For the Sandy anniversary, those within reach of the afflicted NY-NJ-CT coastal area are invited to "Light up the shore!"

Blacked-out lower Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, looking northeast, with the tower of the Empire State Building poking up in the background

by Ken

It's an anniversary that has been looming ominously for, well, going on a year.

As it happened, yesterday I was in New Jersey's "Mile-Square City" of Hoboken, on the mostly flatland lip of land below the southern end of the bluffs that rise above the state's Hudson River shoreline, on a wonderful 5½-hour Wolfe Walkers walking tour with the incomparable Justin Ferate, and wherever we went -- at least until we finally reached the high ground overlooking the river where the Stevens Institute of Technology was built, with those spectacular vistas across to Manhattan and up and down the river, and on to the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge -- there were tales of the horrendous flooding from Superstorm Sandy.

In many cases, happily, the flooding stories were accompanied by subsequent stories of gradual restoration and/or rebuilding and reopening. But there were also the cases of not-yet-restored, including the very start of our Hoboken excursion, where the beautiful Erie-Lackawanna Railroad and Ferry Terminal designed by Kenneth Murchison, where connection was once made between trains running to the west and the ferry link to Manhattan. The terminal, which now connects NJ Transit's light-rail lines with the nearby Hoboken station of the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) subway line, remains largely closed, including the famous vaulted Waiting Room.

As Justin pointed out in the course of the walk, big storms plowing the Northest tend, for reasons of local geography, to pass over the stretch of coast surrounding New York Harbor, producing the double whammy of a storm like Sandy -- inflicting damage, yes, but not of a kind we're accustomed to.

This scene of course plays out all through the New Jersey-New York-Connecticut coastal region, and of course with special severity in the unprotected shore areas that took the hardest hits, where loss of life was highest and rebuilding has been a maybe-yes, maybe-no proposition, with the prospect of permanent changes in land use and lifestyles.

I thought of sharing some of my memories of the storm days and the aftermath weeks, but they're so much milder than the fates suffered by the hardest-hit folks that somehow they don't seem appropriate. So I was pleased to see an e-mail this morning from the Municipal Art Society with information about a remembrance tomorrow which is called either "Light the Shore" or "Light Up the Shore," depending where you look.

Join Sandy-Impacted Communities to Light Up the Shore!

On Tuesday October 29th -- the anniversary of Superstorm Sandy -- groups from across the region will be lighting up the coastline to acknowledge the impact of the storm and the on-going resilience challenges we collectively face. Groups in Staten Island, Red Hook, Lower East Side, in Connecticut and all down the Jersey shore will join together with flashlights and candles along the coast. The goal is to have the entire Sandy-impacted coastline illuminated!

All communities are welcome to join their friends and neighbors and line the coast in solidarity for a resilient future!  Information about specific community meeting spots and times are shown below:

MANHATTAN, LOWER EAST SIDE

Time: 6:45pm to 8:15pm

Where: East River Park
• 10th Street (GOLES) will be meeting at 10th Street and Avenue D at 6:45pm to walk to the East River.
• 6th Street (Henry St.) will be meeting at BGR on 6th between FDR and D to walk over at 7ish to the East River.
• Houston Street (FEGS) will meet at Houston and Avenue D at 6:45pm to walk over.

BROOKLYN

Time: Meeting at 6:30pm, candle-lighting at 7:45pm

Where:
• Brighton Beach: Shorefront Y, 3300 Coney Island Ave.
• Canarsie: Canarsie Park 84th & Seaview (6:30pm -- interfaith service; performance by local elementary school and gospel talent; 7:45pm -- candle-lighting)
• Coney Island: West 8th Street & Riegelman Boardwalk (by NY Aquarium, on boardwalk side). Contact: OHEL / Project Hope Rachel Heller,  rlh290@yahoo.com
• Coney Island (2): Stillwell Avenue & Riegelman Boardwalk Point
• Coney Island (3): Coney Island Pier, W. 21st Street & Riegelman Boardwalk
• Coney Island (4): Kaiser Park Pier, W. 33rd St. & Bayview Ave
• Dumbo: corner of Main Street & Plymouth @ entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Point of contact: Alexandria Sica Email: alexandria@dumbonyc.org
• Gerritsen Beach: Meet at 7pm at the end of Gerritsen Avenue, on the Shell Bank Creek shoreline. Candle-lighting at 7:45pm
• Red Hook: Coffey Park, Verona St. between Richard St. and Dwight St.
• Red Hook (2): IKEA, 1 Beard Street (join Portside and friends at the water’s edge)
• Sea Gate: Sea Gate Association Beach 42 and Surf Avenue. Contact: 917-586-7006 or merrie5017@gmail.com
• Sheepshead Bay: 2801 Emmons Avenue

STATEN ISLAND

Time: 7:45pm

Where: Light a candle with your neighbor in the closest waterfront to your community in Staten Island.

[See the link for information about an earlier Walk Along the Boardwalk, Community Supper, and Interfaith Servic of Remembrance.]

LIGHT UP NEW JERSEY

Time: 6:00pm

Where:
• Raritan Bay Waterfront Park, 1 Kennan Way, South Amboy (NJ 101.5 with Raritan Bay Federal Credit Union)
• Keansburg (NJ 101.5)
• Asbury Park Boardwalk: Keansburg 9/11 Memorial , Main Street and Beachway (NJ 101.5 with CentraState and First Atlantic Federal Credit Union)
• Jenkinson’s in Point Pleasant, 300 Ocean Ave. Point Pleasant Beach (94.3 The Point with United Teletech Financial and Zarrilli Homes)
• Bradley Beach, 900 Ocean Ave. (94.3 The Point)
• Seaside Heights, 800 Ocean Terrace (105.7 The Hawk with NJ Outboards and Walters Homes)
• Chef Mike’s ABG in Seaside Park, Island Beach Motor Lodge, 24th and Central Ave, South Seaside Park (92.7 WOBM with Chef Mike’s ABG, Jersey Shore Crawlspace Enhancement, Classic Kitchens,Island Beach Mortor Lodge, Marine Max and DelPrete Construction)
• Mud City Crabhouse, Long Beach Island, Manahawkin, 1185 East Bay Ave. (105.7 The Hawk with Modular Factory Homes Direct)
• Lucy the Elephant, Margate, 9200 Atlantic Ave. (Lite Rock 96.9)
• Ocean City Music Pier, Moorlyn Terrace (Cat Country 107.3 with South Jersey Gas)
• Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, 2500 Boardwalk (97.3 ESPN / WPG 1450 with Atlantic City Electric and Xfinity)
• Laguna Grill & Rum Bar in Brigantine, 1400 Ocean Ave., Brigantine (SoJO 104.9 with Prudential Fox & Roach Real Estate, the "LePera Team"

(Note: No information is provided about Connecticut events, and with a quick search I couldn't find any. But whose to say that Nutmeg Staters can't follow the same prescription as Staten Islanders? "Light a candle with your neighbor in the closest waterfront to your community.")

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Urban Gadabout: World Tourism Day is this Friday -- so go someplace! (I have some NYC thoughts)

by Ken

No, I don't know anything more about "World Tourism Day," and I'm not interested enough to research it. But I do know what it means to me, and one thing it doesn't mean is booking a $10K fancy-pants trip to some exotic destination.

For reasons that probably wouldn't interest anyone but me, regular travel-style tourism isn't terribly workable for me, but as "Urban Gadabout" readers know only too well, I've become a firm believer in the "tourist in your own city" approach, and if I did have occasion to travel, I would probably try to do it the way I've been doing my local gadding. I expect that in more and more places there are more and more opportunities for walking and other kinds of tours that explore an area's past and present, appreciating what's there now and understanding how it came to be there.


LAST CALL FOR "BRIGHTON LINE MEMOIRS"

As I mentioned in my recent post "Catching up with Jack Eichenbaum," Jack -- who's the Queens Borough Historian -- had to postpone this tour from its original July date. People are probably more familiar with Jack's more or less annual "World of the #7 Train," a day-long trek along the subway line that goes from Times Square to Flushing. Awhile back he brought back his "Day on the J train," to Brooklyn and Queens, and now for the first time in a decade or so he's doing Brooklyn's Brighton line.

Brighton Line Memoirs meandering off the Q train

Saturday, September 28, 10am-5:30pm
This is a series of five walks and connecting rides along what was once the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island RR dating to 1878. Walks take place in Prospect Park, Brighton Beach, along Avenue U, in Ditmas Park and Central Flatbush. Lunch is in Brighton Beach where you can picnic on the Boardwalk. Tour fee is $39 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) Get the full day’s program and other info by email jaconet@aol.com. The tour is limited to 25 people. Don’t get left out!

As I also reported in that post, although the last I heard Jack still had a fair amount of space, "The way it often works is that there's a flurry of registrations as the date closes in, and people wind up getting closed out. You don't want that to happen to you, do you?"


MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY

I still don't know of any better place to start exploring the city than MAS's tours (what's posted now is the schedule through November), and while a bunch of tours for the coming weekend are already sold out, the last time I looked there was still space in:

Harlem Hike: 145th Street from Hotel Olga to Sugar Hill
Eric K. Washington
Saturday, 11am-1pm

Prowling the War of 1812 Seaport
Kathleen Hulser
Sunday, 11am-1pm

Note: I've done Eric Washington's 145th Street "hike" and loved it -- and also his "Harlem Grab Bag," of which there's another edition coming up Saturday, October 12.


ACROSS 57th STREET WITH JUSTIN FERATE,
PLUS "THE REAL GANGS OF NEW YORK"

I worried that I jumped the gun in providing a link for the fall 2013 Wolfe Walkers brochure, which I'd unearthed while doing my own Web rummaging, but Justin Ferate (who has been organizing the Wolfe Walkers program for some years now) finally attached the brochure to a list e-mail. (And if you're not on Justin's list, you're missing out on a wealth of information. Sign up now.) As it happens, there's hardly any time left till the first event on the agenda, "57th Street: Art! Music! Culture!," this Saturday the 28th at 1pm ("to approximately 4pm").

57th Street has long been a treasure trove of artistic, musical, and cultural delights. We discover the history, legends, and lore of this fascinating thoroughfare. Among the various sites will be Trump Tower, Tiffany’s, the Fuller Building, the Solow Building, Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, the Art Students’ League, and a selection of art galleries. Rediscover old friends, discover remnants of the street’s residential past, and view high-end new buildings. Tour will include several special interior visits.

Meet: Inside the entrance of Trump Tower, located on the east side of Fifth Avenue, between East 56th and East 57th Streets. A coffee restaurant and restrooms are available inside the building.

Fee: $23 on-site (by check to Hermine Watterson)

I've spent a lot of time on various stretches of 57th Street, and I'll bet it would be special to be able to see it through Justin's eyes, not to mention those promised "special interior visits." During the ominous weekend last October when the Northeast was girding for Hurricane Sandy, and the Municipal Art Society prudently canceled its tours, I found myself suddenly free to hook up with Justin's Halloween Greenwich Village "ghost" walk. I don't have much interest in ghosts, but I realized I'd never done a walk in the Village with Justin, and his view was bound to be different from any I'd experienced. It was, it was.

As it happens, this walk is scheduled on the same day as Jack Eichenbaum's "Brighton Line Memoirs," so I can't do it, but I'll bet that people who do won't ever look at this grand old street the same way. It's too late to take advantage of the discount for advance registration, so just show up at the meeting place (see above) with that check for $23 made out to Hermine Watterson.

Tomorrow Justin's giving a lecture at the Merchant's
House Museum on "The Real Gangs of New York"

It's a "19th Century Lifeways Lecture," "marking the 150th anniversary of the New York Draft Riots, the bloodiest urban insurrection of 19th Century America," tomorrow night, September 26, at 6:30pm. Justin will "examine the social pressures and misguided public policies that led to the powder keg that exploded in the streets of New York in July of 1863."

The Merchant's House Museum at 29 East 4th Street is a unique destination in its own right, not just for the survived 1832 Federal-style house itself but for the remarkable circumstance that a house worth's of furnishings and possessions from the family that lived there for almost a century has also been preserved. The lecture is free to museum members, $15 to others. For more information and registration, go to the museum's Calendar of Events.


GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY

One of the sites planned for Saturday's "Far Side" tour

Green-Wood is a reminder of the days before we had major parks, when cemeteries on the outskirts of the city were places where harried urbanites went for a day's outing in nature, and Brooklyn's Green-Wood was in fact the prototype for New York City's first great parks, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted's Central Park (Manhattan) and Prospect Park (up the Terminal Moraine a piece in Brooklyn). Green-Wood has an active tour and events schedule, and while Sunday's "Historic Trolley Tour" is sold out, on Saturday at 1pm there's an intriguing-looking trolley tour called "The Far Side of Green-Wood," which will visit "sites not included on many other Green-Wood tours."

*     *    *

That's just some off-the-top-my-head thoughts, and just for the coming weekend. Don't neglect to check these folks' ongoing schedules -- including that of one of my favorite tour sources, the New York Transit Museum.

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Urban Gadabout: Summer gadding around the outer boroughs of NYC, with news from MAS, Jack Eichenbaum, and the NY Transit Museum

Lighthouse Park at the northern tip of Roosevelt Island -- we'll be there tomorrow evening for the Municipal Art Society's walking tour, Roosevelt Island: The Northern Route.

by Ken

I haven't been writing much about my late-spring and summer wanderings, but after my enforced decommissioning in late April and May, I've been getting my rhythm back, and having some especially good times outside Manhattan. In fact, including tomorrow night's Roosevelt Island: The Northern Route (7/26, 6pm -- an evening tour, note), with Roosevelt Island Historical Society president Judith Berdy (who a few weeks ago led us on a terrific walk through the "Southern Route," down to the new Four Freedoms Memorial at the island's southern tip), I'll have had something like nine consecutive excursions over seven weeks outside Manhattan, including neat destinations like City Island, the tiny island off the coast of the northeasternmost Bronx, and the Little Italy along the Bronx's Arthur Avenue, both Municipal Art Society tours.

I actually undertook a walk less than four weeks after total-knee-replacement surgery, because I'd been wanting to do Joe Svehlak's tour of the few remains of Manhattan's once-thriving Lower West Side, a neighborhood that was basically to make way first for the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and then the World Trade Center. I've done a lot of tours with Joe, both his own and other tour leaders' -- and who should I run into on the Lower West Side tour but another of my favorite tour leades, urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum?

There's exciting news from Jack, maybe the most exciting New York tour news of the summer, but we'll get to that. Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Joe is repeating his tour of Brooklyn's Sunset Park: The Old Neighborhood (Saturday, 8/31, 10:30am), where he grew up and later became a first-time property owner. I'm a huge fan of Joe's neighborhood tours (I still kick myself for missing his walk through Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood but loved the follow-up tour of Ridgewood, straddling the Brooklyn-Queens border), which provide a great feel for the way geographical and historical factors have shaped development as well as a feel for the way area residents live their lives.

Joe pointed out, by the way, that in his time Sunset Park wasn't yet a neighborhood in its own right, but was "the Sunset Park area of Bay Ridge," which then covered the full four miles or so of Brooklyn's waterfront along New York's Upper Harbor, down to the Verrazano Narrows. And the day after Joe's Sunset Park tour, Melanie Macchio will be leading a walk in Bay Ridge: Brooklyn's Western Waterfront Neighborhood (Sunday, 9/1, 4pm) -- I can hardly wait for that one! (The Bay Ridge walk means I won't be able to do another of architectural historian Tony Robins's patented art deco-themed tours, Art Deco on Central Park West; Sunday, 9/1, 2pm.)

Even though I did it last summer, I'm tempted to redo Norman Oder's Atlantic Yards: Urban Debate, Arena Debut (Saturday, 8/3. 10am), now that the first-completed part of the massive Brooklyn development project, the Barclays Center arena, has been open for nearly a year and is in full swing. Of course, as Norman, who has been the blogger most assiduously tracking the fairly squalid (and often flatly illegal) history of the project, stressed last year, when the arena was just opening, we won't know how seriously it will impact the immediate and surrounding neigborhoods until the serious parts of the develoment, the money parts, the 16 planned towers, are built and functioning -- if they ever all are.

One of the more suspicious aspects of the development is the way the modest concessions to the community which probably made it possible to finally get the project going don't kick in until virtually all of the planned development is completed, which may never happen. There doesn't seem to be much question that there will be enough towers built to alter the lives of everyone living in the area now, but that by itself won't trigger the community concessions.

Last summer I loved Norman's Atlantic Yards walk and presentation, which really gave us an immersion in the welter of issues raised in and by the project. I was all the more impressed since my attention was serious compromised by clock-watching even as we were walking farther and farther in the wrong direction to help me make the rendezvous for Francis Morrone's walk through Red Hook, the low-lying area on the western Brooklyn shore that would soon be devastated by Superstorm Sandy.

As it happened, i didn't make the start of the walk, but did manage to catch up, as did my friend Laurence Frommer, who had also been on the Atlantic Yards walk and had separately made his frantic way from one tour to the other. Laurence is an MAS tour leader himself, and I've been on countless tours with him, both his own and other tour leaders'. Earlier this summer he did a series of Pride-themed LGBT walks. This weekend he continues his exploration of the city's new phenomenon of cultural districts with a walk through the South Bronx's Mott Haven Cultural Corridor (Sunday, 7/28, 2pm-5pm -- yes, it's three hours). Then next weekend he's doing a pair of tours, Off and Off-Off Broadway, Parts 1 and 2 (Saturday and Sunday, 8/3 and 4, 3:30pm each day).

Let's see, I still have a tour coming up with Harlem (and Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery) maven Eric K. Washington: namely, Manhattanville: Recalling a Neighborhood's Activist Heritage (Sunday, 8/11, 1pm). I've really wanted to do a tour of this West Harlem neighborhood with Eric, and last time had it sell out on me before I realized I hadn't registered! Eric is also doing a Harlem Week edition of his terrific Harlem Grab Bag walk (Saturday, 8/17, 11am).

I'm also signed up for Bedford Stuyvesant's Eastern District (Saturday, 8/24, 11am) with architecture bloggers Suzanne Spellen and Morgan Munsey, who I'm happy to see have become MAS mainstays specializing in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area (and related areas). The next day they're doing Stuyvesant Heights Expansion District (Sunday, 8/25, 11am).

Staten Island will be represented too, with a two-part investigation of the north shore led by lifelong Staten Islander Georgia Trivizas: Part 1, basically the St. George area (I thoroughly enjoyed an earlier version of this walk with Georgia), tomorrow (Saturday, 7/27, catching the 10:30 Staten Island Ferry from Manhattan); with Part 2, the northwestern shore around to Snug Harbor, to follow (Sunday, 8/18, also catching the 10:30 ferry).

AS FOR JACK EICHENBAUM . . .

As I've said, I've probably learned more about how the underlying geography has conditioned the development of New York City neighborhoods from Jack Eichenbaum, a geographer, than from anyone else. I've still got a summer tour with Jack coming up, and it should be fascinating: Willets Point (Saturday, 8/17, 4pm), "a sewerless hardscrabble area of auto junkyards and related businesses" lying between the Mets' baseball stadium (now-gone old Shea Stadium and now-functioning Citi Field) and now-booming Flushing, a sort of wasteland "that has twice beaten back attempts at redevelopment." Once again the developers have their beady eyes on an imagined wonderland. "We’ll walk to the area from central Flushing," Jack says, "to
understand its important setting, confront ecological issues and learn why
'Willets Point'  is a misnomer."

The September-November MAS schedule won't be announced till, probably, mid-August, but Jack has tipped his mailing list off that he has some tours coming up: Forest Hills to Corona (Saturday, 9/7, 4pm), Maps, Realities and the People's Palace (from the exterior of Grand Central Terminal to the interior of the New York Public Library, specifically the Map Division; Saturday, 9/14, 11am), Flushing's Koreatown (Saturday, 10/19, 11am), and Astoria (Saturday, 11/23, 11am).

But the really exciting development I referred to earlier is an addition to Jack's famous all-day expeditions built around a subway line. He has been doing The World of the #7 Train annually for a number of years now, and not that long ago revived his Day on the J. Now he's taking on Brooklyn's Brighton Line (Howie's and my old subway connection to "The City" in our Brooklyn years).

BRIGHTON LINE MEMOIRS -- meandering off the Q train

Saturday, September 28, 10am-5:30pm

This is a series of five walks and connecting rides along what was once the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island RR dating to 1878. Walks take place in Prospect Park, Brighton Beach, along Avenue U, in Ditmas Park and Central Flatbush. Lunch is in Brighton Beach where you can picnic on the Boardwalk. Tour fee is $39 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address). Get the full day’s program and other info by email jaconet@aol.com. The tour is limited to 25 people. Don’t get left out!

Those who didn't know about Brighton Line Memoirs -- meandering off the Q train or weren't able to register when Jack originally intended to offer it, on July 21, are benefiting from a blow of misfortune he suffered this summer: a knee injury that didn't ground him but made it medically inadvisable for him to be on his feet so long. So he has rescheduled this exciting outing for the end of September when, as he notes, it will also be cooler.

I had my check in the mail the day the tour was originally announced, but the delay also helps me. I'm hoping that by the new date my leg will be a good bit stronger. (I also would have had walking tours on back-to-back days, something I've found I don't do so well yet.)


OH YES, THE TRANSIT MUSEUM STILL HAS
ONE MORE NOSTALGIA RIDE THIS SUMMER

I've also had a busy summer with NYTM, including a vintage subway-and-bus trip to the Bronx's Orchard Beach (on a day that turned out to be singularly un-beach-friendly). The third of the summer's three popular Nostalgia Rides is still coming up.

THE BRONX EXPRESS: VOYAGE TO VAN CORTLANDT PARK

Sun, Aug. 25, 10 am to 5 pm – Tickets
Non-members Adults $50 / Children $25 Museum Members Adults $35 / Children $20

Venture uptown on our WWI-era IRT subway cars to spacious public grounds at Van Cortlandt Park, the third largest park in NYC. During a 3-hour layover, explore Van Cortlandt House Museum and a stroll along the John Kieran Nature Trail. Pack a picnic blanket and “staycation” with us!

Information on Municipal Art Society walking tours is ridiculously easy to find. Just go to mas.org and click on "Tours." Preregistration is required, but you can probably do it online right up to tour time. For New York Transit Museum tour information, go to the Programs and Excursions page of the website. For information about Jack Eichenbaum's activities, and to sign up for his e-mail list, visit his website, "The Geography of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum."

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Urban Gadabout: It's Jane's Walk weekend -- be sure to check to see what's happening in your area`

The NYC subways' Brighton Line had its origins in the Brooklyn & Brighton Beach Railroad, one of the railroads that connected to Brooklyn's ocean beaches. The big news in summer gadding is that Jack Eichenbaum is devoting another of his day-long subway-line odysseys to the Brighton Line.

by Ken

Okay, I've been kind of grumpy about the fact that I'll be on the shelf for one of my favorite weekends of the year: that of Jane's Walks, in honor of pioneer urbanologist Jane Jacobs, who did so much to reorient the way we think about urban life and to empower urban folk to feel that we can claim a voice in shaping the life of our cities in the direction of design and scale optimized for heightened human interaction.

Jane spent as much of her time as she could out in the field observing -- watching the way real people live actual lives, and see what sorts of design configurations produce the most diverse and enriching experiences. If you don't know her work, one word that should give you a clue is neighborhood. She was a great believer in the richness of neighborhood life, at a time when her frequent nemesis Robert "Pave It and Run a Parkway Through It" Moses was destroying every neighborhood he could get his eminent-domain-empowered mitts on.

In New York City we now have the best imaginable situation, since the Municipal Art Society took over the planning and execution of Jane's Walk offerings, which are free and mind-bogglingly rich, diverse, and generally tantalizing. With some dedicated work I can winnow the list -- numbering 100-plus this year -- down to about 30 walks over the two days which I would really, really like to do. I hadn't even planned to look at this year's list, knowing the weekend would fall less than three weeks after my knee surgery. I finally sneaked a peek, and with enough work I think I could get it down to 30 again.

As it happens, although not formally part of the Jane's Walk festivities, on Saturday there's an open house at the 225-plus-year-old Dyckman Farmhouse, now a museum, which I can reach easily via a bus that passes right in front of my building, so I'm thinking I'll give that a shot -- plus I can't help noticing that just sticking to my home bailiwick of Northern Manhattan, between Jane's Walk offerings and those of NYC Parks there are a number of other outings Saturday and Sunday.

Note that most of the MAS-organized Jane's Walks don't require preregistration. If I were zeroing in on tour possibilities, I might incline to those that seem likely to be less crowd-drawing to enjoy a more intimate walk. That said, though, the offerings are awesome. And it's all free!

MAY AT MAS

As it happens, my knee is coming along well enough that I've gone ahead and signed up for two Municipal Art Society tours I've had in my sights for the following week ever since the March-April-May schedule was announced. I can get to both by bus, so I don't have to deal with subway steps yet.

On Saturday the 11th, my old pal Joe Svehlak is doing "Downtown's Lost Neighborhood," 11am-1pm, exploring "the diverse immigrant history of Manhattan's Lower West Side in conjunction with the Arab American National Museum's exhibit on 'Little Syria.' " Now "Lower West Side" isn't a geographic term you hear a lot in connection with Manhattan. The Manhattan end of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel -- a Robert Moses project -- wiped out the heart of the onetime neighborhood, and the various immigrant groups that once clustered there, including Joe's Czech parents, dispersed. I once almost did a version of this walk with Joe, but it was pouring that day and I didn't even have an umbrella.

Then on Sunday the 12th I'm going to try to do Laurence Frommer's "Bloomingdale Blocks" (2-4pm) -- "the quiet tre line streets from West 96th Street to West 110th Street that boast some of New York's finest remaining turn-of-the-century row-houses, apartment buildings, institutional structures and public monuments. I figure that will be easier on my legs than Eric Washington's "Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery Spring Tour,"

On Saturday the 11th baseball aficionado-historian Peter Laskowich is leading a tour called "Brooklyn and Jackie Robinson," 1-3pm. And the following weekend, if I felt more secure about those subway stairs, I might venture to Brooklyn for Matt Postal's "New to New York: Downtown Brooklyn," Saturday the 18th, 11am-1pm, and for Suzanne Spellen and Morgan Munsey's "Brooklyn's Automobile Row" (Bedford Avenue between Fulton Street and Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights), Sunday the 19th, 11am-1pm. It's looking as if my first subway venture may be for the rescheduled version of Snyder Schools scholar Jean Arrington's "Brownsville's Cache of C.B.J. Snyder Schools," Saturday the 25th, 11am-1pm.


NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM SUMMER TOURS

Meanwhile, New York Transit Museum members have been early-registering for the newly announced summer schedule since Tuesday, with registration for nonmembers scheduled to begin this Saturday the 4th. Among the tours I signed up for is one I've been awaiting eagerly for months: a visit to the (now finally reopened) totally rebuilt Smith-9th Streets elevated subway station perched on the viaduct over Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal along with the neighboring 4th Avenue-9th Street station. There are more Grand Central Terminal-themed tours, food tours, visits to the 240th Street Maintenance Facility, and more, including the summer's three "Nostalgia Rides," to Coney Island (June 29), the Bronx's Orchard Beach (another Robert Moses legacy, July 13), and the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park (August 25).


FINALLY, NEWS FROM JACK EICHENBAUM

First off, Jack is doing a Jane's Walk this Sunday the 5th, "Bowne Street, My Street," "a walk along the length of historic and multiethnic Bowne Street in Flushing where I have been living for 35 years." If I weren't mobility-impaired I would definitely do this. About a month ago Jack did a walk through the Bayside (Queens) neighborhood where he grew up that was notable both for personal and for regional history. Meet at the northwest corner of Main Street and 39th Avenue (St. George Episcopal Church), near the Main Street (Flushing) station of the no. 7 train.

Jack has a couple of walks scheduled in rapidly developing Long Island City in conjunction with the third Long Island City Arts Open (LICAO), May 15-19, and in May he'll be resuming the series of Wednesday evening walks (6-8pm) he's been doing in recent summers. Scheduled so far under the heading "Changing Cultures of Queens" are: On and Off Jamaica Avenue Avenue (May 22), Sunnyside to Jackson Heights (May 29), and Long Island City to Old Astoria (June 5).

The big news for those who have done or wish they had done Jack's daylong subway-line odysseys ("The World of the #7 Train" and "A Day on the J") is:

Brighton Line Memoirs: Meandering off the Q train
Sunday, July 21, 10am-5:30pm

This is a series of five walks and connecting rides along what was once the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island RR dating to 1878. Walks take place in Prospect Park, Brighton Beach, along Avenue U, in Ditmas Park and Central Flatbush. Lunch is in Brighton Beach where you can picnic on the Boardwalk. Tour fee is $39 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address). Get the full day’s program and other info by email jaconet@aol.com The tour is limited to 25 people. Don’t get left out!

You better believe I've already sent my check in! (And not just because the Brighton Line was my subway lifeline to "the City" growing up in Brooklyn.)

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Urban Gadabout: Say, NYC-area dumpling lovers, are you up for a Dumpling Crawl tomorrow (Saturday)?

There's a serious goal: to bring customers
back to NYC's Sandy-whacked Chinatown

It's dumplings, dumplings, dumplings tomorrow (March 2) in New York's Chinatown, thanks to Rally Downtown's four scheduled "Dumpling Crawls" -- at 12n, 2pm (two crawls), and 4pm. Of the two crawls at 2pm, one will be led by NYS Sen. Daniel Squadron, who hatched the idea for the "Dumpling Rally."

"[NYS Sen. Daniel] Squadron, who held his wedding's rehearsal dinner as well as his first-ever political meeting in Chinatown, passionately described the ideal dumpling as 'a rich and satisfying filling' that 'unleashes the full power' of its flavor from its dough wrapping at exactly the right moment.

"'Chinatown is full of small businesses run by independent entrepreneurs -- many of them immigrants -- who, despite all the challenges of succeeding in the city, work hard, stick with it and provide extraordinary food,' he wrote in an email to DNAinfo.com New York."

-- from "Dumpling Rally Looks to Bring Business Back to
Sandy-Damaged Chinatown," on DNAinfo.com New York

by Ken

Talk about an obvious mark! I only had to learn that a new conglomeration of downtown Manhattan businesspersons called Downtown Rally has scheduled four "Dumpling Crawls" for tomorrow (Saturday, March 2) than I was searching frantically for the "more info" and "buy tickets" buttons. I love dumplings more than just about anything on the planet.

As the invaluable NYC news source DNAinfo.com New York's Serena Solomon explains below, "Rally Downtown is a project to help businesses get back on their feet post-Sandy with events that bring shoppers through their doors once again." As I noted in the caption, the Dumpling Rally was conceived by State Sen. Daniel Squadron, as one way of bringing cash-carrying patrons back into this portion of his district which was devastated by Superstorm Sandy.

In case you can't bear to read through Serena's piece to get to it, here's the link for the page on the Rally Downtown website devoted to the Dumpling Crawls.

Dumpling Rally Looks to Bring Business Back to Sandy-Damaged Chinatown

March 1, 2013 7:14am | By Serena Solomon, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

CHINATOWN -- To successfully eat a soup dumpling don't bother with chopsticks, according to Christine Seid, the second-generation owner of the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.

"You have to really carefully put it onto a soup spoon and eat it in one bite so you don't break it and the soup comes out," she said, adding that waiting a few minutes for the broth to cool down is ideal to avoid burning your mouth.

This is the type of knowledge Seid and others will be passing on to amateur dumpling eaters during this Saturday's Dumpling Rally that is providing tours to some of Chinatown's best dumpling houses.

The rally, an idea from State Sen. Daniel Squadron who is a self-professed authority on Chinatown food, is aiming to bring business back to Chinatown as stores still fight to recover from Hurricane Sandy.

"That is one of our goals, to showcase the gems of New York," said event organizer Tom Gray, executive director of the Greenwich Village Chelsea Chamber of Commerce and co-founder of Rally Downtown that is organizing the tours. "People will go to places they have never been before. The event will drive traffic, raise awareness and get people to come back to these dumplings houses."

Rally Downtown is a project to help businesses get back on their feet post-Sandy with events that bring shoppers through their doors once again.

The Dumpling Rally is offering four tours this Saturday -- one at noon and 4 p.m. and two at 2 p.m. Squadron will host one of the 2 p.m. crawls.

Squadron, who held his wedding's rehearsal dinner as well as his first-ever political meeting in Chinatown, passionately described the ideal dumpling as "a rich and satisfying filling" that "unleashes the full power" of its flavor from its dough wrapping at exactly the right moment.

"Chinatown is full of small businesses run by independent entrepreneurs -- many of them immigrants -- who, despite all the challenges of succeeding in the city, work hard, stick with it and provide extraordinary food," he wrote in an email to DNAinfo.com New York.

Tickets for the dumpling crawl are $25 and include dumplings at houses such as Prosperity on Eldridge Street and Lam Zhou on East Broadway. The tour ends at the Chinatown Ice Cream factory for dessert.

"It will be a little bit cheaper, you get the social aspect, a set of chopsticks. The dumplings are included and you get ice cream at the end," said Gray. The tour also gives out a map so those who attend can return to the dumpling houses.

While the organization is yet to apply for nonprofit status, Gray said any funds left over will go to planning more business-generating events for Sandy affected areas.

Ten percent of the ticket price will also go to the Chinese American Planning Council, a local nonprofit.

"It took a lot longer for business to pick up for a long time after Sandy," said Gray. "At the very least everyone went without power."

To purchase tickets for the Dumpling Rally go to the event's website.

My first temptation was to try to sign up for one of the 2pm crawls led by Senator Squadron, who has been impressing me as one of the more watch-worthy of the city's rising pols. And I could probably get to one of the 2pm crawls from my 11am Municipal Art Society walking tour with Matt Postal, revisiting one of the Midtown Manhattan walking tours originally proposed by longtime New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable's ground-breaking 1961 book Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City. (Tomorrow's walk is sold out, but there may still be space in the second walk from the book which Matt is re-creating, on March 16.) But I'm thinking the senator will be wanting to talk dumplings, or maybe economic development, rather than politics, and am I really that confident of his self-proclaimed dumpling expertise? In the end I decided to play it safe and sign up for the 4pm crawl, with Julie Menin.

As it happens, I'm familiar with two of the stops, Excellent Dumpling House on Lafayette Street, just below Canal (where in fact I came very close to popping in this afternoon after a physical-therapy session, but it was just too crowded), and Prosperity Dumpling on Eldridge Street (which I first visited on a NY Transit Museum eating tour led by Saveur magazine's Todd Coleman). But I'm only too happy to go back to both! Maybe I'll even get some tips about ordering at Excellent Dumpling House. I have eaten there while on jury duty, but the menu doesn't seem terribly dumpling-oriented, merely listing a few varieties as appetizers.

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Urban Gadabout: Some highlights of the MAS March-May schedule

The only image I could find of Ada Louise Huxtable's 1961 book Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City, which Matt Postal points out is long out of print, was pathetic and unusable. So here's a really lovely photo of Ms. H.

by Ken

Talk about a happy coincidence! This weekend I have walking tours in three boroughs with three of my very favorite tour leaders, all of whom I've written about here frequently: Clinton Hill (Brooklyn) with Matt Postal on Saturday, and "New York in the Time of George Washington" in Lower Manhattan with Francis Morrone and and "The Transformation of Queens Plaza" with Jack Eichenbaum on Sunday. Matt's and Francis's walks are Municipal Art Society tours and long since sold out, but Jack's Queens Plaza walk is his own and is offered on a strictly walk-up basis. (See the section below on Jack's upcoming tours.)

I can't begin to describe how much I've learned from, not to mention enjoyed the company of, all three -- and I've spent a fair amount of time and space here trying. Matt and Francis are architectural historians but with different enough perspectives and eyes to be richly complementary. Jack's perspective is strikingly different as an "urban geographer," showing us how natural and man-made geography shape the development (and redevelopment) of neighborhoods. In the many walks I've done with Jack in four of NYC's five boroughs he has radically reshaped my way of looking at and taking in the city from large vistas down to small details. One thing Jack is proud of is that even when he's leading his groups through areas frequented by other tour leaders, his groups see things we're unlikely to see with anyone else.

I might note that Joe Svehlak's terrific walks through quintessentially NYC neighborhoods not often visited by tours -- places like Sunset Park (Brooklyn) and Ridgewood (straddling Brooklyn and Queens) -- always take into consideration the kinds of developmental factors Jack highlights. These have been some of my favorite MAS tours, though I'm not sure that the folks at MAS HQ value them as highly as I do. It still kills me that I had to miss Joe's Bushwick walk in order to finish a Sunday Classics piece; everyone I've run into who was on it loved it. I've been waiting hopefully for MAS to reschedule it.

On the new schedule Joe is repeating a tour that really intrigues me: through the remains of "Downtown's Lost Neighborhood" (May 11), the barely heralded Lower West Side. The last time Joe offered it, I got as close as the No. 1 subway entrance in front of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, with the assembling group in view across Peter Minuit Plaza, but it was pouring and I didn't even have an umbrella, so with great reluctance I shuffled back down the steps to the subway. (I only wish I could do that now. As we've noted, the relatively new South Ferry station was pretty much destroyed in Superstorm Sandy. The last I heard, the New York City Transit people planning the rebuild were still trying to determine what if anything could be salvaged.) And wouldn't you know, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it this time. I just hope it hasn't sold out by the time I know.

REGISTERING EARLY IS BECOMING MORE ADVISABLE

And the fact is that, now that everyone seems to have settled into the MAS system of preregistering for all tours (mostly online, but you can do it by phone when the offices are open), they do seem to be selling out more regularly, some of them pretty quickly. For example, it's already too late, and has been for a while, to register for Francis Morrone's annual tribute to and re-creation of MAS's very "First Tour," led by architecture critic Henry Hope Reed in Madison Square and Gramercy Park on April 8, 1956, when the idea was an astounding novelty. (Recommendation: Since you know when this tour is scheduled, watch for the announcement of the April 2014 tours and pounce. I can tell you that after doing this walk you'll never look at a flagpole the same way.)

I know that people who prefer short- to long-term planning, or are visiting from out of town, aren't entirely crazy about the pre-registration system, but it's also true that some tours may still be available as late as the-day-of. As far as I know, there's no cutoff for online registration as long as there's still space in a tour, which is clearly indicated. If you have nothing to do on a weekend, it's always worth checking the website to see if there's a tour you can slip into. Quite often the tours that don't attract waves of registrants are not only unusual but unusually interesting.

As I mentioned Wednesday, the recently posted listings cover March, April, and May (again, it's easy to remember: you go to mas.org and click on "Tours"), and the first thing that popped out for me is the pair of tours Matt Postal is doing, "Remembering Ada Louise Huxtable in Midtown" (March 2 and 16), based on the NYT's legendary architecture critic's 1961 book Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City.

Matt is naturally scheduled for a slew of other tours, which you can check out for yourself. Among those I've done recently enough that I don't need to do them again just yet is a pungent introduction to "Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal" (April 13). I'd love to do Matt's "East River Panoramas" (April 27), but I know I'll be out of commission for that. I hope, though, to be able to do his "New to New York: Downtown Brooklyn" (May 18), even though I've done walks in the area with Francis Morrone and Joe Svehlak -- they all have their own perspectives and emphases.

Francis in fact is also doing his "Downtown Brooklyn" (March 10) again, and also the "Park Slope South" leg (April 28), covering the more working-class southern portion, of his "Three Ways of Looking at Park Slope." Frustratingly, I won't be able to do the "St. Mark's Neighborhood" (April 21) installment of his East Village series, which I was previously registered for and managed to miss (an embarrassing story). I've already registered for Francis's "Irish Footsteps in Lower Manhattan" (March 17), but I have a schedule conflict (a Transit Museum tour of the 180th Street subway shop in the Bronx) for the Washington Square-centered "American Masters: Henry James, John Lafarge, and Stanford White" (March 24). Happily, I should be able to do "Walt Whitman's New York" (May 26); anyway, I've paid my $15.

I've also registered for Eric K. Washington's "Harlem Hike: 145th Street from Hotel Olga to Sugar Hill" (April 7), as a follow-up to his "Harlem Grab Bag," which I'm doing next weekend (that's sold out, but he's doing another version of it on March 31). Eric is known as a leading chronicler of Northern Manhattan, and has written the "Images of America" series volume devoted to Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem, and so I was really looking forward to his recent MAS Manhattanville tour -- so much so that I didn't realize I hadn't actually registered for it till it was too late -- sold out!

Eric is known in particular for knowing more than anybody I know of about Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery, and had a Halloween tour scheduled for MAS which was washed out by Sandy. I made a point of registering for his next MAS foray into the cemetery, the day before Christmas Eve, which synched up, for those who were so inclined, with the annual reading of "The Night Before Christmas" at the beautiful Church of the Ascension, at Broadway and 155th Street, which was for a long time a satellite of the all-powerful (in matters Episcopal in NYC) Trinity Church of Wall Street. I had previously been in the eastern half of the Trinity cemetery, on the east side of Broadway (which you'll recall includes the final resting place of Mayor Ed Koch), notably on an MAS tour that included the Church of the Ascension. But I'd never been in the wilder and more precipitous western half, on the other side of Broadway, which slopes steeply down toward the Hudson River. On that tour I learned that the otherwise-unconnected two halves of the cemetery were actually, for a time, connected by a suspension bridge over Broadway! (Eric had a picture to show us.) Eric will be venturing back into Trinity cemetery for MAS, with "Notable Women of Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery" (March 3) and a "Spring Tour" (May 12).

I've also already registered for architectural historian Tony Robins's "Art Deco on the Upper Upper West Side" (March 31), art deco being a special passion of his. (Tony has been all over the place lately with the publication last year of an updated edition of his 1987 book on the World Trade Center and now of Grand Central Terminal: 100 Years of a New York Landmark.) This time if Tony starts by asking us when art deco was born, I know it's a trick question. Tony's also doing "Landmark Battles of Midtown" (April 21) and "Central Park as a Work of Art" (May 2).

The Bedford Stuyvesant walks of Brooklyn architecture blogger Suzanne Spellen (Brownstoner.com's Montrose Morris, after her favorite architect) and architect and architectural historian Morgan Munsey have become an MAS staple, and April 14's "Bedford Stuyvesant" is actually focused on the heart of old Bedford Corners. The duo will also be touring "Brooklyn's Automobile Row" (in Crown Heights, Bedford Avenue between Fulton Street and Empire Boulevard; May 19).

SOMETIMES MAS TAPS SPECIFIC EXPERTISE

I had a great time on two such walks. Georgia Trivizas brings a native Staten Islander's special perspective to "Staten Island's Developing Waterfront" (March 23), a walk that's bound to take on some somber new tones post-Sandy, especially in the shoreline area to the east of the Ferry Terminal, where I'd never even set foot before the October walk with Georgia.

And federal court reporter Linda Fisher brings an insider's knowledge to "Manhattan's Civic Center" (April 13), which a hardy band of us did on a bitter cold day in late December (I don't think the temperature reached as high as 20 degrees that day). I'm seriously considering doing the walk again under more normal circumstances. And who knew anybody willing to endure the security screening can just walk into a courthouse and visit courtrooms? Of course most of the courts aren't functional on the weekends, but even on a Saturday the ground-floor courtroom in the Tombs where basically all Manhattan arraignments are handled will be open, because people are always being arrested in Manhattan, after all.

I'm assuming that Alexandra Maruri will be bringing similar special knowledge to the Bronx's "Little Italy on Arthur Avenue" (March 30), a tour I would love to do (as it happens, I've somehow never visited Arthur Avenue) but don't think I can since I'll be visiting Bayside (Queens) with Jack Eichenbaum that morning (see below), it's quite schlepp from Bayside to Arthur Avenue; I don't see how it can be managed in anything like the time available.

IT'S ALWAYS GOOD TO SEE ATTENTION TO THE OUTER BOROUGHS

And I don't think Brooklyn even qualifies anymore.

I expect to make the acquaintance of New School Prof. Joseph Heathcott, who's scheduled for "Queens Is the Future: Immigrant Neighborhoods Along the 7 Train" (March 9, already sold out! whoops, we all missed that one, but check out Jack Eichenbaum's "signature tour" of the "World of the #7 Train" below), "Sunnyside Gardens and Jackson Heights: America's First Garden Cities" (April 6), and "Queensbridge: America's Largest Public Housing Project" (April 27). This is territory I've covered a fair amount with Jack Eichenbaum, the Queens borough historian, but again, it's always interesting to see things through different eyes.

Speaking of Jack, though, as I've done so often here, I'm surprised to see that he's represented by just one tour. It's a terrific one, though: "Morisania: From Suburbia to the Grand Concourse" (March 24), which he did last year as the last of three northward-moving walks through the South Bronx. We got to see a staggering variety of urbanscapes sandwiched into the precipitous topography of the West Bronx -- old construction and new, the savage hatchet job inflicted on Bronx neighborhoods by Robert Moses's Cross-Bronx Expressway, the suburban enclave that has replaced the bombed-out Charlotte Street ruins once visited by Presidents Reagan and Carter, lovely Crotona Park, and the grandeur of the Grand Concourse.

Fortunately, Jack has a number of other projects coming up, starting with that Queens Plaza walk this Sunday which I mentioned at the top. More about those projects in a moment.

MY GOODNESS, THERE'S SO MUCH ELSE --

I feel terrible about all that I've left out, and tour leaders I've left out. I may need to do another post. Let me just point out, though, that there's a night-time tour, ""All Lit Up: Times Square at Night" (with Kathleen Hulser, April 20), and a tour in Spanish, "En Español! El Puente de Brooklyn: Política y Técnica" (April 14), a looks at the history and present of the Brooklyn Bridge and the cities (as New York and Brooklyn both were when the bridge was conceived and built) and the neighborhoods it connects, starting in Lower Manhattan and crossing over the bridge into DUMBO.


NOW, FINALLY, ABOUT JACK EICHENBAUM'S
UPCOMING PROJECTS

First off, if you don't know his website, The Geography of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum, you should, because it contains lots of great information in addition to Jack's schedule. On the "Public Tour Schedule" page you can also sign up for Jack's e-mail updates, which provide advance notice of plans before they make it onto the website. As it happens, Jack has just sent out a very newsy one indeed, which we'll get to.

The World of the #7 Train

Meanwhile, the splashiest news isn't brand new. Jack had already announced that this year's version of his "signature tour" will take place on April 27. I consider this one of the happiest ways an urban gadder can spend a day gadding about NYC. You not only see the full span of the IRT Flushing line (which in Queens is mostly above ground, so there's a lot to see out the windows), but do walks in six strikingly different neighborhoods along its path, including the lunch stop in Flushing's Chinatown. (Jack is a long-time Flushing resident.)

As usual, the tour will be limited to 25 people, and so requires preregistration, and can fill up in a hurry. Jack is still charging only $39, a steal in 2013 dollars. You can e-mail him (jaconet@aol.com) for "the full day's program and other info,", or just send a check. (The address is on the tour page of the website.) Or you can do both! A recent onsite note reports: "As of 2/15/13, there were 12 spots remaining." Be warned that spaces can fill up in a hurry.

Now for the big news: In October Jack offered his "Day on the J," and his new e-mail update contains the news that in June he will offer "Six Walks on the Number Six Train" -- the Lexington Avenue local train that continues on into the Bronx to the southwestern corner of the city's largest park, Pelham Bay Park. Further information is promised in the next update. Once again I expect to be writing my check the day the details are announced!

In other news, Jack reports: "In conjunction with the Grand Central centennial, I am trying to arrange Maps, Realities and the People’s Palace (scroll down at http://www.geognyc.com/?page_id=26) for a weekend date in April. This tour will require registration and I will post it ASAP." Here's the website description:

 Maps, Realities and the People’s Palace

 Tour Grand Central and Bryant Park, planned areas greatly altered since the Civil War. Then we will see how historical cartography captures the changing urban landscape in the splendidly restored Map Room of the New York Public Library.

And Jack also notes that he will be doing two walking tours as part of the third annual Long Island City Arts Open (LICAO, May 15-18), which will also include "performing arts, special gallery exhibitions, open artists’ studios, [and] a street fair," withe details to be posted at http://licartsopen.org/.

Now for Jack's other non-MAS tours:

The Transformation of Queens Plaza (this Sunday, February 17, 11am-1pm)

A look back at how this "nexus of early 20th century transportation improvements" (the Queensboro Bridge, Northern and Queens Blvds., lines of all three subway divisions, and the LIRR) set the stage for "NYC's largest and most modern industrial area," then went to seed with the exodus of industry from the area, and now has been transformed with amazing speed into something quite different.

It's $15, and we meet at the fare booth of the 39th Avenue station of the N and Q (Astoria) lines.

Flushing's Chinatown (Sunday, March 3, 11am-1pm)

As I mentioned, Jack is a longtime Flushing resident, and has watched the transformation of the area, which also experienced a period of deep decline, be reborn in mostly separate Chinese and Korean enclaves. Flushing's Chinatown, he says, "has come to rival its Manhattan antecedent. Taiwanese rather than Cantonese at its core, Flushing’s Chinatown plays host to a variety of overseas Chinese groups."

Also $15. Meet near the rest rooms on the second floor of the New World Mall on Roosevelt Avenue near the Flushing terminus of the No. 7 train. (There are more detailed directions on the website.)

My Childhood in Bayside (vs. What’s There Now) (Saturday, March 30, 2013, 10:50am-12:50pm -- the timing based on the scheduled arrival of the 10:18 LIRR train from Penn Station)

Every year Jack does a fund-raiser for the Queens Historical Society, and the ones I've done have been some of my all-time favorite walks. This year, in honor of his 70th birthday, on February 2 (sorry I missed your birthday -- happy birthday, Jack!), he's leading "a walk through old Bayside where I lived from 1943-1958. Most of the personal landmarks of my early life have vanished but there are threads of continuity and many anecdotes."

It's $12 for QHS members, $15 for others. (I'm a member, but I'm planning to spring for the full $15.) Meet in front of the post office on the south side of the LIRR stateion on 42nd Avenue. You can also get there via the Q13 bus from Flushing.)

And then there are these just announced in the e-mail update, and so not yet on the website:

Bowne St, My Street (May 4 or 5, time TBA)

As part of the annual Jane's Walks Weekend festivities, honoring Jane Jacobs (I reported on the 2012 schedule here), Jack will lead this walk "along the length of historic and multiethnic Bowne Street in Flushing where I have been living for 35 years." In recent years MAS has been organizing the NYC Jane's Walks, which are all free, and they've done such a good job that there are likely to be about 30 walks over the two days that I'll want to do. The listings should appear in April.

What’s New in Long Island City? (Friday, May 15, 5:45-8pm) -- a walk from Queensboro Plaza to the East River waterfront

Daylight Loft Buildings in Long Island City (Sunday, May 18, 10:30am-12:30pm)

In case you haven't gathered, Long Island City holds a special fascination for Jack, and these are new versions of walks of his that I think we can describe as popular "standbys."

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Urban Gadabout: Were Mayor Bloomberg's paratroopers in the City Hall area Sunday to provide a Civil War backdrop for our Lincoln walk?

At City Hall, New Yorkers say a final farewell to President Lincoln.

by Ken

I had thought about writing about my touring (and nontouring) weekend here in NYC as rearranged by the storm (see my Friday post, "While we're on storm watch here in the Northeast, maybe it's an OK time to play '2016'"), but I couldn't find an angle that seemed apt to be of much interest. What's more, I felt awkward, since however life here may have been disrupted, we were largely spared by comparison with our neighbors to the east and north. As you headed east on Long Island the storm was progressively more severe, until in easternmost Suffolk County, the southern shore of which was still reeling from Superstorm Sandy, those unlucky folks got the 2-3 feet of snow that had been threatened, as did areas to the north in a path through Connecticut and Massachusetts. You don't want to go whining about what that mean storm did to you when there are so many people so nearby who had it so much worse.

I originally heard after the snow stopped that the city had gotten 5-8", but later I heard 8-12". As I note in the rambling account that follows, I wound up not setting foot outside on Saturday, when I did venture out on Sunday, it looked to me that at least up here in Washington Heights it was more like 5".

As I said, I had kind of given up on writing about the weekend. And then a friend I hadn't had contact with since before the storm e-mailed asking how I had made out, and by the time I had finished answering, I realized i just had written about it. I've fleshed out the account a little here and there, but what follows is basically my answer to his question of how I had made out during the storm, which I began: "Not bad, actually."

I had a Municipal Art Society walking tour of the Tompkins Square area of the East Village with Francis Morrone canceled on Saturday, so I wound up not budging out of the house, and then a New York Transit Museum tour that would have been mostly in the subways was also canceled, because of possibly iffy scheduling in the subways, and the difficulty of traveling into the city from Long Island. (The scheduled tour was the second half of a riding-the-rails exploration with transit historian Andy Sparberg, a longtime veteran of the Long Island Rail Road, of what is known as the Dual Contracts phase, roughly in the 1910s, of the construction of the NYC subway system. We had done the connection from Manhattan into Brooklyn in the first part, and were scheduled to look at the connections from Manhattan to Queens and the Bronx. Signing up for Andy's tours is a no-brainer for me. One of the best took place the very Sunday that the city was counting down to the transit shutdown in anticipation of Sandy, when we looked at surviving traces, from Queens to Manhattan, of the long-gone Second Avenue El.)

But the cancellation of the NYTM tour, much as I regretted it, worked out fine, because it meant I was able to do an MAS walking tour I'd paid for before that part of the NYTM tour schedule was announced. I knew I didn't want to miss Andy's tour, and so had planned to skip the Sunday MAS tour, intriguing though it looked.

It was a Lincoln's Birthday-themed walk with Matt Postal focused on a part of the city that Lincoln is known to have known from his visits here -- and through which his casket traveled on his final "visit," when it was brought to City Hall (which, remember, dates back to 1810!) for a public viewing and then transported up Broadway. Matt pointed out that the newspapers were filled with accounts of the massive public outpouring for the slain president -- and this in a city that had had little interest in or sympathy for the then-new Republican Party or its hardly-known presidential candidate.

The cool thing is that if you start from City Hall Park, which isn't all that different now from the way it was in Lincoln's time, and walk up Broadway, if you know where to look, there are a surprising number of buildings that actually existed in the 1860s (including, for example, St. Paul's Chapel a block below City Hall Park), you can begin to get a glimmering of how the city looked at that time. In addition, there are many more buildings just a decade or two newer, products of the construction boom that followed the Civil War. Again, you need to know where to look, but if you do, you can get some sense of the city of the 1860s, '70s, and '80s.

We only walked up as far as about midway between Canal St and Houston St, but some of the side streets in TriBeCa and SoHo are still mostly buildings from that period. Also along the way on or near Broadway are some of the early department stores and other businesses where Mary Todd Lincoln is either known or thought to have shopped on her visits to NYC, which were actually more frequent than the president's. For one thing, the White House was redecorated during her time residence, and this is where she did much of the purchasing for it.

Matt pointed out when we started that there's an area farther north, leading to Cooper Union, that we know Lincoln knew, but very few buildings there survive from that time EXCEPT Cooper Union, which of course is one of the seminal sites of Lincoln's life. We do know that on at least two of his visits to NYC he stayed at the Astor Hotel, which is long since gone, but whose site Matt pointed out to us right across Broadway from our starting point at the southern end of City Hall Park (i.e., the block north of St. Paul's). One of the visits was when Lincoln, still a locally little-known presidential candidate, gave the great speech at Cooper Union, one of the most important speeches in American history, a speech that, when it was printed in newspapers across the country, transformed his candidacy. To get from the hotel to Cooper Union, he would have walked pretty much the path we did, up Broadway!

Matt made a point of taking us past the statue of Horace Greeley, the onetime ardent Whig who was a founder of the Republican Party, which now sits at the eastern end of City Hall, across from what was once the city's Newspaper Row on Park Row, where Greeley's New York Tribune was headquartered. The story is that after Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, he and Greeley repaired to the Tribune building to watch over the typesetting and proofing of the speech for publication in the next day's paper.

Matt noted that he's done the Lincoln walk a number of times now, and one thing he knows is not to expect cooperation from the weather. It's always going to be scheduled on what is likely not to be the weather-friendliest weekend of the year. The tour was sold out, meaning 30 people had paid either $15 (for members) or $20 (for nonmembers). About a dozen made it. Which was probably lucky, since the condition of the streets and sidewalks so soon after the storm wouldn't have made it easy for a group of 30 people to navigate. (Of course all 30 people NEVER show up, even when there's no weather excuse! In fairness, I should point out that if the Transit Museum tour hadn't been canceled, I wouldn't have showed up either!)

What's more, the whole City Hall area was being transformed, as we passed through it shortly after 11am, into a locked-down fortress area -- the Bloomberg administration's typical military-stye response to the demonstration that was coming of striking bus drivers. I didn't know anything about it, and was totally puzzled when I came up from the Park Pl subway station and saw about 30 cops huddled at the corner of Broadway and Park Pl. They turned out to be just a tiny contingent of what must have been hundreds (perhaps many hundreds?) of police officers pressed into service for the military operation.


BY THE WAY, THE NEW MAS TOUR LISTINGS ARE POSTED

It's easy to remember. You go to mas.org and click on "Tours." The new listings cover March, April, and May, and the first thing that popped out for me is an interesting pair of tours Matt Postal is doing, "Remembering Ada Louise Huxtable in Midtown" (March 2 and 16), retracing two of the routes proposed by the NYT"s legendary architecture critic in her 1961 book Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City, published by MAS and MoMA.

Matt and a host of other ttour leaders, familiar and unfamiliar (at least to me) will be leading a host of other walks. I started doing some quick notes, but it's a tribute to the range of offerings that it quickly expanded to a length that requires a post of its own, so that's what I'll do, perhaps tomorrow. [<b>UPDATE</b>: Not tomorrow. Make that Friday.]

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Urban Gadabout: Stalking owls in Inwood Hill Park

No, as far as I know this isn't the great horned owl we (supposedly) made voice contact with this evening in way-Northern Manhattan's Inwood Hill Park. But I can't say for sure it isn't. Or it could be a relative.

FINAL TALLY FOR "OWL PROWL"

Total number of owls made visual contact with: 0
Total number of owls made voice contact with: 1 (alleged)
Total amount of fun had during Owl Prowl: tons

by Ken

Now you're going to tell me you could resist an offer like this?

Owl Prowl with Mike Feller

Saturday, December 8, 2012
4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.

Whoooo goes there?

Bring the whole family and find out as you roam the winter woods in search of owls with Mike Feller, Chief Naturalist for Parks's Natural Resources Group. It's the beginning of their mating season so you may observe some interesting behaviors. Mike will demonstrate how to attract owls using calls.

From time to time I've noted announcements from the NYC Parks Dept. about nature-themed walks in Northern Manhattan parks featuring naturalist Mike Feller. I've done a bunch of the (similarly sponsored) walks in Northern Manhattan with the staggeringly erudite Sid Horenstein, educator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History (and I wrote about my adventure with him in Highbridge Park), but I'd never done one of Mike's walks.

Today, finally, I got myself there for the promised Owl Prowl. It surprised me all the more because I'd already done a Municipal Art Society walking tour with Matt Postal -- the first of two walks devoted to "Millionaires' Mile" (which Matt allowed at the outset should probably be renamed "Billionaires' Mile"), this one on but mostly off Fifth Avenue from 60th Street (starting directly opposite the still-imposing McKim Mead & White Metropolitan Club) up to the Frick Collection at 70th Street.

Asked at the outset about our odds for spotting owls, Mike thought a bit before telling us that his record so far on these walks was six for six. Well, now it's six for seven. But along the way we learned plenty about owls, and in particular the great horned owls who have taken over the owl franchise in Inwood Hill Park (at the northern edge of Manhattan, one of our few parks that includes a fair amount of natural rather than manufactured terrain.) Great horned owls, Mike explained, don't like sharing habitat with other species of owls, and tend to terminate them with extreme prejudice.

I learned a great deal about what great horned owls eat, which is mostly live animals -- mice and rats definitely, but on up to skunks and squirrels and rabbits. The smaller animals are swallowed whole, and eventually the indigestible parts are ejected orally in the form of a pellet. Larger animals are torn up for swallowing, perhaps in quarters for, say, skunks. (A tour participant who lives in the area volunteers that in the years before the arrival of the great horned owls in Inwood Hill Park, the park was overrun with skunks, and then the skunks more or less vanished. The connection was "purely anecdotal," she acknowledged, adding that she sure didn't miss the skunks -- the smell was pretty bad.)

It may have been too warm still for owl spotting -- Mike registered surprise at the amount of insect activity still observable in the park at this late date. When he applied his imitation owl-hooting technique, he seemed to get a response from afar, but nothing he could do would persuade the respondent to move from his spot -- a "mellow male owl," he guessed. He ventured that we were having roughly the same effect on him that telemarketers have on us when they call during dinner.

Actually, I wasn't entirely grieving that our mellow male chose to stand, or sit, his ground. (My personal theory is that when Mike started doing his owl calls, the great horneds in the park were texting one another noting that it's probably just that crazy Mike making like an owl. And our mellow male just went back to the book he was reading.)

Whatever. It was a great walk in the park, with all manner of fascinating lore coming from Mike. There was a great turnout for the walk, including half a dozen kids of various ages -- a huge asset to the walk, with their delicious curiosity and enthusiasm. And the nice thing about our having hiked all the way up into the high sierra of Inwood Hill Park on the heading-toward-owl-country leg of the walk was that the return was almost entirely downhill.


LOOKING AHEAD

Part 2 of Matt Postal's MAS "Millionaires' Mile" series, ranging from 70th Street up to about 78th, is scheduled for Sunday, December 23, 11am-1pm. This is a problem for me, because at 1pm that day Eric K. Washington is starting an "Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery at Christmas" walk, which "precedes the city’s oldest ongoing holiday tradition, the annual recitation at the Church of the Intercession of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (by Clement Clarke Moore, who is buried here)."

I just did a quick search, and the next walk the Parks Dept. has listed for Mike is a "Dusk Walk with Mike Feller" in Fort Tryon Park on Sunday, January 12, 4pm-6pm.

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Urban Gadabout: Have you checked out the Dec.-Jan.-Feb. Municipal Art Society walking-tour schedule? (Plus: Winter tour update)

MAS tours with Francis Morrone, Joe Svehlak, ???, and Matt Postal

by Ken

I should have mentioned sooner for the benefit of New Yorkers that the new Municipal Art Society walking-tour schedule -- once again covering three months, December through February -- is available online. As I've mentioned here before, in the two years I've been doing MAS tours, following my ridiculously late discovery that there are such things -- they really have changed my life.

I just did a quick count on my online calendar and see that I registered for something like 20 Municipal Art Society walking tours for the three-month period from September to November. I actually do quite that many, because I "better-dealed" one or two in favor of later-announced tours of other kinds which I couldn't resist, and I had four tours canceled in the two weekends just before and then after the arrival of Superstorm Sandy.

There's so much other tour activity going on in the metropolitan area, including activity involving a number of my favorite MAS tour leaders, activity I'm still just beginning to discover, that it's easy to take the MAS schedule for granted. Which I surely don't do! This time I'll be a little more cautious in registering for tours before other schedules have been announced (I'll try to keep my options open longer, focusing on registering on tours I know will be sold out if I wait too much longer), but by the end of February I expect to wind up doing about as many MAS tours as I've done in these last three months. More, actually, accounting for the tours lost to the storm in this cycle.

I think everyone has settled into the MAS registration system -- no longer so new -- by which all tours require preregistration. It simplifies the life of most everyone concerned, most obviously at the start of each tour, where it's no longer necessary to devote all that time to collecting money for tours that once allowed walk-up registration or doing check-ins for tours that were done entirely by preregistration. The one exception I can think of, and I have met people who fall into this category, is for folks who prefer not to have to plan well ahead.

The fact is that if you do your registration online you can register anytime up to the start of the tour -- provided, of course, that there's still space for the tour you want to do; if the tour is sold out, that's indicated online. (For tour-takers without online access, registrations can still be done by phone, but only during weekday hours when the MAS office is open.)

Even with the price increase that accompanied the new system, MAS tours are an amazing bargain -- a mere $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers. A couple of weeks ago I got an online notice informing me that my renewal was due, and I can assure you, I did my renewal within minutes by return e-mail! Even at the lowest membership level, $50 for individuals ($40 for seniors), you get one free tour each year -- since I had online access to the "free tour" code, I had it applied it to one of the new-season tours even before my new membership card arrived in the mail.

Maybe it was surviving those two weekends without MAS tours that has made me so conscious of paying them their due. Certainly it felt special doing my first post-storm walk, which was of the Madison Square area with Sylvia Laudien-Meo -- on Veterans Day, at the very spot where the Veterans Day parade begins, which added an element of hubbub. I've enjoyed all the tours I've done with the amazingly charming Sylvia, who's an art person, which I'm emphatically not, meaning that I often get a different kind of view of the tour areas, as was the case with a Lower East Side tour she led, which wound up bringing me for the first time ever inside the New Museum on the Bowery. (Sylvia has a tour of Chelsea art galleries scheduled for Jan. 19, and two more of her "family tours," presumably suitable for whole families but not limited to them: Grand Central Terminal on Dec. 8 and Rockefeller Center on Feb. 24.)

(And anyone who hasn't done a Rockefeller Center tour really ought to. I've done architectural historian Tony Robins's and thoroughly enjoyed it. During the holiday season he's doing it twice: on Christmas Day and on Dec. 30.)

WEEKENDS WITH MATT POSTAL AND FRANCIS MORRONE

Then these last two weekends, the schedule has been kind to me, with four tours led by three of my favorite tour leaders. Last week I had the second in a series of three led by architectural historian Matt Postal devoted to the area known to the City Planning Dept. as Midtown East, for which major zoning changes are being proposed which could bring drastic changes (this was actually scheduled as the last of the three tours, but the middle one was a storm casualty and has been rescheduled for Dec. 15); and then Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens with architectural historian Francis Morrone, the middle leg of a three-part series covering the adjacent neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Cobble Hill.

I've written about both Matt and Francis a lot here. Maybe the simplest thing to say is that depth and range of their curiosity and knowledge, I'd sign up, schedule permitting, for pretty much anything they're doing. If the subject of the walk is interesting enough to them to do, I now take for granted that it will: (a) connect pieces of my world that hadn't previously been connected, (b) teach me all sorts of things I had no idea there were to know, and (c) provide two hours' worth of wonderful entertainment. (Both Matt and Francis have all sorts of tours listed in the new schedule. Be warned that Francis's in particular are likely to fill up well before the tour dates.)

MORE FRANCIS M, AND JACK EICHENBAUM

This weekend again I had a pair of tours. For the day after Thanksgiving there was a walk through "Public Housing's Fertile Crescent," along the East River side of Lower Manhattan, an area I'd never actually walked through, with urban geographer (and the borough historian of Queens) Jack Eichenbaum. I've also written here frequently about Jack. No one has done more to help me see -- and often it is literally a matter of seeing -- how the development of regions and neighborhoods is shaped by geography, including transportation access and population patterns over time.

In the new schedule Jack is doing two of his standby walks, ways of walking north-south in Midtown Manhattan while "Keeping Off Midtown Streets" -- an East Side version (from Grand Central to Bloomingdale's, Dec. 29) and a West Side one (from the Time Warner Center to Times Square, Jan. 27). Also, it's invaluable to register for Jack's e-mail list for announcements of his MAS and non-MAS activities, which you can do on the "Public Tour Schedule" page of his website, "The Geography of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum."

Then today Francis Morrone concluded the "BoCoCa" cycle with Cobble Hill, and it was Francis at his best. I'm only sorry that I had to miss the Boerum Hill installment of this cycle owing to a schedule conflict, which was true as well for the "Heart of Flatbush" installment of a three-part series built around Flatbush's historic districts, which fell on the same day as Jack Eichenbaum's one-of-a-kind "Day on the J Train" tour, which I certainly wasn't going to miss! (Be sure to watch for Jack's "World of the #7 Train.")

I've actually done a terrific Boerum Hill walk with Joe Svehlak, another of my "old reliables," who sort of combines the geographical and architectural approaches in his masterful tours of less-walked-through neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn. I'm still waiting for a reschedule of his Bushwick tour, which I had to miss because I had to finish a "Sunday Classics" piece; I've loved Joe's tours of Ridgewood (straddling Brooklyn and Queens), Sunset Park (where he grew up), Cypress Hills, and Downtown Brooklyn. I also see Joe all the time on other people's tours, a tribute to the range of his curiosity; he was supposed to be with us, we learned from Jack Eichenbaum, on Jack's "Day on the J Train." I know Joe does a lot of Grand Central tours, so his "Grand Central During the Holidays" on Dec. 22 should be fun. He's also doing a Lower Manhattan tour called "Downtown Connections" on Jan. 20.

NORTHERN MANHATTAN, ATLANTIC AVENUE, AND MISC.

There are also a number of tours scheduled with the highly regarded historian of Harlem and Northern Manhattan Eric K. Washington: "Uptown Trinity Church Cemetery at Christmas," Dec. 23; "Manhattanville: Revisiting a Neighborhood in Flux," Feb. 3 (Eric has literally "written the book" on Manhattanville); and "Harlem Grab Bag," Feb. 23.

I might also mention "Explore and Shop: Wintertime in the Atlantic Avenue Bazaars" with MaryAnn DiNapoli on Jan. 5. I've done MaryAnn's "Churches of Cobble Hill" (which covers not just still-functioning churches but no-longer-existing as well as repurposed ones). It's always fascinating to tour areas with neighborhood residents, and MaryAnn grew up here. Which means she knows the Middle Eastern shops of Atlantic Avenue from longtime personal experience. In fact, the tour I took with her, having been scheduled on a weekday, was compact enough that she was actually able to take us inside several of the shops where she has shopped, well, pretty much forever.

I don't think I mentioned that the MAS schedule has a Green-Wood Cemetery tour with the cemetery's historian, Jeff Richman, on Dec. 15. And I don't know what all else I haven't mentioned. Oh yes, I'm hoping that this time I'll be able to do Linda Fisher's tour of "Manhattan's Civic Center," on Dec. 30. This is one of the tours I registered for the last time it was scheduled but "better-dealed" in favor of a tour I couldn't resist, a bus tour to the Usonia Houses communal-housing development in northern Westchester which was planned in good part by Frank Lloyd Wright, during which tour leader Justin Ferate, another of my all-time favorites, led us through two of the houses, one of them one that was actually designed by Wright.

AND SPEAKING OF JUSTIN FERATE . . .

He seems to be doing most of his tours these days as coordinator of the Wolfe Walkers tours, via which in just the past year I've been able to do amazing bus tours to the Mark Twain House in West Hartford as well as the Usonia Houses, and also visit such diverse locations as the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge, the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Uptown Manhattan (combined with the Audubon Terrace complex), and Chinatown.

An unfortunate casualty of the storm aftermath was a tour of Staten Island's under-construction conversion of Staten Island's Freshkills landfill into what will be NYC's largest park. But in turn one of the MAS pre-storm cancellations allowed me to do an extra Wolfe Walkers tour I hadn't expected: a Halloween-themed walk through Greenwich Village. I've done a number of Village tours by now, but I had a feeling that Justin's Village wouldn't be the same as anyone else's, and it wasn't! Still to come in the current Wolfe Walkers cycle is a tour of the Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park on Dec. 2, one of the tours I signed up for as soon as I saw the announcement.

By the way, as a source of information about fascinating tour goings-on in the NYC area, there's no resource quite like Justin's e-mail list. Justin sends out vast quantities of pass-alongs of events he thinks may be of interest, and I can say that I ALWAYS look at his pass-alongs. I've already done a whole bunch of events I wouldn't have known about otherwise. For that matter, Justin's website, "Tours of the City with Justin Ferate," is itself an invaluable resource. Here's the link to sign up for Justin's mailing list.

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