Walking Up Along The East River - First Leg (from Manhattan Bridge to Houston Street)

Wanna take a walk?   I'm paraphrasing slightly, but those pretty much were my words to my pal Nature Girl as the weather started turning warmer late last May.   Yes, you read it right...LATE LAST MAY.   So, you're probably wondering why nothing appeared on the blog all summer long (or maybe not).   We did take our first stroll up along the East River the first Sunday in June, but I've been too preoccupied with other issues and endeavors to sit down and blog about it.  So, as we move into mid-September on this sad day, I'll try to lighten the tone with my remembrances (enhanced by notes and photos taken) of a lovely Sunday, June 6, walk on the wild East Side (thank you, Lou). 

Under the Manhattan Bridge

We pretty much started where we left off from "the Bridges Tour" -- underneath the Manhattan Bridge.  It was hot...pretty much a pre-cursor of the kind of summer we were going to have...but at the time, I wasn't too bothered by it.   Nature Girl (NG) was walking with a toe impairment, so we knew it wasn't going to be a long hike.  Per tradition, we stopped what we believed were this mother/daughter team to take our photo at the start of the days "walk."   They took the photo, but didn't really want one taken of them.  I did catch a "sideways" shot of them, as they were playing "tourist" themselves...

Right away, we knew this was going to be a whole different adventure from our trek down along the Hudson River.   For one thing, it was a lot more industrial-looking and definitely much more run-down than most of what we'd seen on the West Side.

Without getting all Jacob Riis on you (more about him later), it also seemed like many of the people walking, sitting or laying on this stretch were from a lower economic strata than those on the other side of town.  

We were walking fairly parallel to the ever-growing Chinatown (encompassing people from many Asian nations).   It was early in the morning, about 9:30 a.m., so we mostly ran into elderly folks taking their morning constitutionals, and even a few practicing their exercises along the route.

                                                                                        

We hadn't walked more than five or so minutes when we were "cut off" from the water by a construction-type fence announcing that the waterfront was "off-limits" while they restored it.   However, it looked to me like the waterfront here was being used to house buses and other municipal vehicles.   Sure enough, as we were being forced to walk under the southernmost part of the East River Drive (known to most as the FDR), we saw a sign that proclaimed the area for the city transportation and sanitation departments.   There was also a huge board describing what was going to be done by December 2010 (I think not!) to allow pedestrians access to the shoreline there. 

   Both NG and I had the sneaking suspicion that the economic downturn had probably with the Parks Department's Utopian plans.   We were still operating according to our criteria (walking within one block, and sight, of the water) but the view between all the garages and ugly warehouse-like buildings was sparse, to say the least.   There were glimpses of Brooklyn (I believe Fort Greene going into Williamsburg)...so we decided to turn our attentions to the other side of the road.  Hmmm...No offense, but where are we...Queens?  (Said expressly to get a rise out of NG, who hails from that proud "borough of churches.")   Neither side of this walk was looking all that promising, until......and...These were buildings about which I was always curious when cruising down the FDR.  They were so "out of place" in a neighborhood of "soulless" high-rises...and yet, such a welcome sight (the one with the rounded balconies has a faint New Orleans or Savannah-like quality to it).   We never found out if the buildings had names -- I imagined aloud that they may have been built as some kind of school, or orphanage, or other such civic buildings of a much earlier era.  I believe they are now pretty cool-looking co-ops or condos on what is now the easternmost portion of the "chic" Lower East Side (LES). 

While the waterside was not showing much promise,

the street side actually got "arty" on us.  

Check out the religions mosaic on this Catholic school building.  And someone in the Parks Department was really paying attention when they created the fence that separates the walkway from the FDR...

I believe we counted five or six different wildlife images in the ironwork along the highway...and for all the times I've driven up and down that road, I never noticed them until we were meandering past them.   While still not right on the shoreline, the path itself started to look a little less desolate!  

And, the folks using the path had morphed into the young, tattooed hoards that have invaded what once was the tenements of the "teeming millions" of Jewish and Italian immigrants who were stuffed into this part of the city during the late 1800s into the early part of the 20th Century.  Between the urban housing projects of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the great experiment in "self-contained" urban living that is Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, and during the past five years, the building of geometrically-interesting, mostly glass apartment towers that is characterizing New York City architecture in the early part of the 21st Century, less and less is left of those tenements that used to be the symbol of poverty and over-crowding, made famous by the "social reformers" of the early 20th Century -- photo/journalists like the aforementioned Jacob Riis (so, that's who he is).  I may have mentioned the LES Tenement Museum before -- I've recommended it to people visiting the city many times, but have never been there myself.   It's on the "bucket list."

The path suddenly lurched back into the 1890s and then fast-forwarded into the 1960s, almost at the same time.   While still a short distance from the shoreline, the path suddenly sprang a number of those elegant light poles that I recall best from the iconic Edward Steichen photo of the Flatiron Building in the early 1900s (with my office only a few blocks away now, I see that gorgeous throwback to elegant urban architecture at the turn of the 20th Century almost every day).

 

In less than 100 paces, we were thrown headlong into our childhoods...a completely unexpected treat to be continued in the next installment.

Bonus Walk - Still Walking (Sixth Leg)

One would think the above columns are on some monument to a great leader, great thinker or, at least, a great pizza maker in Rome (even with the graffiti).  Low and behold, these columns line part of the pedestrian walkway of the Manhattan Bridge.  And so is this...

and this...

Why do I feel like we're bumping up against an architect's nightmare?  Part Roman, part Belle Epoch, part Deco, part Utilitarian...all on one bridge?  Scores of books have been written about the contruction of the "other" bridge easily viewed from this one.

But, how much do we really know about the Manhattan Bridge.  I am hoping that a quick trip to wikipedia will provide some answers.  Seems the bridge was built after the Brooklyn and Williamsburg...opened in December, 1905 (which would account for the Belle Epoch design, but not for the Roman, Deco or anything else).  Apparently, the walkway we're crossing now was closed for a bit (60 years) and only reopened in June of 2001.  It is a suspension bridge...and was built by the architect that designed an infamous suspension bridge in Tacoma, Washington that collapsed on opening day in 1940 (I heard about that bridge on a PBS special).  What does that bode for the poor Manhattan Bridge?   It's interesting, but it doesn't really get into the hodgepodge of styles...though it does say that the north walkway is a bike path and it does go into a number of movies that have used it as a prop or backdrop, including the remake of "Taking of the Pelham One, Two, Three" where Denzel Washington and John Travolta fight it out on the very walkway on which we're now standing.  I don't see them anywhere, but I have seen quite a few "unsavory characters" passing by, not the least of which are Nature Girl and The Old Guy who, per usual, are quite a ways ahead of me as I stop every few steps to take another photo.  I haven't been able to catch any of the pithy conversation they must be having...but I will bet it has little to do with the walk, or the bridge, or what they are seeing around them.

As we walk over the half-way point of the bridge and start a barely perceptible decent back into Manhattan, it really feels like the humble Manhattan Bridge is more "of the neighborhood" rather than the majestic Brooklyn Bridge, which seems to be a bit "above it all."   I was amazed how much of what I believe is Southern Chinatown we're already seeing, and at some pretty interesting angles.Why is the phrase "seedy underbelly" popping up in my too-fertile brain.  Ahhh...this is much better.

At last, we're off the actual bridge...and at the Manhattan entrance to the bridge, which does spill out squarely into Chinatown proper...I'm amazed to find that NG and The OG have actually waied for me before stepping foot back on "the island to end all islands."

Now, for the ceremonial end-of-walk group photo. 

It was taken by these lovely ladies...whose names are lost in the "four+ months later" mist of time.

I vaguely remember that one lived here in the city and the other was visiting from the Midwest or somewhere "out there."  I think they were college roomates, or at least friends from school, just like NG and me (though a tad younger and way, way thinner than we ever thought of being, even "back in the day"). 

I'm going to come back with one more leg about this adventure...more ruminations on the two bridges we just crossed, what was inbetween and how I felt about it all.   So, get ready...