New York Songlines: 110th Street

South:

Corner (375 Riverside): A 1922 Renaissance Revival apartment building by Gaetan Ajello.

610: Fourteen stories designed in 1922 by Schwartz & Gross. Built on the site of the Moorish Garden, an open-air cinema. Jane Shattuck, who launched the Schraft's restaurant chain with her brother Frank, lived here.

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North:

Corner (380 Riverside): The Hendrick Hudson, named for the English sea captain who explored the Hudson River on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. Residents have included developer Abraham Lefcourt, cinema mogul Marcus Loew and Joseph Weber of the vaudeville team Weber & Fields. It was the first home of the Gilbreth family, inspiration for the novel and movie Cheaper by the Dozen.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel lives at the imaginary address of 385 Riverside Drive; her apartment building resembles the real-life 380.

601 (corner): The College Residence, a 13-story building from 1920 that provides housing for Columbia and Barnard students, as well as regular folks. Irwin S. Cobb, a writer for the New York World who was said to be the highest paid reporter in the country, lived here.

In 1939, columnist Walter Winchell investigated why there were nine telephone listings for a Minnie Smith in this building. Turned out that she was a real estate broker who had installed pay phones in nine subtenants' apartments.

South:

Corner (2828): This 12-story apartment building, built in 2002, has an H Mart Korean grocery on the ground floor. It was built on the site of the Lion Palace Music Hall, built before 1864 as the Belvidere, said to be the largest dancing pavilion in the US. It was part of Lion Park, a spacious pleasure garden associated with the Lion Brewery on 108th Street. In 1910 it became the Nemo Theatre, part of the Fox cinema chain. In 1964 it became the Daitch-Shopwell supermarket.

550: Congregation Ramath Orah, an Orthodox synagogue founded in 1941 by Jews from Luxembourg who fled the Holocaust. The building went up in 1921 as the West Side Meeting House, a Unitarian temple whose name is still on the facade.

544: Harmony Hall, Columbia student dorm that used to be the Harmony Hotel. (An old ad on 114th Street described it as a place "where living is a pleasure.") The building dates to 1928, designed by Charles E. Birge for the Explorers Club, which only met here until 1932. The hotel was apparently named for real estate developer William Harmon, one of the Explorers Club's benefactors.

520: Twelve stories from 1911, designed by Schwartz & Gross in the Arts & Crafts style. Originally known as the Prince Humbert, whose namesake became Umberto II, the last king of Italy.

514: Cathedral Tower apartments, a near-twin of 520, another 12-story Schwartz & Gross building from 1911. Originally known as the Marc Antony.

504-510: The Amsterdam-Cortlandt, also known as Casa de Dani. Built as two separate 12-story buildings in 1909-10, both designed by Schwartz & Gross, and later combined internally. William Marston, Wonder Woman's kinky creator, lived at 504, which was the Amherst.

500 (corner): A 1908 Renaissance Revival building by Bernstein & Bernstein, also known as 1018 Amsterdam. The six-story apartment house features Marlow Bistro, Mediterranean, on the ground floor.

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North:

The Britannia

527: A 1909 building distinguished by its whimsical gargoyles, one of whom is eating from a bowl; it's been called the Chicken Soup Building. Developer J. Charles Weschler had architects Waid & Willauer design it in an Old English style with fewer stories (nine rather than 12) than allowed and a wider courtyard (35 feet instead of 20) than required by law. The result has been called "perhaps the most homelike apartment house in New York."

Henry and Phoebe Ephron, who wrote the screenplays for films like Carousel and Desk Set—and were the parents of Nora Ephron—lived here.

501 (corner): A 10-story building from 1910, once known as the Dreadnought. George and Ira Gershwin lived here from 1920-25, where George composed Rhapsody in Blue in 1924.

On the corner of the ground floor is the 1020 Bar, named for the building's Amsterdam Avenue address.

South:

464 (corner): Con Ed W110 Substation.

424: Cathedral Parkway Towers, 12 stories of brown brick built in 1974.

412: Twelve floors from 1930. This was the address of civil rights lawyer Walter Pollak, who defended the Scottsboro Boys and CPUSA leader Earl Browder.

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North:

Synod House

Corner (1021 Amsterdam): A Gothic Revival building from 1913, designed by Ralph Adams Cram to serve as a meetingplace for the Episcopal General Convention. Half the money for the project was put up by JP Morgan. Over the entrance can be seen the figures of Charlemagne, Constantine, Alfred the Great, Gustavus Adolphus and George Washington.

The building is part of the close of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which occupies the site of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum. The orphanage was founded when merchant John George Leake died in 1827, leaving his fortune to Robert Watts, the son of Leake's best friend John Watts. (The will required the younger Watts to change his name to Leake, an odd stipulation to require of your best friend's son.) But Robert died unexpectedly in 1829, with his inheritance going to his father, who decided to found an orphanage with the money.

The Orphan House grounds occupied some 50 acres, between what would now be 109th and 113th streets, and from Amsterdam Avenue to Morningside Drive. It gave a home to parentless children between 3 and 12 years old; these were often "bound out" to farms, factories and the like as essentially slave labor. By 1879, critics were noting the deplorable sanitary conditions of the orphanage, leading to the land's sale to the Episcopal Church and the orphanage's relocation to Yonkers, where it still serves parentless children as well as adults and families in distress.

419: The Diocesan House, also known as St. Faith's House, is the only building in the cathedral complex designed by Heins & LaFarge, the original architects for the whole project. The Tudor Gothic structure was finished in 1911 with funds from the will of Archdeacon Charles Comfort Tiffany, a mamber of the famous jeweler family. It originally served as home to the New York Training School for Deaconesses; since 1948, it's been used as offices, archives and apartments for the Episcopalian diocese.

Corner (1 Morningside): Avalon Morningside, a 20-story apartment building from 2008.

South:

350 (corner): A six-story building from 1906. Writer Upton Sinclair lived at this address.

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Morningside Park

A 30-acre park that stretches from 110th to 123rd Street, one block in width, following the line of the 100-foot cliff that raises Morningside Heights above Harlem. The park more or less follows a plan laid out in 1873 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the co-creators of Central Park, though there was much revision and re-revision. The park was considered completed in 1895.

Plans by Columbia University to build an athletic complex in the park—opposed by both students and the community—were a major issue in the Columbia protests of 1968, which led to the cancellation of the project.

South:

300 (block): Towers on the Park, a pair of 20-story apartment towers, each with a nine-story annex, that frame 110th Street as a gateway to Harlem. Designed by Bond Ryder James and built in 1989. Central Markets supermarket is on the ground floor.

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North:

307: Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hamlin Garland lived here.

301 (corner): The other tower of Towers on the Park. Cafe Amrita, Larry's Freewheeling bike rental are on the ground floor.

South:

Central Park

An 853-acre expanse of green in the middle of Manhattan—larger than Monaco!— it's the most-visited public park in the world, with 42 million visitors annually.

Responding to calls from civic leaders like William Cullen Bryant, the city acquired the land in 1853 and held a design contest in 1857, choosing the Greensward Plan of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux (rhymes with "Walks"). After the moving of 3 million tons of earth and the planting of 270,000 trees and shrubs, the park—almost entirely landscaped, despite its naturalistic appearance—opened to visitors in 1859 (though not officially completed until 1873).

West 110th Street Playground

A rather minimalist playground nestled in a pleasant valley under a dramatic rock outcropping. One of the many playgrounds added to the periphery of the park during the Robert Moses era.

Warriors Gate

One of the 20 gates named by Central Park's Commis- sioners in 1862—but as with most of the gates, the name was not actually inscribed in the park wall until 1999.

This gate—named, like the others, during the height of the Civil War—was intended to pay respect to "the stern truth that peace is not always possible, the strong arm of the soldier being at times absolutely needed to sustain the whole framework of society...that every well organized community must contain within itself the elements of an army prepared, whenever the necessity arises, to strike boldly in defence of its just rights." Andrew Haswell Green, who wrote the report on the gates' names, suggested that the warrior be honored on the north side of the park, "facing Washington Heights"—site of the Battle of Fort Washington in 1776—and "in the immediate neighborhood of the old fortifications," referring to the Blockhouse, a small fort, built in 1814 in anticipation of a British attack on New York, which is the oldest structure in Central Park.

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North:

285 (corner): Purple Waves cafe

217: Central Park North Apartments, built 1926. Previously this was the address of Meyer Bimberg, credited with inventing the campaign button to support William McKinley. He also built the Astor and Stuyvesant (later Belasco) theaters with his brothers.

204: Home to 13-term congressmember James Scheuer.

201 (corner): Lido Hall, a nine-story building from 1911. The building was vacant for several years before a 1987 condo conversion.

South:

North Woods

Farmers Gate

When Andrew Haswell Green proposed names for the gates of Central Park, he naturally suggested that one of them honor "agrictultural labor," since "the city is provided with its seemingly exhaustless supplies of food and raiment, almost entirely through the patient care and prudent foresight of the tiller of the soil," and the city "could with difficulty afford to be deprived, even for a day, or the supplies it is constantly receiving from this prolific source."

In one of the few deviations from Green's suggest- ions, the gate was not dedicated to the "Husbandman," which certainly would be misunderstood today, and his alternative proposals of "Cultivator's" or "Agriculturalist's" were declined in favor of the simple "Farmer's." The park did adopt his recommendation that this gate be placed where 110th Street met Seventh Avenue, which Green envisioned as a "shady country-like road."

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North:

145: A 13-story luxury apartment building from 2021, designed by GLUCK+. Was New York United Sabbath Day Adventist.

141: Cambridge Hotel was built c. 1900 as the Cambridge Residence Hotel. It's now an SRO and not recommended for tourists.

137: The Semiramis, a seven-story granite-columned building from 1901, designed by Henry Anderson. The AIA Guide calls it the "Queen of Central Park North"—though it notes the unfortunate missing cornice. The building was vacant before a 1987 condo conversion, part of the same deal that renovated Lido Hall.

131: FLY Center, "building social and life skills."

129: Vascular Centers of America

111 (corner): A 19-story glass apartment tower from 2007. The all-white figures in a billboard advertising its construction were decried as a sign of gentrification. Yankees outfielder Ichiro Suzuki has lived here.

South:

Harlem Meer

East 110th Street Playground

Not to be invidious, but people seem to prefer this playground to its western counterpart.

Gate of the Exonerated

This was not one of the entrances named by the Commissioners in 1862, but instead was dedicated in 2022 to honor the five teenagers—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam—who were wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989. It is intended "to shed light on the prejudice, hatred and wrongful incarcerations that are a product of inequities inherent in the justice system, and ultimately to honor all those affected by the inequities of the system."

Charles A. Dana Discovery Center

Built in 1993 but looking much older, this environ- mental and visitors center was designed by Samuel G. White—great-grandson of Stanford White—using Central Park's Victorian-styled Dairy as a model.

Charles A. Dana (1819-1897) was a prominent 19th Century newspaper editor (at the Tribune and Sun) who was assistant secretary of War during the Civil War, serving as Grant's liaison to Washington. But the Center was paid for by the Charles A. Dana Foundation, founded by his son, Charles A. Dana Jr. (1881-1975)—a business executive and lawyer who early in his career helped prosecute Stanford White's killer. It's unclear whether father or son is the namesake of the Center.

There was a boathouse built on this site in 1947 that had fallen into ruin by the 1970s.

Pioneers Gate

This gate answers Green's call to recognize those "who devote their energies to making new discoveries that enlarge the field of human action and add to the value of civilized life"—though the Commissioners dubbed them Pioneers rather than Green's suggestion of Explorers.

No doubt the assignment of "Pioneer" to this gate reflects the remote character of 110th Street in the mid-19th century.

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North:

55 (corner): The six-story Parkview Hotel was built in 1910; since then it's been an SRO, a youth hostel and (since 2002) a troubled homeless shelter.

45: A six-story apartment building, c. 1903. Playwright Arthur Miller grew up here.

31-33: The Young Women's Hebrew Association opened this building in 1914 to house Jewish women who had recently immigrated. It was sold to the US Army in 1942 and used as an R&R center during World War II.

From 1948 until 1974, it housed the New Lincoln School, a progressive K-12 school that influenced educational trends nationwide. Its alumni include actor Brooke Shields, journalist Jill Nelson and TV host Bonnie Erbe.

In 1976 it reopened as the Lincoln Correctional Facility, a minimum security state prison that mostly held victims of the war on drugs, along with a few white-collar criminals like Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco.

The prison closed in 2019; starting in 2023, it was used as temporary housing for asylum seekers.

7: Templo Cristiano Bethel

3-5 (corner): La Hermosa Church

South:

The Africa Center

Corner (1280 5th Ave): The newest and furthest north institution on the Museum Mile is in a 2011 building designed by Robert Stern. Originally the Center for African Art and then the Museum for African Art, it was founded in 1984 on East 68th Street.

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North:

The Heritage

Corner (1303 5th Ave): The northmost of a pair of 35-story octagonal apartment towers, which serve as bookends to the Sherry-Netherland and Pierre hotel towers at the southern end of Fifth Avenue's Central Park frontage.

These were built in 1974 to a Gruzen & Partners design as Arthur A. Schomburg Plaza, also known as Frawley Plaza, a mixed-income project under the Mitchell-Lama program. (Schomburg, 1874-1938, was an Afro-Puerto Rican historian and independence advocate.) The buildings were sold in 2005 and became market-rate housing, but were returned to rent regulation under a 2019 deal.

Corner (1295 5th Ave): The southern Heritage tower.

South:

Lehman Village

The complex is named for Herbert Lehman (1878-1963), governor of New York from 1933-42, and US senator from New York from 1949-57. Before his political career, he was a partner in the financial firm Lehman Brothers, which was co-founded by his father. Lehman was a supporter of the New Deal and a critic of Joe McCarthy.

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North:

Corner: Palante Community Garden

53: Tito Puente's childhood home.

71: Lovina House, a "boutique" seven-story apartment building from 2015.

81: Park Deli & Grill

83: Latin Fire Lounge

South:

DeWitt Clinton Houses

A New York City Housing Authority complex of six apartment buildings, five of 18 stories and one of nine, housing some 1,700 people. Opened in 1965, it was designed by Perkins and Will; following criticism by urban advocate Jan Jacobs, the project retained the Manhattan street grid, but did not include the mix of low-rise and and high-rise buildings that she recommended.

Its namesake is Gov. DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828), best-remembered for championing the construction of the Erie Canal, who also established the New York state public school system.

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North:

121: The Casablanca, apartments built in 2010 by the owner of the Casablanca Meat Market, incorporating the meat market's existing building.

123: El Paso Restaurante, Mexican, on the ground floor of The Casablanca.

125: Casablanca Meat Market, founded 1949. With two weeks notice, they will sell you a whole pig for roasting.

129: Eli Mar Bakery & Grocery

135: Pabade Cafe & Bakery

South:

Corner (1773 Lexington): King Lex Gourmet Deli

170: Aloaf Bakery Cafe

174: The Aguilar Library, a branch of the New York Public Library, opened in 1903 with funding from steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie; the building was designed by theatrical architects Herts and Tallant. It named for Anglo-Jewish writer Grace Aguilar (1816-1847), whose estate funded this library's predecessor, the Aguilar Free Library. That library, devoted to helping poor Jewish immigrants, was incorporated in 1886.

Corner (2000 3rd Ave): El Chevere Chuchifrito Corp., Bakery. There's a cool mural of a young Tito Puente ("Oye Como Va") on the 110th Street side.

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North:

Corner (1775 Lexington): Stop 1 King Gourmet Deli

153: Hellgate Station has to have one of the best names of any post office in the country. Serves the 10029 Zip code.

Corner (2004 3rd Ave): Young Fish Market

South:

Corner (2001 3rd Ave): Was Mr. Moe's Deli

Playing fields for PS 83, named for Luis Munoz Rivera (1859–1916), a Puerto Rican journalist and advocate for self-government.

Corner (2137 2nd Ave): Mom & Pop Corner Inc. boasts "The Largest Beer Selection in the Area."

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North:

Corner (2005 3rd Ave): Was Fresh & Fair Supermarket

255: Quesadillas Dona Maty

South:

312: St. Ann's Church. The Roman Catholic parish was established in 1911 to serve the rapidly growing Italian immigrant community; this church was built in 1913, designed by architect Nicholas Serracino. The parish merged with St. Lucy's in 2015.

314: From 1926 until 2023, St. Ann's School, affiliated with the church, was here.

326: Manhattan Animal Care Center

Corner (2135 1st Ave): Blue Sky Deli, known for its cheese- steaks. There's a mural memorializing Derek M. Armstead, a rapper known as Bloodshed who died in a car accident at the age of 20, on the 110th side.

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North:

Corner (2146 2nd Ave): La Nostra Pizzeria

Corner (2141 1st Ave): A Con Edison distribution center.

South:

1199 Plaza

Block (2100-2110 1st Ave): A brown-brick apartment complex, with four 31-story towers housing some 1,600 families. Named for District 1199, the healthcare union, which sponsored the 1973 project. "One of the city's most impressive and most livable works of multifamily housing"—AIA Guide.

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Manhattan Grit Chamber

432 (block): This Department of Sanitation facility, opened in 1937, processes about a third of the city's sewage, removing solid trash, which is sent by truck to landfills out of state. The remainder is piped to Wards Island for treatment.

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North:

Corner (2140 1st Ave): The building housing a Manhattan Ministorage outlet is said to date to 1913, though it looks more modern than that.

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