New York Songlines: 40th Street

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Greyhound Bus Lines Maintenance Building

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Lincoln Tunnel

These on-ramps and off-ramps connect to the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world, handling 120,000 vehicles a day. Opened in 1937, it was the first major tunnel project to be completed without a single worker fatality.

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Corner (536 W 41st): Mercedes Benz dealership

STEPINAC PL   N ===>

Croatia's wartime cardinal was either a fascist supporter or an opponent of genocide--maybe both.

502: Croatian Cultural Center.

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Lincoln Tunnel ramps

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Covenant House

Corner (460 W 41st): This Catholic program to help homeless teens became notorious in 1990 when it was revealed that director Father Bruce Ritter had been helping himself to homeless teens--a scandal that foreshadowed the priest sex abuse story a decade later. The building was put up in 1970 as the Manhattan Community Rehabilitation Center 8

(450 W 41st St): The Hunter MFA Building, featuring the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery. Once NYC Community College's Voorhees Campus. Also houses The New Press, an independent imprint that was started by Andre Shiffren of Pantheon when Newhouse took over that house. Publishers of Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error.

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Lincoln Tunnel access

410: Metro Baptist Church; formerly a Polish Catholic church, now a progressive Baptist mission. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter lived here while working on their first Habitat for Humanity project.

Corner (539 9th Ave): Troy Turkish Grill

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These ramps connect the Lincoln Tunnel to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Corner (541 9th Ave): Sea Breeze Fish Market

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Corner (542 9th Ave): Bus Stop diner

Siberia

356 1/2: Unmarked dive bar is a favorite of journalists--including Jayson Blair, who wrote his notorious piece on Jessica Lynch's hometown while sitting on a stool here.

346-348: Site of 2nd German M.E. Church, built 1913

342: Staging Techniques, theatrical technical services and the like

334-340: S&S Coachworks, auto repair

314: New York State Division of Parole

308: Funcity Video & Magazines--fun as in porn

306: Discount DVD & Video, more porn

304: Top Broccoli Chinese

302: Athens Wines & Spirits, presumably serving the parolee and porn-buying communities

300: 40th Street Video Center--porn again

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Port Authority Bus Terminal

The world's largest bus terminal, with more than 50 million passengers a year, was built in 1950 (expansions in 1963 and 1980) by the same interstate agency that gave us the World Trade towers. There are plans to add a high-rise office tower addition.

Looking for a bowling alley? The Port Authority has one of the few left in Manhattan.

Rosanna Arquette leaves her luggage (and her identity) here in Desperately Seeking Susan; the last scene in Bad Lieutenant was set here.

On 8th Avenue is a statue of Jackie Gleason as bus driver Ralph Kramden--donated by TVland.

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274: Travelers Hotel is actually temporary housing for the homeless transitioning to permanent residences-- run by Urban Pathways.

250: The Drama Bookshop was founded in 1919 and has been in the Seelen family since the 1960s. An exhaustive resource for theatrical literature.

218: Historic offices of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

200 (corner): Sahara Grill, Turkish. Upstairs is Midtown Comics, a contender for best comic book store in New York City.

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269 (corner): Was Taylor Business Institute, founded in 1961.

205:Corner (560 7th Ave): Parsons School of Design's Fashion Education Center; Donna Karan and Tom Ford are alums.

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World Apparel Center

Block: With more than a million square feet of space, this block-spanning 1970 building is touted as the premier showroom for the Fashion District. A statue on the 7th Avenue plaza honors a garment worker, but more striking is the giant needle and button.

This block was previously home to the Metropolitan Opera House from 1883 until 1966. Built by Gilded Age businessmen like William Vanderbilt who were denied boxes at the Academy of Music on 14th Street, it soon eclipsed the older venue as the central stage of New York society (as depicted in Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country). It saw the American debuts of Enrico Caruso (11/23/1903) and Vaslav Nijinsky (4/12/1916). The beloved house was doomed by the Metropolitan Opera company, which insisted, when it moved to Lincoln Center, that the building's buyer tear it down so that a rival opera company could not use it.

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114: Courtyard Marriott/Times Square South; business-oriented hotel

110: World Tower Building, a 30-story bulding finished in 1915.

108: Croton Reservoir Tavern, restaurant with a 19th Century feel, a 50-foot bar and a mural of its namesake.

104: Springs Building, a black-glass Harrison & Abramowitz building finished 1963. One tenant is the Midtown Pregnancy Support Center, part of the religious right's project to fool women seeking abortions into listening to their propaganda. The building appears in the film The Bourne Ultimatum as a CIA operational headquarters.

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119: Lewisohn Building, 22 stories put up in 1922.

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Bryant Park Studios

80 (corner): This 1901 landmark was designed (as the Beaux Arts Studios) by Charles Alonzo Rich for Colonel Abraham A. Anderson, a gentleman portraitist who had returned from a stay in Paris with that city's enthusiasm for north light. A great many artists have lived and/or worked here, including photographer Edward Steichen; painters Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase and Fernand Leger; and print-maker Kurt Seligmann.

On the ground floor is the Park Side Cafe & Market; this used to be the Cafe des Beaux Arts, an opulent ''lobster palace'' frequented by musical comedy stars. Owned by the Bustanoby brothers, it featured a ladies' bar where men could drink only if accompanied by a woman.

58: Banks Building

54-56: Daytop Village, the country's oldest drug counseling service (founded 1963), is in the former Republican Club, a 1904 York & Sawyer building noted for its heroic segmented columns.

American Radiator Building

40: A striking black-and-gold Art Deco building designed in 1924 by Raymond Hood (architect of Tribune Tower). The subject of a Georgia O'Keefe painting. Renamed the American Standard Building, then converted into the Bryant Park Hotel, which features the vaulted Cellar Bar, a restaurant ILO

32: The Columns, formerly the Engineer's Club, built in 1907, reportedly for Andrew Carnegie. Was the site of the Comstock School for Young Ladies, which I believe was the school that Theodore Roosevelt's sister and future second wife attended. . After one of the young ladies, Helen Neilson Potts, died here in 1891 of morphine poisoning, her clandestine lover, Carlyle W. Harris, was executed for her murder.

28: Around the World, newsstand with many fashion mags.

20: The parking lot here was once the site of the Wilkie Building, a nine-story Flemish-style building from 1907, designed by Henry Hardenbergh to house the New York Club. It was bought in 1945 by supporters of Freedom House, a right-wing "human rights" group (Sandinistas bad, Salvadoran death squads good), who renamed the building for 1940 GOP candidate Wendell Wilkie. After vandalizing the building to prevent landmarking, Freedom House sold it in 1985 to Republic National Bank, which turned it into the present parking lot.

12: 7th Day Adventist Book Center. I have to admit they have a point about Saturday being the Sabbath. Was Tappe, a women's wear store.

8: This was inventor Nikola Tesla's office from 1915-24.

Corner (452 5th Ave): HSBC Tower, formerly the Republic National Bank Tower, a 1983 modernist building that incorporates the 1902 Knox Hat Building. (Knox Hats is still around on 8th Avenue, dba Arnold Hatters.) Houses the Boomer Esiason Foundation, fighting cystic fibrosis.

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Bryant Park

This area was set aside as early as 1686 for public use; from 1823 to 1840, like many of Manhattan's parks, it was used as a pauper's graveyard. In 1842, the Croton Reservoir was built on the east side of the space, where the New York Public Library is now, and the remaining land became known as Reservoir Square.

The Crystal Palace was built on the site in 1853, a marvelous seven-story exhibition space made of glass and cast iron that housed America's first world's fair before burning down spectacularly on October 5, 1858.

After serving as a parade ground for Union troops during the Civil War, Reservoir Square was designated a park in 1871, and was renamed in 1884 for William Cullen Bryant, poet, lawyer, New York Post editor, abolitionist and park advocate. It was not much of a park, though, until it was landscaped in French garden style in the 1930s, the object of a contest for unemployed architects.

By the 1970s, the park had become chiefly known as a drug market (dubbed "Needle Park"), but since a re-landscaping in 1992 occasioned by the creation of underground stacks for the library, it's become a highly valued urban space, with 2,000 chairs for urbanites to relax on.

It's the venue for popular outdoor movies in the summer. A plan to use trained falcons to control the pigeons was scuttled in 2003 when one attacked a dachshund.

Sculptures in the park include an imposing Bryant, Goethe, Gertrude Stein, copper maganate and YMCA founder William Dodge (by John Quincy Adams Ward; (originally in Herald Square) and Brazilian liberator Jose de Andrada --not to mention Big Crinkly by Alexander Calder.

25: Bryant Park Cafe and Grill

New York Public Library

Technically, this is just one of four research libraries--the Humanities & Social Science Library, to be specific--but this is the heart and soul of the NYPL. One of the world's greatest libraries, the NYPL was formed in 1895 by combing the Astor, Lenox and Tilden libraries. From 1902 to 1911, this Beaux Arts architectural masterpiece designed by Carrere & Hastings was constructed to house the collection.

Authors who have used the library include Isaac Bashevis Singer, E.L. Doctorow, Somerset Maugham, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Tom Wolfe and Frank McCourt. The Xerox copier, the Polaroid camera and the atomic bomb were all researched here. Almost all the information in Ripley's Believe It or Not! came from here--as did much of Reader's Digest.

This was previously the site of the Croton Distributing Reservoir, a massive tank holding water from the Croton River, completed in 1842. Walking along its monumental Egyptian walls was a popular recreation, recommended by Edgar Allan Poe; the base of the reservoir serves today as the library's foundation.

The pink marble lions outside the library are Patience and Fortitude--nicknamed by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

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Mid-Manhattan NY Public Library

Corner (445 5th Ave): Not as cool as the Main Branch, but here you can check the books out.

On this site was Gordon's Riding Academy, where the first polo game in America (and perhaps the first ever indoors) was played in 1876, introduced to this country by newspaper heir James Gordon Bennett Jr.

10: The editorial offices of Marvel Comics were in this building in the 1990s.

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Corner (461 5th Ave): Pier 1 Imports is on the groundfloor of a 1988 post-modern Skidmore Owings & Merrill building; note exposed trusswork.

3: Clarion Fifth Avenue hotel; formerly a Quality Inn.

13: Permanent Mission of Cyprus to the U.N.

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Corner (90 Park): Sterling Drug Building (1964). This 41-story building, along with the National Distilleries Building across the street, were both designed by Emery Roth & Sons, who also designed the World Trade Center. Sterling, founded in 1901, owned Bayer aspirin and other popular over-the-counter remedies; it was absorbed by Eastman Kodak in 1988.

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Young & Rubicam

Corner (285 Madison): This advertising agency may be the archetypal company people think of when they hear "Madison Avenue." Founded in 1923, the company started the science of market research when it hired George Gallup. It led the way in creating ads for new forms of media, as when it produced the first color TV commercial. It owns noted defenders of evil Burson-Marsteller. Owned in turn by WPP, which owns most of the big names in advertising and PR.

25: Bentley's Discotheque is at the address of Champs Elysees, described as one of New York's 100 Best Restaurants in 1955.

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Corner (91 Park): National Distillers Building (1954). The company, which made Old Grand-Dad among other brands, was added to the Dow-Jones Industrials in 1934 to represent the newly legalized liquor industry. It was acquired by Jim Beam in 1987.

112: Togo Permanent Mission to the U.N.

118: Hotel Bedford. Domenico's is on the ground floor.

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Corner (101 Park): This off-kilter black glass tower was built by Peter Kalikow in 1985, and houses his offices. A real estate developer, Kalikow now chairs the MTA and is pushing Grand Central expansion and the 2nd Avenue subway. As "Clamp Tower," the building was taken over in the movie Gremlins 2. Built on the site of the 1912 Architects Building, where McKim, Mead and White had their offices for a time.

109: Architect Ernest Flagg (known for the Singer Building) designed his own house here in 1906 to accommodate the newly popular automobile--there was an elevator to lower a car to the basement garage. The house was demolished in 1979.

115: Once the home of the Architectural League, a professional organization founded in 1881 at the Salmagundi Club. Prominent architects like Henry Hardenbergh and Raymond Hood have served as presidents. MIT's Technology Club borrowed space here from 1947 to 1955; the American Institute of Graphic Arts was here from 1936 to 1951.

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144: Seton Hotel

148: Jonathan W. Allen Stable, a landmarked, Second Empire carriage house built 1871.

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Corner: Sterling National Bank, founded 1929.

Corner (622 3rd Ave): Grand Central Plaza, also known as the Blue Cross Building, a 38-story black-glass tower that L-shapes across the block.

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Corner (605 3rd Ave): John Wiley Building; offices of John Wiley & Sons. Founded in 1807, they published some of New York City's greatest literary figures: Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving. Now known for technical books.

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Corner (633 3rd Ave): Docks Oyster Bar, popular but pricey seafood.

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238: Engine 21 Firehouse. Capt. William F. Burke Jr. led this company into the North Tower on September 11--then ordered his men to get out while he continued searching for unevacuated civilians.

250(corner): Highpoint, 49-story condo built 1988.

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235 (corner): Vanderbilt condos; 41 floors, built 1985. Named for Commodore Vanderbilt, creator of Grand Central. Kristin Davis, the so-called Murray Hill Madam, was arrested at her apartment here in 2008 for allegedly running a prostitution ring.

245: Marlborough House, 35-story apartment building from 1975. Named for a royal palace in London.

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300 (corner): The Churchill apartments; 32 stories, built 1967. Winston Churchill's mother, Jenny Jerome, was a New Yorker who grew up on Madison Square. Home to the 5 O'Clock Club, executive career coaching.

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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.

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