Aftermath of Irene: The View from Greenwich Village

There's not a lot to report. While the flooding and winds and power outages grew dire in parts of New Jersey, the Catskill Mountains, and terribly in Vermont, Lower Manhattan experienced minor issues with the passage of the storm Irene.

People woke in my neighborhood on Sunday to see steady rains out their windows. We were expecting more. We still had power to watch TV coverage, and in the morning hours CNN's Anderson Cooper was conveniently stationed nearby at the corner of W. 3rd and Thompson Street, just a block south of Washington Square Park. When the meteorologist Jacqui Jeras explained to him that the storm was falling apart, Cooper seemed to share our surprise. This was as bad as it was going to get, we understood, and there was not a lot of weather drama to report from Greenwich Village. We lost some tree branches here and there.

A large tree branch falls on a path on the north side of Washington Square Park.

Typical scene from Sunday afternoon. A few vehicles, a a few leaves.

At Silver Spurs at LaGuardia Place and Houston on Sunday afternoon.

Actually, the worst part came later in the afternoon - several hours of relentless winds - but by that time many of us had ventured down Bleecker Street, to a tavern, or to the park. It felt good to be outside in the fresh air. The air smelled remarkably clean amidst the shutdown of combustion engines. It was also a relief to escape the relentless drone of the breaking news coverage of the storm and the countless images of reporters in windbreakers reporting from receding beaches and washed over boardwalks.

A few lingering rain bands moved through in the afternoon. Houston Street.

Scenes from a Pre-Hurricane Walk to the Hudson River

The waiting is tedious. It was time to leave the apartment and take a walk. I had watched television coverage all day about the track of Hurricane Irene, posed to threaten the New York area beginning later tonight and into tomorrow, and I was getting a little restless. I appreciate the dangers of the storm. In the early afternoon on Saturday, though, I seized the moment before the storm's arrival to take a long walk through the West Village to the Hudson River.

MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, before the storm

Christopher St Station, all subways closed (closed with crime scene tape).

Christopher Street, near Bedford St, West Village

The farther I walked west, the fewer people I encountered. I walked west on Bleecker Street and past MacDougal Street and then up Bleecker where it curves to meet Christopher Street. From there I wandered to the river through Zone A, the designation for our low lying areas at the water's edge. In normal circumstances, we call this particular area in Zone A the Far West Village.

A restaurant prepares windows for Hurricane Irene.

Photos: Improbable Signage in Washington Square Park: "Hurricane Condition - Park Closed Today"

It's muggy this morning. Manhattan feels like an island.

"Hurricane Condition - "Park Closed Today." Washington Square Park.

The scene in Washington Square Park looked fairly typical for a late summer morning, except for the signs. A few people took their dogs for a stroll. Several homeless people - but fewer than usual - started to wake up from their usual benches. One or two people stretched and exercised next to the fountain area.

Washington Square Park. Washington Arch.

View of One World Trade Center, under construction, as seen from Washington Square Park.

At around 8 a.m., in preparation for the potential impact of Hurricane Irene, staff members of the NYC Park Department finished closing the park by arranging barricades at the entrances, affixing chain licks, and posting signs. The signs read "Hurricane Condition - Park Closed Today." Some people ignored the signs and walked around the barricades.

Not just another summer day in Washington Square Park.

In advance of the storm, I worry a lot about the trees.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple. Around 8:15 a.m., Saturday, August 27, 2011. All rights reserved.

Before Hurricane Irene: Views of New York Harbor from Battery Park, Friday Morning

Update: 9:21 p.m. The Port Authority says all airports in the NYC region will be closed to arrivals at noon on Saturday. Most departures are being cancelled.
Update: 7:49 p.m. Several people are reporting on Twitter that the line at Trader Joe's wine store is really long.
Update: 7:48 p.m. Most everything is closed tomorrow.
Update: 7:40 p.m. More closures. JFK Airport will be closed at noon Saturday for international flights.
Update: 7:00 p.m. Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel is reporting live from Battery Park. He said that the Doubletree Hotel (8 Stone Street) where he is staying will close tomorrow. He reported that Battery Park (below) could experience a surge of 10 to 12 feet, depending on the timing of high tide.

You've heard about the storm. What was assumed to be a sleepy time for New Yorkers, these last dog days of August, has suddenly required everyone to become fully alert.

Hurricane Irene is coming. Low lying areas along the city shoreline are being evacuated. The MTA has called for a complete shutdown of the transportation system beginning at noon on Saturday. Many events have been cancelled, and most museums (and Broadway!) are closing their doors on Saturday and Sunday.

Many residents are making their way to their grocery stores and pharmacies to load up on supplies in case the electricity goes out. I had planned to be spending the week reading novels, but over the last 24 hours, I've found myself locating flashlights, purchasing many bottles of drinking water, and dragging in potted plants and lawn furniture from the balcony. On my way to the grocery store, I saw a squirrel carry a small can of Nutella up a tree. I took that as a sign.

This morning I needed to see the New York Harbor, so I went down to the Battery for a walk. Today is a warm and pretty day, with a hint of mugginess. Many others wandered down there, too, especially tourists. Like on other sunny days in the Big Apple, hundreds of people lined up to ride the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Ferries. Others stayed ashore, walking along the Battery at the water's edge to see the views.

25 Artistic Things to Do in Chelsea

The phenomenal popularity of the High Line on the West Side has no doubt introduced many visitors to the pleasures of Chelsea, the multifaceted eclectic neighborhood that stretches out below. On the west side of the rails, between W. 13th and W. 29th or so, the Chelsea Gallery District is home to hundreds of contemporary art galleries in repurposed warehouses. New luxury residences rise up around these spaces, taking advantage of the stunning Hudson River views. On the east side of the line, the iconic Empire State Building comes into the picture, but closer in, the Gothic Revival outlines of the General Theological Seminary represent the neighborhood's roots in an earlier century.

Chelsea is a remarkable neighborhood bound together by an artistic and visual history, but it's also a community held together by social institutions - schools, historic houses of worship, affordable housing under the auspices of the city's housing authority, and businesses with deep ties to the area. Yet, a great deal of modern Chelsea is in the state of nervous flux, exemplified by its most famous hotel, currently shuttered for renovations. The best way to scope out what's happening in Chelsea is to get off that high horse overhead, the one with the pretty saddles, and walk its historic streets.

That's a pretty picture of a scene on the High Line above, but come on down to see Chelsea at street level.

The approximate boundaries of Chelsea: 14th St. on the south to 34th St. on the north. Hudson River marks the western boundary. 6th or 7th Avenue and Ladies Mile Historic District are on the east. Chelsea derives from the name of the estate belonging to the Clarke family. The patriarch, Thomas Clarke, a retired British general, named the estate after London's Chelsea. More on Clement Clarke Moore ahead in this post. Clarke's vast Manhattan property extended from what's now 8th Avenue to the Hudson, with his daughter and her husband extending the original property between 21st and 24th Streets south to 19th Street.

25 Artistic Things to Do in Chelsea

1. Walk the High Line for an overview, if you have not done so already. Begin on the south near Washington Street and Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District and continue north through Chelsea to near W. 30th Street. To explore the historic district, take the steps at W. 20th down to the street and walk east. http://www.thehighline.org/

2. Stroll the Chelsea Historic District. Boundaries are W. 20th to W. 22nd Streets, between 8th and 10th Avenues. While the whole neighborhood presents a range of building styles, the town-house blocks in varying moods of Italianate, Greek Revival, and other popular styles of the 19th century set an Old World mood for a long walk. Map from the city. http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/maps/chelsea.pdf

3. Visit Clement Clarke Moore Park, located at 10th Avenue and 22nd Street. The Clarke family manor house, located at what is now Eighth Avenue and West 23rd, was called "Chelsea." At the time he wrote (or appropriated, as some claim) his famous poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas," Clement Moore was a Professor at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He had donated the family land for use as a seminary, and the still-thriving seminary stands today along Ninth Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets. Another popular park, Chelsea Park is located between W. 27th and W. 28th along 10th Avenue, near the northern part of the High Line.

Starchitecture. Jean Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Avenue reflected in Frank Gehry's IAC building.

4. Are you an English muffin fan? Pay your respects at The Muffin House. 337 West 20th Street in Chelsea. Built in 1850. In the early 20th century Samuel Bath Thomas used the building for his famous muffins. The arched brick ovens remain in the building courtyard. No muffins here, though. You'll have to get them at the grocery store.

Breakfast at Standard and Poor's

Standard and Poor's downgrading of the credit rating of the United States sent enough shock waves through the global financial markets early this week that a morning walk to its headquarters at 55 Water Street seemed like a good idea. The corporate building that houses the firm, built in 1972 by Emery Roth & Sons and at the time the largest private office building in the world, does not warrant that much attention, but setting out on a stroll near this intersection of Water Street and Coenties Slip, the latter an old walkway named in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, provides yet another opportunity to walk off the Wall Street bears. The walk around the Financial District brings several pleasures - small charming plazas, a mostly hidden garden, and breathtaking views of urban canyons, not to mention the generally hectic scenes around Wall Street at the beginning of a trading day. It's easy to find good strong coffee down here.

The headquarters of Standard and Poor's on Water Street.

The idea of walking off a problem has long been considered something of a cure for the particular ill. So, a day after Wall Street posted one of its largest slumps since the gloomy days of the fall of 2008, a walk seemed a good way to cope with the woeful conditions of the market. A picture blog created by a young man who once lived in the city, The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog, captured the Dante-esque gestures of stock brokers in distress on the trading floor. Woeful, indeed. At times like this, we need some hopeful sun, a little more Paradiso than Inferno. A morning walk from the R train stop at Whitehall and then east on Water Street follows the rising sun and New Yorkers making their way to work, or given the present circumstances, those pounding the pavement in search of work.

At Standard and Poor's on 55 Water Street, a set of escalators nestled in a break in the building provides a luring invitation for an impromptu diversion.

facing the escalators to the Elevated Acre. Water Street. A heavenly glow beckons.

Summer Streets Returns to New York City This Weekend

For three consecutive Saturday mornings in August, the city of New York shuts down Park Avenue and connecting streets from Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park to vehicular traffic so that residents and visitors alike may enjoy the streets without the presence of cars and trucks. In this popular program of NYC DOT, many ride bicycles, some walk, and a few skate, but by whatever preferred means of transportation thousands of New Yorkers have been taking advantage of the Saturdays to exercise and to explore the streets in this novel way.

image of Summer Streets from 2010,
looking south to the Helmsley Building and the MetLife Building.
Lever House is on the right.

Summer Streets for August 2011 will take place August  6, 13, and 20 from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. According to DOT, this year's iteration will feature sand boxes and live sand sculpting by Matt Long in Foley Square, free bicycle and rollerblade rentals, performances by Fringe Jr. Festival, and even a guacamole making demonstration.

The event also offers a rare opportunity to look at some of the city's great architecture from a new perspective. Sitting in a moving car, a driver can't fully enjoy urban architecture, or they shouldn't be, and even passengers who might be interested in sightseeing can't see through the roof of the car (unless they are in a convertible) in order to admire the top floors of buildings. On normal days, walking along the sidewalk allows views of the opposite street, but being able to walk in the middle of the street opens up a whole new world. It's a giddy feeling, this sense of the city and the sky, the kind of freedom you get marching in a parade. Biking the route may be the most pleasurable, because it allows the easiest and fastest access to all 6.9 miles of the route.

Summer Streets, 2010. Near Astor Place looking south to Lafayette, the Lower Manhattan thoroughfare
closed for traffic. Charles Gwathmey's Sculpture for Living is on the left.

An Architectural Guide to NYC's Summer Streets -

The BMW Guggenheim Lab Opens in New York

The inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab, a mobile public think tank designed to serve as a temporary community center for a participatory exchange of ideas about the city, opens today (Wednesday, August 3) near the crossroads of Second Avenue and Houston Street. The high-tech modernist structure itself, designed by Tokyo-based Atelier Bow-Wow, is airy, long and structurally lofty, wedged rather uncannily between two tenement structures that front 1st Street to the immediate north. State-of-the-art theatrical lights line the skeletal structure overhead, while sheer white movable tracked curtains function as the walls. These can be pulled and swirled in circles, designed to improvise shifting boundaries among different groups in various modes of conversation and interaction. Flat screens affixed overhead project the agenda and game plan.

exterior of the lab as seen from the sidewalk on E. Houston Street near Second Avenue

For the next ten weeks, the Lab has scheduled over 100 programs that focus on the idea of urban comfort, inviting members of the public to participate in workshops, hear lectures, attend film screenings, venture to other locations, or to stay and play an interactive game called Urbanology. A core goal is soliciting ideas from individuals as to how they would improve the city. As with any inaugural venture - after New York City the mobile structure will be disassembled and then reassembled for future dates in Berlin and Mumbai - there's some uncertainty as to exactly how this social experiment in urban brainstorming will play out. At first glance, the Lab looks good and the programs intellectually stimulating, but the measure of success, of course, will depend on all of us lab rats.

members of the press awaiting formal remarks at a preview on Tuesday