[Robert Schonfeld]

I like to walk. This is a great city for it. Louie likes to walk too. The range of our typical walks is 40th Street to 110th Street. Nearly every day, we cover at least a couple of miles of this along the eastern edge of the island. Weekends, we often cover the whole thing.

There are several very interesting gardens along the way. At Tudor City, two rectangles, each one of at least several thousand square feet, face the Fred F. French Companies' apartments, built in the mock-Tudor style of the late twenties that precedes and overlaps the early Art Deco in New York. These gardens have been landmarked, which is a good thing, because their huge footprints would be irresistible to today's megatower builders.

Like almost all large public gardens in New York, the Tudor City gardens had fallen into neglect, to the point that they were messy, scrubby, ugly pieces of ground; not gardens at all. Then, like so many large public gardens in New York, they began a process of renewal. Although they still show no evidence of a clear, let alone inspired, design, they are most pleasant. Locals up there tell me that there is in fact a long term plan, and every season a little more improvement is seen. They'll never be Russell Page gardens (the little space behind the Frick, viewable from 70th Street, is a small masterpiece by Page), but they are lovely. As far as I can tell, one guy, who doesn't even live in Tudor City, takes care of these two large plots. It's the sort of unsung volunteerism that is more common than many would believe.

Because it takes just a little bit of effort to get to Tudor City (think L'Impero), both foot and automobile traffic are very much lighter than on the nearby midtown streets. Consequently, these few blocks have the feeling of a true enclave, apart and protected. The pace is slower, neighbors sit on benches. There is a balloon shop.

Because the buildings themselves are not and will never be luxury status buildings, the local character seems more likely to be maintained as well. This is a modest place that just happens to be quite beautiful.

By contrast, down below, on the east side of First Avenue between 41st and 43rd Streets, is a very fine piece of hardscaping that has not gotten the best use. The southernmost part of it is called Trygvy Lie Place, after the first Secretary General of the UN. A little sign there indicates that the space came under the Parks Department in 1948, as part of the project, directed by Robert Moses, to widen 1st Avenue. A sign nearby, on the granite wall that forms the base of Tudor City, says that the 1st Avenue underpass, an ugly piece of road, was built in 1950-1952. Presumably all this was going on in readiness for the UN construction project.

A little fenced in garden called, I think, Ralph Bunche Garden, or something like that, also occupies space on the same side of the street between 42nd and 43rd Streets. The design of this whole stretch is meant to be an apron for the United Nations. It is institutional in scale . It is nearly neglected. What plantings remain are not well cared for. The community spirit that works so well upstairs in Tudor City seems almost quaint a staircase (The Sharansky Staircase at the northern terminus of the Raoul Wallenberg Walk of the United Nations Plaza) below, where there is international theater on the grandest scale, and yet another indifferent piece of large scale sculpture. I know that the people who have cleaned it up in recent years, and whatever unseen hand hand has had the homeless set up elsewhere, would take exception, but this space tells a story of opportunities not taken, maybe like the UN itself, but that's another thing.

Whatever one thinks of the UN, though, it would be right difficult to find a critic of its gardens. Unlike the earnest gardens of Tudor City, or the sad scraggle of the stuff across the street, the UN gardens are spectacular, world class, impeccably maintained scapes. The bad news is that most of them have been closed to the public for at least two and a half years, including a large rose garden.

You can still see a lot just from the street, though. The cherry trees in front of the Secretariat, pruned by a master. Studying the cutting on these trees has occupied hours of my time over the years. it would be a charge to meet the person who's done it. I've heard it's a man and that he's Japanese. No surprise on the latter anyhow.

Between the cherry trees there runs a long hedge of yew, about waist high, trimmed correctly so that the bottom is wider than the top allowing sunlight to reach it. Behind it is a lawn, about ten yards wide, and then a corresponding deciduous hedge. This nearly surreal piece of ultraformal design is in perfect condition 365 days a year.

On the other side of the main entrance, still along the street, are large oaks, underplanted with cherry, ivy, and, right now, daffodils, naturalised over the years into thousands of clumps, a display of lavish simplicity.

This is where the elephant with the erection lives. But I don't think I know you well enough to tell that story.

This also is where Louie likes best to hunt squirrels. He hasn't quite figured out how to cope with the double security fencing, though, as the squirrels have.

Across 1st Avenue, 47th street used to run two ways, and the crosstown buses used it as a turnaround. A couple of years ago, half of it, the eastbound side of the street, was converted into a wide promenade and a dark, narrow garden behind a fence, the Katherine Hepburn Garden. While the promenade, Dag Hammarskjold Plaza ("Gateway to the United Nations", it says, engraved right into the pavement) is a truly lovely addition to the neighborhood (the buses have been rerouted for turnaround on 42nd Street, and we now have there the Wednesday Farmers' Market), the garden is, in my view, long on architectural elements and short on a good planting plan. Offendingly, this very nice space ends with a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg consisting mostly of - yes - another bad piece of sculpture.

This past weekend witnessed the extremely uncomfortable juxtaposition in this space of the filming of a full scale Hollywood production, with the beginning of a hunger strike by a group of Tibetans. The film crew has gone, but the Tibetans are in Day 5.

Next up: the cul de sacs of Beekman Place and Sutton Place.

[ngatti]

I am enjoying this.

[Vanessa]

Even better for us Europeans: this was the first thing I read this morning and you made my day. Thank you. With Maurice on the other side, what more does a soul need?

v

[clb]

This is fascinating reading, Robert. Thank you.

clb

[Wilfrid1]

The kind of writing which makes these sites worthwhile, despite the suppressed elephant. Thank you.

[Lippy]

Robert Schonfeld, on Apr 6 2004, 07:16 PM, said:

These gardens have been landmarked, which is a good thing, because their huge footprints would be irresistible to today's megatower builders.

Not just the gardens, but Tudor City in its entirety is a designated New York City Historic District.
Tudor City is also listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. At the link, you can see some pictures of the buildings, but not the gardens, if you click on the boxes in the right-hand column.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Bidding a fond farewell to the UN, the east side of 1st Avenue passes a terrifically ugly International Style building before the north side of 49th Street splits in two. The part still called 49th Street, which also serves as an exit for the FDR Drive, goes down along a very large granite block retaining wall of the sort you just don't see any more, until it reaches a gate for Peter Detmold Park, which borders the southbound lanes of the Drive. Peter Detmold owned what is now Turtle Bay, the string of townhouses on 48th and 49th streets, with a large common garden between them. He was a good community man. He was murdered one night in the neighborhood.

In spite of two costly renovations, Peter Detmold Park suffers from its remove from the city. The only entrances are this and another gate down a flight of stairs on 51st street, which we'll get to. As a result, once down there, people have been free to do pretty much whatever they want. Consequently, it has been a needle park, a place for homelss people to have sex in the cold light of day (the gates are locked at night), and a dog park for the neighborhood's most careless owners.

Although it borders the Drive, with its persistent filth and incessant noise, the Park has a nice view of the East River and some good old honey locust trees. Before the first of the recent renovations, there was an old fashioned New York City style children's sandbox, which is to say, a concrete well down a couple of steps, filled with sand, surrounded by an iron rail. My grandmother used to call them "snakepits", as in, "Robbie, stay out of the snakepit!"

At times when the park got a fair amount of traffic - morning and evening dogwalking, lunchtime, and weekends - the junkies melted away and the homeless tried to sleep. It was nice. Then, for reasons that still confound my simple mind, the Parks Department fenced off the north end of the park as an official NYC dog run. This was the end of Peter Detmold Park for us. The plantings left behind were destroyed, leavings large beds of dust and dirt, which found their way onto the dogs real quick. The small size of the "run" led to a lot of altercation, between dogs and between owners. Not for me, and certainly not for the likes of Louie. We dropped it from our itinerary.

This was not without regret, as I had enjoyed the pre-dog run park with Arnie, my first brown standard. One day, Arnie caught his leg in the hoops that line the planting beds and snapped it. I carried him up the stairs, and the neighborhood private security car for Beekman Place (you were expecting any less?) got me to the Animal Medical Center in three minutes. Some years later, Henry Kissinger got a black Lab and made himself part of the morning klatch. He would bring bags full of goodies from expensive shops. He charmed the women and basically ignored the men. He made his security guy clean up after the dog. Haven't seen him around much lately.

Anyway, we don't go down 49th Street, but up the other way, on Mitchell Place, one block slightly uphill, ending perpendicular to the two block long Beekman Place, anchored at this south end by Number One, among the city's fortress adresses. We have no problems on Beekman Place because Louie knows all the doormen. And he has the benefit of Arnie's history over the same route for 13 years before him. I just try to melt in by wearing all black, like the stage asisstants in a Japanese play.

The first cul de sac is 50th Street. The Irving Berlin house, now the consulate and mission to the UN of the government of Lichtenstein, is on the south side. A large house now owned by some people who have equally large "R"s pinned all over their fence is on the other side. At the holidays, the Beekman Place Association puts up a nice tree here. When Berlin was alive, the locals would gather and sing his songs up at his window.

The cul de sac overlooks the roof of the garage to Number One. For a long time, the roof was just a roof, but a few years ago, apparently with nothing better to do with their money, the shareholders at Number One rebuilt the garage, and on the roof, they arranged a sorta French formal garden scene. Stone paths connecting boxed evergreens and such, laid over the asphalt roof, if memory serves right now. So that's nicer than looking out over just a plain old roof any day.

The houses along Beekman Place are interesting, but that's another story.

51st Street is where a staircase of the same big blocks of granite as on 49th Street, goes down to the north end of Detmold park. Not much else to say, except that here one can also connect with a foot bridge that goes over the park and the Drive to a little stretch along the river, but doesn't connect with the very long stretch beginning on 60th Street. Also, I'd say I pity the people who live on low floors of the really lovely building at the end of 51st Street. All that dog mess goin on down there.

52nd Street is another story. Not strictly speaking Beekman place, it is nevertheless included in the appelation. Being a dead end, it's a quiet block with another (relatively) modest apartment group on the south side called Southgate, and , ultimately, the very discreet number 450, the "Garbo" building. During her long residence in the neighborhood, Garbo dressed down to such a degree that she really melted into the flow. Mazal is one of the few people she would acknowledge, with the very slightest quick nod. Never me. Never Arnie. More than a few times, we'd be standing on a corner and Mazal would nudge me. There would be Garbo, waiting to cross. I never even recognized her.

Across the end of 52nd street is the River House, another fortress address. River House has a cobblestone courtyard of at least a half acre, usually spotted with limos of the Masters of the Universe. Immediately west is an interesting modernist townhouse about which I know nothing.

We always pause at the rail here to look up and down the river. It's one of those spots where you can see pedestrians, cars, boats of all kinds, including the spiffy new water taxis, helicopters, planes, seaplanes, and nowadays, the contrails of the F-16's, way up there. Very New York. Very on the island. As a seasonal bonus, the long straight line of small cherry trees on the edge of Roosevelt Island south of the tramway are just about to bloom. This makes a beautiful show that lasts for about two weeks all together.

River House once had its own yacht landing on the East River, so that owners could tie up and disembark right at their door. A few blocks south, at the 51st Street overpass, there were swimming piers. Some of them were still there when I first moved to the neighborhood in the seventies. George Bellows painted scenes like this from the first part of the 20th century.

Looking down, one sees two private gardens, divided by a wall exactly at the midpoint of the street on which we stand. The one to the south belongs to 450; the one to the north belongs to the River House and, I imagine, the River Club, which is part and parcel. Both of them are nicely walled off from the FDR Drive. The 450 garden is composed of thick beds of English ivy laid at the borders and the center, with gravel paths. There's a table and chairs, and odd bits of architectural remnants placed here and there, as well as some sculpture I can't identify. There are mature small scale trees, maybe dogwood and some others. It looks as if it is never used.

The River House garden consists of a large, well-kept lawn, some flagstone patio and pathwork, same or similar table and chairs, minimal border plantings of evergreens. It also looks as if no one ever uses it. It speaks of a good deal of money that these two spaces should be so well maintained and apparently receive so little use.

From here, it's back to 1st Avenue and then down 53rd Street, which is where Sutton Place begins.

[Rail Paul]

Thank you for this delightful walking tour. Louie certainly gets about.

I believe the long gone yacht landing at River House remains a matter of legal contention. When the East River (FDR) Drive was punched though, the long, sloping lawns to the dock were carved away. Although the city had granted an easement of access to the dock, the access faded away in one of the many rehab projects on the highway.

There's an interest in restoring that access in a way which would not create public access to the riverfront. That has led to discussion about the use of public money for private benefit...

[Robert Schonfeld]

Rail Paul, on Apr 13 2004, 11:10 AM, said:

I believe the long gone yacht landing at River House remains a matter of legal contention. When the East River (FDR) Drive was punched though, the long, sloping lawns to the dock were carved away. Although the city had granted an easement of access to the dock, the access faded away in one of the many rehab projects on the highway.

A similar contention concerns the large lawn behind Number One Sutton Place South, which gives every appearance of being private, but isn't any longer. We'll get there.

[Vanessa]

I took your 2 walking with Louie posts prior to today's to my father's yesterday and read them to him as he can no longer see to read. He liked them very much.

v

[Robert Schonfeld]

I've never had a nicer compliment, Vanessa. Thank you.

[omnivorette]

Southgate has some beautifully structured, double height ceilinged apartments. A friend of mine has lived there for some years. And the gardens behind Southgate are a real treat.

[Wilfrid1]

If it ever stops raining, I shall get some lunchtime strolls out of this thread.

[Robert Schonfeld]

53rd Street, like 49th, is an exit from the FDR Drive. This makes both of these blocks between 1st Avenue and the Drive less than peaceful. Overheated drivers have to adjust from grabbing a one car advantage at 50 miles an hour to competing for space on the city streets, which involves much more intricate, herky jerky zigging and zagging. Alternatively, if the Drive has been locked in a near standstill for a few miles, they may view the exit as some kind of liberation and stomp on the accelerator just for the sheer joy of feeling their machine surge. Some drivers adjust better than others, so the intersections on the east side of First and 49th and First and 53rd should be approached with an extra measure of care.

As a result of this conditon, and the general mayhem of vehicles and pedestrians in Manhattan, I trained first Arnie and then Louie not to step off the curb until I do. It's a pretty easy thing to do, and it makes walking with him much more pleasant. I never bothered with training him to sit at every intersection, or to walk only in heel or any of that other stuff, although it would be just as easy to do. When he wants a cookie at an intersection, he will sit and look at me, as if to say, "See, this is the deal where I get the cookie." If he's not moved to do so at a particular intersection, he'll just stand there, and that's ok with me. I did teach him "walk", which means "move at a pace that doesn't pull my arm out of its socket". He also knows "heel", but I never use it except to remind him what it is. What amazes me is the brain dead stupidity of people who allow their dogs off the leash. Sure, lots of dogs can be trained to follow thier master close by, but that's not the point, is it? We're not out for a walk in the woods here. One mistake and bye bye dog. Then there's the insufferable arrogance of such people. They all but dare you to say something to them. Once, a beautiful Golden off the leash came up to Louie. It was all friendly, but when the owner arrived ten paces later, he smacked his dog across the face with an open hand. When I called him on it, he told me to go fuck myself, the standard response for most such encounters and many like them in New York. When I asked him if he treated his girlfriend the same way, his face turned red with rage. Time for us to get out of there.

There are a couple of things to notice going down 53rd, though. On the south side, about ten yards from First Avenue, is a mews, set behind some old walkups that front on the Avenue. It's not much, but when the gate is open, it offers a nice glimpse into a little bit of peace and quiet. Nothing fancy. On the north side, a few yards further on, is the back entrance to a large apartment building that fronts on 54th. It's actually a passage connecting front and back. There's a small public space that's nicely planted; some benches and whatnot. On the back side, there's a good long row of very healthy azaleas which give a lovely show, due in a couple of weeks. Sometimes, we cut through this passage. Louie likes it because it's a nice quiet spot for him to relieve himself.

The end of the block, by the river, is pretty grim, with striped concrete barriers protecting the corner of the bulwark of River House from cars exiting too fast. As evidence of the efficacy of these barrirers, they are appropriately scraped up and gouged out. You wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it, but right there, at the very end of the block, hard by the highway, is a black door. Yesterday it just happened to be open as we were passing. It's an access to the garden at the River House. It was interesting to get an eye level view of that space, sort of like having field level seats at a game instead of being up with the angels.

Right across 53rd Street, on the north side, Sutton Place begins with Sutton Park, yet another playground turned garden, with yet another snakepit converted into a giant planter. The park rises up a slight incline and widens out as it reaches 54th Street. Outside the park is an area with benches and an excellent long view down the river. This spot used to be called Cannon Point, because there was a gun emplacement there during the Revolution which was used in defense of the British move north. The two buildings, numbers 25 and 50 Sutton Place South, were at one point called Cannon Point North and South. They may still.

I might mention at this stage in our walk that all the parks mentioned so far prohibit dogs, except Peter Detmold, where there is that awful dog run. So Louie and I are restricted to viewing them from the outside looking in. If you ask me, Louie's a better citizen than most of the two legged ones that are invited into these parks, but that's the deal.

The cul de sacs at 54th and 55th are nothing more than paved rectangles between buildings. It is interesting to visit the one at 55th, only because it gives a glimpse of the allegedly private garden at Number One Sutton Place South, the third of those redoubts of the wealthy we've passed so far. This one was designed by the reknowned Rosario Candela, who also did the ultra comfortable buildings on Park Avenue, like numbers 720, 740 and 770.

I say allegedly, because it turns out that, whaddya know, the easement granted to the coop by the city expired some time ago, and that the taxpayers of New York City are apparently the owners of what now serves as a very large, formal, private, garden accessible only through the building. I was out there once because I was playing ball with Louie in the cul de sac at 56th Street (against the rules; sue me) when he ricocheted a toss over the fence. There ensued the Sutton Place version of the classic American scene that always begins, "Mister Smith, can I get my ball from your backyard?" The doorman wasn't happy, but he signalled up the line to the four or five other building employees between us and our ball, and we hotfooted it out there. It was nice. As Mel Brooks says, "It's good to be King."

So what happens to this space remains to be seen, but for now, you can just peek at it from the corners of the public spaces at 56th and 57th Streets.

The cul de sac at 57th Street has an actual functioning children's playground, usually populated with well dressed nannies and their charges. It has a real, surviving snakepit. My grandmother would be horrified at the sight of all those groomed and polished little boys and girls getting themselves the way they really want to be while the nannies talk on their cell phones. The park also has a good group of honey locust trees, one of which - the central one - is contorted in such a manner as to make it the perfect picturesque frame for any view looking east across the River from here. This is the "Woody Allen View", with the trees and the 59th Street Bridge (the "Feelin Groovy" bridge). At dusk, when the lights come on, it provides an unmatched prospect that brings a nearly physical sensation of pleasure and wellbeing at one's good fortune for being a New Yorker. This is Gershwin made visible.

The park has one more unusual feature, a bronze cast of the Boar Fountain, the "Chingiale" in the public market in Florence, which is itself a 17th century copy by Pietro Tacca of a lost Greek original. What it's doing in a children's playground on 57th Street, I have no idea, but I suspect it's the result of some very specific philanthropy. Like the one in Florence, the boar's nose has been rubbed shiny.

On the north side of this cul de sac is the Harriman house. Mazal and I have debated on this spot who was the more successful courtesan, Pamela Harriman, or Jackie Kennedy. Pamela's gone, but the house is still there and shows no signs of having changed hands. Next door is the house occupied by the Secretary General of the United Nations. Louie likes to pee on his pachysandra. About a year ago, we were out walking down by the River, and here comes Kofi Annan the other way, literally surrounded by a security detail. I see at a distance of about ten yards that, like so many people, he has noticed Louie. A second later, he did what many people do: he made a gesture towards the dog, which is often followed by a move to pet him. No sooner did Annan do this than his security circle closed around him. There would be no petting of Louie for Kofi; no losing his fingers in the six inches of Louie's luxurious afro; none of the delight that is transmitted daily by Louie to children, invalids, bikers and bus drivers. Not for Kofi. He walked on. He was wearing a suit on his walk. It brought to mind the famous picture of Nixon walking on the beach in California in a suit.

The rest of the block between 57th and 58th Streets is taken up with the facades of a set of townhouses, for the most part of no particular distinction. One, of them has a little statue, not a sculpture really, of Saint Francis set into a niche. I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for that, but it eludes this casual passerby. Residents of the block include I M Pei, the design of whose facade is a model of clarity and quietude. As usual along this stretch, it's clear that there is a large private garden behind the houses, but it's impossible even to get a peek.

Turning into 58th Street east of 1st Avenue, the south side is lined with large private houses. On the north side is an even larger private house, a doublewide. It's a beauty. This is called Sutton Square. I think the carved plaque says 1920, but I'm not sure. At the end, there is another private mews, this one with an electric gate. Inside is another row of private houses overlooking the River, and another private garden. This one is easily seen through the fence from the outside, allowing the public park which it adjoins to "borrow" the view it provides. While the space is luxurious, it is somewhat unkempt, in that old money sort of way. The public park shows about the same level of community involvement and success as the park at the other end of Sutton Place where we began this leg of our walk.

We often pause here, at the wall above the park. The views across the River are wonderful, and there is an entertaining mix of street traffic consisting mostly of the fortunate residents, and pedestrians and cars turning around because they're lost. In more than seventeen years of walking Arnie and Louie to this spot, no resident has ever approached us. We seem to be lumped in with all the other unpleasant disturbances they are made to suffer because this is public property, not the entirely private street they seem to think it should be. No worries, though. We still pause for about ten minutes while I puff on my cigar and Louie gives pleasure to the mostly lost pedestrians who come up to say hello.

The final cul de sac is 59th Street. There is nothing on this block but very large industrial installations. Some of it seems to be Con Ed stuff, other of it seems to be related in some way to the 59th Street bridge, which is at this point almost directly overhead. When seen that close up, the underpinnings of the bridge provide compelling imagery, a mad matrix of steel that looks as if it had been designed at Lucasfilm.

The bridge forms a logical boundary for this portion of the walk. Beyond it, the neighborhood becomes the Upper East Side, a very different animal. For our purposes, there are a few blocks to navigate along 1st Avenue until we can get down to the River, as the access at 60th Street (where there is a decent dog park) has been closed as part of the highway redirection/renovation program. Louie usually starts to pull on the leash as we go under the bridge, because he knows it means we are headed for the extended portion of the walk, and the longer it is, the better he likes it.

[ranitidine]

Re: River House. It was constructed when the blocks immediately west of it were still slums--the old Gashouse District. This juxtaposition provided the basis for Sidney Kingsley's play (later a movie) "Dead End." The play introduced the Dead End Kids, later renamed the Bowery Boys. The movie featured Sylvia Sidney and Humphrey Bogart.