New York Songlines: 35th Street

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The Javits Center

This convention center, built in 1986, is a series of glass boxes designed by James Ingo Freed, an associate of I.M. Pei's. It was named for Jacob Javits (1904-1986), who was U.S. senator for New York from 1956 until 1980. He's remembered for his work passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the War Powers Act of 1973.


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506: Rex Stout gives several addresses on West 35th Street for his housebound detective Nero Wolfe, including this one. Other numbers given include 618, which would have been replaced by the Javits Center, and 922 and 938, which would be in the Hudson River.

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The Webster

Corner: A non-profit apartment building for women working or studying in New York. Opened in 1923 with money from Charles and Josiah Webster, cousins and partners of Roland H. Macy.

400 (corner): HQ of GHI (Group Health Incorporated), nonprofit health insurer.

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Manhattan Center

Here is the back entrance to what was built in 1906 by Oscar Hammerstein Sr. as the Manhattan Opera House; the opera hall is now known as the Hammerstein Ballroom. Later the place was bought and expanded by the Masons, who added the Grand Ballroom, noted for its outstanding acoustics.

Warner Brothers and Bell Labs exhibited experimental sound films here in 1926. It was later the venue for an America First Committee rally on April 23, 1941, where Charles Lindbergh gave a speech arguing that England had already lost the war against Hitler.

Hotel New Yorker

Corner: When built in 1930, this Art Deco hotel was the largest in New York, with 2,500 rooms, 150 launderers, 92 telephone operators, 42 barber chairs, 35 master cooks, 20 manicurists, 10 dining salons, five restaurants and the nation's largest private power plant.

It was the headquarters for Leo Durocher's Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1941 World Series, and Joe DiMaggio's home-game home. Big bands led by the likes of Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and the Dorsey Brothers played here. Electrical genius Nikola Tesla died in his room here January 7, 1943.

After decades of decline, it was bought by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church in 1976, and served as its World Universal Church. In 1994, the Church reopened part of the building as a Ramada Inn franchise, under the old name. Woody Allen filmed scenes for Radio Days and Bullets Over Broadway in the ballroom here.

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357: Midtown South Precinct; covers 29th Street to 40th Street, 9th Avenue to Lexington. There were three murders in this precinct in 2002. The AIA Guide calls its gloomy 1970 headquarters "a freestanding temple to incarceration."

Detectives Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey work at this precinct on the show Cagney and Lacey, and it's also featured in the TV series F/X. In real life, rapper Jay-Z turned himself in here in 1999 to face assault charges after a stabbing incident at the Kit-Kat Club.

345-351: Rose Building


















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The eastern edge of Hell's Kitchen

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Pennsylvania Building; the back entrance to a 1925 Renaissance Revival building.

Corner (450 7th Ave): Nelson Tower; at 46 stories, this 1931 art deco building is said to be the tallest in the Garment District.

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269 (corner): West Side High School









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Corner (461 7th Ave): Median Foods. Harvey Keitel encounters a robbery here in Bad Lieutenant.

Macy's

Since 1902, this has been the location of the famous department store founded by Capt. Rowland Hussey Macy, a former whaler whose red star tattoo is still the store's symbol (and a whale is still used in sale ads). With expansions to take up (almost) the entire block, this still holds the record for the world's largest store. Macy's claims credit for such innovations as standardized sizes (1934), colored bath towels (1932), the tea bag (1912), the baked potato (1926) and the department store Santa (1870)--the latter claim to fame cemented by the 1947 classic Miracle on 34th Street, set at the store. Another holiday tradition is Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, first thrown in 1924 by immigrant employees in remembrance of European street processions. (The balloons were added in 1927.) Macy's is also responsible for New York's July 4th fireworks.

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163 (corner): Textile Centre, aka the Arsenal Building, a 1924 Renaissance Revival office building.














Corner (1333 Broadway): The Johnson Building's ground floor is mostly occupied by Conway Herald Square. The southern corner of the building was the site of the New York Aquarium from 1876 to 1883. Later there was a theater variously called the New Park, Harrigan's and the Herald Square.


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Herald Square

As in, "Remember me at..." Named for the New York Herald, a racist, anti-Semitic newspaper founded by James Gordon Bennett whose offices were directly to the north of this triangle. The paper introduced such features as the gossip column and Wall Street coverage. Later merged with the New York Tribune; the International Herald-Tribune is the surviving relic. The clock and statuary, crafted in 1895 by Jean-Antonie Carles, are from the old Herald building; the goddess is Minerva, complete with owls, and the bellringers, which swing their hammers on the hour, are nicknamed Stuff and Guff.

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Block: The southern end of the block is a Florsheim shoe outlet. The entire block was once the site of the New York Herald Building, a two-story Venetian palace built in 1893 by McKim, Mead and White and housing the paper that now lives on only in the International Herald Tribune. Demolished 1921, but its name remains in the square to its south.








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76: Giuseppes pizza

66: Mercy College




42: Comfort Inn of Murray Hill; with Anesis Cafe, Brendan's Bar & Grill

36: Playwright Eugene O'Neill lived here in 1921-22. Now home to Kento Raen (formerly Albene), a Korean restaurant.

30: Java Stop

Back entrance to Fairchild Publications, which publishes Women's Wear Daily, Details, Jane etc.




2 (corner): Katwalk, bar with an actual catwalk where would-be models can practice their moves.

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63-67: The site of the Garrick Theater, where anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock shut down a production of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession here on October 30, 1905. The play, set in a brothel, opened the next night, and Shaw coined the term "comstockery" to refer to such attempts at censorship.

55: Cho Dang Gol, tofu-specializing Korean

53: Mul Karaoke

51: Hydonnssak, Hon Bat, Korean restaurants; Red Cafe

45: Hotel Metro features the Metro Grill

41: US Golf

29: Universal News & Cafe specializes in fashion mags.

27: Playwright Restaurant

25: i BOP Karaoke, with songs in Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian and English

21: O'Reilly's Townhouse Restaurant & Pub


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B. Altman Advanced Learning Super Block

16 (block): Building was B. Altman & Co. Department Store; when it opened in 1906 it helped pull upper-class retail to this stretch of 5th Avenue. Bankrupt in 1989. Now the B. Altman Adavanced Learning Super Block, including CUNY's Graduate School and University Center, the NYPL's Science, Industry and Business Library, and Oxford University Press.

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Corner (200 Madison): Maurice Villency Furniture is in a 26-story building once owned by deposed Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Formerly at this address was the house of Franklin Roosevelt's mother; Franklin was living here with here in 1905 when he married Eleanor.


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Corner (199 Madison): The Complete Traveler, renowned travel bookstore.

20: Vivian Blaine, one of the main dolls in Guys and Dolls, has lived here.

22: Designed in 1901 by Stanford White for his friend Thomas Benedict Clarke, an art dealer; a combination of colonial and medieval motifs. Since 1938, home to the Collectors Club, a stamp society.

28: John Hayne Holmes Community House

40: Community Church of New York

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Corner (205 Park): Church of the Incarnation, built in 1864, features Tiffany stained glass and John La Farge murals.










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112: The New York New Church is a Swedenborgian ministry.

132: Murray Hill House apartments

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Corner (23 Park): These 1898 Stanford White apartments later served as home to the Advertising Club of New York.


123: Banker James Franklin Doughty Lanier and his wife Harriet finished this Beaux Arts townhouse in 1903; an NYC landmark.



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Stern College for Women

Corner (245 Lexington): Part of Yeshiva University, founded in 1954 with a grant from Max Stern, founder of the Hartz Mountain pet food company.





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150: Abandoned buildings, once a common sight in Manhattan, are now a rarity.





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Queens Midtown Tunnel

This roadway leads from a tunnel under the East River, 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.

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St Vartan Cathedral

Corner: The first cathedral of the Armenian Orthodox Church to be built in North America, it would consecrated in 1968 and designed to resemble the 4th Century Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin in Armenia.

Vartan was a general who fought against Persia's effort to forcibly convert the Armenians to Zorastrianism.






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St Vartan 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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350 (corner): Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the U.N.; built in the 1990s.

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Block: Rivergate; U-shaped luxury apartment building has a three-story atrium featuring a waterfall and ponds filled with koi.









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Block (616 1st Ave): This former Con Ed plant is slated for demolition and redevelopment as luxury condos.










          FDR DRIVE          






EAST RIVER


Is your favorite 35th Street spot missing? Write to Jim Naureckas and tell him about it.

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