New York Songlines: Seventeenth Street

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HUDSON RIVER









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The High Line

Corner: Bridging the street here is a disused elevated railroad that was used to transport freight along the Westside waterfront, replacing the street-level tracks at 10th and 11th avenues that earned those roads the nickname "Death Avenue." Built in 1929 at a cost of $150 million (more than $2 billion in today's dollars), it originally stretched from 35th Street to St. John's Park Terminal, now the Holland Tunnel rotary. Partially torn down in 1960 and abandoned in 1980, it now stretches from Gansevoort almost to 34th--mostly running mid-block, so built to avoid dominating an avenue with an elevated platform. In its abandonment, the High Line became something of a natural wonder, overgrown with weeds and even trees, accessible only to those who risk tresspassing on CSX Railroad property. Plans are underway to turn it into a park, open to the public; it will be a tricky balancing act to add safety and amenities without sacrificing the lost ruin quality that makes it so cool.

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Fulton Houses

NYC Housing Authority







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457 (corner): Red Rock West Saloon, a raucous bar noted for sexy bartenders. Opened in 1996; formerly the East Boondock restaurant.

417: Original site of Engine Co. No. 3 (1865). Now at 146 W. 19th Street.

Fulton Houses



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366: The unmarked doorway of Hiro, a Japanese-styled lounge located in the new Maritime Hotel (which faces 16th Street).

Covenant House

346: This Catholic home for runaway teens was plagued by sex scandal before Catholic sex scandals were trendy.

Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly Playground

Named in 1934 by Fiorello LaGuardia in honor of a right-wing feminist who ran a clinic for the poor in Chelsea.

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353: Lorge School (special education); formerly Manhattan Center of the Catholic Youth Organization

333: New York Laboratory School for Collaborative Studies (grades 6-12); NYC Museum School (6-9); the O. Henry School (6-8).

311: Suenos, hidden-away Mexican restaurant that replaced the romantic Alley's End.

307: Energy Kitchen, healthy fast food.





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270: Grand Chelsea







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249-253: This building was the wagon house of the Siegel-Cooper department store, from which delivery wagons would race to deliver merchandise to the "Big Store's" upscale customers.


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194: Site of the last home of exotic dancer Lola Montez. Once the mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria, she died here in poverty, January 17, 1861.

136: IS: Industries Stationery Store; ultra-cool paper store

132: Homeworks Kitchen & Bath

124: McBurney YMCA Chelsea Center

120: Monte de Sion Pentecostal church

118: Angel Street Thrift Shop

110: Flatiron Color Lab; digital archival prints





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143: Housing Works Thrift Shop; proceeds go to a terrific AIDS support group.

139: Aronson's Tile & Carpet; since 1867

123: Door Store furniture

117: The original location of Barney's, founded by Barney Pressman in 1923.

111: Snackbar; fancy appetizers

109: Built as a coach house in 1869, which became a livery stable (whose ad was still visible most of a century later). Later Alliance Paper & Twine.

107: Da Umberto; the best food in Chelsea, according to Zagat.

Corner (595 6th Ave): World Famous Ray's Pizza; not even locally famous.


S <===           6TH AVENUE           ===> N

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New York Foundling Hospital

Corner: Founded in 1869 on the Upper East Side; moved here in 1988 to take advantage of lower real estate costs.

50: SBNY; formerly Splash, a gay bar. They changed the name when they got rid of the showers for the go-go boys.

48: Apartment 48; home furnishings

46: Chelsea Inn

36: Barry Supply Co.; Replacement Hardware Specialists

30: School of Visual Arts sculpture studios

Center for Jewish History

22: Houses the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Yeshiva University Museum and more.

Corner: Banana Republic; clothing chain

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55: Charles P. Rogers beds









47: A.I. Friedman; paper, books, framing etc.

37: 17, rock 'n' roll lounge; Basta Pasta, Japanese/Italian fusion

33: Chelsea Kids Quarters, children's furniture. Upstairs is Lens & Repro Equipment Corp., a store for camera buffs.

25: Association in Manhattan for Autistic Children

21: AZ, restaurant/club




Corner: The Gap, clothing chain


S <===           5TH AVENUE           ===> N

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Corner (95 5th Ave): Kenneth Cole, conceptual shoe store

16: Beads of Paradise, paradise for bead-lovers

20: Dance Forum--NY

22: From 1884 until 1889, this was the address of the Manhattan Chess Club--a group whose members have included three world champions.

24: Chop't Creative Salad

Hartford Building

26 (corner): Houses Rainbow Falafel; some say the best in town. Also a fish & chips store.

Bruce Kayton reports that Emma Goldman had a massage parlor at the corner of 17th and Broadway; I think it must be this 1895 building, built for the Hartford Carpet Co. Later it housed the offices of Partisan Review, and of poet Allen Ginsberg.

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Corner (97 5th Ave): Lee's Gourmet Deli

7: Johnny Lat's Gym

9: Cafe Medina (was Caffe Simpatico?), noted for its eclectic soups; Edo Japanese Restaurant. Here was the office of the Goelet family, important developers, until they moved to the Goelet Building at Broadway and 20th in 1887.

17: Sushi Jones






Corner (857 Broadway: Tisserie, Venezuelan bakery/coffeehouse, was Union Square Deli. Painter Isabel Bishop's studio was on the 4th floor from 1934-44, helping to name the "14th Street School" of social realism.


S <===     UNION SQUARE WEST / BROADWAY       ===> N

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Union Square

Union Square was not named for the North or for labor, but for the fact this stretch of roadway can be construed to be part of both Broadway and what was once the Bowery, at that time Broadway's rival as NYC's main street. In the city plan of 1811, Broadway was supposed to be eliminated north of 14th Street, permanently uniting it with Fourth Avenue. Fortunately, NYC was unable to raise money to reroute Broadway, saving Manhattan from complete predictability.

Union Square has a rich political history: 250,000 gathered here to support Union during the Civil War (1861), the largest crowd ever assembled in North America up to that point; the first U.S. labor day parade (September 5, 1882); Emma Goldman was arrested for telling the unemployed to steal bread (1893); funeral march for Triangle Shirtwaist Fire victims (1911); protests against Sacco & Vanzetti's execution (1927), and against the Rosenbergs' (1953). After the World Trade Center was destroyed, the square became an impromptu memorial and peace vigil.

The parking lot at the north end of the square hosts the Union Square Greenmarket; Manhattan's premier farmers' market. It's also a meeting place for the Society for Creative Anachronism.

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Corner: The building with the Petco was from 1974 until 1987 the final location of Andy Warhol's Factory. From 1980-89, it also housed Underground, a new wave dance club featured in the movie Liquid Sky. (Around 1987, it changed its name to Union Square.)

31: In 1872, this was the address of the City Club.

The Century Building

33: This 1881 Queen Anne masterpiece, designed by J. William Schickel, housed the publishers of The Century and the children's magazine St. Nicholas (which was Edna St. Vincent Millay's first publisher). Architect George B. Post also had an office here. Now a Barnes & Noble; Mel Gibson buys a copy of Catcher in the Rye at this branch in the movie Conspiracy Theory; Carrie and her friends shop for self-help books here on Sex and the City.

Everett Building

Corner (200 Park South): Built in 1908, this building's functionalist design was a taste of things to come in skyscrapers. Rothman's clothing store, on the ground floor, is in a former Chase bank branch; suits are now sold in the basement vault.

Built on site of the Everett Hotel, a popular bunk for entertainers. On November 7, 1876, it threw a victory party for the Democratic presidential candidate, New York's own Samuel Tilden--who had his victory stolen by Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.


S <===           PARK AVENUE SOUTH           ===> N

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Tammany Hall

100-102: The final home, built in 1928, of the club that dominated New York politics for decades. Named for an Indian chief known, like the club, for his anti-British attitudes. The hall is now home to the New York Film Academy, a movie-making school, and to the Union Square Theater.

112: This brownstone looks like a Bedrock mansion.

118: The Irving; one of a row of handsome brownstones

"Irving House"

Corner (49 Irving): Washington Irving did not live here, contrary to the plaque; nor did Irving's nephew live here, as some guidebooks alternatively suggest. This was the home of Edgar Irving, a seemingly unrelated merchant; the fact that the street was named for Washington Irving, and that a nephew whom the writer frequently visited did did live nearby seems to have caused the confusion.

This house was lived in by Elsie de Wolfe, an early and influential interior decorator who redecorated the White House in 1902, and by her lover, Elizabeth Marbury, literary agent for Shaw, Oscar Wilde and J.M. Barrie. Currently Yama, a noted sushi place, is in the basement.

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W Union Square

Corner (201 Park Ave S): Fancy hotel houses bars Olives, Underbar. The building with its four-story mansard roof was built in 1911 for the Germania Life Insurance Co.; when World War I prompted a name change, Guardian Life was chosen because several letters could be re-used in the building's light-up sign. Theodore Dreiser rented an office here in 1925 to finish An American Tragedy.

105: Built in 1961 as a modernist annex to the Guardian Life building; designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.









117: Katherine Anne Porter wrote Ship of Fools here in 1953.

119: Sal Anthony's Pilates

121: Charming carriage house

Corner: Site of the Blue Bell Tavern, a favorite O. Henry drinking spot.


S <===           IRVING PLACE           ===> N

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Washington Irving High School

Corner: Built in 1911-13 as the Girls' Technical High School, its students have included actors Claudette Colbert and Whoopi Goldberg. The interior is worth checking out.

The giant bust of Irving was sculpted in 1885 by Friedrich Beer. It was placed first in Central Park and then in Prospect Park before being rededicated here in 1935.

The school was built in part on the site of the National Conservatory of Music of America, which was located on this corner at No. 126-128; composer Antonin Dvorak was for a time its director, and Victor Herbert a teacher.

Corner: Gramercy Cafe, diner. At this corner, at No. 146-148, was the Conservatory's concert hall.

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Corner (52 Irving): Irving restaurant

125: Cafe Spinoza

125 1/2: Pure Juice and Take Away, a carryout version of Pure Food and Wine, the raw food place on Irving. Was Bar Demi.




141: Time magazine was founded in what is now a bike shop.

143: St John the Baptist; Greek Orthodox church

145: Corbet & Coney Cafe




S <===           3RD AVENUE           ===> N

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200 (corner): Mumbles restaurant; "a soul-sucking vacuum"--Shecky's

210: Monbijou apartments


RUTHERFORD PLACE

Stuyvesant Square

For some reason, this park isn't the vibrant public space that its cousins--Union Square, Tompkins Square, Washington Square--are. Part of the reason is that the park is bisected by 2nd Avenue; the neighborhood is also too dominated by one type of use--hospitals.

The west side of the park features a statue of Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam and a major landowner--a descendant of his gave the city the land for this park. The statue has a view of the Friends Meetinghouse, which is ironic considering Stuyvesant's hostility to Quakers.









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225: Hotel 17, hip and cheap; appears as the Hotel Waldron in Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery.

231-235: Hazelden New York rehab center is in a gothic building originally built in 1877 as the St John the Baptist House, later used by the Salvation Army.

237: Site of St Andrews Convalescent Hospital

241: Novelist William Dean Howells lived in this nondescript brownstone in the 1890s. From observations from daily walks in the neighborhood, he wrote A Hazard of New Fortunes--"probably the first novel to offer a realistic view of New York," Stephen Plumb notes.

Sidney Webster House

245: This 1883 house is the only surviving New York residence designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the architect of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal and the central section of the Metropolitan Museum. Now houses a psychiatric day treatment center.

283: The address of Lazlo Kreizler, the title character of The Alienist.

Rutherford Place Apartments

303-305 (corner): Was New York Lying-In Hospital (1899); in the early 20th Century, 60 percent of all NYC hospital births were here. Note the dancing babies on facade. Converted to an apartment building, which Wesley Snipes, Judd Nelson and David Lee Roth have all called home.


S <===           2ND AVENUE           ===> N

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Stuyvesant Square

Statue of Anton Dvorak seems to have been offered as a consolation for tearing his house down.





PERLMAN PLACE

Beth Israel Medical Center

Founded in the late 19th Century on the Lower East Side, Beth Israel is now part of Continuum Health Partners.



330: This was author William Dean Howells' address when he first moved to this neighborhood in 1888.


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Hospital for Joint Diseases

301 (corner): Founded in 1905, moved here in 1979, it's one of five orthopaedic/rheumatologic hospitals in the world.

305: Site of the "Little Mothers'" Aid Society, which helped girls who looked after younger siblings while their parents worked. Later was the house of Tammany Hall leader "Boss" Charles Murphy, the most powerful figure in the New York politics of his day, who died here in 1924.

317: Fierman Hall; houses the Peter Krueger Clinic for the Treatment of Immune Disorders

327: Robert Mapplethorpe Residence; home for people with AIDS. Despite protests (including one from Vaclav Havel), this building replaced the one where composer Antonin Dvorak lived (1892-95) when he was director of the National Conservancy of Music. He wrote his New World Symphony here in 1893.

353 (corner): Gilman Hall, housing for Beth Israel. This was the first home of writer Teresa Gardstein.


S <===           1ST AVENUE           ===> N

Stuyvesant Town

420-440: Built in the late 1940s by Met Life Insurance Co. as affordable housing; now being converted to luxury condos. Built on the site of the notorious Gashouse District, where fumes from chemical plants kept out all but the poorest immigrants. Terrorized by the Gashouse Gang.-->


          FDR DRIVE          




EAST RIVER





Is your favorite Seventeenth Street spot missing? Write to Jim Naureckas and tell him about it.

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