Map of today’s walk, courtesy Google Maps.
WHERE: East 63, East 60, East 57, East 56, East 51 Streets, Midtown Manhattan
SUBWAY AT START: 63 Street - Lexington Avenue (F, Q; fully accessible)
SUBWAY AT FINISH: 51 Street (6; fully accessible)
DISTANCE: 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl.
After the last walk near the United Nations, I was eager to tackle the other stair streets on the city’s list that are in the same area. So I headed to the Upper East Side. As it happens, four of the five stair streets on this trip are ramps, three of them ADA-compliant and one (60 Street) a re-purposed and steep entrance ramp to the FDR Drive.
Profile of today’s walk, courtesy Google Maps.
The “stair street” at East 63 Street, actually a suspension bridge over the FDR Drive and a ramp down to the riverfront promenade, is at the south end of a clutch of medical institutions: the Animal Medical Center, Rockefeller University, Weill-Cornell Medical Center (a.k.a. New York Hospital), Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and the Hospital for Special Surgery.
Clockwise from top left: pedestrian bridge at East 63 Street and, above it, pedestrian bridge connecting two Rockefeller University buildings; Queensboro Bridge and, to its right, Cornell University’s tech campus on Roosevelt Island; obligatory selfie on the riverfront promenade.
You think Manhattan is flat? Guess again. This is one block of York Avenue beneath the Queensboro Bridge.
Leaving the East 60 Street ramp, I walked up a steep block of York Avenue to its continuation, Sutton Place. The late political writer Theodore White called the Upper East Side of the 1960s the “perfumed stockade” but the description applies equally to Sutton Place and adjacent streets. Inside those apartment buildings, most of them bland, is a lot of money. The passageway at the end of East 57 Street leads down to a pleasant park, and the passageway at East 56 Street leads from it.
Sutton Place South ends at East 53 Street, within sight of the United Nations, necessitating a walk west to 1 Avenue, south to East 51 Street and east to the one actual stair street on the trip. This is 28 steps down to the level of the pedestrian bridge crossing the FDR Drive, and another 31 steps down to the riverfront promenade. I walked back up to East 51 Street, the upper flight being a more difficult climb for the lack of a handrail. I had to hold on to a wrought iron fence set back from the stairway. From there I walked a block south on Beekman Place and then along East 50 Street past several countries’ missions to the United Nations to the subway.
Total steps : 59 down, the same 59 up, total 118, a fairly modest amount but the hills and ramps made today’s walk a pretty good workout.
Left to right: ramp down to to the promenade at East 57 Street, looking toward the walkway at East 51 Street, graffiti on the East 51 Street walkway.