New York Songlines: 37th Street

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500 (corner): Was Ellins Piano Co.

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515: Formerly P.S. 127; its multiethnic students, the New York Herald wrote in 1854, represented ''a superior class of residents than those [on the] east side of town.''

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454-458: Clinton South Community Center

450: 37 Arts Theatre

438-448: According to the Hell's Kitchen/Clinton History Project, this site was originally a glass factory built in 1758 in an rural neighborhood then called Newfoundland. By 1763 it was a tavern or roadhouse. Eventually this became the Underhill Building, and by 1982 the Glass House Farm Cooperative.

434-436: Site of the 22nd Precinct in the 1870s, and of a New York county jail known as the "alimony jail."

Corner: Hudson Crossing apartments were completed in 2003.

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455: A proposed 32-story building

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Corner: Formerly Moe's Deli

336: The Zipper Theater is in an old zipper factory

Corner (535 8th Ave): Gray's Papaya; you won't find a better bargain in New York than the classic hot dogs here--and you can wash them down with a variety of foamy tropical beverages.

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Corner: At this corner, Patrick Dorismond was killed by Detective Anthony Vasquez after an altercation that started when undercover police officers accosted Dorismond to ask him for drugs. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani defended the slaying by pointing to a fight Dorismond was in when he was 13 years old.

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226: Exotic dancer Catherine Devine--better known as "Little Egypt"-- was found strangled to death at this address in 1908. She was famous for dancing at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and her popping out of a cake had provoked a police raid on Sherry's Hotel in 1896.

Garment Center Capitol Buildings

Corner (498 7th Ave): Built in 1921 by Russian immigrant Mack Kanner at a cost of $125 million, this project heralded the move of the Garment Center to its present location. Combining showrooms and sweatshops, it was the place of work for 22,000 by 1932.

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225: Bricken Arcade

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Corner (499 7th Ave): Fashion Tower is a 23-story building from 1930, designed by George and Edward Blum.

128: Holy Innocents Church was built in 1870 to a plan by Patrick Charles Keely. Keely designed more than 600 churches across the Eastern United States, nearly all of them Roman Catholic.

Corner (1369 Broadway): Showroom of Ecko Unltd, hip-hop clothing line with a rhino logo.

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Corner (1375 Broadway): The home of Broadway's Jerusalem 2 Kosher Pizza & Falafel

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Corner (1370 Broadway): Rosenthal & Rosenthal, financial services for the apparel industry since 1938.

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Corner (1372 Broadway): Includes Mr. Broadway Glatt Kosher cafe and Another Good Location deli.

Corner (1001 6th Ave): Orchid Cafe

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Corner (980 6th Ave): The Vogue, 25-floor apartment building from 1986

32: Frankie & Johnnie's steakhouse was Red Blazer Hideaway, a sleepy jazz club. In the mid-1930s, this townhouse was home to actor John Barrymore.

Corner (404 5th Ave): This was the A.T. Stewart & Co. store, built in 1914 to a Warren & Wetmore design, noted for its delicate blue-and-white terra cotta. The store moved further uptown to 56th Street in 1928; the building was landmarked in 2006.

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Corner (1000 6th Ave): M&J Buttons, formerly Hersh Sixth Avenue Button, sewing-supply mecca. Also Israeli Falafel Pizza.

15: Investigative reporter Nellie Bly moved to this address in April 1895, after the 28-year-old muckraker married 72-year-old industrialist Robert Livingston Seaman.

11: Eleanor Roosevelt lived with her grandparents at this address from 1893, when her mother died, until shortly before she married FDR in 1905.

Corner: From 1858 to 1938, this was the site of the Brick Presbyterian Church, where Mark Twain's funeral was held on April 23, 1910. Among the mourners were literary lights William Dean Howells, Peter Finley Dunne and Sydney Porter (O. Henry). Samuel Osgood, the first postmaster general, was buried here in 1813.

At this corner, Buster Keaton got on a double-decker bus--on a different level from his date--in the silent movie The Cameraman.

South:

Corner (409 5th Ave): Stanford White designed this building for Tiffany's in 1906, basing the plan on Venice's Palazzo Grimani. It was "the most magnificent retail space in New York City," according to Christopher Gray. The jewelry firm moved to 57th Street in 1940.

Corner (220 Madison): The John Murray House, a large 1940 co-op named for the brother-in-law of Mary Lindley Murray who owned Murray Hill after his brother and sister-in-law died, and whose descendants created the Murray Hill Restriction, a 1847 covenant barring construction from Madison and Lexington between 34th and 38th streets of anything other than a "brick or stone dwelling," specifically forbidding smith shops, breweries and places for the exhibition of wild animals.

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13: Le Grenadin, French

15: George B. Post's Braem House, built 1878-80 at this address and since demolished, was one of the first buildings in New York to feature exterior terra cotta.

Corner (232 Madison): A 1925 neo-Gothic building by Polyhemus & Coffin

South:

Morgan Library

Corner (231 Madison): Based on the collections of financier J.P. Morgan, this private library contains amazing treasures, including the original journals of H.D. Thoreau, the manuscript of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, three Gutenberg Bibles, the nation's largest group of Rembrandt etchings and the world's most comprehensive collection of Gilbert and Sullivan material. Closed for expansion until 2006.

The part of the complex that is on this corner is an Italianate brownstone (perhaps the last of its kind in New York) was originally built for Isaac Newton Phelps in 1853 and was lived in by his son-in-law, banker Anson Phelps Stokes. From 1905 to 1944, it was the home of J.P. Morgan Jr., heir to the Morgan fortune; it was the headquarters of the Lutheran Church in America from 1944 until 1988.

Union League Club

38 (corner): A Republican club formed in 1862 by members who quit the Union Club because it refused to expel Confederate sympathizers. Members have included presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Chester A. Arthur, banker J. Pierpont Morgan, editor William Cullen Bryant and cartoonist Thomas Nast. The club takes credit for ousting Boss Tweed, founding the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Red Cross, and erecting the Statue of Liberty.

This red brick building, by Benjamin Wystar Morris, was built in 1931, long after the club had lost its political fervor. The AIA Guide calls the clubhouse "effete and bland."

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De Lamar Mansion

Corner (233 Madison): Since 1972 the Consulate General of Poland, this glorious Beaux Arts building, designed by C.P.H. Gilbert, was built in 1906 for Joseph De Lamar, a Dutch sea captain and mining tycoon. Later home to the National Democratic Club (1923-73).

19: This nice brick townhouse dates to 1900.

21: Its brownstone neighbor goes back to 1885.

South:

Corner (45 Park): The charming Sheraton Russell Hotel, built 1923, was demolished for a 2007 apartment building designed by Costas Kondylis.

112-114: I like these brownstones.

130 (corner): The AIA Guide describes this house as "an expatriate from Greenwich Village."

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123 (corner): Lindley House, 1939 co-op named for Mary Lindley Murray

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134 (corner): Carlton Regency North, 26 stories built in 1966

142: Brownstone with curious detailing-- almost Pennsylvania Dutch

Corner (558 3rd Ave): Winfield-Flynn Ltd. Wines

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Corner (303 Lexington): Shelburne Murray Hill Hotel dates to 1926. Rare, gourmet burger joint here, was formerly the Secret Harbor Bistro.

Corner (560 3rd Ave): Earl's, spin-off of the similarly Southern-kitsch Duke's, promises "Real Good Cookin'." Was Bobby O's, Rive Gauche.

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Corner (557 3rd Ave): Spade's Noodles Rice & More-- in a three-story building with a mansard roof

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Corner (561 3rd Ave): Josie's; Better Burger, healthy yet tasty

211: The right-wing National Review was founded here by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955.

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Queens Midtown Tunnel Entrance Plaza

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.

310: At this former address was St Gabriel's Church, for which St Vartan Park was previously named.

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Block (645 1st Ave): 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.

South:

Corner (630 1st Ave): Manhattan Place; this 1984 apartment building is situated at an angle, creating a triangular public plaza.

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Corner (660 1st Ave): Built as Kips Bay Brewing Company in 1895; now offices.

415: The Horizon; apartments built 1988.