I just finished watching an episode of Barging Through France in the Ardeche, one of the wildest and most untouched regions of France. Here, villages with thatched roofs can still be found in a land that time forgot.
The program was reminiscent of a series I watched in the 1990s about barging through Europe. Each episode offered a dreamy, kaleidoscopic view of the remote reaches of Europe via its canals. The host and crew traveled by barge and lived in its quarters throughout the journey, making stops wherever and whenever whim and fancy inclined them to do so.
The imagery and music all conspired to give a romantic view of the idyllic countryside and small villages of Europe. Inspired, I did take one barge cruise through Paris and the outskirts. It was not an exploration of remote hinterlands, but, nonetheless, it was a barge, a canal, and Paris. I was accompanied that morning with a group of school children singing songs in French.
In the United States, however, canal typically connotes an image of a waterway and utility. In New York City, the word canal is synonymous with pollution. Perhaps the best example is the Gowanus Canal, once known as Lavender Lake for its technicolor surface. I had been through the area a few times (see here), but recently, I decided to explore the neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn, more thoroughly. I did like the very low rise feel of  the area, although the architecture left much to be desired, reminiscent of the South Bronx.

As I crossed the bridge, I recognized the industrial building complex that housed the space that sponsored a fire performance I attended. For that evening, in a bizarre and unusual transformation, the metal working facility became the Gowanus Ballroom.

As I approached the end of the short block, I was welcomed by a wrecked tractor trailer, folded in half and now being used as a canvas for graffiti.

At the very end of street was an upright rowboat. A banner proclaimed:

Welcome to the Gowanus Canal

Brooklyn’s Coolest Superfund Site.

It was not immediately obvious that the entire area was a boat launch for the Gowanus. However, a poster mounted inside the boat, Canoeing & Superfund Tourism Map, indicated that, indeed, the Gowanus was a Superfund cleanup site (designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) and this was the 2nd Street Canoe Dock. The map brimmed with enthusiasm and outlined 18 sites for the canoeist to explore.
Looming in the distance across the canal was an enigmatic deserted building. Later, after my visit, I learned that this was the infamous “Bat Cave”, a story in itself.

While exploring 4th Street, I passed a tiny, charming one-story house, perhaps a lone candidate in all Gowanus that could be called adorable.

A woman was in front, tending to various chores. I assumed she was the owner and asked. She affirmed. I complemented her on her cute, tidy dwelling and asked, “Is this area considered Gowanus?” “Yes” she said. I offered what I had heard for some time in the media: “This area has been referred to as the future Venice of New York.” She laughed and said, “They have been saying that for a long time.” I agreed and canvassed the area one last time, wondering if and when Gowanus and its canal would live up to its promise as Little Venice…

Related: No Pane at All, Europe?, Not Under the Gowanus, Part 1

Do you want to look like a hero and everybody wins? It’s so easy. Just take a friend or two on a trip down THEIR memory lane, touring the special places of their youth. On January 11, 2012, I went on such a trip through East New York, Brooklyn, driven by an old friend. But now, I was to be the driver and guide.

This was my unplanned agenda for Easter Sunday (after the Easter Parade), when I accompanied a friend and her mother to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, for Easter dinner. Before dinner, we decided to take advantage of the extraordinary weather in the mid-60s and see the places of my friend and her mother’s where they were born and had grown up.

This type of mission is not about efficient driving, nor will it necessarily be a tour of the scenic or architectural wonders of New York City. It will be punctuated by stops that have deep meaning only for your guests being toured and for the small number of others who at one time shared the same addresses.

I accommodated every twist and turn, circling and back tracking, zigging and zagging, providing chauffeur services – convenient for them and enjoyable for me, since I was at one time a New York City taxi cab driver. Patience is required for such a mission, since often only foggy or partial memories are available as a guide to locating addresses. There were places which were of zero difficulty to locate, such as my friend’s former grade school, P.S. 102, and the church where her parents married, Our Lady of Angels.

A special treat was Owl’s Head Park, a place which I had heard about and driven by but never actually walked in. This was special for my company, too, since my friend’s mother had taken her there as young as when she was one year old, their residence only one-half block away. The waterside park affords vistas of the bay of New York, the Verrazano Bridge, Staten Island, Memorial Pier, and the skyline of Manhattan. We took in the views while basking in the warm afternoon sun setting over the bay.

Other stops were the former homes of parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters – this is an Italian family with deep roots in this section of Brooklyn. Some exact addresses were known. For others, we became Big Game hunters, tracking our quarry. Details of buildings were examined, proximity to other buildings and shops, all with a singular goal – to identify with absolute certainty that, yes, THAT’S the place.

Like a modern African safari, our trip through the urban jungle was to see and shoot our game with eyes and cameras only. Once positively identified, we would sit and look as my guests would ooh, aah, and reminisce. And that is how I spent my Easter afternoon. Starting on the highways of New York City, I watched the sign posts, looking for An Exit Marked Memory Lane

Related Post: Wherever You Go, There You Are

She said she wanted to find the “mushroom house” she knew as a child, a very special place where her father often took her growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The memories of childhood are clouded and skewed, and I doubted that we would find such a house or, if we did, how long it would take. But her instincts were good, and what I truly anticipated to be a long and likely fruitless search mission turned out to be a very quick drive, almost like she was guided by a secret hand straight to our destination.

But nothing would prepare either of us for what we saw. As I turned up 83rd Street and pointed out a “nice” house, she cried for joy, “That’s it.” It was much larger than her memory served her, and she was elated, to say the least. The home is extraordinary and, as I surmised, no secret at all. It was designated a historic landmark by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. It is known internationally and referred to variously as the Mushroom House, the Witch’s House, the Hansel and Gretel House, and, most commonly, The Gingerbread House. The AIA Guide to New York City calls it:

A mansion disguised as a witch’s hideaway. Black Forest Art Nouveau. Bumpety stone and pseudothatchery make this Arts and Crafts revival one of Brooklyn’s greatest fantasies.

The mansion sports 6 bedrooms and 6 baths and is 5743 square feet and sits on 10 acres – unfathomable for New York City. It is constructed of uncut stone. The roof, with its rolled edges, is covered in special asphalt shingles the color of thatch, recalling the thatched roofs of English country manors. Inside, it exudes old world charm with beautiful woodwork, pictorials set into walls, enormous fireplaces, and decorative elements using medieval stained glass from Europe.

The home is located at 8220 Narrows Avenue and spans between 82nd and 83rd Street. It was built between 1916-17 for Howard E. and Jesse Jones House and designed by James Sarsfield Kennedy. Howard Jones was a shipping tycoon, president of James W. Elwell & Co. and also a director and later vice president of the Maritime Association Board of New York. The house has changed hands only a few times and made big news when it was put up for sale in 2009 for $12 million dollars by the owners, Jerry and Diane Fishman, who lived there for 25 years. From the New York Post:

But Jerry Fishman said it has held a fairy-tale-like spell over him his entire life growing up in the neighborhood, where he was born and raised. “My mother used to push me in my stroller past the house and one time I got out of the stroller and tried to get into the house,” recalled Fishman, 62.

When he was a student at Fort Hamilton HS — across the street from the Gingerbread House — Fishman said he would sit in his English class staring out the window at the house as if in a trance. “My grades suffered,” he recalled. And on his first date with Diane, Jerry remembers driving her by the home and telling her, “One day I’m going to own that house.”

And he did. From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Fishman, who grew up two blocks away from the house in the Bay Ridge neighborhood, had his eye on the house all his life. “As the legend goes,” he says, “I knew of this house when I was six months old, and I was attracted to it like it was candy.” As he got older, his fascination with the Arts and Crafts-style house only grew. “I would walk by it, drive by it on purpose just to look at it,” he says. His first date with his future wife, Diane, included a drive past the house and a vow. “I told her, ‘I’m going to own this house,” says Mr. Fishman, now 61.

Built around 1917 when Bay Ridge was, as the New York Post puts it, “an oceanfront getaway for the city’s rich and famous,”  the Gingerbread House has only changed hands a few times. In 1980, just after the Fishmans bought a home nearby, it came on the market. “We ran over here, and we looked at the house,” Mr. Fishman says, But he was disappointed. Two elderly women had lived in the home since the 1930s, Mr. Fishman says, and many sections of the home needed extensive work that he and his wife could not afford at that time.

When the home came on the market again in 1985, they pounced, even entering a bidding war. The day the Fishmans closed on the house, paying under $1 million, “was the most memorable day of my life,” Mr. Fishman says. “We had the Gingerbread House.”

The Fishmans sold the house in order to relocate near their parents in Florida. The fairy tale home that cast a spell on at least two people from childhood. For them, the chapter is finally closed – Jerry Fishman and my friend both found their Childhood Dream

More homes: Big Secret on Little Street, Love Is All Around, Part 1, Grisly Business, Todt Hill, The Feeling Passes, Head for the Hills, All the Way…, Affront to Dignity, Manhattan Beach, Itsy Bitsy, Bloomberg, Terrapin Chelsea Art Gallery

I was walking with two friends, touring them by what I felt was the most beautiful prewar building in Greenwich Village: 43 Fifth Avenue. This architectural gem is a grand and elegant 1903 Beaux-Arts building which sports a distinctive mansard roof. The property just screams PARIS. I have learned that this building is not just my little secret but also, in fact, highly coveted. There is little turnover/availability of apartments, and a number of celebrities, past and present, have called it home.

At the time, an entire floor was available at the unfathomable price of $17 million dollars (reduced from $25 million). That’s a lot of money for an apartment. It does however, buy you 13 rooms – 5 bedrooms, 4 1/2 baths, and everything imaginable, even with a recording studio.

On the same evening, we strolled down my favorite block in the center Village: 11th street between 5th and 6th Avenues. As my friend Bill, also a long-time Village resident, and I concurred on the number of reasons that made this block special, a For Sale sign appeared for a small, exquisite townhouse. I joked that he and I would be buying the building in partnership, splitting the floors, and that he look up the price immediately on his iPhone. A quick search of the broker’s listing returned the bad news very quickly: asking price, $14 million for the small townhouse.

And so it goes in Manhattan. Many non-city residents, accustomed to the idea of owning a house, are unaware that this cornerstone of the American Dream – private home ownership – is essentially unattainable here except for a very few who are able to come up with 10-40 million dollars. Even in the outer boroughs, single-family homes are quickly becoming unaffordable for any except the very well heeled. With few apartments currently under one million dollars in Manhattan, these prices for entire townhouse should come as no big surprise.

So sales of these homes have become newsworthy events, often purchased by notables. Spending time at the Central Park boat pond years ago, I learned that Woody Allen had decided to join the ranks of home ownership, making the move from a Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment to the purchase of a property at 118 East 70th Street. From a Streetscapes article by Christopher Gray of the New York Times:

In 1939, Fortune magazine called it “probably New York City’s most beautiful residential block,” and Paul Goldberger, in his 1979 book, “New York: The City Observed” (Random House), described it as having “a perfect balance between individuality and an overall order.”

Regarding the property purchased by Woody Allen in 2006 for $26 million:

The neo-Georgian house at 118 East 70th was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston in 1900, with a spectacularly wide fanlight; the rippling surface of the glass dances and glistens in the sun.

So I toured the block in 2006 to see for myself what all the hoopla was about and why this one city block, between Park and Lexington Avenues, has been considered by some to be one of New York City’s finest. Today’s photos are from that visit. At the time, construction was under way on Woody’s house (lower left and center photos).

I know what many of you are thinking. Manhattan is a very nice place, and 70th Street looks like a very nice block, but $26 million for a small house? Even as a long-time resident of New York City, and inured as I am to the lust for this borough and stratospheric prices, I share A Furrowed Brow

Related Posts: Old New York (Part 1 and Part 2), The Feeling Passes, When Worlds Collide, Air Rights, 121 Charles, Grove Court, The Dakota, Kerbs Boathouse

My tagline for this blog avoids a few very applicable cliches. It could easily read something like “New York City – a place of contrasts and juxtaposition.” True or not, it’s one of those claims that many want to make. I cannot argue that New York City leads the world in contrasts; travelers to places like Egypt speak of the extreme contrasts unknown in the United States, such as disembarking from a plane and seeing the pyramids of Giza, or camels and limos in the streets of Cairo.

In the United States, we cannot compete with contrasts based on age. However, in New York City, there are remarkable cultural and ethnic pockets, with shops and services often juxtaposed in startling ways. Looking into my vault of photos, I found today’s images from July 2011, when I paid a visit to Woodside, Queens.

On or near 55th Street, in two short blocks, you can have you taxes done, bookkeeping, find a notary, pray at the local Masjid Fatima mosque, or get your fresh fowl at the Bismillah Live Poultry. From their website:

We are in business since 2002. All our poultry items are slaughtered Under Muslim rules & regulations (100% Halal). We are a proud member of Shariah Board of USA. All our chicken are naturally grown, no hormone or steroids used and they are tested by USDA.

In this industrial warehouse district, you will also find Sapori d’Ischia, an Italian foods retailer that becomes a highly regarded restaurant at night. ABC has a rental facility there, as well as Saks Fifth Avenue.

The live poultry business is always the biggest shocker for me to see in New York City. When I started this blog in 2006, I was particularly driven to show things of dramatically disparate natures. I had recalled passing a live poultry dealer on the Lower East Side, and one of my first postings was of a Live Poultry Market on Delancey Street, which I believe is now closed. At one time, there was even a live poultry dealer in the South Village, only blocks from my home. These things are often taken for granted at the time, and once gone, I begin to question my own memory of something so seemingly out of place in Manhattan.

As I explored the streets of Woodside that Sunday in the hot summer sun, there was very little activity, even by locals. The streets were deserted. Some of the backroads hearkened to the Old West. At any moment, I expected tumbleweed to blow through, had there been a breeze. And maybe out of that New York-styled Wild West would be our own Wyatt Earp, just back from Masjid Fatima toting a sixshooter on one hip and live poultry from Bismillah on the other. And that’s New York City at High Noon