manhattan north to south

Since going to Florida was cancelled this weekend I had an unexpected couple of days at home. So on Saturday, Sandy and I did something we had talked about doing for awhile, which was to walk from the northern tip of Manhattan to the southern. It was quite enjoyable and I recommend it as long as you don't mind walking 15 miles or so (it's actually 13.4 miles, but we wandered around a bit). Click the link below to read the whole saga.

We started in the Bronx (pics of Bronx), in the northern neighborhood of Kingsbridge. We walked down past Marble Hill which, though physically in the Bronx, is actually still considered part of Manhattan (interesting history). Then we crossed the Broadway Bridge into Manhattan. While crossing this bridge you have a good view of the Henry Hudson Bridge. The first neighborhood, Inwood, is where we lived when we first moved into Manhattan. It is pretty quiet (as far as pedestrians and activity), near the top, where most of the east side of Broadway is taken up by warehouses and MTA repair facilities. On the extreme west part of this neighborhood is Inwood Hill Park, which is beautiful and vast. Most of the park area is actually forest and has pretty much been undisturbed since the Manhattan was purchased from the Indians by Peter Minuet. That purchase, by the way, supposedly occurred in this park.

Going south on Broadway we passed a giant archway that houses an auto body shop and is partially obscured by some other industrial buildings. This is the old entry way to the Seaman estate, which used to cover most of the northwest side of this neighborhood, back when most of it was rural. Less than a mile south from here is the Dyckman House, which is a farm house once lived in by the original owners of most of northern Manhattan from where the 150's are up to the top. Even up to the early 20th century this part of Manhattan was grazing and farmland, believe it or not. Click here for Forgotten NYC's tour of Inwood.

Near the intersection of Dyckman and Broadway we entered Fort Tryon Park. This is one of my favorite parks in the city, because of it's beauty and history. We walked slowly through and then stopped by a friend's house to drop off some veggies from the farmers market.

After that, we took Fort Washington down into the thick of Washington Heights, going through Columbia University Medical Center right before we hit Broadway again. Then, continuing on Broadway, we went south past Harlem, Columbia University, what has become the HUGE Upper West Side (this has happened because so many people want to say that they live on the Upper West Side that you now have people in the low hundreds claiming they live there. That doesn't bother me much, but one thing that really gets my goat is when realtors try to create fashionable sounding names [Hudson Heights, for example] instead of using the historical ones). Around this time we consumed our lunch and had a Frappacino at Starbucks. There are about 5,000 Starbucks in Manhattan. What is so wrong with labelling sizes "small", "medium", and "large", by the way?

At about 66th St. we crossed into Central Park and wound our way down to come out on 59th/Central Park South. At this point the battery on my camera gave way. I don't know why I was surprised, but I was, and I didn't have a spare. We went over to Park Ave. and then started south again. I don't think I've ever walked past 50th St. on Park Avenue, and really enjoyed seeing this part of the city. It kind of reminded me of spots from old movies. We kept going on Park until we got distracted around Union Square and wandered around shopping for awhile (Sandy has a weakness for candles and green fleas). Then we kept it going until we got to Canal St., which is Main St. in Chinatown. I'm usually not worried about pick pockets, but this street is always so jammed with people that I always stay wary. We decided to go north a bit on Mulberry to check out the San Gennaro Festival, which was unbelievably crowded as usual. Must be seen to be believed. I'll try to find an old photo and put it up. We ended up having a very nice Italian dinner at Caffé Sorrento right out on the street while the humanity shuffled by.

By this point it's dark and we are getting pretty tired, but are so close that we couldn't possibly quit. Anything below Canal becomes city-governmenty and financial-centery which means that it's deserted at 9pm on a Saturday night. Eerily deserted, I might add. I'm actually surprised you don't hear about more muggings down here at night. The streets are quite narrow and winding here, as the street plan was laid out way before cars were ever an issue. That is one interesting thing about Manhattan that I didn't mention before, they way that the historical development from south to north affected the way streets and buildings were designed and built. This reminds me that Sandy got me a book about the history of Manhattan up to nearly the 20th century, called Gotham, which I really must read. Anyway, we made it through this, coming near the South St. Seaport, and then down past the a few 18th century buildings to Battery Park. As you can tell, I don't know much about lower Manhattan, but it's full of history and if you ever visit New York you should check it out.

We walked up a bit past the WTC site to the Chambers St. stop and then took the 1 train all the way back up to where we started. All in all, quite a fun day.

Below I will post a few selected snap shots from the part of the day where my camera worked, including a couple of lucky ones I was able to squeeze out of the camera at the bottom of Manhattan. Click on the thumbnails for larger versions. Some others I'll be saving to post later on the photoblog.