The Big Finish (Fourth Day, Fifth Leg)

(The Old Guy and Upstate Annie show us the Battery area when it was all piers and commerical trade -- pretty much the view my dad used to see from his office window when he worked as an accountant for a shipping company in the late 1950s.)

As we're entering Battery Park, it occurs to me that we're now stepping back into history by stepping into one of the oldest parts of the city, having walked from the northernmost tip of Manhattan to the Battery on one of Manhattan's newest walkways.  Bowling Green (now a subway stop on the northernmost side of Battery Park), was the town of New Amsterdam's "village green" where the original Dutch settlers played a strange game of knocking down wooden "pins" that were arranged in a triangle with a small ball rolled towards them on the green lawn.  Hmmm!   Being from a 1960s "bowling mad" barely suburban Long Island  family, I can immediately relate.
Though it should be fairly self-evident, the Battery is so named because way, way back -- nearly to the founding of our fair city in the 1600's -- this is where the 15th Century's version of a "star wars" defense system (some huge black canons housed in a round fortress) were ready to ward off invaders (though they did little to stop the British during their first, pre-Beatles invasion in 1776). 

I believe New York City was the only major Colonial city the British conquered during the Revolutionary War...with nary a shot from the massive Battery artilery.   Some of the canons, and the fortress now called Clinton Castle (no, not named after our former president but, I believe, New York State's first governor) are still sitting down there, in a buzzing park that has been fashioned around them.  Today, Castle Clinton is the epicenter of tourist activities as it is here that one buys ones tickets to tour Liberty and Ellis Islands.

Battery is a park filled with monuments to the valorous and the dead...

.

..including the below slabs with the names of "the greatest generation" of New Yorkers who perished during World War II.

It is also filled-to-bursting with tourists, especially on this sunny, late fall day, as it is here that ships bound for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island embark.

It was just beyond the World War II Memorial, strolling on the path next to the River, that I realized we were just about at the exact southern tip of Manhattan...and the end of our quest.  Quite a successful quest it was, as we have demonstrated that yes -- you can now walk from the top to the bottom of Manhattan along the Hudson River, never losing sight of the amazing waterway first spied and navigated by Europeans 400 years ago...and by my band of (mostly) loyal walkers over the past four months.

This called for the ceremonial "end of walk" photo...

...and who better to take it than a "man of letters" (currently a "visiting professor" at Rutgers), Israli-born Dr. Samuel Peleg, with his daughters Efrat and Adelle.

 After we told them about our trek...and this blog, his parting words to us were "Go, Yankees!" (remembering that this last segment of "the walk" was conducted during the World Series).  The New York Yankees (a team that carries a massive chunck of American baseball's glory and legend on its exceedingly well-endowed shoulders) did, indeed, go all-the-way a few nights later to clinch their 27th post-season World Series title at the new, food-friendly Yankee Stadium.  I'm sorry, but playing against other American teams does not a "World Series" make!  And, I also have heard that the Met's new Citi Field in Queens has better pickin's in the food department.  It almost makes me want to take in a game next summer!

So, here OG, Upstate Annie and I are, at the end of our journey, but without any repast this entire walk.  Given that the name of this blog is "Will Walk For Food" not having any food certainly will not do!  We kept walking, past where the Hudson River and East River meet,

and actually took a few steps into our new quest (to see if we can go from the bottom of Manhattan up to the top along the East River -- again, without losing sight of the river during our travels).  We almost stopped at The Restaurant at Battery Gardens, which is a lovely restaurant set among some gorgeous summer flower

gardens with windows looking south and west -- out at Governor's Island, Brooklyn and beyond -- right next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal.  However, the memory of having a lovely, but sadly, last meal here last year with a beloved (now tragically departed) Brazilian cousin (not to mention the fairly costly, but tasty, menu) kept us walking,  We passed "The Big Lebowsky"...

 ...as well as the shrine and pretty little church to honor one of New York's two cannonized Catholic saints, Elizabeth Anne Seaton......and into the canyons of downtown Manhattan.  In keeping with our afternoon's theme of tramping through "Olde NY," we walked over a few blocks (yes, losing sight of any body of water) to the oldest street in New York City -- Stone Street.  Now closed to traffic, the cobble stones are flanked on either side of this one short block by some of the city's oldest buildings...each one housing a restaurant.   Call it the ultimate "food court." There's many cuisines (from quasi-Swedish smorgesbord to French cafe, from American pub-grub to Italian pizzeria -- mostly all owned by one family -- a Greek guy named Harry, who's Harry's Grill is the ultimate Wall Street "insider" steakhouse in the area).  It was that pizzeria, called Adrienne (for Harry's wife, I believe) where we parked our weary carcasses at the outdoor picnic tables, slightly off-kilter and leaning toward one side because of the street's uneven design.We had very thin-crusted, coal-oven baked gems (Adrienne's is regularly considered among the best of the "new guard" of New York pizza-making) and then asked our waiter to take the post-walk, celebratory photo.

So, where do we go from here -- walk-wise and blog-wise -- now that our mission has been accomplished?

That's easy -- to blaze new trails in and around this magnificent island-city that has many secrets to reveal (even for die-hard New Yorkers like my friends and me) -- and "oh so many" places to eat.  As long as the weather holds out, we'll be lacing up our walking shoes every few Sundays to take an early-morning stroll into all the nooks and crannies that make up this big, beautiful, shiny Apple.

In fact, as I write this entry, I am resting my weary bones after another wonderfully sunny and fairly warm day of "bridge-walking."   A few bonus entries are coming as the Old Guy and Nature Girl (yes...she's back) make a pligrimage to the borough of my birth by walking the Brooklyn Bridge into historic Brooklyn, following a trail along the Brooklyn side of the East River, to cross back to Manhattan over the Manhattan Bridge.  Surprises are in store, as usual.  Later...

Familiarity Breeds Content (Fourth Day, Fourth Leg)

We're now strolling through completely familiar terrain, from the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, past the boat basin and down into the residential heart of Battery Park City.  The sun, coming directly off the water, was blindingly bright.  As Nature Girl was sidelined by illness for this day's journey, the Old Guy was one major squint since he left his sunglasses in NG's car after the last walk. 

Here, the streets of BPC come right onto the path, right next to the water.  Each of the three or four streets have really funky, interesting "art" where they meet the path.  

The "boardwalk," if you will, has a fairly unbroken line of benches facing the water (with clear, if still a bit far-off views of Lady Liberty and Ellis Island).

Given the title of this blog, I'd be totally remiss if I didn't mention the lovely two restaurants that fit snugly and inobtrusively into the landscape here.  There's Steamer's Landing, a small seafood cafe that has decent views of water and more than serviceable seafood snacks like oysters-on-the-halfshell, seafood soups and the like.  Not a great culinary experience, but very pleasant if one is walking this way around lunchtime.  Unfortunately, we were a little early yet for lunch, so on we gaited, past a small, unremarkable Chinese restaurant at the south end of the apartment complexes.  You would think an area like this would have one or two better restaurants.  But, outside of a few that used to be in the World Financial Center, including Waldy Malouf's first restaurant and a great Irish pub that made authentic Irish Coffees (with real heavy cream, poured down the back of a spoon to float on top the coffee -- not whipped and plopped into the coffee).  Both are long-gone and nothing very interesting ever took their places.

Then there's the stretch just south of the highest residential towers that features lower towers facing a landing for smaller crafts in a cunning little alcove. 

Having recently returned from DisneyWorld, this area reminds me of the hotels just outside Epcot around a lake -- one recreating the feel of a Cape Cod resort and the other the "olde" Jersey Shore of old-fashioned boardwalks with "grand dame" hotels of the 1890s (I believe it's called Disney Boardwalk).  Despite the growing crowd of New Yorkers that had joined us on this lovely fall day, there was a tranquility and restfulness that was palpable.

 If you feel like climbing a bit, there's an elevated view of this area on a winding girder structure built into the landscape, surrounded by somewhat surreal-looking bushes, trees and wooden structures.

When the OG and I lived in the Village, this was the southernmost border of the path.  You would have had to walk next to the West Side Highway, back to the broken glass and litter-strewn bike path, to reach Battery Park.  No more...now, you're still walking along the water past newer apartment buildings and a park named after former mayor Robert F. Wagner...

replete with statues (which I believe I discussed, at length, in a prior blog)...

...and this still unknown brick and arch-like structure, atop of which you could walk or sit.

We're now right next to one of the most under-utilized structures dating back to the 1800s...the fire boat dock.

Not used for nearly 20 years, it was where the once ubiquitious fire boats were housed...and it was probably home to the offices to one maritime enterprise or another. 

There were signs about the restoration and new usage of this "clock tower" building that has been a part of the downtown skyline for more than a century.  This also is the start of Battery Park...and just a brief ten-minute walk away from the end of our stroll from North to South, along the Hudson River. 

A Melancholy Stroll (Fourth Day, Third Leg)

As we continue our trek along the Hudson River on this absolutely gorgeous fall day, we found time for moments of tranquility...

...and a few scant areas along the riverbank still under construction.

When we lived in the Village, up until the early 1990s, Battery Park City didn't start until just below Chambers Street...except for the lone building that went up a few blocks north, right on the river.  It was Stuyvesant High School, named after the first mayor of New York City (New Amsterdam, as it was called then) Peter Stuyvesant.  The public school for New York City's "gifted" students, it was uprooted from it's long-time Gramercy Park address, just below that lovely (but sadly) private park, and plunked down on this barren stretch of landfill, cut off from the rest of civilization by the West Side Highway, surrounded by weeds, parking lots and vacant spaces.  While it was always a known entity and boasted famous graduates like Jerry Seinfeld, it really became famous when one if its long-time English teachers, the Irish writer Frank McCourt, recounted his days working there in his last book "Teacher Man."  In those days, you really could call it a "shining outpost" of education as it was the only building there.

Now, I didn't even recognize it as our intrepid walking triumverate (Upstate Annie, the Old Guy and I) leave the beautifully arranged "dunes-like" walkways described at the end of my previous entry.  All we see is a large group of people milling about outside this building that is the obvious start of a large park area...

Never shy about asking, we learned that some sort of exams were being given inside the school...and these were the parents, siblings and friends waiting for the test to end.

We opted to continue to the back of Stuyvesant, where Hudson River Park begins in earnest.

What a lush expanse of greenery, flowers and gracefully flowing granite and stone, spilling right down to the river's edge.

What a backyard these apartments have!  This beats the hell out of Scarsdale...the view...the landscaping...

the amenities...the outdoor pool table...the outdoor pool table!Yup..as demonstrated by our lovely models, Miss Upstate Annie and the ever-dapper Old Guy.  The OG was plainly tickled with this find (but, I'll wage, probably still not enough to move us back to Manhattan). We kept walking south, out of this special urban oasis, still strolling right next to the river.  To our left, a heap of turf and a high stone wall covering some kind of urban cave caught our collective eyes.

Turned out to be Irish eyes, as this is the recently completed "Irish Hunger" museum.  A recreated Irish cottege from the mid-1800s, surrounded by authentic turf and stones from "the old sod" was, without doubt, the very last thing I expected to see during this walk!

It was only fitting for a son and daughter of Ireland to happen upon this alternatively beautiful and sad monument to the potato famine that probably brought the ancestors of both Upstate Annie and the OG (and millions of others) to our bountiful shores. 

I beleive the promise of better restaurants brought my Italian grandparents here.

It is a dignified, quietly moving remembrance...right next door to the offices of the World Hunger Organization.  Right across the way from the Irish Hunger Museum is a monument of another kind.  I believe this is this Ferry Terminal (pictured below) that was an instrumental escape route for people fleeing the collasping Twin Towers on that fateful day, September 11, 2001.  We are just coming up to the part of Battery Park City (then, the northern most devleoped part of the area, also called The World Financial Center) that was enjoying an equally cloudless, sunny September sky that ordinary morning when "all hell broke loose" in this corner of our great city.   

Others more eloquent have written about the horrors and heroics of that time.  I'd like to focus, instead, on how quickly the World Financial Center and Battery Park City physically recovered from the structural devastation of that day.

Actually, given that the Twin Towers fell virtually across the street, is it remarkable how little damage was done to the buildings on the west side of the West Side Highway.  I remember aerial photos and video taken during  those weeks following the attack and marveling at how relatively unscathed the office and residental business in this area looked (except for the broken glass ceiling of the Winter Garden -- one of my favorite parts of the complex).
Though I never spent much time in the Trade Center buildings, I vividly recall walking through the lower concourse of one of the towers (I don't know that I ever knew which number tower it was), from the #1 Train to the escalators that provided access to the glass bridge over the West Side Highway to the wide, inviting stairs down to into the Winter Garden.  Pre-9/11, I was a frequent Winter Garden visitor (for the annual Orchid Show; for Christmas holiday concerts; dance and jazz recitals; photo exhibits and other museum-quality shows).  I often brought Brazilian cousins and other out-of-towners through to show them the glass-domed space and the "way upscale" boat basin just outside. 

Nature Girl, her infant daughter (Junior Miss, or NG the Younger, who you may recall as a participant in the second day of this walk) and I grooved in the hot summer sun to the soothing and, by that time, nostalgia-inducing sounds of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes, just in front of the yachts and racers (an admittedly odd setting for these "hard blues" rockers).  The OG and I braved Fourth of July fireworks with some San Francisco friends from here.The crowds were too much for the claustrophobic OG and he bailed before the display lit the sky.  Of course, when we lived only a few short subway stops north, bailing was much easier to do.  The entire World Financial Center complex, save the aforementioned glass bridge, looks eerily exactly as it did before the world exploded. 

There is some very personal comfort in this for me, as my mother (who passed away in January of 2001) loved this area -- she often said it was the only part of New York City she'd ever consider living in.  It would have been doubly sad for me if she and the part of the city she actually admitted to liking had disappeared so soon one after the other.

I promise a more upbeat chapter next time in the recounting of our last day of the now legendary stroll from the top to the bottom of Manhattan along the Hudson River.