Fifth Avenue & 44th Street

In addition to trying to show how everything’s connected (does that sound a tad ambitious, hehe) I’ve also come to see these writings as a kind of incidental catalog – a tiny way to make some order out of the endless and overlapping stimulus and artifacts, people and history that make up New York; a way to keep it all straight.  I often think that I should be a bit more systematic about it all: actually make lists and follow them; of neighborhoods for example, or skyscrapers or churches or certain types of buildings, certain architects or influential New York persona.  But the whole point of life I think is that it isn’t systematic; that one can casually pick up some bits of knowledge as one goes along, to be returned to or forgotten as one needs – a catalog made on the run.  That’s how it seems to really work in practice at least, and practice is reality, and reality is fun.  Well is it fun?  Most of the time.

Cornelius Vanderbilt is one of those New York persona I’ve had in mind, since touching upon him when writing on Grand Central Station.  Following the path of his life would bring you in touch with a lot of the city.  Vanderbilt’s life (as biographer T.J. Stiles notes) spanned “the presidency of George Washington through the days of John D. Rockefeller.”  Born on Staten Island in 1794, the pugilistic capitalist made his fortune in steam boats during the laissez-faire days of Jacksonian Democracy, before making an even epically huger fortune in shipping (specifically to California during the gold-rush) and railroads.  He stopped going to school at age 11, and though literate was never much of a speller.  He married his first cousin and had 13 children with her.  When she died late in his life he apparently married another cousin, 43 years his junior.  He was worth over $100 million upon his death in 1877, a record amount at the time, and left almost all of it to just one son.  (Daniel Day Lewis would probably love to play this guy…and he’d only have to shave off his Lincoln beard and keep the muttonchops).

Vanderbilt’s wealth (if not his cultured respectability) allowed him to become an early member of the New York Yacht Club – founded in 1844 by John Cox Stevens.  Stevens was the eldest son of Revolutionary War colonel John Stevens, the one-time owner of almost all of present day Hoboken.  Colonel Stevens and his second son Robert Livingston Stevens where sometime allies, sometime rivals of Vanderbilt – running steamship lines out of New Jersey and up the Hudson.  Robert L. Stevens was also president of one of the earliest railroads in the country: the New Jersey based Camden & Amboy Railroad, which began running in 1833.  That same year saw the Hightstown rail accident: the earliest recorded train accident involving the death of passengers (2 killed when the train de-railed).  Vanderbilt himself was on board and almost lost his life when his lung was punctured in the crash.  It didn’t stop him from riding railroads though, or buying railroads, or racing his steamboats against his rivals.

The New York Yacht Club was founded with racing in mind too, though specifically the more patrician-worthy sail-boat type of racing (their schooner America won the first America‘s Cup in 1851, for which the trophy was then named).  The Yacht Club’s first home was in Hoboken, on land donated by Stevens, changing locations through the years (Staten Island, Mystic Connecticut) as their membership grew.  They didn’t build their current clubhouse on West 44th Street until 1899.  The Beaux-Arts building, replete with some pretty impressive nautical decorations, was the first building designed by Warren & Wetmore (responsible for Chelsea Piers and the Con Edison tower by Union Square), the same firm that would go on design the exterior of the current Grand Central Station.  Grand Central Station: the depot for the various rail-lines Vanderbilt himself owned.  So there you go, right back to old Cornelius again….that same reminder that maybe anyone’s personal history can be a proxy for the greater history around them, although it probably helps if you were the richest person in the country.   But who knows, maybe I’ll stick with this awhile and see where Vanderbilt’s tangents take me.  Yeah, let’s get all systematical!

Park Avenue & 42nd Street

I’ll admit, I sometimes too feel like the world’s a cold and forlorn place, closed off, unrecommendable, with nothing beyond the most pedestrian or sallow gifts to offer – and then the weary, fetid soul: that oft befuddled, tired soul, no mystery so much as an incessant and repetitious recurrence.

Most of the time I’m feeling pretty good though.

I was kind of wondering the other day: what’s the heart of Midtown?  This was coming off of an earlier musing: what the hell is Midtown?  That one might be, ultimately, unknowable.  But for the first one, I figured 42^nd Street would be a decent guess.  I was only even asking the question because it was so hot out and I was thinking how inhospitable Midtown is: absorbing and radiating out its own internal heat, and then, following that (some what perversely) – standing, expectant, on its edges – I was thinking how one could feel compelled, driven almost, to delve into its thick, sun-blasted canyons of as if on some type of vision quest.  Does that make sense?  I was already pretty sweaty and delirious by now.

Heading east on 42^nd Street, from the Hudson, there’s the feeling of moving from new to old, from empty towards full, from the threshold to the established.  The crux is probably somewhere near Fifth Avenue, closer to Park.  In fact the crux, possibly, is Grand Central Station (officially Grand Central Terminal, but who cares, right?  We’re sweaty).  Grand Central is nestled firmly, snuggly, in the city fabric, in its stream – a rock really – which is impressive because in truth Grand Central is a door: an exit, a passage out of the madness.  And it’s a throw back too: the largest train station in the world (44 platforms, 67 tracks) at a time when rail travel ain’t exactly what it used to be.  Still, Metro-North remains one of the busiest commuter rails in the U.S., with about 140,000 people passing through Grand Central daily (compared to close to 600,000 over at Penn Station).

Grand Central wasn’t built for Metro-North though; it was built for the much larger and more extensive New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, the New York & Harlem Railroad, and the New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad.  The first two of those railroads, at least, were owned by “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt: who got his start (and nickname) running ferry service in the harbor out of Staten Island.  He created Grand Central in part to physically consolidate his different rail lines; the first depot was opened in 1871 (by all accounts already obsolete when it was finished), with renovations to follow in 1898 and 1900.  The big change came though only when it was decided (with much public and governmental coercion) to electrify, sink and then cover up the entire railroad yard and tracks all the way up Fourth Avenue to 96^th Street.  Out of that idea the current Grand Central Terminal, and also Park Avenue, was born.

The Terminal, completed in 1913, was a huge, expensive, ten year long endeavor, that played out as a bit of a power struggle between the two architectural firms involved: Reed & Stem and Warren & Wetmore, with Warren & Wetmore seemingly winning out (and being primarily responsible for the Beaux Arts style and details of the building).  One of Reed & Stem’s big contributions though was the use of viaducts to run Park Avenue around Grand Central Terminal, which I guess is pretty blasé today, but honestly, is pretty wacky.  It’s kind of like the past’s idea of what the future would look like, you know: let’s just run elevated roads around buildings, no problem, they’ll probably all be doing it in 30 years.  So there you go.  There’s basically a highway circling Grand Central Station like a belt, around the second floor or so – a highway – and no one even talks or gives a shit about it!

Anyway, sorry.  The interior of the terminal, of course, is very beautiful (you can’t see the highway) and famous, but probably everyone knows that already.  There’s been a move in recent years, beginning with extensive restorations in the 90s, to make Grand Central a destination in its own right, which is bearing fruit today: nice restaurants upstairs ringing the Main Concourse, gourmet shopping at the Grand Central Market, and then a host of cheaper options in the Dining Concourse downstairs.  It’s pretty cool: I mean, the building’s here already, we should use it.  I think it would be fun to get dressed up real nice, like an old-fashioned, classy 1920’s look, and sit down in the Dining Concourse with a couple different newspapers, ex-pat style, and just drink Fernet.  And then, you know, go and eat at like Chipotle.  Also the Oyster Bar (since 1913!) lists where all their beers are from, including Budweiser, which I think is great.  Like, “Hey, what do have that’s from St. Louis?”  “Man, this is delicious!”

And a whole lot more of other things.  There’s way too much about this place to fully delve into: the railroad’s history, the architecture, “Commodore” Vanderbilt himself, Park Avenue and the skyscrapers and developments that run along it.  No lack of tangents there: more than enough to get you going.  A map of our curiosity would possibly look a lot like New York City, except with way fewer straight lines and angles, and also, to read it right, you’d have to be physically running and maybe adding on to it, incessantly, just as you go, and also, probably shouting.  But it’s cool though; I mean, we’re already sweating, right?

(Originally posted Aug. 11th, 2011 on Takethehandle.com)

Broadway & 73rd Street

Surprise! I’m back on to the rich folks people. I can’t help it; they seem to have built everything around here. And because they had a lot of money their stories were well recorded too. I can actually find out about them, these people who died decades before I was born, whose lives had absolutely nothing to do with mine. I don’t even know as much about my own great-grandparents (okay, maybe my own great-great-grandparents). It points towards one reason humans build giant houses and monuments — to make sure they are remembered, to have their names stuck on to something physical. And guess what? It works. So much of the history I learn is incidental. It’s because of what I see around me, and look into.

But guess what again? It’s all just a drop in the bucket isn’t it? Our lives I mean, who we’re actually going to touch in the long run. What’s even a thousand years, in the scheme of things, especially when you’re no longer living? But isn’t that inspiring? Really, I’m serious. When I read about someone who’s dead and gone, someone I never knew, I often get that faintest whiff of their life, the world they lived in and the way it thought. Just enough for me to think, “well huh, that’s how they did it. I guess I can do anything I want. I think I’ll try it this way.” Honestly, sometimes the assholes inspire me more than the good ones. They hammer home the fact it’s all a choice. It’s all a choice. Who do you do it for? That’s up to you. Who ultimately judges your life? Well I don’t know. Uh, me? No wait, my mother! Oh yeah, or nobody.

Or maybe yourself. I wonder how William Earl Dodge Stokes rated his own. He was the gentleman who financed and built the Ansonia Hotel as well as a lot of other property on the Upper West Side. He was born into a wealthy family in New York, the grandson of Anson Greene Phelps, co-founder of the Phelps, Dodge & Company mining business and the Ansonia Clock Company. And he seemed to be a bit of a bastard. When his father died in 1881 he contested the will and sued his brother, earning a million dollar inheritance out of the affair. Four years later he began building brownstones in the Upper West Side, at a time when it was still considered the Manhattan frontier, undeveloped and cut off from the rest of the city. It was his belief that Broadway, then called the Grand Boulevard above 59th Street, would become the premier thoroughfare in New York. He was a big player in getting the city to pave the road in 1889 (ahead of Fifth Avenue) and ten years later he opened his Ansonia at 73rd Street and Broadway, the “monster” of all NYC residential buildings.

By then he’d already been divorced from his teenage wife, with the cash settlement of 2 million dollars said to be a record for his day. He’d go on to marry a much younger tenant of the Ansonia years later, ending in another litigious divorce, but that was after being sued for child support by another woman and before being shot and wounded three times by a third. I feel like Daniel Day-Lewis probably wants very badly to play this guy in the biopic of his life. His style seemed to fit, or maybe set the tone for the Ansonia. Its ornate, Beaux Arts exterior was matched by an equally sumptuous inside, including the largest swimming pool in the world in its basement, sound-proof and fire-proof walls (he hated insurance companies and did without them) and steel pipes in the walls that pumped frozen brine in the summertime, keeping the building at a uniform 70 degrees. Oh, he also kept farm animals on the roof, until the Board of Health shut him down in 1907.

It makes sense then that, despite appearances, the Ansonia was never considered fashionable by New York’s elite. It was run as a residential hotel, with furnished apartments that tenants could check in and out of as they wished. It was tied early on with pro-athletes, musicians, gamblers, and various sundry and shady types. Babe Ruth lived here and supposedly liked to stroll the halls in his silken bathroom. Chick Gandil lived here too; it was in his room that the plan was made for the Chicago “Black Sox” to throw the 1919 World Series. The opera star Toscanini, and composers Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and Mahler, all called it home as well. You get the idea: it was a rockin joint. A lot of names, a lot of personalities. And what are they to us now? Just stories really, right? Just moods. I feel like Babe Ruth today, strolling down the hallway. I feel like 1919. I’m going to stare up at this building. I’m going to snap my suspenders, stick my hands in my pockets, and say “shucks.” You wanna buy a paper mister?

(Originally posted June 5th, 2009 on Takethehandle.com)