be Subject to a Penalty of Five Dollars for Each Offence.”

At the west end of the Carroll Street Bridge, a nice canalside path begins and goes south to 2 Street, two blocks. I’m sure Buddy Scotto approved.

The canalside promenade south of Carroll Street. The large building in the background is the former Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company electric power station, built 1901 - 1903, derelict since its abandonment in 1972, and recently reopened as a stunning new arts and events venue called Powerhouse Arts. In its early days, coal was delivered to the power station on barges on the canal.

From the south end of this promenade I made my way to the Third Street Bridge and to another canalside promenade, this one having been built together with the Whole Foods Market on 3 Street. The sight of those apartment towers in a once industrial area has a more than passing resemblance to the very similar transformation of the Mott Haven section of the Bronx.

View north from the 3 Street Bridge.

View south from the Whole Foods promenade, with the canal turning to the right and the 4 Street Basin to the left.

“Feast or Famine” at Whole Foods.

The former can factory on 3 Avenue, more recently a space for artists’ studios.

From the end of the Whole Foods promenade I turned onto 3 Avenue and then right onto 7 Street, into a not yet redeveloped part of Gowanus. On this block is the Bell House, which National Public Radio listeners will recognize as the home base for the game show “Ask Me Another” and as the frequent venue for the storytelling series “The Moth Radio Hour.”

The Bell House.

On 2 Avenue is the former Kentile Floors factory, now artists’ studios. For decades the Kentile sign was a local landmark.

Photo courtesy ny.curbed.com

I turned west onto 9 Street and the 9 Street Bridge, which is underneath the highest subway station in the city, Smith - 9 Streets (F and G trains). Less than a decade ago the MTA refreshed this station but inexplicably passed up the opportunity to make it accessible.

The 9 Street Bridge underneath the Smith - 9 Street subway station.

View north from the 9 Street Bridge.

Wrought iron fence on West 9 Street.

Crossing Smith Street, I continued for a block on West 9 Street, one of two West 9 Streets in Brooklyn (the other is in southern Brooklyn), then left on Court Street to Hamilton Avenue. Hamilton Avenue is a wide, ugly thoroughfare underneath the elevated Gowanus Expressway (Interstate 278). I would not have ventured there at all but for the southernmost bridge over the Gowanus Canal, at Hamilton Avenue. This bridge is two double-leaf draw spans. one for northbound traffic (toward Manhattan) and one for southbound traffic. The New York City Department of Transportation has talked for years about creating a protected bike lane on the southbound span as part of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, similar to what was done on the Pulaski Bridge between Long Island City and Greenpoint, but nothing has been done and whatever plans exist lie on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust.

Looking toward the Hamilton Avenue Bridge from Smith Street.

View north from the Hamilton Avenue Bridge. The elevated Smith - 9 Streets subway station and, beneath it, the 9 Street Bridge, are in the background.

From the southern end of the Hamilton Avenue Bridge I walked east on 14 Street, past a Sanitation Department garage, some light industry, and some homes, to 4 Avenue, whence I turned right to the end of the walk, the Prospect Avenue subway station. This station was recently freshened up under the Enhanced Stations Initiative launched by former Governor Andrew Cuomo. While the station looks nicer than it did, this was yet another missed opportunity for accessibility.

I had not done an extended walk through Gowanus since the early days of the pandemic, and I had never set foot on either of the canalside promenades. It is certainly an area in flux. The area south of 3 Street has not seen the burst of new construction that characterizes the Gowanus Canal north of the 3 Street Bridge. It will. I hope places like artists’ studios, the Bell House, lumber yards, and U-Haul will not be swept away. A lot of people in the community work in these places and the light industry that still dots the landscape. And new housing has to have a large percentage of truly affordable units for people who have been or will have been priced out elsewhere. This is the challenge for the ongoing re-zoning of Gowanus: preserving (and encouraging) jobs and a mix of uses; providing quality, truly affordable housing; all in an accessible environment. This is not inconsistent with Buddy Scotto’s vision or what the city needs.

Bronx Park

WHERE: A portion of Bronx Park

START: Botanical Garden station (Metro North Railroad, Harlem Line), fully accessible, also Bx26 bus

FINISH: Gun Hill Road subway station (2 train), fully accessible; also Bx39, Bx41 buses

DISTANCE: 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers)

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

Route of this walk, reading from left to right.

On a map Bronx Park appears roughly as a triangle, much of the lower part taken up by the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden, adjoining the Rose Hill campus of Fordham University. There is still much of it that is just a public park. On this walk we will traverse the northern part of Bronx Park.

The Bronx River runs north to south through the park. Through the efforts of the Bronx River Alliance the Bronx River Greenway is being created and the Bronx River is being cleaned up and made open to the public. This walk takes us along a portion of the Bronx River Greenway, including a crossing of the Bronx River. Other walks on this site cover other portions of the Greenway.

Part of this walk also takes us through the Bronx River Parkway Reservation. The Bronx River Parkway Reservation is a linear park that includes recreational facilities, preserved and restored natural areas, and a road that is restricted to private passenger vehicles. The Reservation parallels the Bronx River for 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) from the New York Botanical Garden north to Kensico Dam at Valhalla in Westchester County. The parkway extends 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) in Westchester County and its original section, from the New York City limits south to Burke Avenue, another 3 miles (5 kilometers). According to the Historic American Enginering Record:

The Bronx River Parkway Reservation was the first public parkway designed explicitly for automobile use. The project began as an environmental restoration and park development initiative that aimed to transform the heavily polluted Bronx River into an attractive linear park connecting New York City’s Bronx Park with New York City’s Kensico Dam and reservoir. With the addition of a parkway drive the project became a pioneering example of modern motorway development. It combined beauty, safety, and efficiency by reducing the number of dangerous intersections, limiting access from surrounding streets and businesses, and surrounding motorists in a broad swath of landscaped greenery.

In addition to reclaiming the Bronx River, the Bronx Parkway Commission (BPC), as it was called, cleaned each parcel of land as soon as it acquired title. The BPC immediately instituted a forestry program. “The condition of the trees in this section of the country,” the BPC noted, was “cause for grave concern.” Prompt measures were necessary.

The BPC hired a forester, Albert N. Robson, who was noted for his experience in tree care. In addition, the commission engaged Hermann Merkel, a landscape architect and forester at the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Gardens, who was considered to be a recognized authority on various tree pests. Robson’s and Merkel’s first year with the commission resulted in 13,018 dead trees being removed, 5,037 trees trimmed, and 16,039 trees improved and reclaimed by surgery.

Construction of the Bronx River Parkway began in 1908. It was completed as far south as Burke Avenue in 1925 and the extension to Story Avenue in the south central Bronx opened in 1951.

I started the walk on this picture-perfect Memorial Day at the Botanical Garden railroad station, across the street from the New York Botanical Garden. The Botanical Garden is worth its own blog post at the very least. From there I walked north on the footpath that parallels Southern Boulevard, crossed Mosholu Parkway, and continued north on the path, following the Bronx River Greenway/East Coast Greenway arrow.

Going left at the arrow and continuing past baseball fields on the right, I passed French Charley’s Playground. Who exactly was French Charley? The NYC Parks website has the answer: “This playground honors the memory of Charley Mangin who owned a nearby French restaurant in the 1890s. His establishment, in the heart of a small French enclave of the Bronx, was popularly referred to as French Charley’s. After the restaurant closed down, a ball field and picnic area were built near the site and people began to refer to the site as French Charley’s Field.” This has become a playground and picnicking area.

From there I continued on the path, following the arrows, through the Bronx River Forest, a remnant of the original forests and floodplains that once blanketed the Bronx River corridor. The path crosses the Bronx River on the Burke Avenue Bridge, then ducks underneath the Bronx River Parkway.

Path through the Bronx River Forest.

Bronx River Parkway underpass.

Past the Parkway I turned left, and across from the Rosewood Playground was a stone monument. The near (south) side is missing a plaque that was engraved thus and memorializes the huge undertaking that was the construction of the Bronx River Parkway, not just the road of that name.

BRONX RIVER PARKWAY/PLANNED AND BUILT BY THE/BRONX PARKWAY COMMISSION/ESTABLISHED 1907 AND APPROVED 1913/WITH FIRST APPROPRIATION BY THE/CITY OF NEW YORK/AND THE/COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER/COMPLETED 1925/MADISON GRANT PRESIDENT 1907-1925/WILLIAM NILES VICE PRESIDENT 1907-1925/JAMES G. CANNON TREASURER 1907-1916/FRANK H. BETHELL TREASURER 1916-1925/JAY DOWNER CHIEF ENGINEER/L.G.HOLLERAN DEPUTY CHIEF ENGINEER/H.W. MERKEL LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT/THEODOSIUS STEVENS COUNSEL/LENGTH OF PARKWAY SIXTEEN MILES/AREA TWELVE HUNDRED ACRES/370 OLD BUILDINGS AND FIVE MILES/OF BILLBOARDS REMOVED TWO MILLION/CUBIC YARDS EXCAVATED AND THE SURFACE/RECOVERED WITH TOPSOIL 30,000/TREES AND 140,000 SHRUBS PLANTED/THIRTY SEVEN BRIDGES AND VIADUCTS BUILT/THE RIVER CLEARED OF POLLUTION/AND THE NATURAL BEAUTIES/OF THE VALLEY RESTORED.

The north side of the monument has a plaque noting that the location was the southern terminus of the original Bronx River Parkway.

The footpath parallels Bronx Boulevard, this portion of which was the original Parkway. Ahead lay the ornate Gun Hill Road overpass and, on either side of it, a two-span arch bridge over the Bronx River, whose course at this point is a U shape.

The inscription reads Gun Hill Road 1921.

The Bronx River from just north of Gun Hill Road.

This was not a long or physically taxing walk. It was level except for a few gentle slopes. This walk was an easily accessible respite from the hustle and bustle of the city, along with a lesson in how a park was created. This was a short, interesting, refreshing walk.

The South End of Roosevelt Island (Manhattan)

WHERE: The southern third of Roosevelt Island

START/FINISH: Roosevelt Island subway station (F train), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 1.9 miles (3 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl.

Roosevelt Island is a narrow finger of land in the East River. In 1637, Dutch Governor Wouter van Twiller purchased the island, then known as Hog Island, from the Canarsie Indians. After the Dutch surrendered to the English in 1664, Captain John Manning acquired the island in 1666, which became known as Manning’s Island, and twenty years later, Manning’s son-in-law, Robert Blackwell, became the island’s new owner and namesake. The City of New York bought Blackwell’s Island from the Blackwell family in 1828 and over the years constructed the Smallpox Hospital, the Lunatic Asylum, a jail, a workhouse, and other facilities. In 1921 the City renamed the island Welfare Island, and between 1939 and 1952 two new municipal hospitals for the chronically ill, Bird S. Coler Hospital and Goldwater Memorial Hospital, were built. The Fire Department constructed a training facility on the island. When the Queensboro Bridge opened in 1909, an elevator was built to carry pedestrians and vehicles between the bridge and the island. Road access came in 1955 with the construction of the Welfare Island Bridge to Queens.

In 1969 the city leased the island to the New York State Urban Development Corporation for 99 years. The UDC built a new town on the island, which was renamed Roosevelt Island in 1973. In 1976 the Roosevelt Island Tramway opened just north of the Queensboro Bridge, as a temporary measure to take people between Manhattan and the island. Nearly 50 years later, the aerial tramway is a beloved fixture in the cityscape. The subway came to Roosevelt Island in 1989.

From newyorkalmanack.com:

The island was a pioneer in creating barrier free environments with curb cuts, elevators, wide doors, and low counters, according to Judith Berdy, president of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society, which has extensively documented this history, and has a rich archive on the hospital, its leading doctors and some of its patients. She says that the hospital and associated research institutes have hosted many outstanding research scientists and doctors, including hospital director Dr. David Seegal who made advances in nephritis and rheumatic fever, and Julius Axlerod who won a Nobel Prize in Medicine for neuro-pharmalogical research relating to pain relief. Important studies of tuberculosis, arthritis and cirrhosis were also conducted there.

This short walk was around the southern third of the island, south of the Queensboro Bridge. Starting at the subway station, I walked south to the tramway terminal. Here, one of five kiosks that used to serve passengers for the Queensboro Bridge streetcars has been made into a pleasant little visitors center.

From here I crossed over to the Queens side of the island - a very short walk - and walked south past the bridge to the Cornell Tech campus. This research institution is a joint project of Cornell University and the Technion in Haifa, Israel. It opened in 2017 on the site formerly occupied by Goldwater Memorial Hospital.

From newyorkalmanack.com:

The Goldwater Hospital was a monument to the golden years of public health in New York City, designed in distinctive chevrons to offer light and air to all its patients. The rooms had terraces to allow patients direct access to fresh air, and each ward featured a solarium. The hospital had 2,700 windows.

In its early years Goldwater cared for polio patients and ran a wheelchair repair shop with a national reputation for innovation and patient service. Mike Acevedo, nicknamed Dr. Wheelchair, ran it as a “wheel chair pit-stop that maintained and repaired a stock of more than 2,000 wheelchairs.” In his early work during the Vietnam era, they would scavenge parts from model airplanes to use as controls.

There was a nursing school and residence on the island. The Central Nurses Residence had 600 rooms, built by the Works Progress Administration. New York City ran the School of Practical Nursing from 194 -to 1970. One of the most famous nurses is best known outside of her work with patients. Jazz singer Alberta Hunter worked at Goldwater for 20 years, but is most known for her blues recordings of the teens to 1940s. Concealing her age, she studied for a nursing degree, and upon retirement started singing again until she died at age 89.

When Goldwater closed, its patients, many confined to wheelchairs, were moved to Coler Hospital (now Coler-Goldwater Hospital) at the north end of Roosevelt Island, or to the renovated old North General Hospital in Harlem (now the Henry J. Carter Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility).

The Cornell Tech campus is architecturally excellent; it is light, accessible, and with plenty of space for the general public to walk around. Time will tell what innovations come from there.

Cornell Tech campus.

Crossing the campus, I was back on the Manhattan side of the island, walking south toward the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. A short distance past the park entrance was something I didn’t know about before: the FDR Hope Memorial. Completed in 2020, it is a monument to the thirty-second President of the United States overcoming disability. Markers in the pathway commemorate events in his life and afterwards, culminating in something that remains an aspiration.

At the end of the walkway is a bronze statue of FDR in a wheelchair, greeting a girl who has a crutch and a leg brace. I sat on a bench there for a good while, contemplating that Franklin Roosevelt, a son of privilege, rose to greatness only after succumbing to polio in 1921. I thought of my own journey. I might never achieve greatness - I’m not sure I could define “greatness” - but my experience of stroke has given me new purpose. That might be enough. It’s not what I do about the stroke, it’s what I do with the stroke, and I mean to do plenty.

The FDR Hope Memorial is on part of the site occupied by Charity Hospital, previously City Hospital. This was designed by James Renwick and opened in 1861. In 1877, Charity Hospital opened a school of nursing, the fourth such training institution in the United States. The program of education for nurses encompassed two to three years of training in the care of patients and general hospital cleanliness. At Charity Hospital, nurses treated patients, assisted surgeons, weighed and cared for newborns, and took cooking classes. In 1957, Charity Hospital and the neighboring Smallpox Hospital were closed and their patients transferred to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. Charity Hospital fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1994.

From the FDR Hope Memorial I went past the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital on my way to the Four Freedoms Memorial. The central portion of the hospital, designed by James Renwick, opened in 1856. The north and south wings opened early in the 20th Century. Although a smallpox vaccine existed when the hospital opened, smallpox remained a public health problem in New York City and smallpox patients were kept on Blackwell’s Island, away from the city.

Ruins of the Smallpox Hospital.

The Four Freedoms Memorial was one of the last works designed by Louis Kahn (1902 - 1974), who had the plans with him when he died in New York’s Pennsylvania Station. Kahn was known for outwardly hard-edged buildings; for example, the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut certainly is that, but inside it is an outstanding place to view art. Approaching from the north, the visitor passes between a double row of trees that narrow as they approach the point, framing views of the New York skyline and the harbor. The memorial is a procession of elegant open-air spaces, culminating in a 3,600-square-foot (330 square meters) plaza surrounded by 28 blocks of North Carolina granite, each weighing 36 tons. The courtyard contains a bust of Roosevelt, sculpted in 1933 by Jo Davidson. At the north end of the open-air room at the tip of the island is an excerpt from FDR’s Four Freedoms speech of January 6, 1941. Looking at this, I couldn’t help thinking that we surely are led by lesser lights today.

View south from the Four Freedoms Memorial.

There is nothing bombastic about this space; it is cool, contemplative, peaceful. At the far southern end the narrowing entry to the Memorial gives way to the great sweep of the city, looking down the East River.

The walk back to the subway more or less retraced my steps. The southern part of Roosevelt Island is by far more interesting than the northern part. The island as a whole packs in a respectable amount of history.

Ward's Island and Randall's Island (Manhattan and the Bronx)

WHERE: Ward’s Island and Randall’s Island in the East River

START: 96 Street subway station (Q train), fully accessible

FINISH: Brook Avenue subway station (6 train)

DISTANCE: 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers)

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

Route of this walk, reading from left to right.

The impetus for this walk was the walk I did two weeks ago, part of which was on the northern part of Randall’s Island. Randall’s Island, Sunken Meadow Island, and Ward’s Island, once separated, were joined together by landfill after World War II, and the combined island is often referred to as Randall’s Island.

The creation of the parks on Ward’s Island and Randall’s Island can be credited to New York’s master builder, Robert Moses, together with Randall’s Island becoming the hub of the Triborough Bridge system. Moses’ mixed legacy is surely evident here: a robust highway network, a fine system of parks, and minimal public transportation (just the M35 bus from Manhattan).

The walk started at the subway station at 96 Street and 2 Avenue, just a short walk from the the promenade on the FDR Drive. The walk from East 96 Street to East 103 Street, where I ascended the ramp to the Ward’s Island Pedestrian Bridge, offered a beautiful view and one surprise: the Vito Marcantonio Peace Garden on the opposite side of the FDR Drive, part of Public School/Middle School 50. According to the United Federation of Teachers website, “the school’s peace garden, which consists of a dual-level atrium, with soil beds on the lower level and a hydroponic garden on the upper level. An outdoor, street-level garden near the elementary-grade classrooms has been a source of pride.” Vito Marcantonio (1902 - 1954) was an Italian-American lawyer and politician, manager of Fiorello La Guardia’s mayoral campaigns, and member of the U. S. House of Representatives. Marcantonio's district was centered in his native East Harlem, New York City, which had many residents and immigrants of Italian and Puerto Rican origin. Fluent in Spanish as well as Italian, he was considered an ally of the Puerto Rican and Italian-American communities, and an advocate for the rights of the workers, immigrants, and the poor. In addition to defending the Puerto Rican and Italian communities and common workers, Marcantonio was a strong advocate of Harlem's African-American communities and fought vehemently for black civil rights decades before the civil rights movement of the 1950s – 1960s.

P.S./M.S. 50, with the Vito Marcantonio Peace Garden.

View from the promenade near East 96 Street: left to right, the Ward’s Island Pedestrian Bridge, Ward’s Island, Hell Gate Bridge, the Queens span of the Robert F. Kennedy (Triborough) Bridge.

At East 103 Street there is a ramp up to the pedestrian bridge from Manhattan to Ward’s Island. Designed by the great Swiss-American bridge engineer Othmar Ammann (1879 - 1965), this bridge opened in 1951. In the New York area alone Ammann also designed the George Washington Bridge, Bayonne Bridge, Triborough Bridge, and Throgs Neck Bridge. This is a vertical lift bridge but the center lift span opens only rarely. On this beautiful Spring day the bridge was busy with walkers, runners, and cyclists going to or from Ward’s Island. The slopes on the ramp and the bridge are steeper than those allowed by the Americans with Disabilities Act and they are not really for people in wheelchairs, but there are handrails the whole way.

Ward’s Island Pedestrian Bridge, looking toward Ward’s Island.

The island has an excellent system of pedestrian and bicycle paths. My friend Ryan and I walked up the west side of Ward’s Island, past the Manhattan Psychiatric Center (behind a high fence) and toward the Little Hell Gate Salt Marsh. Manhattan Psychiatric Center is operated by the New York State Department of Mental Health. This colossal structure, which opened in 1954, continued the New York tradition of putting jails, hospitals for psychiatric patients, and hospitals for people with chronic and long-term illnesses on islands, whether natural (Rikers Island, Roosevelt Island, North Brother Island) or man-made (Hoffman and Swinburne Islands off Staten Island), or elsewhere far from the city.

Manhattan Psychiatric Center. Photo courtesy Creative Commons.

Footpath, west side of Ward’s Island.

Interpretive sign at the Little Hell Gate Salt Marsh.

Little Hell Gate was the body of water separating Ward’s Island from Randall’s Island. Most of it was filled in during the 1960s; the remnant is part of the salt marsh. The branch of the East River separating Randall’s Island from Queens is called Hell Gate, the name coming from the treacherous navigation of this body of water, with its rocks and dangerous currents. Little Hell Gate used to be crossed by a three-span arch bridge with a two-lane roadway, just east of the Triborough Bridge viaduct, that was also designed by Othmar Ammann and opened in 1936. The Little Hell Gate Bridge remained in place for many years after that portion of Little Hell Gate had been filled in and I biked on it before it was demolished around 1990. No trace of it remains.

Little Hell Gate Bridge. The Hell Gate Bridge, used by passenger and freight trains, is behind it. Photograph courtesy Library of Congress.

Crossing Little Hell Gate on a low arch bridge, we entered Randall’s Island and walked east and north past Icahn Stadium to the Randall’s Island Connector. Icahn Stadium was built on the site of Downing Stadium, previously called Triborough Stadium and Randall’s Island Stadium before that, which was demolished in 2002. Both stadiums have hosted interscholastic games, Olympic trials, concerts, and, in the 1930s, professional football. Downing Stadium was built together with the Triborough Bridge and Little Hell Gate Bridge. The light towers at the stadium used to be at Ebbets Field, the home stadium of the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1913 until 1957.

Icahn Stadium. Photograph by Jim Henderson.

The Randall’s Island Connector is an excellent pedestrian and bicycle path that runs underneath the Hell Gate Bridge, across a low arch bridge spanning the Bronx Kill, to East 132 Street in the Bronx. Unlike the Bronx leg of the Triborough Bridge, it requires no climbing. At the Bronx end of the Connector the scene is mostly industrial, but we were surprised by a block of East 133 Street with some trees and some row houses. People live there. We continued to lunch in the neighborhood at the fine Milk Burger at Bruckner Boulevard and St. Ann’s Avenue.

Some years ago some real estate hucksters wanted to re-brand this area the Piano District. In the late 19th Century a number of piano manufacturers set up here to cater to middle class households that wanted pianos. The piano manufacturers are all gone but some of the buildings remain. The whole idea was tone-deaf, ignoring the people who live in this area. This idea died a quick and deserved death.

Randall’s Island Connector.

East 133 Street between Willow Avenue and Cypress Avenue, looking east.

This was a partially accessible walk; the ramps to the Ward’s Island Bridge and the bridge itself are steep, and the Brook Avenue subway station is not accessible, but otherwise the walk is accessible. At the end of the walk there was the option to take the Bx33 bus on East 138 Street to the fully accessible 135 Street subway station (2 and 3 trains).

Randall’s Island and Ward’s Island are excellent for walking, biking, sports, and picnicking. Motor vehicles are mostly out of sight and out of the way. Walking along the Ward’s Island path, I had the feeling of being out of the city, in the city.

Three More Walkable Bridges (Manhattan and Bronx)

WHERE: The Third Avenue Bridge and the Manhattan and Bronx legs of the Robert F. Kennedy (Triborough) Bridge

START: 3 Avenue - 138 Street subway station (6 train)

FINISH: Brook Avenue subway station (6 train)

DISTANCE: 3.27 miles (5.26 kilometers)

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

Route of this walk, reading from left to right.

On this trip I walked across three more of New York’s walkable bridges, starting and finishing in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. At the start of the walk is a triangle bounded by Third Avenue, Lincoln Avenue, and East 137 Street, in the middle of which is a monument to the Bronx men who died in the Spanish-American War in 1898.

From there I walked to East 135 Street, where I crossed to the opposite (west) side of Third Avenue, then continued to the Third Avenue Bridge. This is the third Third Avenue Bridge, all on the same site. The first bridge, built in 1898, was replaced in 1955, and that span was replaced in 2004 - 2005.

Third Avenue Bridge.

At the Manhattan end of the bridge the walk continued on a footbridge over the exit ramp to the Harlem River Drive. The footpath itself curves around a playground to the Harlem River Drive.

Footbridge at the Manhattan end of the Third Avenue Bridge.

Mural at P.S. 30, East 128 Street and Lexington Avenue.

From there I walked east on East 128 Street to 3 Avenue. There is a three-way footbridge to take pedestrians over another exit ramp from the bridge and over East 128 Street. Both footbridges date from the 1955 incarnation of the bridge. While I’m glad there was some thought given to keeping pedestrians safe from motor traffic, it certainly is obvious that accommodating motor traffic was, and in many ways still is, paramount. Neither stairway is wheelchair-accessible. The park and the “Crack is Wack” playground on the north side of East 128 Street are on the site of the 129 Street terminal and repair shop of the Second and Third Avenue elevated railways, demolished after the discontinuance of the Third Avenue el in Manhattan in 1955.

Three-way footbridge at 3 Avenue and East 128 Street.

129 Street terminal, from the corner of 3 Avenue and East 128 Street, 1941. From the collection of Herbert P. Maruska by way of nycsubway.org.

At the corner of 3 Avenue and East 127 Street is the United Moravian Church, which was advertising an upcoming revival.

United Moravian Church

The footpath on the Triborough Bridge is on the south side and access is from 2 Avenue and East 124 Street. On a fence near the entrance is a sad little memorial to a young man who must have been killed there, probably by traffic.

The Triborough Bridge was the brainchild of Robert Moses (1888 - 1981), whose legacy is parks, highways, and public housing projects that are to be found all over New York City and Long Island. The definitive history of Robert Moses and his legacy is The Power Broker by Robert Caro. I cannot recommend this highly enough to students of urban planning, students of politics, anyone. Moses illustrates the truth that we all walk this earth leaving a mixed legacy. The Triborough Bridge, completed in 1936, links the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens as a hub-and-spoke system with its hub on Randall’s Island. In time, the route from Queens to the Bronx would become part of Interstate 278, and the Manhattan leg would connect with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and Harlem River Drive. I have biked across all three legs of the bridge in the past, and wrote about walking the Queens leg in 2021 in the post “From Queens to the Bronx” on this page, but until this walk had never traversed the other two legs on foot.

The Manhattan leg is a vertical lift span whose towers’ steel structure is vaguely reminiscent of the towers of the George Washington Bridge,

Manhattan leg of the Triborough Bridge, 1936. Photograph by Berenice Abbott.

The Manhattan span has a well-maintained foot and bicycle path on the south side, with a gentle grade walking from Manhattan but a fairly steep ramp down to Randall’s Island.

Foot and bicycle path on the Manhattan leg of the Triborough Bridge.

Looking south from the Manhattan leg of the Triborough Bridge. The arch bridge in the background is the Hell Gate Bridge, used by passenger and freight trains. The suspension bridge to its right is the Queens leg of the Triborough Bridge.

Seen on the ramp to Randall’s Island.

From the bottom of the ramp, turn right, but at the next sign, pointing the way to Queens and the Bronx, do not turn right but go straight ahead, staying on the road and being watchful for the occasional car. Move over to the foot and bike path on the left when it appears.

Randall’s Island and Ward’s Island to the south used to be separated by water, but that body of water, known as Little Hell Gate, has been filled in. The combined island is home to numerous athletic fields and other athletic facilities, picnicking areas, a salt marsh, offices of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, Fire Department facilities, a psychiatric hospital, and more. The parks are maintained by the Randall’s Island Park Alliance, a public-private partnership. Native Americans called Ward’s Island Tenkenas which translated to "Wild Lands" or "uninhabited place", whereas Randall’s Island was called Minnehanonck. The islands were acquired by Wouter Van Twiller, Director General of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, in July 1637. The island's first European names were Great Barent Island (Ward’s) and Little Barent Island (Randall’s) after a Danish cowherd named Barent Jansen Blom. Both islands' names changed several times. At times Randalls was known as "Buchanan's Island" and "Great Barn Island", both of which were likely corruptions of Great Barent Island. Both islands acquired their present names from their new owners after the American Revolution.

The walk continued on the Bronx Shore Path past baseball fields to the Bronx leg of the bridge. Until the Randall’s Island Connector (described in the post “From Queens to the Bronx” on this page) opened in 2015, the only direct bike and pedestrian route from Randall’s Island to the Bronx was on the Triborough Bridge. The ramp up to the bridge is somewhat steep and has four 90-degree turns, but the walkway is clean and well-maintained, and other people were using it despite the ground-level Randall’s Island Connector being nearby. Going up the ramp, at the “T” intersection go left. A switchback ramp down to the Bronx has an easy slope. It was built in the 1980s to replace stairs.

At the bottom of the ramp up to the Bronx leg of the Triborough Bridge.

On the Bronx leg of the Triborough Bridge, near the top of the ramp from Randall’s Island.

A lot of this part of the Bronx shoreline between the Major Deegan Expressway (Interstate 87) and the waterway called the Bronx Kill is industrial, including a freight rail yard, a Department of Sanitation garage, and a large facility of the New York home-delivery grocer Fresh Direct. Here and there are surprises, like the South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and the Arts, and where I had lunch on this trip, Milk Burger, at the corner of Bruckner Boulevard and St Ann’s Avenue. Not only was the hamburger well worth gong back for, which I will do sooner than later, but I struck up a good conversation with the owner, Erik Mayor, who besides offering a hamburger well worth the trip back to the Bronx has done a lot of good work in this very underprivileged part of the city.

South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and the Arts.

From lunch I walked north on St. Ann’s Avenue and west on this area’s main commercial street, East 138 Street, to the subway at Brook Avenue.

This walk included panoramas of a changing city and closeups that at once echo and defy the panoramas. Not far from the “perfumed stockade” of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as the late writer Theodore White described it, and not far from the glassy new residential buildings in Mott Haven, a large, poor, proud community gets on with life. This was an easy walk but not one that was wholly wheelchair-accessible. The subway stations where the walk started and finished are not accessible and I had to walk down the ramp to Randall’s Island with care, owing to its steepness.

I think about this walk glad that there are some accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists but not glad that we are an afterthought in the primacy of motor vehicles. This was part of the mixed legacy of Robert Moses. Thinking about that three-way footbridge on East 128 Street, why can’t pedestrians and bicyclists have a safe ground-level approach to and from the Third Avenue Bridge? These people didn’t matter much to planners like Robert Moses (he was by no means alone). Over the years some improvements have been made to pedestrian and bicycle accommodations at the Triborough Bridge but more are needed, here and throughout the city.

On the Waterfront (Hoboken and Jersey City)

WHERE: The promenade on the Hudson River from Hoboken to Jersey City, New Jersey.

START: Hoboken Terminal (PATH train, fully accessible; Hudson-Bergen Light Rail (fully accessible); Ferries to Manhattan (fully accessible); New Jersey Transit commuter rail (wheelchair lifts on the platforms, otherwise not accessible)

FINISH: Exchange Place station (PATH train, fully accessible)

DISTANCE: 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl except where noted. Map courtesy footpathmap.org.

Note: The accessible PATH stations in Manhattan are at 33 Street and World Trade Center. The 33 Street station is accessible from the street and from the 34 Street - Herald Square subway stations (B, D, F, M trains and N, Q, R, W trains, both stations being fully accessible), the latter by way of a passageway with a ramp whose slope exceeds the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This ramp also has no handrails. The way between the subway and the World Trade Center PATH station is accessible but the elevator between the PATH mezzanine and the “Oculus” (concourse) is hard to find. It is on the north side of the fare control area, by the Duane Reade/Walgreens store.

Route of this walk, reading from top to bottom.

This walk illustrates the de-industrialization of the waterfront in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, and the transformation of the waterfront into a valued public space. Since the advent of containerized cargo after World War II, most maritime trade in the Port of New York and New Jersey is handled on the New Jersey side of the river. The waterfront in Hoboken and Jersey City used to be dominated by rail and marine transportation. Several steamship lines had their docks in Hoboken, not Manhattan. The great 1954 film On the Waterfront was filmed in Hoboken. Several railroads had their passenger and freight terminals along this waterfront: the New York and West Shore (later part of the New York Central system) just north in Weehawken; the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western in Hoboken; and the Erie, the Pennsylvania, and the Jersey Central in Jersey City. All the railroads ran passenger ferries directly from their New Jersey terminals to Manhattan and put freight cars onto barges to be transported across the Hudson River to Manhattan and across New York Harbor to Brooklyn. Only the Pennsylvania would build a direct connection for passenger trains to Manhattan, in 1910, with the tunnels to Pennsylvania Station now used by Amtrak and New Jersey Transit.

Some rail freight traffic is still moved across New York Harbor by barge. Hoboken Terminal is the only one of the riverfront terminals that still exists in active use. The Jersey Central terminal, now the centerpiece of Liberty State Park, hasn’t seen a train since the 1960s.

The Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation (PATH) began life in 1908 as the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (the “Hudson Tubes”), a subway-style service going from 33 Street and Hudson Terminal (near today’s World Trade Center) in Manhattan to Hoboken, Jersey City, and eventually Newark. It connected with the riverfront terminals of the Lackawanna (Hoboken station), the Erie (today’s Newport station), and the Pennsylvania (Exchange Place station), providing a more reliable connection than the railroads’ ferries. The Port of New York Authority, now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, took over the Hudson and Manhattan in 1962 and operates it today.

The star attraction of this walk is the Manhattan skyline across the river, but the promenade is pleasant and new. Only a block or two inland from the riverfront and the new buildings along it lie an older Hoboken and Jersey City.

Looking south from near Hoboken Terminal.

Looking toward Manhattan from Newport.

We start at Hoboken Terminal, a big, magnificent train station that opened in 1907 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hoboken Terminal from the Hudson River, 2012. The five ferry slips are in front. Photo credit: By Upstateherd - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62597969

Stop inside the Waiting Room before starting the trip and admire the architecture. Hoboken Terminal is a major multi-modal transit facility, hosting commuter rail, light rail, PATH, local buses, and ferries. New Jersey Transit operates the commuter trains along the former Erie and Lackawanna lines from Hoboken (the Erie moved its trains from its own terminal to the Lackawanna’s Hoboken Terminal in 1956).

Two views of the Waiting Room at Hoboken Terminal.

Exit left from the Waiting Room and follow signs to Light Rail. Stay on the promenade along the river; the light rail station will be in front of you first and then on your left. Continue along the promenade, entering a large area called Newport that was once the site of Erie Terminal. For a detailed history of Erie Terminal and the surrounding area, go to Erie Railroad Terminal - Erie Railroad Terminal - Library Guides at New Jersey City University (libguides.com). Redevelopment of this area began in the 1980s with the construction of the Newport Center shopping mall and accelerated with the opening of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail in 2000.

The waterfront at Newport.

Erie Terminal, where Newport is now, in the early 1950s. From “Charlie” on flickr.com,

Continuing south along the promenade, we go past a buff-colored brick structure on the right, and its look-alike at the end of a pier on the left. These are two of the four ventilation towers for the Holland Tunnel. The promenade turns to the west at Harsimus Cove, one of the places on this waterfront where rail freight barges once docked. Tall office buildings and hotels dominate the waterfront as one approaches Exchange Place, where the Pennsylvania Railroad once had one of the busiest railroad stations in the world. For a detailed history of the Exchange Place terminal go to Exchange Place - Exchange Place - Library Guides at New Jersey City University (libguides.com). Patronage declined after the Pennsylvania Railroad reached Manhattan in 1910. The terminal and the connecting elevated structure were demolished in the early 1960s. Just to the south of the terminal, the Colgate-Palmolive Company had a factory where the Goldman Sachs tower, which opened in 2004, stands today. The “Colgate Clock” remains, visible from lower Manhattan and a short walk south of Exchange Place on the riverfront.

Pennsylvania Railroad terminal, Jersey City (Exchange Place), circa 1910. Source unknown.

The Colgate Clock; the Goldman Sachs tower is to the right. Photograph by Allen Beatty.

This is an easy walk to enjoy on a nice day. It is full of the history of the waterfront and urban redevelopment. There are plenty of places to stop, relax, have a cup of coffee or a meal, and enjoy the view.

Two More Harlem River Bridges (Manhattan and the Bronx)

WHERE: The Madison Avenue Bridge and Willis Avenue Bridge between Manhattan and the Bronx.

START: 135 Street subway station (2 and 3 trains), fully accessible

FINISH: East 125 Street and 2 Avenue, Manhattan, with these buses to fully accessible subway stations:

  • M15 to 96 Street (Q train)

  • M60 SBS to Astoria Boulevard (N and W trains)

  • M125 to 3 Avenue - 149 Street (2 and 5 trains)

  • M60 SBS and M125 to 125 Street (4, 5, 6 trains and Metro North Railroad)

  • M60 SBS and M125 to 125 Street (A, B, C, D trains)

DISTANCE: 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers)

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

Route of this walk, reading from left to right.

Continuing my occasional walks across the walkable bridges of New York City, today I tackled two short bridges across the Harlem River that I have biked across before but had never walked across. This walk started at the subway station at West 135 Street and Lenox Avenue, across from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research unit of the New York Public Library. For more about the Schomburg Center see the post on this page entitled “Harlem and Heights History Walk.” Walking past Public School 197, I noticed this mural.

Crossing 5 Avenue and turning left, I passed the Riverton Houses. These apartment towers were built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in the 1940s, at the same time as Metropolitan Life’s Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan and Parkchester in the Bronx. When they were built the latter two were restricted to white residents, while Riverton was for African-Americans. An apartment in Riverton was considered a step or two up for the people who moved in. Metropolitan Life no longer owns these apartment complexes and they are no longer racially restricted.

Riverton Houses, seen from 5 Avenue.

From 5 Avenue I turned onto the ramp to the Madison Avenue Bridge at East 138 Street. This is a swing bridge that opened in 1910, replacing a smaller bridge that opened in 1882. The slope up to the main span is gentle and the walkway is in excellent condition all the way across.

From the Bronx end of the bridge, for a few blocks to Grand Concourse, one needs to walk with care because of all the cross streets and a lot of turning traffic.

At Park Avenue the Metro North Railroad tracks cross overhead. At this location, on the south side of East 138 Street, there used to be a grand station built by the New York Central Railroad in 1886. The station was closed and demolished in 1973. Nothing remains except a pair of manhole covers.

138 Street station. Image courtesy flickr.com.

Manhole cover at East 138 Street and Park Avenue. NYC&HRRR stands for New York Central and Hudson River Railroad (the name of the New York Central prior to 1914).

I turned north onto Third Avenue, then east onto East 140 Street. (Third Avenue is the only “numbered” Avenue in the Bronx, and is rendered as 3 Avenue only in the subway.). At the corner of East 140 Street and Alexander Avenue is the Mott Haven branch of the New York Public Library, which opened in 1905. A stately center of learning in a low-income neighborhood.

Mott Haven branch, New York Public Library.

Around the corner, on Alexander Avenue, are row houses from the 1890s that would not be out of place in “Brownstone Brooklyn.”

The intersection of East 138 Street and Alexander Avenue is dominated by the 40th Precinct station house of the New York Police Department and St. Jerome Roman Catholic Church.

St. Jerome Church.

The plaque on this statue of Saint Jerome reads “Love without truth is just sentimental. Truth without love is sterile.”

Plaque at the 40th Precinct station house.

This part of the Bronx is known as Mott Haven, named for Jordan L. Mott, who built an iron works on the Harlem River in 1828. The part of the Grand Concourse south of Franz Sigel Park was once known as Mott Avenue. The 138 Street - Grand Concourse subway station was called Mott Haven when it opened in 1918, and in a recent station renovation that got everything right except that it was not made fully accessible, some of the original Mott Haven station mosaics were restored, while other, aesthetically similar mosaics read “138 Street” and “138 Street Mott Haven.”

Mott Haven is a low-income area, part of what has been the poorest Congressional district in the United States, that used to have a lot of light industry, from Mott’s iron works to piano factories (their heyday was in the decades preceding World War I). Near the Harlem River there is still industry but also truck and bus garages and rail lines. After World War II, and after the Third Avenue Elevated was discontinued south of 149 Street in 1955, huge public housing projects were built in the southern Bronx. Through a lot of dislocation, crime, drugs, substandard housing, and much else, people have gone about their lives in an old, largely neglected neighborhood. Recently, new high-rise apartment towers have risen near the Harlem River, and shops and restaurants cater to the new arrivals. I will leave it for people who live in the southern Bronx, including Mott Haven, to say whether this change is good, but it is here. A sleek-looking wine and spirits shop on East 138 Street looked incongruous only at first.

I walked east on East 138 Street past St. Jerome Church and another public housing project, then south onto Willis Avenue. Between East 133 Street (now Bruckner Boulevard) and East 143 Street, the Third Avenue Elevated ran in a private right-of-way, a “clothesline alley,” between Alexander and Willis Avenues. There is no trace of that and most of those blocks have been obliterated by housing projects. Approaching East 135 Street on Willis Avenue there is broken sidewalk by a public housing building, so walk with care. Crossing the Major Deegan Expressway (Interstate 87), I came to the Willis Avenue Bridge. This is an early 2000s replacement of the 1901 Willis Avenue Bridge. The bike and pedestrian path is excellent.

Harlem River rail yard, circa 1920. Collection of Frank Pfuhler via nycsubway.org.

Remnant of the Harlem River rail yard, taken from the same vantage point as the preceding image.

When the city reconstructed this bridge it placed interpretive posters along the walkway. Though marred by graffiti, they still offer valuable history of the area. Beneath the Bronx end of the bridge used to be a freight yard of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, and the Harlem River passenger terminal of the New Haven’s subsidiary New York, Westchester, and Boston Railway. I have written about the “Westchester” in the “East Bronx Ramble” post on “The Stair Streets of New York City” page. The Second Avenue and Third Avenue Elevateds cut across and above the freight yards from the Harlem River bridge (between the Willis Avenue Bridge and the Third Avenue Bridge) to “clothesline alley.”

The walk ended at East 125 Street and 2 Avenue, not a subway stop but where there are bus connections to many subway lines. This walk encompassed an area with a lot of change underway. In the last ten years, Mott Haven has seen a lot of change but its many problems remain. I will be back before long to walk across the Third Avenue Bridge.

UPDATE - 13 SEPTEMBER 2023: On WNYC’s “Radio Rookies” series there was an excellent piece on the changes happening in this part of the Bronx, by a young resident of the area. Listen. http://www.wnyc.org/story/christina-adja-gentrification-bronx/

Union Square - Gramercy Zigzag (Manhattan)

WHERE: Union Square north and east to Gramercy Park

START: 14 Street - Union Square subway station (L, N, Q, R, W trains - fully accessible; 4, 5, 6 trains - not accessible)

FINISH: 23 Street subway station (6 train), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 1.67 miles (2.7 kilometers)

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

Route of this walk, reading from bottom to top.

One of the delights of walking around New York City is that one can find a lot of interesting things to see just around the corner, or on a short walk. So it is on this walk in the neighborhood of my office.

The walk begins at the top of the elevator and escalator from the concourse of the 14 Street - Union Square subway station complex to East 14 Street. The complex encompasses three stations, two of which are fully accessible. The station that is not accessible, on the Lexington Avenue Line (4, 5, 6 trains) is part of the First Subway that opened in 1904. The layout of this station will make accessibility a major challenge.

The elevator and escalator to the street are part of Zeckendorf Towers, a mixed-use development from the 1980s on the site formerly occupied by the S. Klein department store. Klein’s motto was “On the Square,” an allusion to the Union Square location of its flagship store and a suggestion of fair prices.

Nighttime view, S. Klein department store with the Consolidated Edison building in the background, 1935. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York via urbanarchive.org.

Walking east on East 14 Street, one passes the site of a longtime and long gone German restaurant, Luchow’s, before coming to Irving Place. From urbanarchive.org:

Luchow’s was a German restaurant/beer garden. It opened in 1882 at 110 East 14th Street at a time when the East Village was known as “Little Germany”, or Kleindeutschland. The restaurant would expand over the years in size and prominence, eventually occupying a space eight times as large as the original venue. In its heyday, Luchow’s was the place to see and be seen if you were a part of the music, theater, or literary crowd. It imported 70,000 half-barrels of beer a year, a daily consumption of 24,000 liters. Famous diners included Theodore Roosevelt, Diamond Jim Brady, Oscar Hammerstein, John Barrymore, Enrico Caruso, Sigmund Romberg, Lillian Russell, O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Wolfe, and Edgar Lee Masters. Luchow’s was the first restaurant in the city to get its liquor license following Prohibition’s repeal in 1933.

Interior of Luchow’s (1902 postcard).

Luchow’s in 1975. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York via urbanarchive.org.

Just across Irving Place is the headquarters of Consolidated Edison, which provides electric power and natural gas in New York City and Westchester County. The Con Edison building is on the site of the old Academy of Music (1867), a huge concert venue that could not compete with the Metropolitan Opera, which opened its opera house at Broadway and West 39 Street in 1883.

Walk up Irving Place one block, then right (east) on East 15 Street. At the northwest corner is the Irving Plaza music venue. Cross 3 Avenue, then stop at Rutherford Place. On either side of East 15 Street are buildings of the Friends Seminary, a private school founded by the Society of Friends (the Quakers) in 1786.

Two buildings of Friends Seminary, across from each other on East 15 Street.

According to The Street Book by Henry Moscow (Hagstrom Company, 1978), Rutherford Place was named for Colonel John Rutherford, “a member of the committee that laid out Manhattan’s streets and avenues beginning in 1807.” On the east side of this quiet little street is Stuyvesant Square, a park dating from 1836 that is bisected by 2 Avenue and is surrounded by a magnificent wrought iron fence. Along this walk one will see a lot of beautiful wrought iron work. The west side of Rutherford Place is dominated by the Friends Meeting House (1860), St. George’s Episcopal Church (1846 - 1856), and St. George’s Chapel (1911 - 1912).

Looking north on Rutherford Place from East 15 Street.

Rutherford Place entrance to Stuyvesant Square.

Entrance to the Friends Meeting House.

St. George’s Church.

St. George’s Chapel. Above the doorway is a bas-relief of St. George slaying the dragon and the words “Fight the Good Fight of Faith.”

At the end of Rutherford Place, on the north side of East 17 Street, is a striking row of houses (1877 - 1883), the easternmost of which has statuettes of coachmen above the first floor, reminiscent of the old “21 Club” in Midtown.

Turning left (west) on East 17 Street, we pass more late 19th century brownstone and brick buildings, and decorative wrought iron. Crossing 3 Avenue, one sees a relic of the days when this was a German neighborhood and the Third Avenue Elevated thundered overhead: Scheffel Hall (1894), once the German-American Rathskeller (beer hall), later the club Fat Tuesday’s, now in need of a new use and a lot of tender loving care. At the southwest corner of East 17th Street and Irving Place is the onetime home of the American author Washington Irving (1783 - 1859), marked by a plaque.

Wrought iron on East 17 Street.

Washington Irving plaque, southwest corner Irving Place and East 17 Street.

Continuing west on East 17 Street, we come upon the former Tammany Hall, by which name the regular Democratic Party (the “machine”) in Manhattan was long known. Tammany Hall is often associated with William Marcy “Boss” Tweed, its leader and de facto New York mayor, in the 1860s and 1870s, but Tammany Hall long outlasted Tweed. This, the last Tammany clubhouse, opened in 1928 and as of this writing is being converted to commercial use. The downfall of Tammany Hall occurred in the 1960s, led by progressives, one of whom was Edward I. Koch (1924 - 2013), who would go on to become a three-term Mayor.

Tammany Hall.

Turning right onto Park Avenue South, on the right is the W Hotel Union Square, formerly the Guardian Life Insurance Company, formerly the Germania Life Insurance Company (1910 - 1911). Germania changed its name to Guardian in the wake of anti-German sentiment during World War I. Turn right on East 18 Street, then left on Irving Place. At the northeast corner is Pete’s Tavern, in a building dating from 1829. Legend has it that O. Henry wrote “The Gift of the Magi” here. Looking up Irving Place, note Gramercy Park in the near distance, and Midtown towers such as the Chrysler Building in the far distance.

Pete’s Tavern.

Turn left on East 19 Street. On the north side of the street is 81 Irving Place, a building with a lot of bas-reliefs.

South facade of 81 Irving Place.

A bit farther along is 110 East 19 Street, a Beaux-Arts building with metal roll-down shutters. This is an electrical power substation for the subway, built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company in 1904 for the First Subway. Cross Park Avenue South, and at Broadway turn right. On the opposite corner is the massive Arnold Constable building (1869), long home to the Arnold Constable and Company department store.

IRT (now New York City Transit Authority) electrical substation, 110 East 19 Street.

Arnold Constable building, East 19 Street and Broadway.

Turning right from Broadway onto East 20 Street, we pass on the right the birthplace and childhood home of Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919), the twenty-sixth President of the United States (1901 - 1909). This house is maintained as an historic site and museum by the National Park Service.

Theodore Roosevelt birthplace, 28 East 20 Street.

Cross Park Avenue South and continue toward Gramercy Park. On the south side are two famous private clubs: the National Arts Club (1881 - 1884) and, next door, the Players’ Club (1845, remodeled 1888 - 1889). The Players’ Club was founded by Edwin Booth (the same Booth family as John Wilkes Booth) for people associated with the theatre and so it remains. Years ago I had dinner there as the guest of a theatre person who was a member of the club.

The Players’ Club (left) and the National Arts Club (right)

Wrought-iron extravaganza in front of the Players’ Club.

Gramercy Park is an inspired use of space even though it is a private park. Only people living in the buildings surrounding it, and members of the Players’ Club and National Arts Club, can use a key to enter the park. It was developed by one Samuel Ruggles in 1831, when this area was beginning to be developed. From The WPA Guide to New York City (1939):

The park’s creator, Samuel B. Ruggles, was among the first of New York’s early real-estate operators to offer for sale a development with building restrictions. He caught the fancy of the rich by guaranteeing to a selected group - those who bought his property - the exclusive us of a private park as a permanent privilege. Keys - no longer golden - to the iron gates are distributed to owners and tenants under the close scrutiny of the trustees of Gramercy Park. Residents in near-by streets who have been approved by the trustees are given keys for annual fees. All others must be satisfied with a glimpse through the gate.

Gramercy Park was a marsh in 1831 when Ruggles drained it, laid out the green and the streets on the model of an English square and offered sixty-six lots for sale. The privacy of Gramercy Park was violated only once, when troops encamped within this sacrosanct area during the Draft Riots in 1863.

Gramercy Park, looking north.

Detail of wrought-iron fence surrounding Gramercy Park.

Turn left onto Gramercy Park East, then left again onto East 21 Street, then right onto Lexington Avenue. 34 Gramercy Park East (1883) is an extravagant, wonderful structure. A passer-by told me that no. 34 is the oldest apartment house in the city (it isn’t) and that the television host Jimmy Fallon lives there.

34 Gramercy Park East.

On Lexington Avenue, cross East 23 Street and then turn left (west). The walk ends at the 23 Street subway station, at Park Avenue South. The elevator to uptown trains is on the near corner, while the elevator to downtown trains is across Park Avenue South.

This short walk certainly packed in a lot to savor about the city: a lot of history and a lot of change. It is fully accessible, and the only curb cuts that are at all problematic are when one goes east on East 20 Street crossing Park Avenue South.

Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside (Queens)

WHERE: The neighborhoods of Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside, in Queens

START: Junction Boulevard subway station (7 train), fully accessible

FINISH: 61 Street - Woodside station (7 train and Long Island Rail Road), fully accessible

DISTANCE: 2.9 miles (4.3 kilometers)

Photographs by Michael Cairl. Map courtesy footpathmap.com.

Route of this walk, reading from right to left.

When Pope John Paul II led the Roman Catholic Church, somebody once said that he could have spared himself all his overseas trips and just visit Elmhurst, Queens, with all the nationalities living there. This walk was inspired by the excellent book The Intimate City: Walking New York by the architecture critic of The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman, and took in a fascinatingly diverse and changing area.

In 1898 New York City, which previously had been confined to Manhattan and part of the Bronx, absorbed the rest of modern-day Bronx (then part of Westchester County), Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the western part of Queens County. The eastern townships in Queens County became Nassau County. This area of the new Borough of Queens was part of the pre-1898 Town of Newtown. It had some streetcar lines in the early 20th century but it only became developed after the Queensboro Bridge opened in 1909 and especially after the elevated subway along Roosevelt Avenue opened in 1917. A housing boom soon followed.

This walk started at the Junction Boulevard subway station on the edge of Elmhurst, in the midst of a busy commercial area. Here, the predominant language is Spanish, and people from all over Latin America live here. Along Junction Boulevard and elsewhere on this walk, shopkeepers took advantage of the sunshine to move a lot of their wares outside. At 37 Avenue the walk turned west. 37 Avenue runs parallel to Roosevelt Avenue and both are busy commercial corridors, but 37 Avenue is somewhat more serene as, unlike Roosevelt Avenue, it does not have elevated subway tracks overhead.

Intersection of Junction Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue, at the subway station.

Junction Boulevard between Roosevelt Avenue and 37 Avenue.

Walking west on 37 Avenue into Jackson Heights, the commerce was busy and just as diverse. The history of Jackson Heights is an interesting study in early 20th century urban development. Before 1900, Jackson Heights did not exist; it was just an unnamed part of Newtown. The name was invented by the Queensboro Corporation, which had acquired the land, constructed utilities and paved roads, and began the construction of apartments surrounding common gardens. The demand for housing in Jackson Heights was great and between 1919 and 1929 new housing was constructed at a rapid pace in both Jackson Heights and Elmhurst. These were cooperative apartments, not rentals, and when built they were restricted to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. How times have changed.

82 Street between 37 Avenue and the subway station at Roosevelt Avenue is another very busy commercial block. The co-naming Calle de Colombia probably wouldn’t have passed muster decades ago.

On 37 Avenue near 81 Street is Jahn’s, an old-time ice cream parlor and family restaurant. There used to be Jahn’s in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens, on Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx, and elsewhere around the city. Jahn’s is celebrated for the Kitchen Sink sundae, an extravaganza of ice cream and toppings.

From 37 Avenue I turned north on 81 Street and met my old friend Clarence Eckerson, who did the video that appears on the post “The Stick It to the Stroke Stair Climb and Gallivant” post on the page “The Stair Streets of New York City,” and his family. At the corner of 35 Avenue we spotted a street sign honoring the inventor of Scrabble, Alfred Butts, who lived in Jackson Heights and invented the game while living there.

The Scrabble sign at 35 Avenue and 81 Street. Note the lower street sign with the letters showing the letter scores they have in Scrabble. A clever, great tribute.

From 81 Street we turned west onto 34 Avenue, a long stretch of which has been turned into an “open street” for pedestrians, bicycles, and a greenmarket, watching for cars only at the cross streets. Barricades keep cars off 34 Avenue from 7 AM until 8 PM. At 78 Street we passed what in 2008 became a temporary play street that has been made permanent.

This and the following image show how 34 Avenue has becoome a place for people.

The New York City Department of Transportation placed concrete blocks at intersections to demarcate the open street. A local resident gave this one some local color.

We turned south on 74 Street. The block between 34 and 35 Avenues is a mix of attached houses and apartment buildings, typical of the side streets in Jackson Heights. Near Roosevelt Avenue and a major subway station, we passed a block of Indian restaurants, sari shops, and other stores, turning onto Diversity Plaza, a car-free pedestrian space.

74 Street between 34 and 35 Avenues.

Diversity Plaza between 74 and 73 Streets.

From Diversity Plaza we walked west on Roosevelt Avenue underneath the elevated subway, along low-rise 39 Avenue, south on 61 Street to the subway and Long Island Rail Road station at Roosevelt Avenue, and then to Donovan’s Pub at 58 Street and Roosevelt Avenue for their great hamburgers. This area, the end of the walk, is Woodside, once heavily Irish Catholic but now fully as diverse as Jackson Heights. In the early 19th century this area, like much of Newtown, was farmland. Plank roads to the East River and railroads were built and farmland gave way to country estates. The opening of the subway in 1917 led to a building boom here as in Elmhurst and Jackson Heights. The 61 Street - Woodside station is a hub for the subway, several bus lines (including one to La Guardia Airport), and the Long Island Rail Road.

This walk was a feast for the eyes with plenty to enjoy, and restaurants along the way catering to just about every taste. It was a fully accessible walk. There were curb cuts at every intersection and nearly all are in very good condition. On 74 Street I encountered two narrow sections of sidewalk going past trees, but they are wide enough for a wheelchair. For someone wanting an easy excursion through a very diverse area, this walk would be hard to beat. And if you want to cut the walk short, at 74 Street and Roosevelt Avenue turn east one block, enter the subway station at street level at 75 Street, and take the elevator up to the 7 train or down to the E, F, M, or R trains.