WHERE: East 42 and East 43 Streets, Midtown Manhattan
SUBWAY AT START: 51 Street (6, fully accessible)
SUBWAY AT FINISH: Grand Central - 42 Street (4, 5, 6, 7, S; fully accessible)
DISTANCE: 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl and Jordan Centeno.
Route of today’s walk, courtesy Google Maps.
Cold weather and unshoveled snow kept me from tackling stair streets the past several weeks, but there are three of them in the Turtle Bay neighborhood, close to each other across from the United Nations, that I correctly suspected would be clear. One is on each side of East 42 Street going up to Tudor City Place, and one at the Isaiah Wall going from 1 Avenue to East 43 Street.
According to Wikipedia, “Turtle Bay is named after a former cove of the East River, which in turn was named after the Dutch word for ‘knife.’ The neighborhood was originally settled as a Dutch farm in the 17th century, and was subsequently developed with tenements, power plants, and slaughterhouses in the 19th century. These industrial structures were largely demolished in the 1940s and 1950s to make way for the United Nations headquarters. Today, Turtle Bay contains multiple missions and consulates to the nearby United Nations headquarters.” Manhattan once had an irregular shoreline with several coves like Turtle Bay before the city was built out and the shoreline made even with landfill. The definitive map of what Manhattan looked like and was filled out to was completed in 1865 by Colonel Egbert Viele; you can see it on the Library of Congress’ Website at https://www.loc.gov/item/2006629795/.
The Isaiah Wall is across 1 Avenue from United Nations headquarters and has been the site of many peace demonstrations over the years. It gets its name from the following from the Book of Isaiah, inscribed in the retaining wall: They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Aspirational more than actual, perhaps; a challenge and rebuke to the United Nations and to all of us.
Profile of today’s walk, courtesy Google Maps.
There are 42 steps from East 43 Street down to Ralph Bunche Park at the base of the Isaiah Wall. The park is dedicated to Ralph Bunche (1904 - 1971), an African-American Under Secretary-General of the UN and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his mediation efforts in Israel in the late 1940s.
From there we walked around the corner on East 42 Street, up 40 steps to and along Tudor City Place, which crosses 42 Street on a viaduct, then down 40 steps back to East 42 Street. Tudor City is a group of mid-rise apartment buildings constructed between 1928 and 1932. They front on a pair of pleasant parks on either side of East 42 Street, and Tudor City has a air of calm detachment in busy Midtown.
From there it was an easy walk to the incomparable Grand Central Terminal (1913), passing such iconic buildings as the Ford Foundation headquarters (1967), the Daily News building (1930) and the Chrysler Building (1930). Grand Central deserves its own page, and maybe I’ll write one though there are countless books about it. Suffice it to say it was a great place to end this short walk.
Top row: two views of the Isaiah Wall and steps. Middle row: Plaque in honor of Ralph Bunche and Grand Central Terminal exterior. Bottom row: me and my friend and videographer Jordan.
Climbing up the stairs from East 42 Street to Tudor City. Video by Jordan Centeno.