Jane’s Walks are walks that take place the first weekend of May that are led by ordinary citizens and honor Jane Jacobs, an activist known for thwarting Robert Moses when he was trying to develop a six-lane highway through lower Manhattan in the ’50s and ’60s. One of the interesting things about Jane’s Walks is that the group leaders create their own itinerary, based on their interests and local expertise. As usual, I prepared a very ambitious agenda and also, as usual, managed to not make it to all of the walks on my list.
After work on Friday, May 4, I caught up with a group whose leader was having us stroll through the west side in the low 70s, learning about architecture and some of the people who had lived in a few of the buildings that he highlighted. Our first stop was the Pythian, located at 135 W. 70th Street. Built as a meeting lodge for the Knights of Pythias, it has gone through several incarnations, including a stretch when Decca Records had a studio there. Notable artists who recorded there are Billie Holliday, Buddy Holly, and Sammy Davis Jr. We then strolled over to the Dorilton, at 171 W. 71st Street. Completed in 1902, it’s a marvelous example of the Beaux-Arts style and really quite an eyeful. We stopped in Verdi Square to ogle the Ansonia which, when it was built, had a farm on the roof. Among its roster of famous names, Babe Ruth, Theodore Dreiser, Arturo Toscanini, and Igor Stravinsky are some of the biggies. And its baths were, of course, the Continental Baths which played an early role in the careers of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow. The next stop was the Hotel Belleclaire, at 250 W. 77th Street, designed by architect Emory Roth and completed in 1903. There were more stops, but I ditched early and hightailed it home to the east side. The guide, who in real life is a guide for one of the bus tour companies, was extremely knowledgeable.
I had five walks on my schedule for Saturday but only made it to three of them, starting out in Brooklyn on a tour that had a literary flair. We began at the Eagle Warehouse & Storage building which was originally the offices of the Brooklyn Eagle. A notable editor there was none other than Walt Whitman. As we got further into Brooklyn Heights, we learned a lot about February House, which was run as a sort of artist’s commune in the 1940s. Notable names there included George Davis, Aaron Copland, Gypsy Rose Lee, W. H. Auden, Leonard Bernstein, Carson McCullers, and Benjamin Britten. Interesting aside, here—February House was spared but a lot of other buildings in this neighborhood were demolished when the BQE was being built. And activists saw to it that the BQE's design was changed, which is why it's a tiered highway. Oh, the brains behind the BQE? Robert Moses. We then went on to see Norman Mailer’s house and learned about some of the antics that Truman Capote got up to when he stayed there for a while. Since time was running out for me, I left the tour a little early and, eventually, made my way back to Manhattan (weekend subway service can be spotty and hit or miss sometimes).
Walk number two was Tin Pan Alley—this was more of a stroll than a walk because we stayed on one block of W. 28th Street. Witmark & Sons publishing house opened c.1893 at 49-51 W. 28th Street. Several other publishers, with their song pluggers (people hired to sing the new songs, in hopes of selling the sheet music), opened along the same stretch of the street. Harry Von Tilzer (interesting back story there), composer of Wait ’Til the Sun Shines Nellie and A Bird in a Gilded Cage, was generally referred to as the Dean of Tin Pan Alley. His brother Albert managed to pen a hit song as well with Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1908). Other titles mentioned in this tightly packed (lots of people, narrow sidewalks, Saturday morning shoppers) event included After the Ball, by Charles K. Harris (1891), and (I’m not making this up, you know) Dill Pickles, A Rag, by Charles Johnson (1906).
After an al fresco lunch (falafel sandwich on a park bench, er, on a pita but eaten while sitting on a park bench) I found walk number three, even though the meeting instructions were a bit unclear. This one focused on women with a connection to Washington Square Park. I didn’t take too many notes but I know that Eleanor Roosevelt figured into the mix as did Peggy Guggenheim. Other women authors, publishers, and artists were also mentioned, with the guide pointing out where they had lived and when. One name I did write down, however, was Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven—how could I not share a name like that with you? She was part of the dada and avant-garde movements in New York. Even though I cut this walk short, I was thwarted by the MTA and missed the start of my fourth walk, in Harlem.
Rather than kill two hours before my fifth planned walk that would have ended in Times Square at 7:30pm (what was I thinking?), I decided to call it a day. In fact, I’m going to call this a post and then attack Sunday’s walks anew.
WalkMeister
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