New York Songlines: 1st Avenue

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Queensboro Bridge

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Bridgemarket

A vaulted space under the Queensboro Bridge, with a ceiling covered in Gaustavino tile. Long neglected as city storage space, it was converted in 1999 into a Food Emporium and a Conran's Restaurant & Housewares Store.

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1076 (corner): Writer John Cheever lived here in the late 1940s before moving to suburban Scarborough, New York in 1951. In the early 2000s, Casa la Femme North was located here.

West:

1063 (corner): Rosa Mexicano on First Avenue, part of a local chain

Corner (357 E 57th): This 19-story building opened in 1958 was home to "Preppie Killer" Robert Chambers after he was released from his 15-year prison sentence for killing Jennifer Levin in Central Park. He was arrested in 2007 for selling cocaine out of his apartment here and sent back to prison for 19 years.

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Corner (401 E 57th): Ultimate Pizza

West:

Corner (360 E 57th): The Morrison, 25-story apartment building from 1983.

Corner (345 E 56th): A 22-story apartment building from 1960 is on the site of 353 E. 56th, where painter Piet Mondrian moved in 1939 after fleeing the Nazi invasion of Holland and then the London Blitz. He painted Broadway Boogie Woogie, now at MOMA, here.

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1026 (corner): 1931 Art Moderne apartment building; includes Sutton Cafe Restaurant.

West:

Cathedral High School

Corner (350 E 56th): A Catholic girls' school founded in 1905 and moved to this location (from Lexington Avenue) in 1973.

Catholic Center of New York

1011 (block): This building, known as the Terence Cardinal Cooke Building, dates to 1979 and is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. Catholic Charities is also based here.

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989 (corner): International Film and Video Center; Reme's Oggi Pets

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994 (corner): A 17-story building from 1956

West:

Corner (350 E 54th): A six-story building from 1959

965 (corner): Madison Restaurant, a 24-hour diner opened in 1948

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Corner (400 E 54th): The Revere, a 30-story, dark-brown-brick apartment tower from 1970. Presumably named for Paul Revere, silversmith and patriot.

Corner (411 E 53rd): Sutton Manor, a 20-story white-brick apartment building from 1960.

West:

949: New York Video, with more than 20,000 titles, one of the last great video stores in New York

Corner: Blueberry's Deli

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948: The site of Billy's Restaurant, opened 1870 and closed 2004--at the time, reportedly the oldest family-owned restaurant in New York.

West:

939 (corner): Jeffrey Wine & Liquor on the ground floor

Corner (351 E 51st): The Beekman Regent's five-story base was originally built as P.S. 135 in 1892 (George W. Debevoise, architect), expanded in 1904. It later served as the United Nations School, educating the children of diplomats. A tower was added to bring it up to 20 stories in a 2000 condo conversion.

This was the site of Mount Pleasant, James Beekman's mansion. During the Revolutionary War, it was headquarters of the British military force. Nathan Hale was tried and sentenced to death here.

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891 (corner): Azaza, Asian, was Wylie's Ribs and Steak Joint.

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The Grand Beekman

Corner (400 E 51st): A 32-story apartment tower designed by Costas Kondylis and completed in 2002. With a Post-Modern crown and distinctive corner bay windows, it's a fairly interesting and attractive building--much better than the average generic new apartment building.

West:

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Corner (400 E 50th): This is the address of The Women's Mosaic, "Recognizing our unity, celebrating our diversity."

Beekman Tower Hotel

Corner (3 Mitchell Place): This 28-story Art Deco landmark was originally built in 1928 as the Panhellenic Tower, designed as a residence and clubhouse for members of Greek-letter sororities. The architect was John Mead Howells, the winner (along with Raymond Hood) in the Tribune Tower design competition, though it more resembles the influential second-place plan by Eliel Saarinen.

The Zephyr Grill is in this building but has the address 1 Mitchell Place.

West:

875 (corner): Nations Cafe

871: German House, Germany's permanent mission to the U.N.

865: This 1929 neo-Medieval building was designed by George & Edward Blum. Christopher Gray praises their work for its "informality" and its "picturesque and varied crowning towers."

Corner: United Nations Plaza, 1990s apartments by Der Scutt.

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East:

Block: 860 U.N. Plaza Apartments, a 40-story tower that's part of a 1968 apartment complex designed by Harrison, Abramovitz & Harris.

West:

Trump World Tower

845 (block): This 72-story building, completed in 2001, is the tallest residential building in the world. It closely resembles the monoliths from 2001, but is far less likely to advance human evolution.

W <= DAG HAMMARSKJOLD PLAZA

823: Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith is in a 1953 building put up for the Carnegie Endowment International Center. Founded in 1913 as a broad-based civil rights group, the ADL increasingly tends to make support for Israel its litmus test-- honoring Italy's Silvio Berlusconi despite his praise for Mussolini, for example.

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821 (corner): The U.N. missions of Turkey and Bangladesh are at this address.

809: Built in 1961 as the Institute for International Education, this building is noted for its penthouse Kaufmann Conference Rooms, designed by Finland's Alvar Aalto--one of only two U.S. projects by the renowned modernist architect.

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Federal Office Building

799 (corner): This 35-story building, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with Maki and Associates, replaced the U.S. Mission to the U.N., a 1959 building surrounded by a perforated concrete shell.

787 (corner): 1 U.N. Plaza is a strikingly folded glass and aluminum form by Roche-Dinkeloo (1975). "The public spaces within are some of the best in New York's modern architecture"--AIA Guide. The National Bank of Pakistan is on the 1st Avenue side. The Milennium Plaza U.N. Hotel starts on the 28th floor.

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777 (corner): U.N. Church Center; built by the United Methodists in 1962, this 12-story building provides offices for U.N.-related programs of many denominations and non-governmental organizations.

771: Brunei's mission to the U.N. This used to be the Herbert Hoover Building, a 1960 building that housed the Boys and Girls Club of America.

765: U.N. Plaza Dental

763: Bhutan's mission to the U.N.

W <=== SHCHARANSKY STEPS

Named for the Soviet dissident (now an Israeli cabinet member), these steps lead up to Tudor City and E. 43rd Street.

Ralph J. Bunche Park

This small park commemorates the African-American U.N. official who received a Nobel Peace Prize for leading the Palestine Peace Commission in 1947. The tall, silver sculpture here is Daniel LaRue Johnson's Peace Form One.

The Isaiah Wall on the edge of the park, a gift from New York City, bears the hopeful message "They Shall Beat Their Swords Into Plowshares...."

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The flags of the U.N. members fly along U.N. Plaza in alpha-betical order; the flag of Afghanistan is at the corner of 48th Street.

United Nations Headquarters

This land, formerly used by slaughterhouses, gas works and the like, was going to be developed by William Zeckendorf into a futuristic housing/retail complex called X-City. When that fell through, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave the U.N. the money to buy it for its headquarters, to spare New York the embarrassment of having the world organization base itself in Philadelphia instead. The land is now considered international territory, not part of the United States.

Construction began in 1947, following the design of an international architectural committee, with Switzerland's Le Corbusier probably the most famous and influential member.

North Garden

Cast the Sleeping Elephant, by Bulgarian-born artist Mihail and donated to the U.N. by Kenya, Namibia and Nepal, has attracted more than its share of controversy. The bronze, based on a cast of a tranquilized wild bull elephant, made U.N. officials squeamish because of the animal's anatomically correct erection; some strategically planted shrubbery was added for modesty. Model Cheryl Teigs, who volunteered to be a test subject for the casting process, has been in court with Mihail over the product of the experiment.

Good Defeats Evil, by Georgian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, depicts St. George killing the dragon; the dragon was created from two actual dismantled nuclear missiles, U.S. and Soviet. It was donated by the Soviet Union in 1990.

Let Us Beat Our Swords Into Plowshares, by Evgeny Buchetich, was also given to the U.N. by the Soviet Union, in 1959.

Visitors Plaza

In front of the U.N. entrance is Arnoldo Pomodoro's Sphere Within a Sphere, a reflective sculpture.










The gun tied in a knot is Non-Violence, a 1988 gift from Luxembourg by sculptor Karl Fredrik Reutersward.

General Assembly Building

Conference Building

Northwest of the Secretariat Building is the Japanese Peace Bell, cast out of coins collected by children in 60 countries. It is rung twice a year, on the first day of spring and on International Peace Day (September 21).

Secretariat Building

The 21-foot-tall bronze oblong with the hole in it is Single Form, by Barbara Hepworth, created in 1964 as a memorial to Dag Hammarskjold, the two-term U.N. secretary general. Hammarskjold died in a plane crash in 1961 while on a peace mission to the Congo. Nearby is Henry Moore's Reclining Figure: Hand.

Dag Hammarskjold Library

The flag of Zimbabwe, the last member nation in alphabetical order, flies at the corner of 42nd Street.

West:

Tudor City

A self-contained development, built in 1925-28 by the Fred F. French Company, in the half-timbered style of Ye Olde England. Few of the windows face east because in those days there were mostly slaughterhouses and glue factories where the U.N. is now.

The area used to be called Dutch Hill, where "one can hardly enter a shanty where is a sober family," according to an 1872 account.

Block (25 Tudor Place): Tudor City's Tudor Tower. Tom Hanks lived here in Splash. In the mid-1800s, gang leader John Corcoran aka "Paddy" aka "Genteel Jamie" had a hideout around here known as Corcoran's Roost, from which his Rag Gang terrorized the neighborhood.

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Robert Moses Playground

Moses, despite never being elected to any office, did more to reshape New York City than perhaps any other person--for better and for worse. Among his many projects were Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center, the BQE, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and Jones Beach. Among the things he destroyed or tried to destroy: Penn Station, the South Bronx, Greenwich Village and Shakespeare in the Park. He was involved with the construction of the United Nations Headquarters, which is presumably why his park is here. The large, oddly angled building provides ventilation for the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

West:

Block (5 Tudor City Pl): Tudor City's Windsor Tower, noted for its ornate stonework entrance. This building is the target of a bomb plot in the Al Pacino movie Scarface.

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Block: Schindler Elevator Corporation

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Con Edison Waterside Station

700 (block): Con Ed shut down this plant and increased power production at its 14th Street facility. This plant was demolished, to be replaced with high-rise apartment buildings and office towers. There's talk of a riverfront park being built over the FDR Drive.

The section between 39th and 40th streets was actually quite handsome-- a classic old red-brick factory building. It's highly unlikely that what they replace it with will be more attractive.

The middle section, built more recently, was admittedly kind of bland.

The section of the plant by the corner of 38th Street was kind of cool again. Bore the inscription "NY Edison"-- it's strange to think that the electric company was founded by the same guy who invented the lightbulb etc.

West:

645: The Corinthian, 1987 luxury apartment building with distinctive fluted bay windows. "Corinthian" is used to mean "luxurious" because Corinth was the party town of ancient Greece--noted as the home of Aphrodite's sacred prostitutes.

The fountain in front of the building is called Pierene--named for the fountain in Corinth where the flying horse Pegasus was captured.

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660: This office building was originally the Kips Bay Brewing Company's brewery. NYU Medical Center and other healthcare practices have offices here.

West:

Queens Midtown Tunnel

Opened in 1940 to relieve congestion on the East River bridges. Ole Singstad, who earlier dug the Holland Tunnel and later started work on the Brooklyn-Battery, was the chief engineer. FDR broke ground on the project in 1936.

The entrance to the tunnel is the western end of the Long Island Expressway.

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630: Manhattan Place. This 1984 apartment building is situated at an angle, creating a triangular public plaza. On the ground floor is Karabelas Food Market & Cafe.

West:

St. Vartan's Park

Sadly enough, this out-of-the-way, one-square-block piece of green, bisected by the Queens Midtown Tunnel entrance road, is the only real park in Manhattan's 30s. Opened in 1904 as St. Gabriel's Park, it was renamed in 1978 for the Armenian cathedral on 2nd Avenue. Vartan was a general who fought against Persians in Albania who were trying to force the Armenians to convert to Zoroastrianism.

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616 (block): This former Con Ed plant is slated for demolition and redevelopment as luxury condos.

West:

Corner (350 E 35th): Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the U.N.

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Block (401 E. 34th): Rivergate, a U-shaped luxury apartment building with a three-story atrium featuring a waterfall and ponds filled with koi.

There used to be a Coca-Cola bottling plant on this block, where a reader recalls getting free soda on hot summer days.

West:

593 (corner): Kips Bay Delicatessen

591: Golden Dragon #1

587: Bagels & Cafe

577 (corner): NYU Child Study Center

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545: Greenberg Hall

Residences for NYU's med school.

Kips Bay Plaza

This 21-story exposed-concrete slab was built in 1960 to an I.M. Pei design.

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NYU Medical Center

Built from 1950 to 1977 to a Skidmore Owings & Merrill design.

Corner (400 E 34th): Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine; part of the NYU Medical Center, it's named for Dr. Howard Rusk, who pioneered medical rehabilitation treating injured airmen during World War II.

560: NYU's Tisch Hospital. Lawrence Tisch, the media mogul who funded it, ended up dying here, November 15, 2003. My daughter, Eden Jean Jackson Naureckas, was born here February 24, 2004.

540: NYU's Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine

Schwartz Health Care Center (Co-op Care)

The Morgue

520 (corner): Offices of the New York Medical Examiner. John Lennon, Andy Warhol and the Son of Sam victims all came here after their deaths.

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Bellevue Men's Shelter

Block 9400 E 30th): Also known as the 30th Street Shelter, this Victorian pile houses elderly and mentally ill homeless men.

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491 (corner): East Bay Diner & Cafe

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Theodore Roszak's 1969 statue Sentinel honors ''those intrepid men and women who dedicate themselves to science and humanity.''

Public Health Laboratories

455 (block): A division of the NYC Department of Health; houses the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, which played a key role in developing the combination drug therapy that greatly reduced the death rate from HIV. In 1996, Dr. David Ho, the center's director, was named Time's person of the year.

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Children's Center

492 (corner): A shelter for children and teens run by the city's Administration for Children's Services. The building, which is quite striking, is a McKim, Mead and White design added to the Bellevue complex from 1907-12. It formerly served as the hospital's morgue, but it sounds like ACS has gone out of its way to make it hospitable.

Bellevue Hospital

462: This institution got its start in 1794, when the city needed a site to treat victims of a yellow fever epidemic far from the city center, they bought the Belle Vue estate of Peter Keteltas, named for its beautiful view of the East River. In 1811 additional land nearby was purchased from the Kip family.

Songwriter Stephen Foster, who fatally injured himself in a Bowery flophouse, died here in 1864. Socialist Congressmember Meyer London died here after being struck by a car in 1926.

People used to refer to the emergency ward as the Eastman Pavilion because gangster Monk Eastman sent so many people here with his club.

It's most famous for its psychological services; Dr. Norman Jolliffe's study of patients here helped establish the modern concept of alcoholism. Santa Claus was sent to Bellevue for observation in Miracle on 34th Street, Ray Milland dried out here in The Lost Weekend and Michael Caine was a shrink here in Dressed to Kill. In "For You," Bruce Springsteen sang that "They're waiting for you at Bellevue/With their oxygen masks."

West:

433 (corner): Built in 1897 as the Bellevue Hospital Medical College; now NYU Med School's Basic Science Building.

Corner (341 E 25th St): Built for the NYU Medical Center's School of Medicine in 1938.

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Hunter College Brookdale Health Science Center

Block (435 E 25th St): Includes the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, the Brookdale Center on Aging and the Hunter College School of the Health Professions.

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NYU College of Dentistry

421 (corner): Weissman Clinical Science Building houses part of the largest dental school in the country.

Corner (345 E. 24th) NYU's Schwartz Hall of Dental Science

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Corner (340 E 24th): International Center for the Disabled, a rehabilitation center.

East Midtown Plaza Apartments

The AIA Guide is very excited about this 1972-74 complex, calling it "an ode to brick." No. 403 was the East End Temple-- now moved to 17th Street.

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VA Hospital

400 (corner): District 75/Citywide Programs; provides instructional support for students with special needs throughout New York's public school system.

West:

385 (corner): Post Luminaria, a 2002 apartment building that appears to have been inspired by Mondrian.

383: 1st Avenue Wines & Spirits has a neat old sign.

377 (corner): Lucky Chicken, formerly Chirping Chicken

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Peter Cooper Village

Peter Cooper was a 19th Century industrialist who ran the first U.S. railroad (the Tom Thumb), helped lay the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable and invented jello. He founded Cooper Union, a school of art, engineering and architecture where tuition has always been free.

West:

375 (corner): PB Deli & Grocery

371: Frank's Trattoria

367: Vera Cruz Council of the Knights of Columbus

361 (corner): There was a bar here from the 1930s until 2005--first as Walter Mac's, later as Freddie's, then as the First Avenue Pub. Served as an unofficial local of the Steamfitters' Union. Now a corporate doughnut franchise.

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359 (corner): Ess-a-Bagel ("Eat-a-Bagel"), a contender for the best bagels on the island. Opened in 1976.

357: Rose Restaurant, buffalo wings.

349: Bangkok Express

347: Tony's House of Pizza

345 (corner): 345 Produce & Plus

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Peter Cooper Village

Peter Cooper Village and Stuy- vesant Town were built on the site of the notorious Gashouse District, where fumes from chemical plants kept out all but the poorest immigrants. Home to the Gashouse Gang, one of New York's more fearsome crews--they specialized in robbing other gangs (since there was so little to steal on their own turf).

West:

343 (corner): Season's Clothing

339: Cooper Town Diner, since 1984

331: David's Bagels

329: MJ Armstrong's, a restaurant opened in December 2001 and named after Michael Joseph Armstrong, a Cantor Fitzgerald vice president who was killed in the September 11 attacks. ''You could say you went to a building on 14th Street, and he would know exactly what building it was and what it looked like,'' his fiancee recalled.

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Police battled mobs at this corner during the 1863 Draft Riots.

327 (corner): Donna's Deli

321: Adriatic Pizzeria

319: K's Gourmet Food & Cheese

315: One's Fruit & Grocery

313 (corner): Quigley's, a restaurant/sports bar, formerly the Stuyvesant Town Cafe

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311 (corner): Karpas Health Information Center; connected to the hospital Beth Israel ("House of Israel")

Corner (353 E 17th): Gilman Hall, housing for Beth Israel, built 1969. This was the first home of writer Teresa Gardstein.

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Beth Israel Medical Center

The university hospital for the Manhattan campus of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

295 (corner): The tall building is Beth Israel's Linsky Pavilion.

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273: Ambrosia Diner

265: No. 1 Restaurant (Chinese take-out)

263: La Bagel, dairy restaurant. (Kosher restaurants can generally serve either milk or meat, not both.)

261: Murray's Falafel & Grill-- glatt kosher; Johnny's Pizza & Pasta.

259 (corner): Orchid Garden was Pan Pangea, veggie burger joint; before that Far East Oriental Restaurant.

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239-241: Salt & Pepper was Darbar East Haute Indian Cuisine. Cornice says "G. Wilkens."

Corner: Papaya Dog (formerly 14th Street Papaya) is a Gray's Papaya imitator, offering cheap, tasty hot dogs and frothy tropical fruit drinks.

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Stuyvesant Town

Like Peter Cooper Village, built in the late 1940s by Met Life Insurance Co. as housing for returning World War II vets; it was slightly more affordable than its uptown neighbor. Now being converted to luxury condos. To build these highrises, Met Life leveled the notorious Gashouse District-- which chemical fumes made one of Manhattan's least desirable neighborhoods.

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.

346 (corner): Emerald Too, greeting cards, etc.

338: The Villager is a concierge for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village--not to be confused with the local paper of the same name.

332: Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town leasing office

310: The Gramercy Theatre (not to be confused with the one on 23rd Street) was once here.

298: Elm Drugs & Wellness Center; a good drug store.

288: The Linen Depot

284: Stuyvesant Camera

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.

1ST AVENUE STATION: L to 3rd Avenue

This subway stop is chiefly responsible for making Williamsburg a hip neighborhood-- people could live there and still get to the East Village easily. Now people go from the East Village to Williamsburg in search of something cool to do.

W <===         EAST 13TH STREET         ===> E

W <===         EAST 12TH STREET         ===> E

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W <===         EAST 11TH STREET         ===> E

W <===         EAST 10TH STREET         ===> E

W <===         EAST 9TH STREET         ===> E

W <===         ST MARKS PLACE         ===> E

W <===         EAST 7TH STREET         ===> E

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<=== E 5TH ST

71: Pukk, tasty, stylish vege- tarian Thai 69: Downtown Bakery II is an unassuming hole in the wall that serves good Mexican food.

W <===         EAST 4TH STREET         ===> E

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W <===         EAST 2ND STREET         ===> E

W <===         EAST 1ST STREET         ===> E

One of only two places in Manhattan where a numbered street meets an avenue with the same number.

W <===         EAST HOUSTON STREET         ===> E
The southern boundary of the East Village.

W <===     STANTON STREET     ===> E

W <===     RIVINGTON STREET     ===> E

W <===     DELANCEY STREET     ===> E

W <===     BROOME STREET     ===> E

W <===     GRAND STREET     ===> E

W <===     HESTER STREET     ===> E

W <===     CANAL STREET     ===> E

W <===     DIVISION STREET     ===> E

W <===     EAST BROADWAY     ===> E

W <===     HENRY STREET     ===> E

W <===     MADISON STREET     ===> E

W <===     CHERRY STREET     ===> E

W <===     SOUTH STREET     ===> E

W <===     FDR DRIVE     ===> E

EAST RIVER

What's missing on 1st Avenue? Write to Jim Naureckas and tell him about it.

Topography: Thirst Avenue is a collectively produced guide to 1st Avenue drinking establishments.

Allen Street: A Journey Through Chinatown.

Allen Street posts on the Manhattan Street Project, a photoblog

New York Songlines Home.

Sources for the Songlines.

NYSonglines' Facebook Fan Page.

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