New York Songlines: Seventeenth Street

South:

Corner: Manhattan Mini Storage

Corner (99 10th Ave): The New York office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The office's biggest win was probably busting Nicky Barnes, who controlled Harlem's heroin trade, in 1977.

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North:

Block: Parking lot

High Line Park

Bridging the street here is a disused elevated railroad that was used to transport freight along the Westside waterfront, replacing the street-level tracks at 10th and 11th avenues that earned those roads the nickname "Death Avenue." Built in 1929 at a cost of $150 million (more than $2 billion in today's dollars), it originally stretched from 35th Street to St. John's Park Terminal, now the Holland Tunnel rotary.

Partially torn down in 1960 and abandoned in 1980, it now stretches from Gansevoort almost to 34th--mostly running mid-block, so built to avoid dominating an avenue with an elevated platform. In its abandonment, the High Line became something of a natural wonder, overgrown with weeds and even trees, accessible only to those who risked trespassing on CSX Railroad property.

In 2009 it was opened to the public as New York City's newest park; it truly transforms its neighborhood and hence the city. This section cuts diagonally through this block, marking off a triangular section that is intended to be developed as the 18th Street Plaza, tying the High Line into the life of the street.

South:

458 (corner): This brownstone, dated c. 1910, was spared when the rest of this end of the block was leveled for the construction of The Caledonia. It really adds character to the new building. Houses the sushi restaurant Naka Naka.

450: The Caledonia, a 2008 apartment building with 24 floors, 190 units and an interior meditation garden. Said to be the first luxury condo project on the newly refurbished High Line.

Fulton Houses

430 (corner): Eleven NYC Housing Authority buildings from 1965, containing 945 apartments and more than 2,000 people. They're named for Robert Fulton, who launched the first commercially viable steamship into the Hudson not far from here.

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North:

457 (corner): Artichoke Basille's Pizza, spin-off of an East 14th Street pizzeria offering delicious, creamy slices. From 1996-2008, this was the Red Rock West Saloon, a raucous bar noted for sexy bartenders. Earlier it was the East Boondock restaurant.

453: 1 Oak, hard-to-get-into nightclub with celebrity regulars like Jay-Z and Beyonce.

417: Original site of Engine Co. No. 3 (1865). Now at 146 W. 19th Street.

Fulton Houses

South:

Maritime Hotel

Block (363 W 16th): Built in 1966 for the National Maritime Union, featuring porthole-like windows and a sloping setback. Later home to the scandal-ridden Covenant House runaway shelter. Now a nautical-themed hotel, which includes the acclaimed Japanese restaurant Matsuri and the popular La Bottega.

366: The unmarked doorway of Hiro, a Japanese-styled lounge located in the new Maritime Hotel (which faces 16th Street).

Covenant House

346: This Catholic home for runaway teens was plagued by sex scandal before Catholic sex scandals were trendy.

Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly Playground

Named in 1934 by Fiorello LaGuardia in honor of a right-wing feminist who ran a clinic for the poor in Chelsea.

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North:

353: Lorge School (special education), formerly Manhattan Center of the Catholic Youth Organization

333: New York Laboratory School for Collaborative Studies (grades 6-12); NYC Museum School (6-9); the O. Henry School (6-8)

311: Suenos, hidden-away Mexican restaurant that replaced the romantic Alley's End.

307: Energy Kitchen, healthy fast food.

301 (corner): Nooch, Japanese/ Thai fusion

South:

270 (corner): Grand Chelsea apartments

206: From 2001 to 2004, this condo housed the studio of sculptor Don Gummer, who's married to Meryl Streep.

Corner: Gourmet Deli

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North:

257: Kate Winslet has lived here.

249-253: This building was the wagon house of the Siegel-Cooper department store, from which delivery wagons would race to deliver merchandise to the "Big Store's" upscale customers.

120 (corner): Was United Colors of Benetton. In 1900 this was the address of 10-year-old Arthur Massey and Tommie McGrath, "two well-known incorrigibles" who were arrested for posing as orphan twins in order to get handouts.

South:

150 (corner): Rubin Museum of Art, opened in 2004, specializes in Himalayan Art.

194: Site of the last home of exotic dancer Lola Montez. Once the mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria, she died here in poverty, January 17, 1861.

136: IS: Industries Stationery, ultra-cool paper store

132: Homeworks Kitchen & Bath

124: McBurney YMCA Chelsea Center

120: Monte de Sion Pentecostal church

118: Angel Street Thrift Shop

110: Flatiron Color Lab, digital archival prints

104: From the Source, sustainable solid-wood furniture

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North:

Corner (119 7th Ave): Cafeteria, styley faux diner. The Voice calls it "ground zero for LGBT dining." Meatloaf is $11.95, is all I'm saying.

143: Housing Works Thrift Shop; proceeds go to a terrific AIDS support group.

139: Aronson's Tile & Carpet, since 1867

123: Door Store furniture

117: The original location of Barney's, founded by Barney Pressman in 1923.

111: Crema, Mexican, was Snackbar, fancy appetizers. In a building whose facade is 90 percent windows.

109: Built as a coach house in 1869, which became a livery stable (whose ad was still visible most of a century later). Later Alliance Paper & Twine. Now Haven's Kitchen, a recreational cooking school, specialty food shop and event space.

107: Da Umberto, Tuscan, has the best food in Chelsea, according to Zagat.

101 (corner): It's been a while since they built three-story buildings like this on Sixth Avenue. Upstairs here is Nightlight Astrology, a donation-based astrology studio founded in 2010.

South:

New York Foundling Hospital

Corner (590 6th Ave): Orphanage founded 1869 on Upper East Side; it moved here in 1988 to take advantage of lower real estate costs. (Today they mostly support special-needs children-- there not being as many foundlings as there used to be.)

50: Was Splash, well-known two-level gay bar, aka SBNY. Opened in 1991, closed in 2013. Early on it had showers for go-go boys to dance in.

48: Apartment 48, home furnishings

46: Chelsea Inn, a little hotel that opened in 1995 in a Queen Anne-style house from 1890, designed by Henry Congdon. Also Nana's Treats, bakery.

44: Petite Abeille, local Belgian chain, in a five-story Italianate rowhouse c. 1861.

40: Cerutti Miller, gallery specializing in French posters from the 1880s through the 1930s. In a 1910 Beaux Arts building by Schwartz & Gross.

36: Barry Supply Co.--Replacement Hardware Specialists

30: School of Visual Arts sculpture studios

26: Impressive 12-story Beaux Arts building with columns is a 1908 design by William C. Frohne. Surprisingly, the original occupants were a miscellaneous collection of clothing merchants.

Center for Jewish History

22: Houses the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Yeshiva University Museum and more. Originally built in 1947 for the American Institute for the Blind.

16: Eisenberg & Eisenberg men's clothing is in a 1907 Beaux Arts building by Buchman & Fox.

8: Editor and poet William Cullen Bryant built a brownstone at this address c. 1851. Demolished 1961.

Corner (114 5th Ave): Banana Republic is on the site of the home of Ambrose Kingsland, mayor and sperm-oil merchant. Later the offices of Oxford University Press.

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North:

63 (corner): Lyla, condos built 2003.

55: Charles P. Rogers beds, established 1855

51: A 1907 grey-brick loft designed by Grosvenor Atterbury for investor Henry Phipps--Christopher Gray calls it "particularly handsome."

47: A.I. Friedman, paper, books, framing etc.

37: Retreat Lounge, which uses antlers in all of its decorating, was 17, rock 'n' roll lounge; Basta Pasta, Japanese/Italian fusion

33: 17th Street Photo was Chelsea Kids Quarters, children's furniture. Upstairs is Lens & Repro Equipment Corp., a store for camera buffs.

31: Aldea ("Village"), Spanish opened in 2009, is on the ground floor of Flatiron 17, condo built 2008.

29: Karaoke One7 is in a 1907 loft that markedly slants to the left.

23-27: The Association in Manhattan for Autistic Children is in an 11-story Beaux Arts building from 1904 designed by Buchman & Fox.

21: BLT Fish, part of the Bistro Laurent Tourondel empire, was AZ, restaurant/club.

13: Pangea Salon & Spa

11: Rye House, whiskey bar, is a "narrow, gawky" 1908 loft, built by developer Edward Browning, whose initials ("EWB") are on the facade. In 1972, this building was home to The New York Ace, an underground paper whose writers included P.J. O'Rourke and Richard Meltzer. Other tenants at the time reportedly included the scandal sheet The National Peeping Tom, the Communist Party's New York City headquarters and Broadway star Tommy Tune.

9: This vacant lot had the office of the Goelet family, important developers, until they moved to the Goelet Building at Broadway and 20th. The charming three-story Dutch Renaissance building, designed by McKim, Mead & White, was here from 1886 until 1952.

Corner (120 5th Ave): Gap Body is in an 11-story 1906 building by John B. Snook & Sons. This seems to be the location of No. 118 as well, home of the JL Mott Iron Works, a plumbing supply shop that entered art history in April 1917 when Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal here and renamed it Fountain, launching the idea that anything could be art.

South:

Corner (95 5th Ave): Kenneth Cole, the intellectual's shoe store, is in a nine-story building built in 1920, supposedly designed by Robert Maynicke (though the architect died in 1913). This was painter Childe Hassam's first New York address in 1889; artist Bruce Crane also lived here.

16: Beads of Paradise, paradise for bead-lovers

18: Wm. H. Jackson Company, fireplace furnishings--established 1827

20: Ennju, self-service Japanese; a sign above the door says "Established 1914," but I'm pretty sure that refers to a previous occupant.

22: From 1884 until 1889, this was the address of the Manhattan Chess Club--a group whose members have included three world champions.

24: Chop't Creative Salad

Hartford Building

26 (corner): Houses Rainbow Falafel; some say the best in town. Also Dogmatic Gourmet Sausage System, fancy hot dogs.

Bruce Kayton reports that Emma Goldman had a massage parlor at the corner of 17th and Broadway; I think it must be this 1895 building, built for the Hartford Carpet Co. Later it housed the offices of Partisan Review, and of poet Allen Ginsberg.

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North:

Corner (97 5th Ave): Aldo is in an eight-story building from 1900 designed by Robert Maynicke.

Corner (97 5th Ave): Lee's Gourmet Deli

3: Journelle, lingerie. This was built as a nine-story loft in 1903; all but the bottom two were demolished in 1941.

5: This eight-story neo-Renaissance loft, built in 1902, extends through to 18th Street. It's part of the Barnes & Noble flagship--but you can't get in this entrance.

7: Another eight-story neo-Renaissance loft from 1902 was Johnny Lat's Gym, which one regular recalls as "the 'ex con gym' because so many of its members were huge and mean-looking. You'd walk in the place and you could literally smell the testosterone in the air--you didn't need to inject steroids.... You'd get a dose just by being there."

9: Cafe Medina (was Caffe Simpatico?), noted for its eclectic soups, and Edo Japanese Restaurant are in a four-story 1846 building, originally constructed as a dwelling and converted to commercial use in 1883.

11: Hale and Hearty Soup, local chain, is in a 1904 Art Nouveau loft building by Israels & Harder. The publisher Houghton, Mifflin & Co. was based in an earlier building at this address in the 1880s and '90s.

13: A nine-story neo- Renaissance loft from 1901, designed by James E. Ware, architect of the Osborne Apartments and part of Mohonk Mountain House. On the ground floor is Lillie's Victorian Establishment, a bar/restaurant named for actress Lillie Langtry.

15: Laut, Malaysian, is in an 1899 Beaux-Arts loft by Cleverdon & Putzel.

17: The Pump Energy Food, local chain. Formerly Sushi Jones. The 1912 loft building has a geometric terra cotta pattern on its facade.

19-21: A pair of five-story neo-Grecian/Queen Anne buildings from 1882.

Corner (857 Broadway: Tisserie, Venezuelan bakery/coffeehouse, was Union Square Deli. Painter Isabel Bishop's studio was on the 4th floor from 1934-44, helping to name the "14th Street School" of social realism.

South:

Union Square

Union Square was not named for the North or for labor, but for the fact this stretch of roadway can be construed to be part of both Broadway and what was once the Bowery, at that time Broadway's rival as NYC's main street. In the city plan of 1811, Broadway was supposed to be eliminated north of 14th Street, permanently uniting it with Fourth Avenue. Fortunately, NYC was unable to raise money to reroute Broadway, saving Manhattan from complete predictability.

Union Square has a rich political history: 250,000 gathered here to support Union during the Civil War (1861), the largest crowd ever assembled in North America up to that point; the first U.S. labor day parade (September 5, 1882); Emma Goldman was arrested for telling the unemployed to steal bread (1893); funeral march for Triangle Shirtwaist Fire victims (1911); protests against Sacco & Vanzetti's execution (1927), and against the Rosenbergs' (1953). After the World Trade Center was destroyed, the square became an impromptu memorial and peace vigil.

The parking lot at the north end of the square hosts the Union Square Green- market, Manhattan's premier farmers' market. It's also a meeting place for the Society for Creative Anachronism.

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North:

Corner (860 Broadway): The building with the Petco was from 1974 until 1987 the final location of Andy Warhol's Factory. From 1980-89, it also housed Underground, a new wave dance club featured in the movie Liquid Sky. (Around 1987, it changed its name to Union Square.)

31: In 1872, this was the address of the City Club.

32: In 1865, the Fenian Brotherhood declared a brownstone here to be the capital of the Irish government in exile.

The Century Building

33: This 1881 Queen Anne masterpiece, designed by J. William Schickel, housed the publishers of The Century and the children's magazine St. Nicholas (which was Edna St. Vincent Millay's first publisher). Architect George B. Post also had an office here. Now a Barnes & Noble; Mel Gibson buys a copy of Catcher in the Rye at this branch in the movie Conspiracy Theory; Carrie and her friends shop for self-help books here on Sex and the City.

Everett Building

Corner (200 Park South): Built in 1908, this building's functionalist design was a taste of things to come in skyscrapers. Rothman's clothing store, on the ground floor, is in a former Chase bank branch; suits are now sold in the basement vault.

Built on site of the Everett Hotel, a popular bunk for entertainers. On November 7, 1876, it threw a victory party for the Democratic presidential candidate, New York's own Samuel Tilden--who had his victory stolen by Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.

South:

Tammany Hall

100-102 (corner): The final home, built in 1928, of the club that dominated New York politics for decades. Named for an Indian chief known, like the club, for his anti-British attitudes. The structure, designed to resemble New York's Federal Hall, was built in 1929 on the site of the Westmoreland Apartment House, where abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison died May 24, 1879. For a time it was the HQ of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. It's now home to the New York Film Academy, a movie-making school, and to the Union Square Theater, in the auditorium where journalist Nellie Bly lectured after her trip around the world in 72 days; The Laramie Project debuted here in May 2000.

104: Red-brick Greek Revival building from the 1840s--part of a charming group of mostly 19th Century buildings on this side of the block.

106: Italianate building c. 1850.

108-110: An Anglo-Italianate rowhouse built in 1854. Home for a decade in the 1870s to merchant W.R. Grace, just before he was elected mayor of New York.

Another Anglo-Italianate rowhouses from 1854. Served as the shooting location for Nicholas Cage's apartment in Vampire's Kiss.

112: Fanwood Apartments, an 1889 brownstone with a rusticated groundfloor that makes it look like a Bedrock mansion.

116: Renaissance-style brownstone from the 1850s.

118: The Irving, Edwardian apartments from 1901.

120: A Greek Revival building of the 1840s.

'Irving House'

Corner (49 Irving): Washington Irving did not live here, contrary to the plaque; nor did Irving's nephew live here, as some guidebooks alternatively suggest. This was the home of Edgar Irving, a seemingly unrelated merchant; the fact that the street was named for Washington Irving, and that a nephew whom the writer frequently visited did live nearby, seems to have caused the confusion.

This house was lived in by Elsie de Wolfe, an early and influential interior decorator who redecorated the White House in 1902, and by her lover, Elizabeth Marbury, literary agent for Shaw, Oscar Wilde and J.M. Barrie. Currently Yama, a noted sushi place, is in the basement.

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North:

W Union Square

Corner (201 Park Ave S): Fancy hotel houses bars Olives, Underbar. The building with its four-story mansard roof was built in 1911 for the Germania Life Insurance Co.; when World War I prompted a name change, Guardian Life was chosen because several letters could be re-used in the building's light-up sign. Theodore Dreiser rented an office here in 1925 to finish An American Tragedy.

105: Built in 1961 as a modernist annex to the Guardian Life building; designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Now houses Zurich Capital Markets.

117: Katherine Anne Porter wrote Ship of Fools here in 1953.

119: Sal Anthony's Pilates

121: Charming carriage house

Corner: Site of the Blue Bell Tavern, a favorite O. Henry drinking spot.

South:

Washington Irving High School

Corner: Built in 1911-13 as the Girls' Technical High School, its students have included actors Claudette Colbert and Whoopi Goldberg. The interior is worth checking out.

The giant bust of Irving was sculpted in 1885 by Friedrich Beer. It was placed first in Central Park and then in Prospect Park before being rededicated here in 1935.

The school was built in part on the site of the National Conservatory of Music of America, which was located on this corner at No. 126-128; composer Antonin Dvorak was for a time its director, and Victor Herbert a teacher.

Corner: Gramercy Cafe, diner. At this corner, at No. 146-148, was the Conservatory's concert hall.

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North:

Corner (52 Irving): Built for bach- elors in 1912, this Colonial Revival apartment building includes the Spanish Casa Mono ("Monkey House"), by famed restauranteur Mario Batali. Formerly Irving on Irving, where Carrie and Charlotte rated men on Sex and the City.

125: Cafe Spinoza

125 1/2: Pure Juice and Take Away, a carryout version of Pure Food and Wine, the raw food place on Irving. Was Bar Demi.

141: Time magazine was founded in what is now a bike shop.

143: St John the Baptist, Greek Orthodox church

145: Corbet & Coney Cafe

South:

200 (corner): I assume Mumbles Restaurant is named for the Dick Tracy villain. Recently got a makeover.

210: Monbijou apartments

Stuyvesant Square

For some reason, this park isn't the vibrant public space that its cousins -- Union Square, Tompkins Square, Washington Square -- are. Part of the reason is that the park is bisected by 2nd Avenue; the neighborhood is also too dominated by one type of use -- hospitals.

The west side of the park features a statue of Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam and a major landowner -- a descendant of his gave the city the land for this park. The statue has a view of the Friends Meetinghouse, which is ironic considering Stuyvesant's hostility to Quakers.

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North:

Park Towers

Corner (197 3rd Ave): At 30 stories, the tallest thing in the neighborhood. Park Towers Medical Plaza on ground floor.

225: Hotel 17, hip and cheap; recommended if you can handle sharing a bathroom. Appears as the Hotel Waldron in Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery.

231-235: Hazelden New York rehab center is in a gothic building originally built in 1877 as the St. John the Baptist House, later used by the Salvation Army.

237: Site of St. Andrews Convalescent Hospital

241: Novelist William Dean Howells lived in this nondescript brownstone in the 1890s. From observations from daily walks in the neighborhood, he wrote A Hazard of New Fortunes--"probably the first novel to offer a realistic view of New York," Stephen Plumb notes.

Sidney Webster House

245: This 1883 house is the only surviving New York residence designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the architect of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal and the central section of the Metropolitan Museum. Now houses a psychiatric day treatment center.

283: The address of Dr. Lazlo Kreizler, the title character of The Alienist.

Rutherford Place Apartments

303-305 (corner): Was New York Lying-In Hospital (1899); in the early 20th Century, 60 percent of all NYC hospital births were here. Note the dancing babies on facade. Converted to an apartment building, which Wesley Snipes, Judd Nelson and David Lee Roth have all called home.

South:

Stuyvesant Square

The eastern half of the park includes a dog run. The statue of Anton Dvorak here seems to have been offered as a consolation for tearing his nearby house down.

Beth Israel Medical Center

Block: Founded in the late 19th Century on the Lower East Side, Beth Israel is now part of Continuum Health Partners.

330: This was author William Dean Howells' address when he first moved to this neighborhood in 1888.

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North:

Hospital for Joint Diseases

301 (corner): Founded in 1905, moved here in 1979, it's one of five orthopaedic/rheumatologic hospitals in the world.

305: Site of the "Little Mothers" Aid Society, which helped girls who looked after younger siblings while their parents worked. Later was the house of Tammany Hall leader "Boss" Charles Murphy, the most powerful figure in the New York politics of his day, who died here in 1924.

317: Fierman Hall houses the Peter Krueger Clinic for the Treatment of Immune Disorders

327: Robert Mapplethorpe Residence, home for people with AIDS. Despite protests (including one from Vaclav Havel), this building replaced the one where composer Antonin Dvorak lived (1892-95) when he was director of the National Conservancy of Music. He wrote his New World Symphony here in 1893.

353 (corner): Gilman Hall, housing for Beth Israel. This was the first home of writer Teresa Gardstein.

Stuyvesant Town

Built in the late 1940s by Met Life Insurance Co. as affordable housing for World War II vets; the private development had a great deal of public support, organized by city power broker Robert Moses. Eighteen city blocks containing 600 buildings were leveled for the project.

When Met Life sold it, along with Peter Cooper Village -- a total of 110 apartment buildings -- for $5.4 billion in 2006, it was reportedly the biggest real estate transaction in history...and perhaps the worst, since it was negotiated just as the housing bubble was about to pop. The purchaser was Tishman Speyer Properties, a real estate group that owned Rockefeller Center, among other things. Failing in a scheme to convert rent-stablized apartments to market rate, Tishman Speyer turned over the property to its creditors in 2010 to avoid bankruptcy.

Built on the site of the notorious Gashouse District, where fumes from chemical plants kept out all but the poorest immigrants. The home turf of the Gashouse Gang, a tough crew that specialized in robbing other gangs, since there was so little to steal in their own neighborhood.

The development is named for Peter Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam's one-legged governor, who owned most of the land in this neighborhood. Autocratic, anti-democratic and intolerant, he was something of a 17th Century Giuliani. Earlier the mansion called Petersfield could be found here, less than one block east of 1st Avenue between 15th and 16th streets. It was the home of Petrus Stuyvesant, a descendant of Peter.

Notable residents of Stuyvesant Town have included writers Frank McCourt, Mary Higgins Clark and David Brooks, Obama adviser David Axelrod and actor Paul Reiser.