New York Offbeat Walks, page 24
On the right at 131 West 86th Street is the Jewish Center, a prominent synagogue founded in 1918. Look up high for the dates 1919 and its equivalent in the Hebrew calendar, 5680. The size of this building reflects how many wealthy Jews were moving to the UWS in the early decades of the 20th century.
When you reach Amsterdam Avenue, turn right where you find the UWS institution Barney Greengrass, “The Sturgeon King.” If you have not been before, you must try the smoked fish specialties here and soak up the atmosphere. Greengrass founded his original Jewish deli in Harlem in 1908 and moved here in 1929. You probably guessed it, but the deli has appeared in many films and television programs, most notably Seinfeld, Sex and the City, You’ve Got Mail, Deconstructing Harry, Revolutionary Road, 30 Rock, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Billions. Stars such as Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio have sat at these tables and read their lines.
Walk away from Barney Greengrass and south down Amsterdam Avenue, right down to West 83rd Street. A little farther up on the right is Café Lalo (201 West 83rd Street). In You’ve Got Mail this is where Kathleen and Joe (she only knows his email name, NY152) are due to meet. When Joe realizes his date is his bookstore rival, he does not reveal this to Kathleen who believes she has been stood up.
Continue down Amsterdam Avenue, turning left down West 82nd Street to stop at No. 155 on the left. This is where an unknown 22-year old law graduate from Cuba stayed for three months with his wife on their honeymoon in 1948. The couple enjoyed everything the city had to offer, and the law graduate contemplated studying in New York. He would return for a second trip in 1955 to continue his love affair with New York, but Fidel Castro was also seeking to raise funds for his Cuban revolutionaries. His third visit in 1959 was quite different. He was now divorced, and a media star who could draw a crowd of 16,000 when he gave a speech from a Central Park bandstand. Castro’s popularity in the United States was not to last. Opposite is the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral.
Return to Amsterdam Avenue and head left down West 81st Street, in recent years one of the most expensive streets in the city to buy an apartment. On the left is 129 West 81st Street, where Jerry Seinfeld lived in apartment 5A in the long-running series (Cosmo Kramer lives at 129 across the hall from Jerry). No filming took place here and the façade of the building seen in the show was that of a building in Los Angeles. However, fans continue to pay their respects here.
Grand apartment buildings can start to look remarkably similar, and sadly most of us will rarely (if ever) get a chance to look inside. However, two notable ones along here are 15 West 81st Street and The Beresford . The first is notable for being another design by Emery Roth and was completed by 1930. This remarkable architect was also working on The Beresford and San Remo at the same time. This features an Italian Renaissance-style design and a typical apartment here might cost around $5 million.
The Beresford on the corner dates from 1929 and its entrance faces Central Park. This was Roth’s largest apartment building and is one of the most expensive addresses in New York. It is also a favorite of celebrities who love soaring ceilings, ballroom-sized rooms, and sheer opulence. The average price here is around $10 million, and some have sold for $40 million. The list of famous people who have lived here is very long but it includes Rock Hudson, John McEnroe, Diana Ross, Meryl Streep, Calvin Klein, mobster Meyer Lansky, Glenn Close and—inevitably perhaps—Jerry Seinfeld.
Turn right down CPW, passing the American Museum of Natural History and the New-York Historical Society. Why does the latter institution have a hyphen between “New” and “York”? When the Society was founded in 1804, the hyphen was commonly used in this way right up until the mid-19th century.
A little farther down is The Kenilworth at 151 CPW. This French Second Empire-style delight was completed in 1908. Actor Basil Rathbone lived here and the greatest Sherlock Holmes used to go walking with the finest Frankenstein—actor Boris Karloff, who lived in the Dakota. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones also lived here. It is named after Kenilworth Castle in England.
Next up is The San Remo at 145-46 CPW. It has been home to Dustin Hoffman, Raquel Welch, Barry Manilow, Diane Keaton, Bruce Willis, Bono, Rita Hayworth, Stephen Sondheim, Steven Spielberg, Tiger Woods, Demi Moore, Steve Martin, and Paul Simon. Madonna’s application to live here made headlines when she was rejected by the co-op board. In 2019 it was reported that Demi Moore’s old apartment was on sale for $50 million (she had sold it for $5 million less in 2017). Completed in 1930, this is another Emery Roth design.
The Langham, The San Remo and The Kenilworth (from left)
Continue, passing The Langham at 135 CPW. Completed by 1907 at the cost of $2 million (try not to smile …), Maureen O’Sullivan and her daughter Mia Farrow lived here. Woody Allen (then Farrow’s husband) included her apartment in his film Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Other residents have included Robert Ryan and Carly Simon. Marilyn Monroe used to visit The Langham, both to see her psychiatrist and her friend and acting coach Lee Strasberg.
Walk on, passing The Dakota—the most famous apartment building of them all. When it was built in 1881, this was a very unfashionable and remote part of New York. As you have seen over the last few miles, all that was soon to change. Books have been written about this iconic building but most people associate it with John Lennon and Yoko, and inevitably Lennon’s murder here in 1980.
A fantasy residents’ social night here includes Roberta Flack, Judy Garland and Yoko singing together (Imagine!), accompanied by Lennon on guitar and Leonard Bernstein on piano. Not to be outdone, Nureyev would be dancing around the room, with the coolest of them all—Lauren Bacall—gazing on through a fog of cigarette smoke. Melanie Griffith, Carly Simon, and Billy Joel would not be at the party—their applications to live here were rejected by the co-op board. The Dakota has featured in several films, most notably Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
Now walk up West 72nd Street. The arched gateway of the Dakota facing onto the street is where John Lennon’s killer Mark Chapman hung out for several hours on December 8, 1980. At about 5 p.m., Lennon and Yoko Ono came out of here to get into a limousine. Lennon talked to Chapman briefly and signed a copy of an album for him. The couple went to the Record Plant Studio on West 44th Street, and returned here at around 10:50 p.m. When they got out of the limousine, Chapman shot Lennon, and then calmly sat down on the curb and began to read Catcher in the Rye before being arrested.
Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital by the police but was pronounced dead at 11:07 p.m. Each year thousands of people visit the memorial to Lennon in Strawberry Fields, located directly to the east of the Dakota in Central Park. The Liverpudlian is a reminder of how people born outside the city often make the biggest impression on New Yorkers.
Continue up West 72nd Street where—on the right at No. 27—is The Olcott apartment building. It used to be the Olcott Hotel and features in Taxi Driver when Bickle drops off a fare here. It is also one of the locations Mark Chapman stayed in November 1980, a few weeks before he returned to New York to murder John Lennon in front of the Dakota.
Follow the map, turning left down Columbus Avenue then left onto West 71st Street. Stop at No. 69 on the left, now a restaurant. This was the site of Café La Fortuna that was a local institution for three decades before it closed in 2008. It was a regular haunt of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and their son Sean. On Lennon’s last day he had breakfast here with Ono at their regular table. Afterwards he went to get a haircut, did a photoshoot at the Dakota and—as mentioned earlier—went to the recording studio before returning home to encounter his murderer.
Continue down Columbus Avenue, turning right onto West 69th Street. You pass on the corner No. 106 (at the time of writing a dry cleaners). It used to be a cheese and antiques shop, but during filming for You’ve Got Mail the lucky owners were paid to go away for a few weeks while their shop was turned into a movie set. It would serve as Kathleen’s independent bookstore—The Shop Around the Corner.
Continue to Broadway, and turn right, passing a real-life iconic UWS bookstore—Shakespeare & Co. It was the opening of a new Barnes & Noble store on 82nd Street that helped inspire You’ve Got Mail. Many Upper West Siders were unhappy that independent stores like Shakespeare & Co. would be severely affected and the controversy was picked up on by Nora and Delia Ephron. Fox Books was the fictionalized chain-store version.
The last stop on this walk is the astonishing Pythian Temple, reached by turning right onto West 70th Street, No. 135. Dating from 1927, it was designed as the meeting place for Pythian lodges that existed in New York. There are decorative embellishments reflecting Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian motifs.
The Knights of Pythias is a fraternal organization that has many similarities to Freemasonry although is centered around the Greek legend of Damon and Pythias. In the early 20th century, there were around a million Knights of Pythias, but in recent years this has declined to 50,000 or so. After the Knights moved out from here, this became a recording studio for Decca Records. Bill Haley and His Comets recorded Rock Around the Clock here in 1954, and the world was never the same again. Billie Holiday, Buddy Holly, and Sammy Davis Jr. also recorded here. It was converted—sadly—into yet another condo building in 1983.
Return to Broadway and continue up it to reach the end of the walk.
12
HARLEM WALK
START:
Intersection of 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard
SUBWAY:
Central Park North (110 St) ,
FINISH:
Schomburg Center
SUBWAY:
135th St ,
HARLEM
Distance: 3.5 Miles
Central Park
Placid and Saranac
Martin Luther King Jr. Playground
Martin Luther King Jr. Towers
66-72 St. Nicholas Avenue
Mount Neboh Baptist Church
Fields Court
Wadleigh Secondary School
The Community Kitchen and Food Pantry
First Corinthian Baptist Church
Graham Court
A. Philip Randolph Square
Carrie McCracken Truce Garden
Minton’s Playhouse
Harlem Hebrew Language Academy
Harlem Parish
Headquarters of the New York Chapter of the Black Panthers
The Castle
The Joseph Daniel Wilson Memorial Garden
Harriet Tubman Memorial
Police 28th Precinct Building
Hancock Park
“New York Amsterdam News” Building
Clayton Williams Community Garden
Apollo Theater
Site of Rivera Riot
Former Blumstein’s Department Store
Former Hotel Theresa
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building
The Harlem Alhambra Building
James Brown Way
Salem United Methodist Church
“Tree of Hope” Sculpture
Site of Lafayette Theater
St. Aloysius Catholic Church
Muhammad Ali Islamic Center
Bill’s Place
YMCA building
Mother Zion
Strivers’ Row
The Abyssinian Baptist Church
Salvation Army Building
Harlem Hospital Center
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
As you exit, look south to see the northern edge of Central Park, the dividing line between the Park and Harlem. The cultural significance of the divide inspired the title of the crime film Across 110th Street (1972). It depicts the struggle between Italian and African American gangsters and features Bobby Womack’s song “Across 110th Street,” which contains the forbidding lines:
“Across 110th Street
Pimps trying to catch a woman that’s weak
Across 110th Street
Pushers won’t let the junkie go free
Across 110th Street
Woman trying to catch a trick on the street, ooh baby
Across 110th Street
You can find it all in the street.”
The song accompanies the opening credits of Quentin Tarantino’s film Jackie Brown (1997) and also features in Ridley Scott’s film American Gangster (2007) about legendary Harlem drug-trafficker Frank Lucas (1930-2019).
Harlem has been considerably gentrified since the early 1970s, as will be evident during this walk.
Follow the map up Malcolm X Boulevard—also known as Lenox Avenue. It was originally known as Sixth Avenue but was renamed in 1887 after the wealthy philanthropist James Lenox (1800-80). Nothing in New York stays static, however, and in 1987 it was co-named after Malcolm X, the civil rights activist who spent much of his life in Harlem. This is the primary north-south road through central Harlem.
Stop at the right-hand corner of West 111th Street to see the beautiful apartment buildings named the Placid and Saranac, designed by C.A.F. Miller and dating from 1899. They are just a taste of the many buildings in Harlem that are among the most pleasing in the city.
Dutch settlers came to the area in the late 1650s—originally, it was “Nieuw Haarlem,” named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands, which had a population of only 40,000 or so in the mid-17th century. Farms dominated the area, and it remained largely undeveloped until the 1880s. In that decade elevated railway lines extended up Eighth and Ninth Avenues. New transport lines in a densely populated city inevitably attract speculators and developers, and row houses and later apartment buildings like these were constructed to attract wealthier white residents who could easily commute downtown.
The hopes of those early developers were overly optimistic, however. As other northern districts in Manhattan were also developed, there was an over-supply of residential buildings. Philip A. Payton Jr. (1876-1917), known as the “Father of Harlem,” was an African American entrepreneur who persuaded many white landlords struggling to fill their buildings to accept African American tenants in the early years of the 1900s. Over the next few years, thousands of African Americans flocked to the relative safety of Harlem to escape the racial and economic problems that had plagued them in the southern states and other parts of the city such as Hell’s Kitchen. The effect was that most white residents began to move away, a reminder of the city’s long-running racial tensions.
By 1914 it was estimated that three-quarters of New York’s African American residents lived in Harlem. By 1920 the community numbered around 80,000 and over 200,000 by 1930, and from it emerged a golden age of cultural activity—the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem would become known around the world as the heart of Black America, and its artists, musicians, writers and activists would influence American society in ways that the African American community had never achieved before.
Continue along, turning right (after West 112th Street) to follow the map around the Martin Luther King Jr. Playground. To your right are Martin Luther King Jr. Towers. Harlem suffered badly in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and no one was building anything as memorable as the smart apartment blocks that had been constructed in the 1880-90s. The area to our right resulted from the regeneration of Harlem after World War II. In the late 1940s, the City Housing Authority carried out an ambitious plan of urban renewal, with housing projects like this aimed at helping poorer residents.
This involved tearing down buildings on dilapidated residential streets and replacing them with a vast new residential development. The Joseph family were the first to move in in May 1952, their address then being Stephen Foster Projects Houses, named for the “father of American music” Stephen Foster (1826-84). It was later renamed after Martin Luther King Jr., another reminder of the importance of the civil rights movement to many in Harlem.
Tragedy struck here in 1989 when two local children—Christopher Dansby (2 years old) and Shane Walker (18 months)—vanished on separate dates from the playground, presumably abducted. They have never been found, and the case was featured in the Netflix series Unsolved Mysteries.
Follow the map back onto Malcolm X Boulevard and turn left, crossing over to walk down West 113th Street. At the entrance to West 113th Street, you pass more examples of fine apartment buildings from the early days of Harlem’s development as a new residential suburb. When you reach St. Nicholas Avenue, turn right. Steven Spielberg used these streets to film a number of scenes in his 2021 remake of West Side Story. The Upper West Side streets that feature in the classic 1961 movie had long since disappeared, demolished for the construction of the Lincoln Center complex.
When you reach the corner of West 114th Street, turn right where immediately on the right is 66-72 St. Nicholas Avenue. Completed in 1915, the details of its impressive frontage with its lion faces is typical of the buildings in this area. Retrace your steps, now crossing over to the other side of West 114th Street (heading west).
Harlem-Lane (St. Nicolas Avenue) from Central Park to Manhattanville, 1865
Harlem has been home to many different communities over the centuries, many of which are overlooked today given the area’s more recent reputation as the Black Mecca of the world. Originally Native Americans lived here, followed by Dutch settlers in the 1600s. Nieuw Haarlem was incorporated as a stand-alone settlement in 1660 when Peter Stuyvesant served as leader of the New Netherland colony.
Nieuw Haarlem lay about eight miles north of New Amsterdam’s boundary along Wall Street, and served as a useful bulwark against intruders heading down Manhattan island. The British later tried to rename Harlem as “Lancaster” but it never stuck. Several eminent New York families such as the Bleekers, de Lanceys and Rikers had landholdings here, however in the 19th century many local farms were struggling and some abandoned. Irish squatters arrived, followed by many other immigrant groups including German, Italian, Jewish and even Finnish.
