HERALD SQUARE HOTEL

Amidst the grime warehouses, freight forwarders and Cargo Service companies is the magnificent Herald Square Hotel. This hotel is one of several built at the turn of the 20th century in the midtown area to take advantage of proximity to the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

 
The first thing you see, as you enter this hotel, is the statue of WINGED LIFE which hovers protectively above the doorway on West 31st Street. The hotel says that “It seductively appeals to the artist, lover and child in each of us and beckons one and all to enter his temple and peruse the art, inhale the heady aroma of history and dance with the memories of all the joy that he has created within.”


What makes this hotel different from the rest of the area hotels is that it was the home of Life magazine. Once in the hotel you see reproductions of the art which appeared on the covers of the magazine including those of Charles Gibson.


One of the infamous tenants of the hotel was Ida Wood who moved in about 1910. Her husband, Benjamin, served three terms in Congress and was owner of the New York Daily News. When Benjamin died in 1900, Ida, her sister and daughter moved into suites 551 and 552 at the hotel. Ida was worried about the future of the newspaper which she sold for $340,000, converted it to cash which she hid in her suite. The women became recluses opening the door only to receive food deliveries. Ida paid her hotel bills in cash. When Ida’s sister died in 1928 they discovered that each sister has $175,000 worth of stock in Union Pacific. Ida died in 1932 leaving an estate of more that $1 million.

KNICKERBOCKER HOTEL

The Knickerbocker Hotel once located at the SE corner of 42nd Street and Broadway was one of the four “Elephant Legs” (landmarks) of the new 42nd street. It was build by the Astor family in 1902 and once home to the famed opera great Enrico Caruso. By 1965 the real estate values fell and the hotel was converted to commercial space, at one time accommodating Newsweek Magazine. Today the building still stands as with commercial and retail tenants. There is a Gap Store on the corner.


One of the legends about this building comes from the drink called the martini, which was said to have been invented by the house bartender in 1912. According to the story, one Martini di Arma di Taggia mixed dry vermouth and gin together and the mixture gained the favor of residents and visitors alike.

When the hotel first opened it advertised that it had all the modern conveniences such as underground transportation system.

The pictured sign, in the 42nd street subway near the end of the Shuttle closest to Grand Central, is a reminder of the fact that the hotel had direct access to the underground transportation system.

DOORMEN

Doormen are not unique to New York, I’ve seen them at Watergate in Washington DC and I suspect at other high profile buildings across the country. But no where are they as prolific as they are in New York. I say “Doormen” because I have never seen a female door keeper. I see that “Female Door Staff” have their own Facebook page. A Google search of “Female Door Staff” reveals that there are several opportunities in London, but none in New York.

So, what is it about an individual dressed like Sasha Baron Cohen’s character Admiral General Aladeen whose sole job seems to flatter the residents by opening doors and saying “Good Morning” or “Good evening” or “Do you want a cab?” It can’t be our egos, can it?

A couple of years ago, when the doormen in New York threatened to go on strike, comic Billiam Coronel said “What will they do, stand in front of your building?”

Professor Bearman, a sociology professor at Columbia University opined that doormen and apartment building fulfill a need in each other. “For tenants to have distinction they must have professional doorman and for the doorman to be a professional they must have distinctive tenants. It is that these quite discordant social classes figure out a way to relate to each other that elevates the status of both”


When I first moved to New York, I lived in the Upper East Side. The doormen there were nice, but not overly solicitous, that is, until the month of December arrived. In anticipation of holiday tips, they suddenly remembered my name and offered to help with the smallest of tasks. I will never forget one day I was walking home from the grocery store carrying three bags of groceries. The doorman saw me one-half block away and rushes to meet me and carry my groceries the rest of the way. That only happened during the month of December.

TRASH PART TWO

When you think about trash in New York City, it is easy to remember this famous Saul Steinberg tribute to trash.  We also think of the quote by famous photographer, Fran Lebowitz:  "When you leave New York you are astonished as how clean the rest of the world is.  Chean is not enough"  Amen

HATS

As many of you know I love wearing hats. I didn’t always wear a hat, but when my hair started thinning, I needed some protection from the sun. Baseball hats were too hot but a nice straw hat was both comfortable and cool. Alas, in the winter I needed a hat for warmth. A baseball hat just did not go with a suit and overcoat, so I found a fedora to keep me warm and shield my face from the snow and rain.


I have seen many famous black and white photos of NYC in the 40’s showing all the men on the streets wearing a fedora. (A fedora is basically a brimmed hat with a lengthwise crease pinched at the front.) My father wore a fedora to work in the 50’s and all the men in my old family pictures are wearing hats: however, men stopped wearing hats in the early 1960’s when John Kennedy was sworn into office wearing no hat at all. That event caused men everywhere to jettison their hats.

Perhaps to grieve the passing of a refined tradition, Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, wrote Death of the Hat. He describes the poem as “Looking nostalgically at that period of time in the past century, in the twentieth century, when men all wore hats, in cities at least.”

The Death of the Hat

Once every man wore a hat.

In the ashen newsreels,
the avenues of cities

are broad rivers flowing with hats.

The ball parks swelled
with thousands of strawhats,
brims and bands,

rows of men smoking

and cheering in shirtsleeves.

Hats were the law.

They went without saying.

You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.

You bought them from Adams or Dobbs

who branded your initials in gold

on the inside band.

Trolleys crisscrossed the city.

Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.

Men with hats gathered on the docks.


There was a person to block your hat

and a hatcheck girl to mind it

while you had a drink
or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.

In your office stood a hat rack.

The day war was declared

everyone in the street was wearing a hat.

And they were wearing hats

when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.

My father wore one to work every day

and returned home

carrying the evening paper,

the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.

But today we go bareheaded

into the winter streets,

stand hatless on frozen platforms.

Today the mailboxes on the roadside
and the spruce trees behind the house

wear cold white hats of snow.

Mice scurry from the stone walls at night
in their thin fur hats
to eat the birdseed that has spilled.

And now my father, after a life of work,

wears a hat of earth,

and on top of that,

a lighter one of cloud and sky--a hat of wind.

NEW YORK CITY TRASH

With an absence of alleys in New York the only place to put the garbage is on the side of the street. As the old saying goes, “You can’t live with it and you can’t live without it” When my sister visited me from Michigan she saw the garbage outside our building (At Madison and 37th Streets) and declared the neighborhood unsafe.


The Department of Sanitation reports that each week, the city collects at least 64,000 tons of household and institutional waste. We don’t necessarily like the look of garbage on the street but as resilient New Yorkers we found way to make lemonade out of lemons. For example, we eat and drink at the “Trash Bar” http://www.thetrashbar.com/ , and our artists have turned trash into “Sculpture” http://nycgarbage.com/.


Even Broadway uses :”NYC Trash“ as a comic script in the Neil Simon’s play “A Prisoner in Second Avenue.” Mel Edison, the protagonist, while standing on his balcony leaning over proclaims to his wife Edna “What a stink. Will you look at that? Fourteen stories up and you can smell the garbage from here. Why do they put garbage out in 84* heat? Hey Edna (His wife): Do you want to smell the garbage? “Edna walks to the balcony, leans over and says” you’re right; if you really want to smell it you have to stand right here.” Mel says: “The whole country is being buried by garbage. It keeps being piling up higher and higher. In three years this (14th floor) apartment will be on the second floor. “Edna replies” What do you want them to do, save it up and throw it out in the winter. They got to throw it out sometimes, that’s why they call it garbage

STREET FAIRS

I keep trying to imagine street fairs in heaven. For New Yorkers, the street fair is a hallmark of summer and a powerful means of inviting people to share the city’s most ubiquitous public space. We average about 375 street fairs each year.


Street fairs certainly tap into a deep-seated desire on behalf of many residents and visitors to be outside during the hot days of summer, to stroll along city streets that would normally be closed to pedestrians, to people watch and maybe even indulge on a massively over-buttered cob of corn. Although I have only indulged in the sausage sandwich once, I love the smell of those links cooking.

But for many New Yorkers, the sight of fried dough and Italian sausage carts inspire little more than an eye-roll and a step in the opposite direction. Once vibrant gathering places that reflected the rich diversity of New York’s neighborhoods, many people think the street fairs are mass-produced affairs that offer little variety and even less opportunity for local vendors to participate.

Those who don’t like the street fairs claim the worst part is that they are uniformly bland. Though the five boroughs are filled with an incredible diversity of businesses and artists yet, the overwhelming majority of street fairs seem to have the same few items for sale, such as tube socks, knock-off purses and gyros. This is true.


I believe the street fairs have two constituencies:


1) Tourists who buy tube socks, knock-off purses and the over priced street food.

2) New Yorkers who love to people watch. That’s me. I could stroll the streets all day people watching. Isn’t that part of what living in NYC is all about: Being around people?