New York Songlines: 43rd Street

South:

Corner (520 12th Ave): Chinese Consulate

W

4
3
R
D

North:

Block: United Parcel Service

South:

560 (corner): Riverbank West, 1987 high-rise apartments. They were the site of Club Kid Michael Alig's 1996 murder of Angel Melendez.

520: New Gotham apartments

Corner: Strand apartments

W

4
3
R
D

North:

Corner (572 11th Ave): Market Diner, classic dating to the 1960s.

521: The New York Public Library Annex houses old newspapers, among other collections.

South:

Manhattan Plaza

Block: This block-spanning project, built in 1977, was intended to provide housing for performing artists; 70 percent of its 3,000 residents are said to be theater people. Tennessee Williams moved here in 1978, but moved out three years later because he found it too noisy. Helen Hayes and Angela Lansbury have lived here as well.

402: Esca, well-regarded Italian owned by celebrity chef Mario Batali. Formerly Curtain Up!?

W

4
3
R
D

North:

407: The Westside Theatre is in an old German Baptist church. From 1969 to 1972, it was a dance club called Sanctuary, described as "the first totally uninhibited gay disco in America"--featured in the 1971 Jane Fonda movie Klute. It later served as Methadone clinic before becoming a theater. The Vagina Monologues played here for three years, with performers including Rosie Perez, Marisa Tomei, Calista Flockhart, Teri Hatcher, Claire Danes, Julia Stiles, Alanis Morisette, Erica Jong and Donna Hanover.

403: Le Madeleine, French bistro opened c. 1980

South:

W

4
3
R
D

North:

327: This was the address of the Troupers' Club Association, a mutual aid society for stagehands.

311: The Mint Theatre specializes in reviving long-neglected plays. Also at this address is the Sande Shurin Theatre, named for an acting teacher who boasts of her appearances on "reality" TV, as well as Theatre 3. The building dates to 1907, a printing plant for Charles Scribner's Sons that was designed by Ernest Flagg.

307 (corner): Second Stage Theatre is dedicated to giving overlooked plays a second chance. The building was a Manufacturers Hanover branch from 1927, a synthesis of Classical and Art Deco.

South:

Westin New York at Times Square

270 (corner): 2001 hotel designed by Arquitectonica is a 45-story prism split by a distinctive glowing arc.

264: Was Sally's Hideaway, noted drag/transgender club from 1986 to 1992. Earlier it was Blues Bar, a black-oriented gay bar that was trashed in two illegal police raids in 1982--in the first, a cop fired his gun into the floor and said the shots were "faggot suppositories."

252: Cheetahs Club & Restaurant, topless club, was Club New York, whose claim to fame was a 1999 shooting incident involving Puff Daddy and J-Lo. Earlier this was Sally's II, after Sally's Hideaway was damaged by fire; the "Paris Is Burning" ball was held there. Before that it was an after-hours joint called Rose Saigon.

250: Hotel Carter, budget lodgings. Opened in 1930 as the Dixie Hotel, with a restaurant called Plantation and the Central Union Bus Terminal in the basement. Today >remnants of the bus depot can still be found in the hotel's parking garage.

234: Address of the Apollo Theatre, built as a theater in 1920 and used for burlesque and movies before becoming the New Apollo, The Academy (a rock venue) and Alcazar de Paris (a cabaret). Abbott and Costello debuted their "Who's On First" routine at the Apollo in 1936; Richard Gere premiered Bent at the New Apollo in 1977. Now part of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts.

220: Was Avalon Studios, where the New York chapter of the Mattachine Society, the pioneering gay rights group, held monthly meetings in the late 1950s.

212: Was Gough's, from 1947 to c. 1992 the unofficial bar of the New York Times.

Reuters Building

Corner (3 Times Square): Building housing the British news service, a 2001 design from Fox & Fowle, is noted for its curved video facade; includes the offices of Prudential Financial Services; on the ground floor is Quiksilver Boardriders Club, skatewear. Replaced the 1935 Art Deco Rialto Building (named for an old Times Square nickname, derived from a Venetian bridge).

W
E
S
T

4
3
R
D

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

255 (corner): The Times Square Hotel, now an SRO; Lee Harvey Oswald and his new wife Marina Oswald stayed here on June 13, 1962, the night after Oswald returned from his stay in Russia.

Former New York Times Offices

229: New York's leading establishment paper was here starting in 1913, gradually moving here from the tower that gave Times Square its name. The paper was headquartered here when its reporting on a Montgomery, Alabama police chief led to a landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the First Amendment right to criticize government officials; here in 1971 the paper decided to publish the Pentagon Papers in defiance of the Nixon administration. In more recent years the paper has been more noted for its invention of Whitewater, its railroading of Wen Ho Lee and its gullible coverage of Iraqi "WMDs"--not to mention the fabrications of Jayson Blair. It moved to a new building on 8th Avenue in 2007.

205: Haru, popular sushi

Paramount Building

Corner (1501 Broadway): Built for the film company in 1927; the step-like setbacks are intended to resemble the mountain on the Paramount logo. Here was the Paramount Theater, which was Frank Sinatra's home base in the early 1940s, and a Beatles venue in 1964; the space was later the WWE New York, a wrestling-themed restaurant, and is now becoming a Hard Rock Cafe. The Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a spin-off of the movie Forrest Gump, is also found here.

This was earlier the site of the Putnam Building, which was used as a base by racketeer Kid Dropper. Involved in a gang war with another mob leader, the Kid was shot while being sent out of town with an escort of 80 cops.

The Paramount Building has pre-recorded chimes that play "Give My Regards to Broadway" at 7:45 p.m. every day to remind theatergoers that it's 15 minutes until curtain.

South:

One Times Square

It was Longacre Square (named for a London plaza) until the New York Times made a surprise move from Newspaper Row downtown to what was then the edge of the city, suddenly made accessible by subway. (It replaced the Pabst Hotel on the site.) Building an Italian Renaissance castle on the spot, the paper got the city to rename first the subway stop and then the square after itself.

The paper celebrated moving in on New Year's Eve, 1904, with a fireworks display--starting the tradition of Times Square as the place to be on December 31. The ball, which used to drop from Trinity Church downtown, has been dropping from here since 1908. The Times moved off the Square in 1913, but the name has stuck.

The world's first illuminated news ticker (dubbed the "Motogram") circles the building; it got its start reporting the 1928 election returns. (Hoover won.)

The tower was modernized by new owners Allied Chemical, who moved out in 1975. Since then the building has mostly been a place to put giant signs. The ground floor was a Warner Brothers store for a while.

W
E
S
T

4
3
R
D

S
T
R
E
E
T

The Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Station is in the middle of the square at this intersection. Opened in 1946, it has signed up more people for the military than any other recruiting booth. It was the target of a smallish bomb on March 6, 2008.

South:

Conde Nast Building

Corner (4 Times Square): This 1999 Fox & Fowle building houses The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, Wired and other Conde Nast publications. Noted for having a glitzy glass face on the Times Square side (including the NASDAQ video facade) and a more demure masonry cliff on 42nd Street. Avant garde architect Frank Gehry designed the cafeteria.

132: Dallas BBQ, local chain

124: Was Henry Miller's Theatre, built in 1918 for actor/director Henry W. Miller and hosting such plays as T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party and Born Yesterday (with Judy Holliday). A porno theater in the 1960s, it became the disco Xenon, noted for its fantastic lighting and sound system. It reopened as the Kit Kat Klub for a Cabaret revival, and was once again the Henry Miller for Urinetown.

110: The address of Le Jardin, a disco in the basement of the Diplomat--originally called L'Oubliette. Gloria Gaynor was crowned as Queen of Disco here on March 3, 1975.

108: Was the Hotel Diplomat, where radical activist Abbie Hoffman was busted with cocaine on August 28, 1973, leading to six years underground. The New York chapter of the Mattachine Society, a pioneering gay rights group, was founded here in December 1955. The New York Dolls had some of their first gigs in the hotel's Palm Room.

The hotel was built in 1911 as the Mother Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks; Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was a member, and future Mayor Robert Wagner was Exalted Ruler of Lodge 1. A memorial service for Harry Houdini was held in the Elks' ballroom on November 4, 1926.

Corner: Was Hanover House, a seedy hotel where Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land" on February 23, 1940.

W
E
S
T

4
3
R
D

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Times Square Plaza

Corner: This building includes the set of ABC's Good Morning America; also for Dick Clark's New Year's Eve broadcasts. This corner was the site of the Barrett House Hotel, where playwright Eugene O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888, while his father was in town playing The Count of Monte Cristo.

149: Was the Hotel Metropole, where on July 15, 1912, gambler-turned-state's-evidence Herman Rosenthal was murdered on the orders of crooked police detective Lt. Charles Becker, who went to the chair for the crime. The first New York hotel to have running water in every room, the Metropole boasted such residents as Nick Arnstein (played by Omar Sharif in Funny Girl) and Bat Masterson, gunslinger-turned-sportswriter. It had an earlier incarnation on 42nd Street until 1909.

147: The Casablanca Hotel, a Moorish-themed inn with Rick's Cafe on the second floor. Tony's di Napoli, popular Italian, is on the ground floor. Used to be Rosoff's.

127: Heartland Brewery & Chop House makes its own beer.

Town Hall

113-123: Completed in 1921 to a McKim, Mead and White design, this auditorium was built for the League for Political Education and has been a forum for such speakers as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Henry James, Booker T. Washington and Noam Chomsky. Margaret Sanger was arrested on stage here in 1921 for lecturing on birth control; black opera singer Marian Anderson gave her first New York performance here in 1935 after being shut out of other venues; Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker gave bebop its first big exposure here in June 1945. Noted for its fine acoustics, it was the site of the faux folk concert in A Mighty Wind.

International Center for Photography

South:

Corner: Grace Plaza is an underutilized space that was left vacant in return for allowing the W.R. Grace Building to add extra stories. There's an entrance here for the school of the International Center for Photography, which is located in the Grace Building next door.

Grace Building

Built for W.R. Grace in 1974; replaced Stern Bros. department store, here from 1913 to 1970. The AIA Guide hates this building; the design, by Gordon Bunshaft, was a recycling of his Solow Building plan on 57th Street.

William Russell Grace, who founded the company in Peru in 1854, was mayor of New York City for two terms starting in 1880. Originally a shipping firm, the company now manufactures chemicals.

34: On the third floor of this building is Aeolian Hall, an auditorium where George Gershwin debuted Rhapsody in Blue on February 12, 1924. The building later became the CUNY Grad Center; now SUNY's College of Optometry.

20: Salmon Tower (York & Sawyer, 1927) houses NYU's Midtown Center for Continuing Education. In 1990, the New Yorker moved here from across the street, though now it's in the Conde Nast building on Times Square.

4: New York headquarters of the Unification Church, led by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, self-proclaimed messiah, America-hater and prominent supporter of Republican causes. Formerly the Columbia University Club; originally the 1900 incarnation of the Hotel R enaissance.

Corner (512 5th Ave): This was the address of the Hotel Renaissance, home to notables like architect William Rutherford Mead (of McKim, Mead and White) and German-American publisher and politician Carl Schurz. Naturalist Ernest Thomas Seton had a suite here decorated with animal skins.

The bank building on the corner (at No. 510) now was built for the Manufacturers Trust Company in 1954, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The bank's enormous vault was designed to be visible in the window.

W
E
S
T

4
3
R
D

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Hippodrome

Corner: "I wanna see the Hippodrome," insists the sailor in On the Town, referring to the namesake predecessor on this site, an enormous auditorium (5,697 seats) designed for spectaculars by the team that developed Coney Island's Luna Park. Open from 1905 until 1939, it saw the American debut of Cary Grant on August 8, 1920; Harry Houdini made an elephant disappear here in 1918. It's said that the Algonquin Roundtable formed when Robert Sherwood, who worked at Vanity Fair, was intimidated by the midgets at the Hippodrome, and so insisted that his coworkers Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley eat lunch with him every day.

The current building has a Hagstrom's store for maps and globes.

(44 W 44th): The back side of the Royalton Hotel, an old literary hotel stylishly redesigned by Ian Schrager. (Benchley was a longtime resident, and George Jean Nathan lived on the top floor from 1908 until 1958.)

37: The back of the New York Bar Association's landmarked 1896 headquarters. This was the address of Cortile, a restaurant described in a 1940 restaurant guide: "Pseudo-Spanish decorations, Negro waitresses, and American food at a reasonable price."

35: The back of the City Bar Building, a 1922 building that has historically provided offices for lawyers—including Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo.

33: Fire Engine Company No. 65 is a landmarked building dating to 1898, in an Italian Renaissance style intended to fit in with the Century Club building down the block.

27: The address of the first clubhouse of the Racquet & Tennis Club, from 1890 to 1918.

25: This Beaux Arts building was from 1925 until 1991 the offices of The New Yorker, during its heyday when it was publishing writers like EB White, John Cheever and AJ Liebling. Here Joseph Mitchell famously suffered from writer's block, coming to work every day but not writing anything from 1964 until his death in 1996. When the magazine moved across the street, it took a wall covered with James Thurber drawings with them. Now houses the American National Standards Institute, which helps standardize industrial and commercial products.

23: Bryant Post Office

15: The Princeton Club was built for the alumni association in 1963. The Columbia University Club is also based here.

The Dwight School, now on Central Park West, was founded at this address in 1880 as the New York School of Languages.

Century Association Clubhouse

7: This Italian Renaissance building was built from 1889-91 to a McKim, Mead and White design that set the fashion for clubhouses for many years to come. The Century Club is an artistic and literary society founded by William Cullen Bryant in 1847, and was supposed to be limited to 100 members, though it now has closer to 2,000. Novelist Louis Auchincloss is the current president.

South:

Corner (511 5th Ave): At this defunct address was the brownstone residence of William "Boss" Tweed, the famously corrupt leader of Tammany Hall, New York's reigning political machine. When Tweed was arrested for graft in 1876, he was allowed to return here to get clothes for jail-- but instead fled from here to Florida, Cuba and Spain. Spain extradited him back to New York, where he died in jail in 1878.

In 1882, Richard T. Wilson, a former Confederate cotton merchant, built a house at this address; he was noted for his attractive children, who married into the Astor, Vanderbilt and Goelet families.

The house was demolished in 1915, replaced in 1917 by the Postal Life Insurance Building, a Renaissance Revival design by York & Sawyer. Now the Israel Discount Bank.

Corner (330 Madison): The Sperry & Hutchinson Building is the home of S&H Green Stamps. The Kahn & Jacobs building dates to 1964; it replaced the Manhattan Hotel, where Sigmund Freud stayed in August 1909 on his only visit to the United States. In May 1916, Sen. Warren G. Harding began his affair with Nan Britton at the hotel--a relationship that continued after Harding was elected president.

E
A
S
T

4
3
R
D

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Corner: Lefcourt National Building, a 1929 Art Deco building by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, who two years later would design the Empire State Building. Named for Samuel Lefcourt, a prolific developer of the garment district.

Previously on this site was Temple Emanu-El, housing an influential Reform congregation that moved here from East 12th Street. Built in 1868 to a Moorish design by Henry Fernbach and Leopold Eidlitz, the building here was said to be "beyond doubt the most elegant Jewish house of worship in America." It moved again in 1929 to its present location, Fifth Avenue and East 65th Street.

3-7: Berkeley School

9: Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist

South:

E

4
3
R
D

North:

Former Biltmore Hotel

43 (block): Now called the Bank of America Plaza after a severe 1981 "modernization," the Biltmore was one of New York's most famous hotels; its lobby clock (which still can be seen in the office building's atrium) made "meet me under the clock" a catch phrase. F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned here in April 1920 until management asked them to leave. Henry Ford's 1915 attempt to broker an end to World War I was headquartered here.

South:

Chrysler Building

130 (corner): When it was built in 1930, the 123-foot spire was added at the last minute to make it the tallest building in the world--for a few months, until surpassed by the Empire State Building. Still makes the ESB look square. William Van Alen's design uses automobile themes throughout; the 100-by-97-foot tribute to transportation on the lobby's ceiling is said to be the largest mural in the world. The first color TV transmissions ever were broadcast from here by CBS on September 3, 1940. Writer James Agee is said to have dangled himself out a window of Fortune magazine's 50th floor offices here. The spire serves as a lair in the cult monster movie Q.

The building is slightly askew to the Manhattan grid because the property line follows the 18th Century East Post Road. The site was previously the Bloomingdale Brewery, once the city's largest beer-maker.

Corner (660 3rd Ave): The Kent Building, also known as the Chrysler Building East. A 1952 Reinhard, Hofmeister & Walquist design was reworked in 1998 by Philip Johnson.

E
A
S
T

4
3
R
D

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Corner (425 Lexington): Commerce Place, a 1988 building by Murphy/Jahn, has an entrance that looks the AIA Guide says looks like ''the portal to the lair of the Emperor Ming.''

141: St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church is an Italian Renaissance structure that replaced an old Gothic incarnation that burned down in 1992. The earlier church was the site of Diamond Jim Brady's funeral on April 16, 1917, and later the seat of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, a TV priest who converted Claire Booth Luce and Henry Ford II to Catholicism. His Life Is Worth Living show was at one point No. 1 in America.

South:

Corner (679 3rd Ave): Prince Deli Middle East Cuisine is in a quaint five-story brick building painted pale green.

200: This 1965 highrise is called the Xerox Building.

204: Sushi Yasuda has some of the best sushi in town, according to Zagat.

E
A
S
T

4
3
R
D

S
T

North:

Corner (685 3rd Ave): American Home Products Building. Now known as Wyeth, AHP marketed such brands as Advil, Robitussin, Chap Stick and Preparation H.

Sakagura

211: If you want to seem like a real insider, take your date to this sake bar (the name means "sake brewery") located in the basement of a nondescript office building. You go down a stairway that looks like it leads to the super's office, and end up in what looks like a Tokyo drinking club. A massive selection and a helpful staff.

245: The Permanent Mission of India to the U.N. was designed in 1991 by Charles Correa, a noted Indian architect.

Episcopal Church Center

Corner (815 2nd Ave): The church's national headquarters, housing administrative offices for the presiding bishop and the General Convention.

South:

Ford Foundation Building

320: This well-regarded building, built in 1967 to a design by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, features a stunning 130-foot atrium with full-grown trees. On the downside, the foundation was created by an anti-Semite, and has a history of working with the CIA.

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.

328: The Hermitage is part of the Tudor City development.

S <=== TUDOR CITY PL

350 (corner): Prospect Tower; more Tudor City.

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 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...."

E
A
S
T

4
3
R
D

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

313: American Field Sevice, an international exchange program.

315: The Cloister--part of Tudor City

339: The Manor, another Tudor City building