new york minutes: April 2007

spring

This weekend's weather was beautiful! It was the first weekend everyone came out of their winter hibernation... central park was packed with people!

she sells sea shells

This weekend we went up to Massachusetts for an escape from the city. We stayed with Robin's mom. On Friday, we drove up to Marblehead, a cute town on the North Shore, and had lunch and walked around. It wasn't really tourist season yet, so there wan't much going on, but it was great to see the ocean and get out of the city environment.

offbeat

We went up to Hillsdale last night as a spontaneous escape from the city. On our way back today we stopped at the Texas Taco along route 22 for lunch. It is a very unique place. The woman who runs it has been doing it for 30 years! The food isn't amazing, but the decor is unforgettable. She doesn't let you take pictures inside, but I did sneak some pics of the bathroom and outside, so you can use your imagination to figure out the decor.

This is the business card with a picture of Rosemary. She wears this make-up every day! How amazing that someone with this eclectic found a way to make $ off of it. You go girl!

sid

This post is for you Liz...
Greg & Bryte's cat Sid is all grown up and big! He's still the same mellow guy as before, just bigger! I thought you'd get a kick out seeing him, so cute!!

history lesson

Last weekend we went on a walking tour of the Greenwich Village section of NYC. The tour was full of interesting facts and tid-bits about the societal and architectural history of this once small village on the outskirts of New York city. Check out www.walknyc.com for information on all the tours offered.
We started off in Washington Square Park, named after our first president. We learned that the park sits on top of the site of an old graveyard with the mass graves of yellow fever victims. Maybe this explains all the freaks that hang out there now, they feel right at home with all the ghosts?

The day of our tour was the 96th anniversary of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The building is now used for classrooms and offices at NYU.

This little street called a "mew" was actually the back alley with stables behind the fancy row houses on the park. The street slopes towards the center where the gutter used to be. After plumbing was included in houses, the gutters were moved to the sides of the street.

The details on the house are beautiful, however, the shocking detail at the time was the lack of a prominent front stoop. Apparently it was shocking to see an entrance right at the street level, and not one where you go up the stairs, because of the ambiguity it caused of where the owners of the house would enter and where the servants would enter. All the details around the windows and doors are hand carved teak with the center window being the biggest feature.

The original fire tower for the village was on this site, so when they tore it down to build the new municipal building with the courthouse and jail they included a tower to keep watch over the village.

Anyone who's been to New York city knows how frustrating it is to try to find your way around the west village because the streets don't follow the grid of the rest of the city. This is because the village streets were originally laid out by the farmers who owned the land. Each farmer arranged their own streets to be parallel, but they didn't coordinate with their neighbors, hence the random angles where the properties met. If you take a look at a map you can make out where the different land plots were. The funny angles made funny spaces and some houses were built back in the awkward lots left over. At the time these houses were for the poor and less well-to-do because having a "street presence" was important. Today it's the opposite. The apartments in the "back-houses" are about 3-times more expensive than the street side ones!