Side Streets: New York City Firehouse

I had turned off Broadway, a main thoroughfare of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, onto 83rd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues yesterday when a building on the south side of the street stopped me in my tracks.

Amid West 83rd Street’s late 19th-century tenements and down-at-the-heels walk-ups was a five-story, brick firehouse with a broad, red door trimmed with gold. It was decked out with carved, stone trim, stone lintels above the windows and a lovely iron pulley at the top to hoist hay for the horses that pulled the fire trucks in 1888 when it was built.

A plaque named the fire commissioners at that time, and the architect, N. Le Brun & Sons. When I got home, I looked them up. Napoleon Eugene Henry Charles Le Brun was born in Philadelphia, which is where I come from, and was the architect of several beloved Philadelphia landmarks, including the Academy of Music and the vast Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul on Logan Circle.

Le Brun moved to New York City during the Civil War, and by 1888, was in business with his sons, Pierre and Michel. They designed many New York City firehouses as well as the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, one of the city’s first skyscrapers.

The other names on the firehouse plaque were equally interesting. All were Tammany Hall politicians — Tammany Hall being the organization that ran New York City politics for almost a hundred years, dispensing graft and patronage in exchange for votes.

Richard Croker, for instance, whose name appears on the firehouse, was two years old when he came to the United States from Ireland. Eventually he became the leader of Tammany Hall, where he became enormously wealthy off the bribe money he took from the owners of brothels, bars and gambling dens. He spent the last years of his life in Ireland, where he died in his castle.

When you travel, I recommend leaving yourself enough time to turn down the side streets. Often they are as interesting as the attractions touted by the guidebooks!

Terese

Arctic New York

Twice I've traveled north of the Arctic Circle, but yesterday visitors from north of the Arctic Circle came to my neighborhood in New York City.

After a heavy snowfall, I was walking in Battery Park at the southern end of Manhattan when I spotted some handsome birds swimming in the Hudson River. They proved to be brants — sea geese who summer in the Arctic and winter on the East Coast of the United States. I learned that they have glands that enable them to drink sea water and filter out the salt and that they like to eat eelgrass and crustaceans. I hope that New York gave them a friendly welcome.

My walk was rewarding in other ways as well. The architecture of trees and grasses was particularly beautiful against the snow, and the cold, moody skies seemed to suit Battery Park's war memorials and the sculpture formerly in the plaza of the World Trade Center, which is now in the park.

In general, I find there's a lot to be said for off-season travel. In addition to smaller crowds and lower prices, as I found yesterday, there can be wonderful, unexpected experiences.

Terese

Fall Foliage in New York City

Though some people may feel the need to head for New England to see masses of brilliantly colored autumn leaves punctuated by white church steeples, New York also has wonderful autumnal displays. In Manhattan's Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park, we have Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's legacies, and now, in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, we have another great landscape artist at work. In an exposed marine environment that must resemble in some ways his native Holland, Piet Oudolf has massed tall grasses and flowers to create a poetic, wild-looking enclave that is, in fact, carefully planned. Oudolf's garden is less than four years old and will only grow more lovely as it matures, but already it gleams. It's worth a trip to Lower Manhattan to wander along its serpentine paths.

Terese

Another September in Lower Manhattan

As soon as Lower Manhattan reopened to the public after the destruction of the World Trade Center in September 2001, visitors started arriving. They're still coming.

At first the visitors left flowers, photos, candles, mementos and notes that they pinned to the metal fence surrounding the site. Now, they mostly look at the construction equipment and the few displays near the site, perhaps buy a booklet or a New York City baseball cap from a souvenir vendor and take photographs. But it would be a mistake to think that most of them are just gawking. A week ago, I walked by the World Trade Center site and asked a few people at random where they were from and their thoughts about what they saw there.

To my surprise, everyone that I happened to talk to came from outside the United States, with the exception of one man who was working at 2 World Financial Center on Sept. 11, 2001 and had brought his daughter and two of her college friends to see Ground Zero. I spoke to four Italians, a young man from Belgium, a woman from Spain and a Catholic priest from England.

The Spanish woman said to me in halting English, "The pain is our pain. In Spain, we had the same in Madrid on March 11 with the train that was bombed. We cried for the American people and we cried for the Spanish people, too. We are brothers because we’ve got the same pain." When we parted, she kissed me on the cheek.

And so another September 11 approaches. There will be speeches, the reading of the names, and there will be flowers pinned to the chain link fence. And visitors will continue to come. Should you be among them, be sure to visit St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway. The chapel was finished in 1766 and is Manhattan's oldest public building in continuous use. This is where George Washington worshipped after he was inaugurated as the first president of the United States on April 30, 1789.

Miraculously, considering how close it is to the World Trade Center site, St. Paul's survived the attack. In the aftermath of the destruction, the chapel was used by rescue workers as a place to eat and rest. Scuff marks from their ash-covered shoes are still on the pews.

Usually, the chapel is open from Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays. On Sept. 11, the chapel will be open to the public from 8 a.m. for prayer and reflection.

Terese

New York Greenmarkets

For the last 31 years, Greenmarkets in New York City have been bringing local farmers and city residents together for their mutual benefit. The farmers get an outlet for their products and city dwellers get beautiful, fresh food at reasonable prices -- plus a chance to get to know people whose way of life is so different from their own.

Every day of the week from spring through Thanksgiving, there's a Greenmarket somewhere in New York City. Sixteen of the Greenmarkets run year round.

The largest is on Union Square in Manhattan. On a typical Saturday in the height of the growing season, around 60,000 people shop there.

But there are Greenmarkets throughout the boroughs that are as central and haimish as the old wells and fountains in European villages. These are places where neighbors run into each other and chat and where it's easy to strike up a conversation even with a stranger.

For visitors to New York, a neighborhood Greenmarket is a great way to meet New Yorkers — and also to cut down on the cost of a New York City visit.

On a Saturday, stop by the Tribeca Greenmarket, for instance, on Greenwich Street just north of Chambers. Buy some fresh fruit (strawberries, blueberries and peaches are in season, with apples and pears on the horizon), some cheese, bread, milk or yogurt, and maybe some carrots and cucumbers, and take your picnic into the Washington Market Park, which is right next to the Greenmarket.

For Greenmarket schedules and locations, see www.cenyc.org/site http://www.cenyc.org/site.

Meet a Greenmarket merchant at http://www.TravelArtsSyndicate.com/fish

Terese

Dublin in New York

The Dublin of James Joyce's "Ulysses" barely exists any more, though tour guides will point out the brick building with the faded sign that says "Finn's Hotel," which is where Nora was working as a chambermaid when she and Joyce met. But Joyce's cascade of words brings it all back.

For the last 26 years, some New Yorkers have observed Bloomsday — June 16 — the date on which the events of "Ulysses" occurred — by attending the marathon reading at Symphony Space (Broadway at 95th Street). Dozens of well-known actors read from "Ulysses" and other Joyce works starting at noon and continuing until midnight.

"Ulysses" can be a hard slog for many readers, but I wonder if Joyce scholars would quarrel with me when I say that it was meant to be heard. It is full of poetry and playlets that come to life on the stage. I attended part of the reading last year and was entranced.

Tickets to the marathon are sold in three-hour segments. For more information, call the box office at (212) 864-5400 or go online at www.SymphonySpace.org.

Terese

Brooklyn to Broadway

Last night, I saw "Hairspray" — a good-natured, high-energy, cartoon version of the 1960's, now in its fourth year on Broadway. Shannon Durig, who presently plays tubby Tracy Turnblad, the Baltimore teen who longs to dance on the TV show she admires, comes to Broadway from Overland Park, Kansas, and is as sunny and genial off-stage as she is on. Naturi Naughton, who plays a young, black teenager who also would like to dance on the TV show and is excluded because of her race, is a 22-year-old from East Orange, N.J. Judine Somerville, one of two cast members who has been singing and dancing in "Hairspray" since the beginning of its Broadway run, grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, one of Brooklyn's troubled neighborhoods in the 1960's and now getting gentrified.

Most actors would be over the moon to be in a Broadway show, much less a long-running one that guarantees them steady work and a decent paycheck. New York is a place where anything can happen, and sometimes does. On Broadway at twenty-two? Why not?

That's what keeps people coming here — and coming and coming — New York, the place where dreams even bigger than dancing on a TV show sometimes come true...

Terese

Street Food

Yesterday on Manhattan's Upper West Side, I saw my first Mister Softee truck of the season and stopped to buy a small vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. The return of Mister Softee is like the return of the robin — a sign of spring. Through the summer and into the warm days of fall, the jingle of the ice cream trucks is the evensong of many New York neighborhoods.

With cone in hand, I walked up Broadway, remembering other street food that I have loved. When I was growing up in Philadelphia, there were chestnut vendors. I would come out of the subway near City Hall on a cold, winter's day, greeted by the smell of chestnuts roasting over hot coals. Two bags, one in each pocket, would keep my hands warm and sustain the long walk to the art museum, which was my usual destination.

On a recent trip to Portugal, I encountered chestnut vendors in Alentejo province, and couldn't pass them by. They sold their chestnuts in little paper cones — not piping hot like the ones of my youth, but still plump and meaty. In Evora, I photographed a chestnut vendor's cart on the main square.

Street food can be like Proust's petite madeleine — embodying a time and place and bringing back a flood of memories. As a travel writer, I always notice it, and when I dare, partake.

Terese

Getting Started

I recently spoke about travel writing at the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA)'s national conference — and the usual question was posed by a member of the audience. "How can I get started as a travel writer?" he asked. He was thinking about the cost of a big, exotic trip and the uncertainty of getting a published clip from it. I answered as I always do — start local. All you have to do to be a travel writer is walk out your door and look around.

At that moment, we were in a hotel conference room on East 42nd Street in New York City.

Grand Central Terminal was on one side of the hotel and the Chrysler Building on the other side. Both of those would make excellent travel stories (Grand Central Terminal, with its international food court, shops, architecture, Oyster Bar restaurant, Campbell Apartment, history and connection to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who helped to save it from destruction — and the stunning, Art Deco Chrysler Building, which could be a lead-in to a travel article on Art Deco Manhattan).

There were at least a dozen more possible travel stories within blocks of where the man who wondered how to get started was sitting.

I admit that not every place is as rich in travel-article possibilities as New York City. But if you want to be a travel writer, chances are you're already sitting on a mine of material. Start digging.

Terese

P.S. — Even if you don't want to be a travel writer and find yourself in New York, I suggest that Grand Centr`l Terminal is worth visiting. Here's the Web site for more information: http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/default.aspx. If you're interested in Art Deco New York, start with the Art Deco Society of New York, www.artdeco.org.

Springtime in New York

After a deluge that roiled the Hudson River and unseasonable cold, spring has finally come to Manhattan. It's warm today and almost hot, but not too hot. People in my neighborhood are sitting on the grass, their faces turned toward the sun, or picnicking or thronging the promenade that stretches along the Hudson River from the Battery at the southern tip of the island to midtown. There is an unspoken joyfulness.

If you're visiting New York, think about coming to Lower Manhattan. For a few days, you'll find trees with masses of delicate, white blossoms lining the streets and in the parks. They are perfection before the petals fall, creating delicately scented carpets. Under the trees, tulips, daffodils and irises are in bloom. They will be followed throughout the spring and summer by a kaleidoscope of flowers. Some of the loveliest gardens in New York City are in Lower Manhattan, along the river.

You can stop in the World Financial Center to buy lunch (or gelato at Ciao Bella!) and then take your food to one of the benches facing the river, where you can look at the yachts in the North Cove or watch the freighters and sailboats. Toward 5 p.m., when the tide flows out, you may see cruise ships on their way to Europe or the Caribbean. As the water warms up in the later spring, you'll see people in kayaks, and there are several places where you can rent (or borrow) boats and gear and join them.

Is this Manhattan as you imagined it? I bet it isn't!

Terese