New York Songlines: 4th Avenue

West:

750 (corner): Much less spendy than its next-door neighbor, this brown-brick 17-floor building was built in 1951 with Horace Ginsbern & Associates as architects.

740 Park Avenue

740 (corner): This 19-story limestone-clad apartment building is said to be home to more billionaires than any other building in the country; six of the 25 richest New Yorkers are current or former residents. Completed in 1930, it's considered the masterpiece of Rosario Candela, the master designer of luxury apartment houses, who collaborated here with the Empire State Building's Arthur Loomis Harmon.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., lived here from 1937 until his death in 1960. It's the current address of David Koch, billionaire backer of the Tea Party movement, who's noted for giving his doorman here a $50 annual tip. Other notable past and present residents include Marshall Field, Time Warner's Steve Ross, KKR's Henry Kravis, designer Vera Wang and novelist Jerzy Kosinski. It was the childhood home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whose grandfather was the building's developer; Andy Warhol protoge Edie Sedgwick lived here with her grandmother in 1964. The French ambassador to the UN and the German consul general have residences here.

Among those whose celebrity reportedly made them unwelcome as apartment-owners here are Barbra Streisand, Joan Crawford and Barbara Walters.

Illustrating the way local tax laws favor the super-wealthy, the entire building is assessed at $63 million for tax purposes, even though a single duplex here sold in 2012 for $52 million.

There's a book about the building subtitled The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building; it inspired a film, Park Avenue, that offended David Koch and other PBS funders and helped expose censorious tendencies in public broadcasting.

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755 (corner): A 12-story apartment building built in 1914 to an Italian Renaissance design by Rouse & Goldstone. In 1889 the Freundschaft ("Friendship") Club, the city's oldest German club (est. 1879), moved to a five-story brick building here designed by McKim, Mead & White.

737 (corner): A 19-story red-brick building from 1940 by architect Sylvan Bien. As of 2013 it was in the midst of a contentious condo conversion under the ownership of developer Harry Macklowe.

West:

730 (corner): A 19-story brick-clad building from 1929, designed in Jacobean Renaissance style by F. Burrall Hoffman and Lafayette Goldstone.

Richard Rodgers lived here from 1945-1971, where he wrote South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music with Oscar Hammerstein; Edna Ferber wrote the novel Giant living here from 1950 until her death in 1968. 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace lived here until his death in 2012.

Yugoslavia kept an apartment here for its diplomats from 1975 until 1992, when the country fell apart; since then it's been vacant, as the successor republics have been unable to agree on a broker to sell it.

The penthouse here sold for $39 million in 2012.

720 (corner): This 19-story condominium is a 1929 collaboration between Rosario Candela, considered the master of luxury apartment buildings, and Cross & Cross, perhaps best known for Tiffany's. An architectural critic of the time described as being topped by "a jumble of setbacks, stick-outs, bays, battlements and buttresses."

One early resident was Macy's co-owner (and ambassador to France from 1933-36) Jesse Isidor Straus. Financier Peter Kraus bought a $37 million apartment here after getting a $25 million bonus for working a Merrill Lynch for three months.

This building was used as a case study by the New York Times of how tax laws favor the super-wealthy; the paper pointed out that in 2006 the building's entire assessed value was about $20 million, the price that one apartment here sold for that year.

Both 730 and 720 are on the former site of Presbyterian Hospital, founded in 1868 by James Lenox, whose book collection helped form the New York Public Library. After a merger it's now New York-Presbyterian in Washington Heights, ranked by U.S. News as the best hospital in the country.

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Asia Society

725 (corner): The world headquarters of an international organization founded by John D. Rockefeller III in 1956 to promote under- standing of Asia (which includes Iran and New Zealand but not Iraq or Siberia, oddly enough). The nine-story red-granite building was designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes (architect of the IBM Building) and completed in 1980. The galleries here, expanded in 1999, showcase the Rockefeller family's extensive collection of Asian art.

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710 (corner): This was from 1884-1910 the site of Union Theological Seminary, then as now a bastion of liberal Christianity; it was here that the school broke from the Presbyterian Church after one of its professors was tried for heresy.

The school was replaced by the Trowbridge & Livingston-designed mansion of financier/philanthropist George Blumenthal, who was president of both Mount Sinai Hospital and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Per his instructions, the house was demolished after his death in 1941, with the proceeds from the sale of the land going to the museum. The house's interior patio, scavenged from a castle in Spain, was moved to the Met, where it is still on display.

The current 20-story building was designed by Sylvan Bien and completed in 1948. TV pioneer Dave Garroway lived here from 1952 until 1961, when he was the first host of the Today show.

700 (corner): A co-op built in 1961, designed by Kahn & Jacobs, Paul Resnick & Harry F. Green.

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715 (corner): An 18-story apartment building from 1948, designed by Emery Roth & Sons.

Union Club

Corner (101 E 69th): New York City's oldest social club, founded in 1836. Its members have included some of the city's most powerful figures. including tycoons Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan and John Jacob Astor IV; newspaper moguls James Gordon Bennett, Jr. and William Randolph Hearst; generals Winfield Scott, Philip H. Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman; and presidents U.S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower.

The Union League Club was formed in 1863 by members unhappy with the club's refusal to expel Confederate sympathizers from its ranks. In 1871, concern that the Union Club's membership standards were falling led to the creation of the Knickerbocker Club. Other offshoots include The Brook and the Metropolitan Club.

The Union Club relocated here from Fifth Avenue and 51st Street in 1933. This clubhouse was designed by Delano & Aldrich, who wanted a more restrained design than club members insisted on.

West:

Italian Consulate

690 (corner): This townhouse was designed in 1899 by the architects Walker and Gillette for Henry Pomeroy Davison, a founder of Bankers Trust, an organizer of the Federal Reserve and a president of the American Red Cross. Later it was the home of department store magnate Marshall Field. Since 1952 it's been Italy's consular office.

Queen Sofia Spanish Institute

684: A neo-Federal house from 1926, designed by McKim Mead & White for World War I aviator Oliver Filley and his wife Mary Pyne Filley; it was paid for by Mary's parents, who lived next door. In 1965 the house was bought by Margaret Rockefeller Strong de Cuevas, a granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller who married an aristocratic gay Chilean ballet impressario, to save it from demolition; she donated it to the Spanish Institute, which promotes Spanish-language culture. It adopted the name of its benefactor, the queen of Spain, in 2003.

Americas Society

680 (corner): This neo-Federal townhouse was designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1911. Its original owner was Percy Rivington Pyne, grandson of financier Moses Taylor and director of the National City Bank. From 1948 until 1965 it was the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, from which Nikita Krushchev made his famous shoe-banging visit to the UN in 1960.

This building was also bought by Margaret Cuevas in 1965 to spare it from the wrecking ball, and donated to the Americas Society, an organization for Western Hemispheric dialogue set up that year by her cousin David Rockefeller.

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Hunter College North Building

695 (block): The largest college in the CUNY system, Hunter was established in 1870 by New York State legislature as the Female Normal and High School (later the Normal College of the City of New York)—a "normal school" being a school for teachers that established educational norms.

The school was renamed in 1914 for its president for the first 37 years, Irish immigrant Thomas Hunter; Hunter established a then-unusual policy of accepting applicants of all ethnicities and religions, and today the college is still known for the remarkable diversity of its student body. The college began admitting men in 1964.

Brooklyn College and Lehman College in The Bronx both began as Hunter satellite colleges.

This building, which provides Hunter with its official address, was completed in 1941 after a 1936 fire destroyed much of the former Collegiate Gothic campus. Designed in International Style by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the architects of the Empire State Building, it was one of the first Modernist public buildings in New York. Its "warehouse design" was highly controversial at the time, and its unsentimental approach still makes it a startling presence on Park Avenue.

Notable Hunter College alumni include Bella Abzug, Bobby Darin, Ellen Barkin, Ruby Dee, Jean Stapleton, Grace Paley, Donna Shalala (who was later the college's president) and Vin Diesel.

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Council on Foreign Relations

Corner (58 E 68th): This house was completed in 1920 for Harold Pratt, a director of Standard Oil of New Jersey (the ancestor of ExxonMobil) and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His widow donated the house to the CFR upon his death and the group moved in in 1945.

The CFR is the think tank of the foreign policy establishment, founded in 1919 to guide post-Great War policy. Its members have included most of the presidents and major-party candidates since 1968, and virtually every secretary of state.

666: This is the address of a fictional luxury apartment building with a billionaire owner who commands dark supernatural forces—featured in a novel and an ABC TV series, both called 666 Park Avenue. As it happens, this address does exist, but it's not here, where it should be—it's around the corner on East 67th Street. (See below.)

660 (corner): This 12-story Italian Renaissance apartment building was built in 1927 by Starrett Brothers, designed by York & Sawyer. It includes a 27-room triplex with its own entrance and address—666 Park Avenue, though the entrance is on East 67th Street. "The city's most spectacular maisonette" (per Carter Horsley), it was built for Virginia Graham Fair Vanderbilt, wife of William K. Vanderbilt and heir in her own right to the Comstock Lode fortune—though she never lived here.

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655 (block): A 11-story Georgian-style co-op from 1924, designed by James E.R. Carpenter ("the foremost architect of luxury residential buildings in the city of his generation"—Carter Horsley) and Mott Schmidt. Its understated approach is indicated by the courtyard facing Park Avenue, which is not a grand entrance but rather a well-landscaped garden. William K. Vanderbilt was one of the original owners here—across the street from the maisonette of his estranged wife Virginia.

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650 (corner): Twenty-one floors of white brick built in 1963—Kokkins & Lyras, architects. Earlier on this spot was the Sulgrave Hotel, built c. 1923; the corner lot, 62 East 67th, was a brownstone owned by an elderly woman named Sofia Hawkins, who declined to sell to the hotel. After her death in 1929, the holdout became a garden for the hotel and later an outdoor restaurant. Henry Fonda lived briefly in the hotel after he married socialite Frances Brokaw.

640 (corner): This limestone-clad building was the height of luxury when it was built in 1914 by Spencer Fullerton Weaver, to a design by J.E.R. Carpenter. The full-floor apartments had six rooms for servants apiece, and rented in 1914 for a then astronomical $9,000 to $12,000 a year.

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7th Regiment Armory

This block-filling red-brick castle, also known as the Park Avenue Armory, was built in 1877-80 to house the 7th Regiment of the New York State Militia.

The 7th Regiment descends from a militia unit formed in 1806 in response to skirmishes with the British Navy off the coast of Sandy Hook. Called into military service, it participated in the War of 1812, the Civil War (when it protected the nation's capital from rebel encirclement) and both world wars (as the 107th Infantry). Closer to home, it helped to put down the Astor Place Riot in 1849, the Dead Rabbits and Bowery Boys in 1857 and the Draft Riots in 1863. It guarded Abraham Lincoln's body when it was brought through New York City in 1865, and participated in the inauguration of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 and the Statue of Liberty in 1886.

Known as the Silk Stocking Regiment because of its ties to New York's social elite, it was originally based at the Tompkins Market in what is now the East Village, where Cooper Union's new building now stands. After the Civil War, which included the worst civil unrest in the city's history, the regiment looked for a new home closer to the wealthy neighborhoods deemed essential to protect. The armory, designed by Gothic revivalist (and 7th Regiment veteran) Charles Clinton, was privately funded with contributions from the likes of John Jacob Astor, William H. Vanderbilt and James Lenox. The lavish ornamentation of the fortress includes two rooms decorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

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630 (corner): This 12-story J.E.R. Carpenter building put up in 1916 has considerable cultural history: Pianist Artur Rubinstein lived here from 1956-72; it was Lillian Hellman's main residence from 1970 until her death in 1984. Dorothy Kilgallen, conspiracy-minded journalist and What's My Line panelist, moved here in 1941, where she died of a "mysterious" drug/alcohol overdose in 1965. Another literary resident, from 1932-58, was Mary Roberts Rinehart, a hugely popular mystery writer of the early 20th Century who is said to have originated the "butler did it" cliche.

A four-bedroom apartment here went on the market here in 2006 for $17 million, and finally sold in 2011 for $7.6 million.

620 (corner): Another J.E.R. Carpenter design, this 14-story building (with only 15 apartments) went up in 1924.

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635 (corner): A 12-story J.E.R. Carpenter building from 1912. Formerly on this site was a Henry J. Hardenbergh building called the Adelaide.

625 (corner): A limestone-clad 15-story apartment building by J.E.R. Carpenter. It features a 26-room triplex penthouse where cosmetic tycoon Helena Rubinstein lived from 1935 until her death in 1965—whereupon her rival Charles Revson of Revlon bought and lived in it until he died in 1975. Presumably Rubinstein's Salvador Dali murals are still in place.

West:

The Mayfair

610 (corner): Built in 1925 as the 450-room Mayfair House hotel, designed by luxury apartment architect J.E.R. Carpenter. From 1974-97 it was home to Le Cirque, the sort of place that boasts that its customers have included Ronald Reagan, Ferdinand Marcos and Anastasio Somoza (as well as the usual Trumps and Giulianis). It popularized pasta primavera and creme brulee.

Since 1999, the space has housed Daniel, run by Daniel Boulud, formerly Le Cirque's chef who had a falling out with the owner. It's considered one of New York City's top restaurants--one of six to get Michelin's third star, one of five to get four from the New York Times.

Swedish Consulate

600 (corner): This landmarked neo-English Renaissance mansion, built in 1911 for paper manufacturer Jonathan Buckley to a James Gamble Rogers design, now houses the Swedish Consulate and Permanent Mission to the UN.

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603 (corner): This "stupendous neo-Federal" (AIA Guide) was built in 1920 for sugar wholesaler Thomas Howell, designed by Walter Lund and Julius Gayler. It was on the market for nearly 20 years without a buyer before being sold in 2008. It's got 100 feet of frontage on Park Avenue--but is only 20 feet deep.

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580 (block): One of the few Park Avenue apartment buildings to fill an entire blockfront, this 14-story building went up in 1923, designed by J.E.R. Carpenter. Journalist Edward R. Murrow owned an apartment here.

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Central Presbyterian Church

593 (corner): Central Presbyterian was founded in 1821, with its original home on Broome Street; its leadership helped establish New York University in 1831 and Union Theological Seminary in 1836. After several relocations, it moved here in 1929, to a church built here in 1922 for the Park Avenue Baptist Church, paid for by John D. Rockefeller Jr. (They moved so soon because Rockefeller wanted preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick to have a church big enough for the crowds he was attracting--and so built Riverside Church.)

3rd Church of Christ, Scientist

585 (corner): A Delano & Aldrich neo- Georgian design completed in 1924. It matches the architects' Colony Club built a few years earlier a block down the street. The Christian Science congregation—originally called the Metropolitan Third Church of Christ, Scientist—moved here from 43 East 125th Street. There has been a legal battle over the church's renting itself out for social events, with residents complaining that this is "the wrong part of town" for parties. Especially if the riff-raff are invited!

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570 (corner): A 13-story building with a white marble base; built in 1916 by Bing & Bing from an Emery Roth design. Novelist Willa Cather moved here with her partner Edith Lewis in 1932, and died in her apartment in 1947.

Colony Club

564 (corner): A high-society women's club founded in 1903 with membership roster stocked with Morgans, Astors and Harrimans. The clubhouse here was completed in 1916 to a Delano & Aldrich design, and decorated inside by Elsie de Wolfe.

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575 (corner): The Beekman, a 15-story brick apartment building built in 1927 to George F. Pelham's Italian Renaissance design. Residents have included Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the husband-and-wife singing duo Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and her Mob-linked real-estate developer husband John Zaccaro. Woody Allen has rented a three-room suite here for film editing.

The ground floor houses a restaurant that changes its name, menu and decor change with the seasons--Park Avenue Summer, Autumn, Winter or Spring. (It moved to a different space in fall 2013.) The space was Hubert's for some period in the 1980s, cited by the New York Times as one of the restaurants whose "names were on the cognoscenti's lips"; in the movie American Psycho, Patrick Bateman declares he has "a very important lunch meeting at Hubert's in 30 minutes." The co-owner, Karen Hubert Allison, wrote a novel called How I Gave My Heart to the Restaurant Business. Earlier, going back to 1964, it was Le Perigord Park, a fancy French restaurant now on 52nd Street (minus the Park).

563 (corner): Built in 1910, this 13-floor red-brick building was considered the first luxury apartment building on Park Avenue. The apartments facing the avenue are all duplexes, as suggested by the banded facade. Author John Irving has been a resident here.

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550 (corner): A 17-story apartment building from 1917, designed by J.E.R. Carpenter (who was among the first residents). Comedian Danny Kaye lived here in the 1940s. Earlier on this site was the Yosemite, a seven-story 1891 co-op designed by McKim, Mead & White for the New York Life Insurance Company. Before that there was Holbrook Hall, an apartment building destroyed by fire.

Loews Regency Hotel

540 (corner): A luxury hotel that opened in 1963. Audrey Hepburn and Princess Grace have been guests here; Carol Channing was a long-term resident, as was World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker. The 540 Park restaurant is said to have invented the "Power Breakfast" in 1975, attracting New York machers like Andrew Cuomo, Al Sharpton, David Dinkins, William Bratton and Eliot Spitzer. There's also a clubby bar called The Library; Michael Feinstein had a supper club called Feinstein's here from 1999 to 2013.

Before the hotel there was a 12-story apartment building on this site, designed by William Boring and built in 1909. It's been called "the first of the high-class apartments to be built on Park Avenue."

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535 (corner): A 14-story brick building with a two-story rusticated limestone base, designed by Herbert Lucas and built in 1909.

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530 (corner): A 19-story white-brick building by architect George F. Pelham Jr., put up in 1940. It has an intriguing facade interrupted by lines of curved windows. Bianca Jagger lived here c. 1985-2005 in a rent-stabilized apartment; after a prolonged court battle, she ended up owing $600,000 in back rent and legal fees to the landlord, who convinced the judge that this was not her primary residence.

Christ Church

520 (corner): This Methodist church designed by Ralph Adams Cram was built in 1932 but intended to appear centuries older, with pre-patched walls and pillars that are supposed to look like they've been scavenged from a pagan temple. From 1928 to 1962, the church was home to NBC Radio's National Radio Pulpit, featuring the church's longstanding minister, Rev. Dr. Ralph W. Sockman.

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521 (corner): A 12-story apartment building built in 1911 to a design by William Boring, who designed the 1899 Immigration Station at Ellis Island and later headed Columbia's architecture school. There's a fine appreciation of the building here.

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510 (corner): An attractive, 15-story brick-and-limestone apartment building, put up in 1925 as a cooperative by Starrett Brothers to a F. H. Dewey design. Philip Barry, who wrote The Philadelphia Story, moved here in 1948 and died of a heart attack here the following year.

Hotel Delmonico

502 (corner): This 32-story building with a distinctive red-tile roof traditionally marks the boundary between the commercial Park Avenue to the south and the high-end residential to the north. It was built in 1928 as the Viceroy Hotel; in 1929, the fabled restaurant Delmonico's moved in, meriting a name change. Lyricist Lorenz Hart lived here in 1943, the year he died; TV host Ed Sullivan was a resident from 1944 until his death in 1973. Actor Richard Harris and director Robert Altman have also lived here. In the 1970s, it was home to the auction house Christie's (which moved out in 1998) and to the ritzy disco Regine's (1976-91). Donald Trump bought the building in 2003, renamed it the Trump Park Avenue and made some dubious glassy additions.

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515 (corner): This 43-story highrise is the tallest residential building on Park Avenue. The tower was designed by Frank Williams & Associates and built by the Zeckendorf organization in 2000. It replaced a 1910 pallazo designed by Ernest Greene; when that building was bought by the Jewish Agency, it evicted the Syrian mission to the U.N. in favor of tenants like the World Zionist Organization.

Sherry-Lehmann

505 (corner): A venerable wine and liquor store that moved here in 2007 after nearly six decades at 679 Madison. Founded in 1934 by Jack Aaron, an ex-bootlegger who used to supply wine and spirits to the 21 Club; it was named for its original home in the Louis Sherry building. It merged in 1965 with M. Lehmann, a gourmet grocery store founded in the early 1900s. The store has introduced brands like Dom Perignon and Chivas Regal.

It's on the groud floor of the Aramco Building, built in 1948 for the Saudi Arabian state oil company and designed by Emery Roth & Co. It was given a black-and-gold makeover in 1987 by Der Scutt.

West:

Pepsi-Cola Building

500 (corner): A modest Modernist 10-story office building with a glass-and-alumninum facade, built for the soft-drink company in 1960 to a Skidmore, Owings & Merrill design. Pepsi soon moved to suburban Westchester, and the building became home to the Olivetti Corporation, the style-conscious maker of office equipment. Now house Amro Bank as well as the Janet Sortin spa. A 40-story condo tower was added in 1980 that meshed with the original structure surprisingly well.

484: Linda Dresner, boutique

480 (corner): This 21-story apartment building, made of buff brick, limestone and terra cotta, features a gleaming marble lobby. It was put up in 1929 by developer Sam Minskoff to a blueprint by Emery Roth, who designed the penthouse apartment for himself; restauranteur Toots Shor also lived here. It replaced the Hotel Clarendon. On the ground floor are Jill Sander, boutique; James Robinson, silver.

In the Marvel series Hawkeye, this is the address of the Bishop penthouse.

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Banque de Paris Building

499 (corner): A 27-story black-glass tower designed by I.M. Pei, completed 1984. The elegant lobby features a painting by Jean Dubuffet. On the ground floor is Bernard Aud, housewares.

485 (corner): A 14-story limestone-and-beige-brick apartment building from 1922. On the ground floor: Pierre Marolini chocolates, Seaman Scheppe jewelry.

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470 (corner): This 14-story red-brick apartment house was built in 1916. It was designed by Schwartz & Gross-- the farthest south of the firm's 13 buildings on Park Avenue.

460 (corner): The Consulate General of the Republic of Korea (South, that is) is in this "rather prosaic and depressing" ( City Review) 22-story office building, built in 1954 to an Emery Roth & Sons design.

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475 (corner): This 15-story white-brick apartment building makes a plain neighbor to the Ritz Tower. It was built in 1908 (when it was numbered 471) to a Charles W. Buckham design. Alcoa planned to build a 30-story headquarters here in the 1950s; when that fell through, the apartment building was stripped of its facades and reclad in white brick in 1958; the vandals were Charles N. and Selig Whinston. Now houses Chinese Porelan antiques; Jay Kos and Atelier Aimee, women's clothing.

Ritz Tower

455 (corner): This 540-foot apartment hotel, designed by Emery Roth and Thomas Hastings, was a sensation when it was completed in 1926 as the city's first residential skyscraper-- "the actual arrival of the home 500 feet high," one critic marveled. William Randolph Hearst lived here with Marion Davies from 1928-38; other residents have included Greta Garbo and Paulette Goddard. The ground floor featured the celebrated French restaurant Le Pavillon; the space later became the Women's Bank of New York and is now a Borders.

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450 (corner): 450 Park Avenue, designed by Emery Roth & Sons and built in 1972, is "the handsomest black skyscraper in the city" (City Review). On the ground floor are Suarez purses, Tanagru jewelry.

Songwriter Jerome Kern collapsed on the sidewalk here on November 5, 1945; he died at Doctor's Hospital six days later.

432 Park

432 (corner): This is the address of developer Harry Macklowe's 1,396-foot, 88-story apartment tower, completed in 2015. But it's not really here; it's actually midblock between Madison and Park, with entrances on 57th and 56th streets. The address of the building that's actually on this corner seems to be 100 East 56th; it doesn't seem to be connected to 432 Park.

The architect is Rafael Vinoly, who did Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Children's Museum expansion. It is the tallest residential building in the world, the second tallest building in the city (officially), the third tallest in the Western Hemisphere, and 25th in the world.

It's been criticized as having all the architectural charm of a stack of cubbyholes. Most of the apartments are vacant the vast majority of the year, because they were not bought as housing but as investments—a system of storing value far more cumbersome than Aztec calendar disks. Two rich people who seem to have actually lived here are Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez.

The Drake Hotel was built on this site in 1927, with the address 444 Park, and demolished 70 years later. Silent film star Lillian Gish lived here from 1946-49. Other notable guests included Muhammed Ali and Glenn Gould; restauranteur Toots Shor lived here in his final years. New York's first discotheque, Shepheard's, opened here in the early 1960s. Fauchon chocolates was on the ground floor.

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Universal Pictures Building

445 (block): A 1947 building by Kahn & Jacobs is considered the first "wedding cake" building--reducing its cross-section with setbacks as it goes up, in precise accordance with the zoning law. Houses Daralamb, women's clothing; Citishoes; Nelson & Nelson Silver; and T. Anthony purses.

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430 (block): Originally the Hoffman Auto Showroom and later a showcase for Mercedes Benz, this space was designed in 1954 by Frank Lloyd Wright--the master architect's first New York work. The circular ramp foreshadowed Wright's New York masterpiece, the Guggenheim museum. In March 2013, the building's owners destroyed every vestige of the work of America's most famous architect, fearing that the interior might otherwise be landmarked. Rot in hell, Midwood Investment & Management and Oestreicher Properties.

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425 (block): A 32-story building from 1957, designed by Kahn & Jacobs. Singer Tony Bennett has lived in this building. On this corner was formerly 103 E. 55th Street, where author John O'Hara lived in 1935 when he started writing Butterfield 8.

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410 (block): The General Reinsurance Building was the NFL's national headquarters from 1968 until 1996, when they moved down the street. On the ground floor are Ferrari cars, and Papyrus Paper.

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417 (corner): This 13-story limestone building, put up in 1916 by Bing & Bing to an Emery Roth design, "is the last survivor of at least thirteen luxury apartment houses, most of them built before World War I," on this stretch of Park Avenue. Features Walter Steiger, purses.

407: Stefano Ricci, men's clothing

West:

Lever House

390 (block): This 21-story blue-green glass office tower, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's Gordon Bunshaft for the British soap company Lever Brothers and completed in 1952, is considered one of the most important and influential Modernist buildings in New York City. It pioneered the use of the glass curtain wall--preceded in the city only by the U.N. Secretariat Building--and the dramatic break with the street wall.

The building was landmarked in 1982--as soon as it became eligible--and was extensively restored in 1998, when an Isamu Noguchi sculpture garden was added. Since 2003, it's been home to Lever House Restaurant. The courtyard displays Damien Hirsh's disturbing Virgin Mother.

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Citibank Building

399 (block): This "bland, undistinguished, 39-story tower" ( City Review), designed by Carson & Lundin and Kahn & Jacobs, has been since 1961 the headquarters of Citigroup-- notwithstanding the 1978 construction of the more prominent Citicorp Center. The move here by Citibank--then known as the First National Bank of New York--sparked a trend of big banks moving from Wall Street to Midtown.

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Racquet & Tennis Club

370 (block): This private men-only club, founded in 1876, is housed in an Italian Renaissance palazzo designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1918. Its five-story height is designed to be twice the width of Park Avenue.

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Seagram Building

375 (block): This 39-story brown-glass-and-bronze office tower, built in 1958 for the Seagram's beverage company, is considered the epitome of the International Style and architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's American masterpiece. Its superbly proportioned geometric form and use of floor-to-ceiling windows were enormously influential on corporate architecture; the New York Times has called it the most important building of the 20th Century.

The vertical bronze beams on the exterior are, ironically, a decorative element intended to express a fuctionalist aesthetic. The plaza surrounding the building--taking Lever House's rejection of the street wall farther by eliminating the earlier building's base--was so admired that zoning laws were changed to encourage similar public spaces...few of which were as successful as this one.

The building is home to The Four Seasons, a restaurant known for its power lunches, whose sumptuous interior was designed by Philip Johnson, who was van der Rohe's collaborator on the entire structure. Painter Mark Rothko was commissioned to do art for the restaurant, but he decided he hated the place too much and kept the series for himself.

In the series That Girl, the Marlo Thomas character works in a magazine stand in this building.

The address used to be that of an apartment building on the block's northern corner, where songwriter Harold Arlen lived in the 1940s in the penthouse apartment building. Another building torn down for the skyscraper, at 116 E. 53rd, was the home of actor Montgomery Clift from 1935-43, when he was a teenager and young man.

West:

350 (block): This boxy 30-story tower was built in 1954 as the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Building, designed by Lever House's Gordon Bunshaft. The flagship branch of the Park Avenue Bank is located here.

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345 (block): This 44-story office tower was built in 1969 to an Emery Roth & Sons design. The bronze sculpture in the plaza is Robert Cook's Dinoceras (1971) -- named for an extinct rinoceros- like mammal.

West:

320 (corner): Mutual of America Building, a 1950s Emery Roth building reclad in glass in the 1990s--the AIA Guide calls it a ''turgid wedding cake dressed for the Mardi Gras.''

There is (or was) a BMW Gallery--or what other companies would call a dealership--in the north corner of the building.

320 (corner): Mutual of America

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St. Bartholomew's Church

Block (109 E 50th): An Episcopalian congregation founded in 1835, ''St. Bart's'' is considered one of the more fashionable churches in town. A 1919 work by Bertram Goodhue (who considered it his favorite), its entranceway was salvaged from an earlier St. Bartholomew's designed by Stanford White. The church tried to tear down Goodhue's Community House and sell the land to developers, but the city successfully defended its landmark law in court-- an important precedent for preservationists.

Saint Bartholomew was an apostle about whom little is known; tradition holds that he was martyred by being skinned alive. I suspect that churches are named after him largely because of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, an attack on Protestants in France.

West:

300 (block): The Colgate Palmolive Building was built in 1955 as the headquarters of the toothpaste and soap company. (They also make Ajax and Fab.) The building, another Emery Roth design, has been called ''a beige box with an horizontal emphasis that conveys the heaviness of a fat plantation owner sleeping and immovable on some stodgy club verandah.''

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The Waldorf-Astoria

301 (block): One of the world's most famous hotels started out where the Empire State Building is now—formed by the merger of the Waldorf and Astoria hotels, owned by rival branches of the Astor family. (Waldorf was John Jacob Astor's German hometown.) When the skyscraper replaced the old hotel, it moved to this 625-foot Art Deco landmark (designed by Schultze & Weaver), at the time the largest hotel in the world; when it opened on September 30, 1931, the first guest to be served dinner was the king of Siam.

Former president Herbert Hoover lived here, as did future president JFK; other long-term residents include the Duke of Windsor, Henry Kissinger and generals Eisenhower, MacArthur and Bradley. Every sitting president since FDR has stayed here as a guest; LBJ met with Pope Paul VI here on October 4, 1965, during the first papal visit to the U.S. The first Tony Awards were presented here on April 6, 1947.

The hotel was featured in the Ginger Rogers film Weekend at the Waldorf. Its namesake salad is compared to a Berlin ballad in the song "You're the Top." The hotel's Empire Room was an early venue for Frank Sinatra and Diana Ross.

The hotel is now owned by the Hilton chain. The restaurant is called Peacock Alley, named for the corridor in the original Waldorf-Astoria where the fashionable paraded.

West:

280 (block): Bankers Trust East was designed in 1963 by Henry Dreyfuss, an industrial designer, under the auspices of Emery Roth & Sons. The result was a building consisting of one rectangular block on top of another. An addition to the west was added in 1971. Deutsche Bank has offices here, as well as the National Football League's national headquarters.

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299 (block): The Westvaco Building, a 1967 Emery Roth building, named for a West Virginian paper company. It hosts Japan's consul general.

West:

Union Carbide Building

270 (block): Fifty-three stories of grey glass and matte-black steel, this 1960 Skidmore Owings & Merrill building, originally built for Union Carbide, was redone in 1983 by the same architects. The elevators start on the second floor because the building is built over a railroad yard. It now houses the world headquarters of JPMorgan Chase, the banking giant.

Corner: At this corner of Park and 47th used to be the Marguery Hotel, noted for its "quiet garden" and "famous food" in a 1936 hotel guide. The Marguery in turn was said to be on the site of The Benedick, a fictional "bachelor's flat" in Edith Wharton's House of Mirth where Lawrence Selden has tea with Lily Bart.

Today on this corner, J. Seward Johnson's Taxi (1983) perpetually hails a cab.

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277 (block): This 50-story building, a 1962 Emery Roth design, houses the investment firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, the Continental Grain Company and Penthouse magazine. Previously on the site was the McKim, Mead & White- designed Heckscher Apartments, which housed Crillon, described in a 1940 restaurant guide as "French cuisine, smart, fairly expensive and good."

West:

250 (block): The Postum Building, named for the cereal company, is a 1925 Cross & Cross design whose smallish block (truncated by Vanderbilt Avenue) has saved it from demolition and replacement with a gigantic glass structure—so it gives some idea of the "Terminal City" which once surrounded Grand Central. Now houses the Marine Midland Trust Co.; there's an Audi dealership on the ground floor. Alien invaders crash into this building in the first Avengers movie.

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245 (block): This 1967 building is by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, better known for designing the Empire State Building. Built for the American Tobacco Company, it was the Bear Stearns investment bank's headquarters from 1987-2001. Now Xerox has offices here. Previously on the site was Warren & Wetmore's Grand Central Palace Building (1911), an exhibition hall.

West:

120 (corner): From 1981-2007 this was the headquarters of Altria, which changed its name from Philip Morris because the old name was too associated with the selling of addictive carcinogens. The 1981 structure, designed by Ulrich Franzen, replaced the 1940 Art Deco Airlines Building. Before that it was the Belmont Hotel, the tallest building in Midtown when it opened in 1906. There was a branch of the Whitney Museum here, which left when Altria did.

In the Avengers movie, Iron Man flies Hawkeye to the top of this building so he can have a good vantage point for the battle.

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Pershing Square Building

Corner (100 E 42nd):

From 1914 to 1920, this area was a plaza honoring Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing, the commander of U.S. forces in World War I. Then it was sold to a developer who put up this building, noted for its terra cotta. You can get tickets for buses to the airports here.

West:

100 (block): Wilmer Chemists, Bistro New York are on the ground floor here.

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101 (block): 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.

West:

90 (block): Sterling Drug Building (1964). This and the building across the street were both designed by Emery Roth & Sons, who also designed the World Trade Center. The Hulk defends this building from alien attack in the first Avengers movie.

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Houses Bogart's, bar that has TV monitors in the restrooms for spying on your date.

At this address was the house of Andrew Haswell Green, a city comptroller who helped establish the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum, the American Museum and Central Park, along with Riverside, Morningside and Fort Washington parks. His work on the commission that consolidated the five boroughs earned him the title of "Father of Greater New York." He was shot to death on this sidewalk, November 13, 1903, by an deranged stranger.

West:

70 (corner): 70 Park Avenue Hotel, formerly the Doral Park Hotel, where the French celebrity stayed in The French Connection. The Silver Leaf Restaurant is on the ground floor.

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77 (corner): The Griffin apartments

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66 (corner): Kitano Hotel, Japanese-style luxury.

58: Scandinavia House, Nordic cultural center, built in 2000. Houses the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and the AQ Cafe, with food from the chef at Aquavit.

52: The City Review calls this 1986 building by David Kenneth Specter "one of the city's most attractive modern high-rise residential facades."

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59 (corner): Roman Catholic Church of Our Saviour, in a neo-Romanesque building that dates to 1959.

57: The Guatemalan Mission to the U.N. and Consulate General is in a Beaux Arts landmark built in 1911 as the Adelaide Douglas House (1911). Douglas was J.P. Morgan's longtime mistress, and the house had a special door in the back to allow the banker to slip in discreetly.

West:

Union League Club

Corner (38 E 37th): A Republican club formed 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."

36: In October 1964, mobster Joe Bonanno was kidnapped from in front of this defunct address, then his lawyer's apartment. It happened shortly before Bonanno was scheduled to testify before a grand jury--and while Bonanno was apparently contemplating murdering crime boss Carlo Gambino. He reemerged in a federal courthouse in 1966, saying he had been at his cousin's in upstate New York, and retired to Arizona shortly thereafter.

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

43: This was the address of Evander Berry Wall, an 1890s dandy who was famous for changing his clothes several times a day. He boasted that after the age of 17, he never again tasted water--only champagne.

West:

30 (corner): Comedian Jackie Mason has lived at this address. Mason calls himself "politically incorrect"--which is literally true, if you think it's wrong to support ethnic cleansing.

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23 (corner): This 1898 Stanford White building, originally an Italian Renaissance private home, built for James Hampden Robb and Cornelia Van Rensselaer Robb, later served as home to the Advertising Club of New York. Now apartments.

West:

12: Franchia, a Korean teahouse whose name means ''generous.''

10: The Metropolitan Synagogue is in this 1931 apartment building. Busy Arnold, publisher of Will Eisner's Spirit magazine, had an apartment here that was apparently something of a lovenest.

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7 (corner): This address for a short while used to be 1 Park Avenue, when Park began, logically enough, at 34th Street. When the City Council moved the start to 32nd Street, the widow who lived here unsuccessfully sued to keep her prestigious number.

West:

The Vanderbilt

4 (block): From its 1913 completion until it was converted to apartments in 1965, this was the Vanderbilt Hotel, one of the city's most fashionable in the early 20th Century. Singer Enrico Caruso lived here in 1920 and 1921, his last U.S. home.

Underneath this building is Wolfgang's Steakhouse, run by the Wolfgang Zwiener, who was the legendary headwaiter at Peter Luger's for 40 years (though he got his start at Luchow's). The space, recently called Vanderbilt Station, was famous as the Della Robbia Bar, aka The Crypt. The vaulted Gaustavino ceiling is the big claim to fame. The rumor that this used to be Commodore Vanderbilt's secret private subway station seems not to be true.

33RD STREET SUBWAY: 6 to 28th Street

The station is here rather than the more obvious 34th Street because Park Avenue slopes upwards from 33rd to 34th to accommodate the auto tunnel.

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Norman Thomas High School for Commercial Education

3 (block): Above this school, named for New York's six-time Socialist candidate for president, is a 42-story red-brick office tower, set at a 45 degree angle to the Manhattan grid, designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Air America Radio, the liberal talkshow network, was originally based here.

In front of the building is an Obelisk to Peace, by Irving Marantz. There's also a plaque remaining from the former occupant of this site, the 71st Regiment Armory, built in 1905 (replacing an earlier armory on the spot built 1894). The Armory is also recalled by the eagle motif in the subway station below. The 71st Regiment of the New York State Guard had its origin in the American Rifles, a militia affiliated with the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party. In 1857, the unit intervened in the 6th Ward gang riots, killing the leader of the Dead Rabbits. In the Civil War, it fought at the First Battle of Bull Run and at Gettysburg, among other engagements. In the Spanish-American War, it fought alongside the Rough Riders at the Battle of San Juan Hill.

33RD STREET SUBWAY: 6 to 42nd Street/Grand Central.

Richard Widmark gets out here in Pickup on South Street to go to the library--he would have saved himself some walking if he had stayed on for another stop.

West:

2 (block): Lewis Mumford called this 1927 Art Deco skyscraper by Eli Jacques Kahn "the boldest and clearest note among all our recent achievements in skyscraper architecture." Kahn had an office here, where Ayn Rand worked as a typist while researching The Fountainhead.

Built on the site of the fashionable Park Avenue Hotel, which was originally constructed by retail tycoon A.T. Stewart as an ultra-strict Woman's Home.

Houses the bistro/ fromagerie/wine bar Artisinal--great if you love cheese, apparently, but expensive. Inside is Newsday's Manhattan bureau as well as the offices of the Sporting News.

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1 (block): This 19-story building was designed in 1926 by York & Sawyer, who did the Bowery Savings Bank on 42nd Street and Broadway's Greenwich Savings Bank. The publisher Henry Holt used to have its offices here.

When steam locomotives were banned below 42nd Street in 1858, the horses that pulled the trains from there to the depot at 27th Street were stabled here. Eventually the railroad built Grand Central Terminal at 42nd Street to avoid the bother.

West:

470 (corner): Canaan Variety Food Cafe, Straight From the Crate and Workbench Furniture are in the Schwarzenbach Buildings--named for Schwarzenbach Looms, makers of Darbrook Silks.

Check out the charming clock on the Park Avenue side--it's surrounded by bas relief leaves, caterpillars and butterflies, and is topped by a wizard and a blacksmith. The Darbrook Silks mosaic above is pretty cool, too.

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475 (corner): This 35-floor 1969 building by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon was reclad in green in 2006. It's home to the magazine Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction. It has a plaza sculpture, Triad, based on the Picasso painting Three Musicians.

West:

450: PS450, lounge, was Arci's Place, cabaret venue

444 (corner): Wild Greens, health food deli; Susie's Kitchen, deli

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455: Alphagraphics; Manhattan Cabinetry

451: Raymond R. Corbett Building, built for the Iron Workers Security Funds and named for a Brooklyn labor leader. The facade is Cor-Ten, intentionally rusted steel.

443: Kalaty Oriental Rugs

West:

440 (corner): This 1913 building by Cross & Cross was for many years the address of the publisher John Wiley & Sons. Now Design & Comfort Furniture.

432: Health 4-U, health food. This was the first address of Detective Comics, now known as DC.

420 (corner): Interbank of New York

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441 (corner): John's Deli

439: NYC Computer Service

435: China Express

433: Desmond's Tavern

429: Clarion Hotel Park Avenue, pleasant hotel, formerly Howard Johnson Park Avenue South. Former Zeigfield Follies dancer Yvonne Hughes was murdered here in 1950, when it was the Ashland Hotel.

425 (corner): Park Audio

West:

416: Pinch sells pizza by the inch.

404 (corner): Walter Haefeli was the architect of this 16-story building finished in 1917. Croissant Cafe was on the ground floor.

SUBWAY: 6 to 23rd Street

In the film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, the ransom for the hijacked subway train is delivered to this station. It was also the site of the first recorded real-life subway crime, when a $500 diamond stick-pin was stolen on opening day, October 27, 1904.

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419 (corner): The Bowker Building, 1927 offices also by Walter Haefeli, are described by the AIA Guide as a "strange multihued, almost phosphorescent, terra-cotta clad building" in an "unknown Islamic Industrial style."

411: Brasserie Les Halles, owned by celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain

407 (corner): The Ascot, rather generic 26-story apartment building from 1983 (Philip Birnbaum & Assoc., architects). On this site was the Belmore Cafeteria, a hangout for Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

West:

Corner (400 Park Ave S): For years, there's been talk of replacing the parking lot here with a futuristic building by French architect Christian de Portzamparc-- an asymmetric crystalline structure that would be much more interesting than the usual bland residential high-rise.

386 (corner): A 20-story building from 1927

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SUBWAY: 6 to 33rd Street

387 (corner): This building, with the Puerto Rico-based Doral Bank on the ground floor, was the long-time home of Marvel Comics. Now it has the offices of Wine Spectator and Cigar Aficionado magazines, as well as Basic Books.

West:

New York Life Building

372: A 1928 building by Cass Gilbert, the designer of the Woolworth Tower; the rooftop pyramid is a trademark.

Built on site of New York, New Haven & Hartford Depot, which in 1871 became P.T. Barnum's Hippodrome, later Gilmore's Garden, a roofless three-story arena that the Vanderbilt family turned into the original Madison Square Garden. This was torn down and rebuilt in 1890 to a design by Stanford White--considered his masterwork. Topped by Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Diana (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; a smaller copy is at the Met). In 1906, White was shot and killed in the Roof Garden by Harry K. Thaw, jealous husband of White's former mistress Evelyn Nesbit.

What would become the Westminster Kennel Show began here in 1877. Jumbo the elephant was presented by Barnum at the old Garden in 1882; heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan was indicted for "fighting without weapons" after a bout there with the British champ in 1884. In 1895, the rebuilt Garden was the site of the first U.S. cat show, and in 1900 of the first U.S. auto show. In 1913 it hosted the Patterson Strike Pageant, organized by Mabel Dodge and Big Bill Haywood, directed by John Reed with scenery painted by John Sloan. The longest Democratic convention in history was held here in 1924, picking John W. Davis after 17 days and 103 ballots.

In the building's northeast corner, at No. 378, is Houston's, a fancy American restaurant. Also on this block are the Graphic Service Bureau and the Park Avenue Floratique.

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Corner (381 Park Ave S): The Fourth Avenue Building--dating back to 1910, before Park Avenue South was renamed. Impressive gilding. Primehouse, steaks, was a fratty sports bar called the Park Avenue Country Club.

377: The Towanda Building houses the Park Avenue Bistro, formerly Lite Delights

373: Dos Caminos features a huge selection of tequila--perhaps the largest in New York.

365 (corner): Hotel Giraffe, named for the building's slender form; includes the restaurant Barna, owned by the Dorrian family, whose bars have a history of involvement with notorious murders. The name reminds me of the Irish folk song "Home by Barna" (or "Bearna")--a creepy association considering the young women who have failed to make it home from the Dorrian's establishments. Formerly Chinoiserie.

West:

360: Lerner Building

350: This four-story holdout houses the Taza Cafe & Cafe.

346: The Provident Loan Society has got to be one of the fanciest pawnshops in the world, with a main office designed in 1909 by Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker. The Society is a non-profit created in 1893 by leading financiers like J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt to provide an alternative to unscrupulous pawnbrokers.

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345-355 (block): A 12-story neo-gothic cube. At No. 345 are the National Law Journal and the New York Law Journal.

Corner (101 E 25th): Megabank branch is on the site of Henry James' last home in the United States, where he lived in 1875 when he began his first novel, Roderick Hudson.

West:

334: George B. Post had a now-demolished building at this address.

Met Life North Building

330 (block): Built in 1929 to provide more space for the insurance company next door; 100 stories were planned, but the Great Depression stopped it at 29, leaving it looking something like the Tower of Babel. Expansions took over the entire block by 1950. Considered an Art Deco masterwork with its amazing corner arcades. Now houses Credit Suisse/First Boston; Price Waterhouse is also a tenant. Griffin Dunne works here in After Hours, as does Amanda Plummer in The Fisher King.

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333-335: These buildings were the design offices and manufacturing facilities of the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Co. from 1881 to 1905. The corner is vandalized by a Citibank branch.

329-331: Was Sage

325: Ashby's

323 (corner): Park Deli & Salad Bar

West:

Met Life Building

Block: This was the site of the National Academy of Design (1865-99). Replaced by the present structure, a 1957 redesign of the 1893 Metropolitan Life Building. The tower, designed by Napoleon LeBrun & Sons in 1909, was the world's tallest building for four years (until the Woolworth Tower).

SUBWAY: 6 to Union Square

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315 (corner): The Ashland House was a popular hotel here from 1869 until the 1890s. Now a neoclassical building whose facade boasts bas reliefs of Hercules and Minerva.

The Dionysian

303 (corner): The building with New York Burger, Pax Wholesome Foods was named by Isadora Duncan, who lived and taught dance in this building from 1914-15.

West:

304 (corner): The Kenny Building's first 11 stories were completed in 1904, an Italian Renaissance design by Clinton & Russell. A penthouse--a single studio the height of two stories--was added in 1916 for artist Jules Guerin, who painted murals for the Lincoln Memorial here. An adjacent penthouse was added in 1925 by the building's then-owner Bill Kenny for his friend, Gov. Al Smith, to use as a political clubhouse. Known as the Tiger Room (for the "Tammany Tigers"), it was decorated in tiger skins and featured the likes of Al Jolson and Will Rogers as entertainment.

The modeling firm IMG, which represents the likes of Heidi Klum and Gisele Bundchen, now has penthouse offices here. Bath & Body Works on the ground floor.

300 (corner): The Mills & Gibb Building, a 15-story building from 1910 designed by Starrett & Van Vleck for the Mills and Gibb linen store. Note waterbaby carvings. Built on the site of the 4th Avenue Presbyterian Church. Wilhelmina, a modeling firm founded in 1967 by model Wilhelmina Cooper, is based here.

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295: The Park 23 was built in 1892 as the offices of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, designed by Renwick, Aspinwall & Renwick. Note children, infinity-shaped wreaths near top. Converted to apartments in 1982, the structure houses Tossed, fancy salads, and Blue Pink Accessories.

United Charities Building

287 (corner): This building was built in 1891 to an R.H. Robertson design and had three stories added in 1897. The Provident Loan Society was launched here in 1894, and the NAACP was founded here on May 31, 1909.

West:

276-278 (corner): Gramercy Place was the 1894 Bank for Savings (as the stone still notes), saved from demolition in 1987 by the placement of a high-rise apartment on top. Associated Supermarkets on the ground-floor corner.

270: Emma's Dilemma, deli, used to be called My Cousin Vinny; Dina Magazines has a great selection. At the corner is a showroom for the German kitchen fixture company Poggenpohl.

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Protestant Welfare Agencies Building

281: This lovely 1894 building was originally the (Episcopal) Church Missions House. Note frieze above the entrance depicting St. Augustine preaching to the Saxons, and Bishop Seabury preaching to the Indians— we were heathens once too, is the message.

275: Chapel Bar, a hidden members-only bar in a striking 19th century chapel space.

Calvary Church

273: Designed by James Renwick Jr. in 1846; diarist George Templeton Strong called it "a miracle of ugliness." It was the Roosevelt family's church (including Teddy and Eleanor). Rev. Edward Washburn, rector here from 1865-81, was the model for Dr. Ashmore in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, got many of the ideas behind the 12 Steps from Samuel Shoemaker, rector here in the 1930s.

This church was used as Clinton Church, the church where Matt Murdock hides out in in the Daredevil TV show.

West:

260 (corner): This building, which houses the United Federation of Teachers, added four stories c. 2006 in the same neo-Gothic style--proving that they can build them pretty much like they used to.

254 (corner): A 13-story Beaux Arts building from 1913 that in 2012 became the home of ex-Congressmember Anthony Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin. Their apartment here is owned by Democratic donor and American Jewish Congress head Jack Rosen.

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257 (corner): Gramercy Park Building is a 20-story Warren & Wetmore design from 1913. Note fancy entrances, shell and urn motifs.

251 (corner): Carved heads overlook arches on top three floors.

West:

250: Barbounia, fancy Mediterranean, was Patria, pricey Nuevo Latino. The building is a 1911 Rouse & Goldstone design.

240 (corner): 2forty, a 2007 residential development by Gwathmey & Siegel, could look a lot worse. It replaced some of the last small-scale buildings on Park Avenue South, including a charming four-story tenement with a pagoda-like cornice that housed Via Emilia, formerly Trattoria I Pagliaci.

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249 (corner): L'Express, 24-hour French bistro.

243: Multi-colored restaurant is trendy Sushi Samba

239: The Original Big Daddy's Diner, pan-nostalgic eatery opened in 2005, was Chango, Mexican. Azuki Sushi is at the same address. The building, featuring lions' heads holding wreaths on the top floor, is by Frederick C. Zobel and dates to 1912.

235 (corner): City Crab & Seafood Company, bi-level restaurant opened 1993

West:

Parker Building

230 (corner): Some of the first radio broadcasts originated here, transmitted by Lee De Forest, radio pioneer. The building, which dates to 1895, was also the American Lithographic Co. The Lemon, good date restaurant, used to be here.

A gated archway here leads to a private courtyard.

222 (corner): Was Alkit Pro Camera, est. 1934

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233 (corner): Angelo & Maxie's, named for the place where the "daffydills" entertain in the song "Lullaby of Broadway," is the flagship of a newish steakhouse chain. On this site there used to be a cycloramic painting called The Falls of Niagara--50 feet high and 400 feet in circumference. Earlier it had been a painting of the Battle of Gettysburg. The current structure, an attractive red brick office building, was apparently built in connection with the American Woolen Building next door. The Port Authority moved offices here after September 11.

225 (corner): The American Woolen Building is a 1909 structure designed by R.H. Robertson for the American Woolen Company; note ram heads. Now home to the magazine Institutional Investor. Wildwood BBQ is on the ground floor, in the space that used to be Barca 18 and Park Avalon. The rooftop was used in Spider-Man 2.

West:

220 (corner): Haru, Japanese, was Choice, American; earlier Nong and Aleutia-- four restaurants since the Songlines started in 2001. In the Bradley Building, an attractive brick-and-limestone structure with nine floors, built c. 1900.

Everett Building

200 (corner): Built in 1908 to a Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck design, this skyscraper's functionalist design was a forerunner of things to come. Union Square Magazine Shop has many foreign mags; Union Bar & Lounge is a stylish yuppie cocktail lounge; Rothman's clothing store is in a former Chase bank branch, selling suits in the basement vault.

Built on the site of the Everett Hotel, a popular bunk for entertainers, named for orator Edward Everett, who gave the two-hour speech at Gettysburg that was immediately forgotten. On November 7, 1876, it threw a victory party for Democratic presidential candidate Samuel Tilden--who had his victory stolen by Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.

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215 (corner): Site of the Clarendon Hotel, built 1846, designed by James Renwick and financed by William B. Astor. Peter Cooper and Cyrus Field met here in 1854 with other investors to raise money for the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. The first member of the Russian royal family to visit the United States, Grand Duke Alexis, stayed here in 1871 on his way West to hunt bison. Composer Anton Dvorak stayed here while his house on 17th Street was being prepared. The hip-hop magazine The Source has its offices in the present building, an impressive 1914 structure by Maynicke & Franke.

213: Was Max's Kansas City, once the coolest rock club in NYC--and perhaps the world. The Velvet Underground and New York Dolls played there regularly; it was a hang-out for Lou Reed and Andy Warhol's crowd, and art and literary bigs like Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, Phillip Glass, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg. David Bowie met Iggy Pop there; Debbie Harry was a waitress. For a time Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe used to sit on the curb outside because they weren't considered cool enough to be let in. Now a Bread & Butter, a bakery.

W Union Square

201 (corner): Swanky hotel houses Todd English's Olives and the subterranean Underbar. The building with its four-story mansard roof was built in 1911 for the Germania Life Insurance Co.; when World War I prompted a name change, Guardian Life was chosen because several letters could be re-used in the building's expensive light-up sign. Theodore Dreiser rented an office here in 1925 to finish An American Tragedy.

West:

Union Square

Union Square was not named for the North or for labor, but for the fact this stretch of roadway can be construed to be part of both Broadway and what was once the Bowery, at that time Broadway's rival as NYC's main street. In the city plan of 1811, Broadway was supposed to be eliminated north of 14th Street, permanently uniting it with Fourth Avenue. Fortunately, NYC was unable to raise money to reroute Broadway, saving Manhattan from complete predictability.

Union Square has a rich political history: 250,000 gathered to support Union during the Civil War (1861), the largest crowd ever assembled in North America up to that point; the first U.S. labor day parade (1882); Emma Goldman arrested for telling unemployed to steal bread (1893); a funeral march for Triangle Shirtwaist Fire victims (1911); protests against Sacco & Vanzetti's execution (1927), and against the Rosenbergs' (1953). After the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, Union Square became a spontaneous center of grieving and peace vigils.

Lafayette Statue

The statue of Lafayette is by Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty; he made this statue to remind New York of Franco-American friendship as part of his campaign to raise money for Liberty's pedestal. The statue ought to be facing the statue of Washington, to whom he's offering his sword; as it is, he seems to be pledging his loyalty to a tree.

Washington Statue

The 1856 statue of George Washington by Henry Kirke Brown (assisted by John Quincy Ward) was formerly on the traffic island next to 4th Avenue, where it supposedly marked the actual spot where Washington greeted the citizens of New York when he liberated the city from British rule after the Revolutionary War, on November 25, 1783. Back then, though, the junction of Broadway and Bowery was probably closer to where the statue is now.

The south end of the square in particular is one of Manhattan's great public spaces, a haven for political ranters, skateboarders and breakdancers--and for those who want to watch the passing scene. The Critical Mass bicycle rallies gather here on the last Friday of every month --though police repression has taken much of the fun out of it. There's a craft fair here every year in December.

SUBWAY:
Uptown:
6 to 23rd Street
4/5 to 42nd Street/Grand Central
N/R to 23rd Street
Downtown:
6 to Astor Place
4/5 to City Hall
N/R to 8th Street
Crosstown:
L to 6th Avenue
L to 3rd Avenue

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Tammany Hall

44 (corner): The last headquarters of the corrupt political club that dominated NYC politics for decades. The club was named for an Indian chief whose anti-English policies appealed to the largely Irish-American New York pols. The structure, designed to resemble New York's Federal Hall, was built in 1929 on the site of the Westmoreland Apartment House, where abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison died May 24, 1879. For a time it was the HQ of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. It now houses the New York Film Academy movie-making school and the Union Square Theater, in the auditorium where journalist Nellie Bly lectured after her trip around the world in 72 days; The Laramie Project debuted here in May 2000.

42: Barocco Kitchen is in a one-story squeezed-in building.

38: Maoz, one of two U.S. branches of an Amsterdam-based vegetarian chain, is in a boring brown brick box.

40 (corner): In the same building was Disc-o-Rama, said to have the best CD bargains in town.

E 16TH ST       ===>

34 (corner): Was Zen Palate, stylish vegetarian. I had a grudge against this place because they tried to make a friend pay for a meal that gave him a life-threatening allergic reaction.

32: Park South Plaza

20 (corner): Daryl Roth Theater, built in 1905 as the Union Square Savings Bank ("formerly the Institution for the Savings of Merchants' Clerks"). This rather squished Greek temple was designed by Henry Bacon, architect of the Lincoln Memorial. The theater was the long-time home of audience-flying De La Guarda.

E 15TH ST       ===>

Corner: Union Square Hotel was at the southeast corner of 15th and Union Square West. Single-tax advocate Henry George died here October 29, 1897.

Zeckendorf Towers

Block (1 Irving Place):

Complex topped by pyramids was built by Davis, Brody & Assocs. in 1987 on the site of S. Klein's department store, bargain mecca for generations (slogan: "On the Square"). Actress Kelly McGillis has lived in has lived in the Zeckendorf; Beth Israel's Phillips Ambulatory Care Center is here.

West:

Corner: Goes by the fake address of 1 Union Square South; this side features an outlet of the egregious Circuit City chain. Like most of the new buildings on this stretch of 14th, it was designed by Davis Brody Bond architects (1999). No. 56, on this site, used to be the Union Square Theater, where Oscar Wilde's Vera premiered, the only production of any of his plays in America that he oversaw; it was a terrible flop.

Corner: Site of Wallack's Theater, which Newland Archer attended in Wharton's The Age of Innocence. The southeast corner of the new building, vacant for roughly eight years after it was built, is now Union Square Wines.

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145: NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies was formerly Touro College. Built on the site of Jacob Abraham's bookstore (where it moved from down the street in 1898), a shop on the famous Bookseller's Row that was used to pass messages to German spies during World War I. Earlier, this address was sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens' studio.

The two-story strip mall here has NYU offices on top. Includes:

143: Artisan Spa

141: Union Square One Stop Tobacco News & Cafe

135: Young Chow, Chinese take-out

West:

132 (corner): The building that used to be the Peridance Center was gutted and transformed into the base for a hotel by Sam Chang. Ground floor was was Plaid, a rock club inhabiting the space of Spa, the nightspot where Vince Vaughan met Puff Daddy in Made. Formerly The Cat Club. Also known as as Plaid, where Courtney Love was arrested for allegedly assaulting a patron on March 18, 2004. The club closed shortly thereafter.

124: Pie, oblong pizza, sold by the pound. Recommended.

Alabaster Bookshop

122: The last used bookstore on Bookseller's Row (not counting The Strand, which is in a class by itself).

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Corner: Brother's Deli is a one-story taxpayer that seems to have taken a bite out of the building that surrounds it.

127: Hancock Building (1897), formerly Hamacher Schlemmer. "What a delight!" says the AIA Guide, which doesn't often gush. Includes Forum, which seems to be inspired by Vegas' Caesar's Palace, and used to be Pop, styley bar.

123: Panorama Galleries, antiques

115 (corner): The Petersfield apartments are in the Fish Building; Petersfield was the name of the Stuyvesant estate, and the Fishes are a branch of the Stuyvesant family. There's a branch of Crunch Fitness here.

West:

112 (corner): Folksinger Pete Seeger lived at a previous building on this corner in 1941; Woody Guthrie stayed with him for a week.

116: Shoe repair shop. I'll bet New York has more of these per capita than any other big American city.

114: Paradis To-Go, cafe

112: Salvation Army Thrift Store in a cool cast-iron building.

110: Far Fetched--cards, gifts

108: Was Gothic Renaissance, sexy goth clothing Artist Alfred Leslie had a loft here, where along with photographer Robert Frank he directed the film Pull My Daisy, based on a play by Jack Kerouac and featuring Delphine Seyrig and Beat icons like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers and David Amram.

104: Halloween Adventure --costumes, masks, magic etc.--is on the ground floor of The Renwick, an 1888 building intended to form a backdrop to James Renwick Jr.'s Grace Church. I sometimes use the store as a short-cut to Broadway.

98: Grace Church's Neighborhood House (1906).

Grace Memorial House

94-96: Designed in 1883 by James Renwick Jr., who also designed Grace Church.

92: Grace Church's Clergy House (1892). Now Grace Church School (K-8).

80 (corner): This was the address of Jacob Abraham's used bookstore, the first shop on Bookseller's Row when it opened in 1893.

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111: Utrecht art store is in the International Tailoring Company building and in the J.L. Taylor Building--two buildings with the same address. These date to 1921, by Starrett and Van Vleek.

103: In 1848, Herman Melville moved to a house at this address, now on the site of the post office.

Corner: Cooper Station Post Office (10003), 1930s Art Moderne. Sold its air rights to the absurdly tall NYU dorm on 12th Street.

E 11TH ST       ===>

85 (corner): Amsterdam Billiards (formerly Corner Billiards)

Corner (77 E 10th): Spice, local Thai chain, was Rosie & Ting, pleasant Chinese.

West:

Stewart House

These apartments were home to Leon Klinghoffer, the man in a wheelchair on the Achille Lauro cruise ship who was shot and pushed overboard by Palestine Liberation Front terrorists, October 8, 1985.

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Corner: Green East grocery

73: Site of Artist's Club, abstract expressionist hangout.

65: Duke & Duchess, a lounge that is ''an eclectic mixture of everything that is 1971 New York''--which apparently includes lots of faux snakeskin and crocodile leather.

63: Offices of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, a Ukrainian cultural institution.

61: The Reuben Gallery was the site of the world's first "happening," Allan Kaprow's 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, October 4, 1959.

West:

Astor Place Subway Kiosk

Many of the IRT subway entrances used to have Parisian-style kiosks on top, but the MTA decided to get rid of them all. This one was recreated in 1986 when the station below was being renovated. The beaver tiles in the station are a reference to John Jacob Astor, who made his fortune trading beaver furs for the hat industry.

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Cooper Union Engineering

This site used to be the American Bible Society, which distributed bibles by the tens of millions. Cooper Union is scheduled to replace the present less-than-inspiring structure with a high-rise, despite some community opposition.

West:

The Alamo

Tilted black cube is a 1966 sculpture by Tony Rosenthal; he's reportedly amused that spinning the cube on its pivot has become an East Village tradition, so give it a whirl.

The statue of Samuel Cox now in Tompkins Square Park was originally here. Before Lafayette Place was extended to meet Fourth Avenue, it was the site of Little St Ann's Church.

This area was once a crossroads of Indian trails, and it's become a gathering place for annual anti-Columbus protests.

<===       ASTOR PLACE

Gwathmey Astor Place

Corner (445 Lafayette Place): Astor Place: Sculpture for Living, a mirror-finished, awkwardly shaped 21-story luxury loft building designed by Charles Gwathmey, who usually designs mansions for zillionaires (e.g. Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, the guy who owns Starbucks). The land here is owned by Cooper Union.

At this corner in 1679 was the tavern and brewery of Adrian and Rebecca Corneliszen, described by a visitor as a "low pot house" "resorted to on Sundays by all sorts of revelers." In the 1690s it was taken over by John Clapp, who started New York's first cab service. He also founded the John Club, which invited all men named John to the tavern on June 24, St. John's Eve.

82 Cooper Square: Now part of the luxury condo's plot, this was once Walt Whitman's address.

62: Formerly the Carl Fischer Inc. sheet music store. Much missed. Now luxury lofts.

52: Web2zone, Internet cafe, is in the oldest building on the block.

48: NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies

The Village Voice

36: Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer, this paper set the template for alternative weeklies across the country. Writers over the years have included I.F. Stone, James Baldwin, Henry Miller, e.e. cummings, Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Ginsberg, Ezra Pound, Tom Stoppard and Lorraine Hansberry.

34: Gyu-Kaku Japanese barbecue--a U.S. outpost of a chain with 800 restaurants in Japan

32: In the late 19th Century, this was Columbia Hall, aka Paresis Hall (a reference to late-stage syphilis). According to police reports, this was a place where "male degenerates," calling themselves "Princess This and Lady So and So and the Duchess of Marlboro," would "get up and sing as women, and dance; ape the female character; call each other sisters and take people out for immoral purposes." In other words, Wigstock.

16-20: An impressive building with striking red brick arches. At No. 18 is Lost City Arts, architectural antiques; No. 16 houses Kaplan Educational Centers, a standardized test coaching chain owned by the Washington Post.

2 (corner): A luxury apartment building built in 2010 in the retro faux-industrial style of the Bowery Hotel. It's actually pretty nice-looking--but perhaps not nice enough to charge up to $20,000 for a month's rent, as it reportedly tried to do. Ashley Greene, a supporting actor in the Twilight films, has reportedly lived here.

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Cooper Union

Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (1859); houses the college founded by Peter Cooper, who ran first the U.S. railroad (the Tom Thumb), helped lay trans-Atlantic telegraph cable and invented Jello. Oldest steel-framed building in United States, using Cooper's railroad rails. Cooper Union's Great Hall, dedicated to the free discussion of public issues, was site of Abraham Lincoln's "Right Makes Might" speech (1860); other speakers over the years have included Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and presidents Grant, Cleveland, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson and Bill Clinton--not to mention Barack Obama. The NAACP had its founding conference here in 1909.

In 2013, the greed and incompetence of Cooper Union's administration led the board to vote to begin charging tuition, scuttling Cooper's vision of a free college.

E 7TH ST       ===> E

Peter Cooper Park

E 6TH ST       ===> E

35: This was a peak-roofed, twin-dormered two-and-a-half-story building built by the Stuyvesant family c. 1825--and torn down in 2011 over the strenuous objections of preservationists. Poet Diane di Prima lived here from 1962 to 1964, during which time she had a child with LeRoi Jones. The building's north wall for a time had the best September 11 mural I've seen. But Cooper Union, the building's owner, had it painted over because it was time to ''move on.''

33: Was Pizzeria Uno Mas Uno

Site of Village Karaoke

27: Not a bar, but a warren of rooms where small groups of people could sing to their friends, accompanied by wonderfully cheesy 1980s-style videos. Poets LeRoi Jones lived on the top floor from 1962-65; his now ex-wife and fellow poet Hettie Cohen Jones still lives here. Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp was also a resident. While neighboring buildings were torn down for the construction of the Cooper Square Hotel, residents here declined to be bought out, and the hotel instead incorporated the tenement into its design.

The Standard

A 23-story high-end hotel with a futuristic glass-clad form that's been likened to a shark's fin. To my eye, this is a much more attractive building than the Sculpture for Living at Astor Place. Initially opened in 2009 as the Cooper Square Hotel, it was rebranded as The Standard (part of a schmancy chain) in 2011 after the original owners ran into difficulty.

E 5TH ST       ===> E

Block (200 E. 5th): Evelyn & Louis Green Residence, a project of the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged.

5: This was the original site of the Five Spot, a legendary jazz club that opened in the 1940s as a Bowery dive. By the 1950s it was regularly featuring the likes of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, David Amram, Billie Holiday, Charlie Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, etc. Lou Reed used to come here to watch Coleman and Taylor play in the late 1950s. It moved in 1962 to 2 St. Marks.

West:

B Bar and Grill

358: This Gulf station-turned-model hangout, formerly known as Bowery Bar, was the widely resented harbinger of the Bowery's gentrification when it opened in 1994.

356: The Marquee, Marion's performance space. Downstairs is the M&R Bar, formerly The Slide (named for the city's first recorded gay bar). Artist Cy Twombly lived on the third floor here in the 1960s.

354: Marion's Continental, old-style cocktail lounge/restaurant. Opened in 1950, closed in 1973, and recreated (by Marion Nagy's son) in 1990.

352: Noho Lighting and Electrical Supply Co.

350: White, vintage furniture. Composer Bela Bartok lived at this address in the 1940s.

348 (corner): Downtown Auto & Tire

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359 (corner): Phoebe's Tavern & Grill; long-running post- CBGB's hangout has gone back to its roots, abandoning its loungey ''Fuel at Phoebe's'' pretensions.

357: Sorta spooky building with a faded ad on the facade.

355A: Bowery Food Convenience

355: Orange Valve Restaurant & Bar

351-353: A 2007 15-story condo

Corner: Salvation Army East Village Residence, since 1951.

West:

344: Sala, old-world tapas bar

342: Downtown Music Gallery sells avant-jazz and other cutting-edge music.

Bowery's Whitehouse Hotel

340: One of the Bowery's last flophouses is now a surprisingly spiffy youth hostel.

334: Was Bowery Tattoo, closed c. 2007

332: Steve's on the Bowery grocery/deli

Bouwerie Lane Theatre

330: The landmark 1874 cast-iron building, by Henry Engelbert, was originally the Atlantic Savings Bank; later the Bond Street Savings Bank and the German Exchange Bank. It became a theater in 1963, and was from 1974 until 2007 the home of the Jean Cocteau Repertory, a leading Off-Broadway company that specialized in classic dramas. Now an upscale clothing store.

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Bowery Hotel

335 (corner): A luxury hotel on the Bowery, with decor evoking the (old) Gilded Age. The oddly torqued building itself is remarkable--one of the few new developments in the area that attempts to match rather than mock the architecture of its historic neighborhood--and quite successfully, I would say.

333: Renewal at Kenton Hall, a mission

331: The address of Great Gildersleeves, a noted rock club from 1979-83. Elvis Costello, Public Image Ltd., Husker Du, Sonic Youth (their second gig), Black Flag, Beastie Boys etc. played here. Named for a 1940s radio serial.

329: Bowery Video

327: Bowery Electric, rock bar in the space that used to be Remote Lounge, strangely compelling bar where customers watched each other on closed-circuit TVs.

Corner (2 E 2nd): Kelley and Peng, local noodle chain, was Daily Chow, Mongolian barbecue. Earlier was The Tin Palace, a noted jazz club from 1970 until c. 1975, when it became a go-go joint. It reopened for a time as a jazz club in 1978, with critic Stanley Crouch doing the booking. The club's co-owner, Paul Pines, wrote a mystery set there called The Tin Angel.

West:

Corner (57 Bond): Noho Lofts, described by a reader as an "eyesore of six floors of ultramodern condos sticking out like a big glass-and-steel sore thumb in this historic neighborhood." There used to be a Sunoco gas station at this corner.

324: Agozar, Cuban restaurant and lounge

Corner (1 Bleecker): Was Rafe, high-end bag and shoe shop

316 (corner): Mannahatta, the former Astor Lounge redesigned to be loungier. Takes its name from a Walt Whitman poem that begins, "I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city." Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid.

310: Crime Scene, a bar named in bad taste

Bowery Poetry Club

308: Yes, a club on the Bowery devoted to poetry. Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid.

304: Slainte, Irish bar

302: Favorita Espresso Machines is now Patricia Fields, glam clothing

300: Once was Bat's Hats, a factory; later the Excelsior Hotel, a flophouse.

294-298: Chef Restaurant Supply Co. has some of the best prices in the district on knives, skillets, etc.

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321 (corner): Otto Maurer's Magical Bazaar was in "the cellar of a grimy old house" here from about 1868 to 1900. It may have been the first such store in New York. Now 1-19 E. 2nd Street.

Amato Opera

319: A Lower East Side cultural landmark, founded 1948 and moved here in 1964

317: The Bowery Residents Committee. This was the Arcade, an 1890 lodging house.

Site of CBGB & OMFUG

315: It used to be The Palace Bar, the bar of the Palace Hotel flophouse, which was overhead. In December 1973 Hilly Kristal opened it under the acronym that stood for "Country Blue Grass Blues & Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers."

That was the kind of music the club intended to book, but a strange rock band called Television talked themselves into a gig, and later played a second show double-billed with The Ramones. In 1975, Patti Smith did four shows a week here for seven weeks. Later Blondie and Talking Heads got their starts here; the latter refer to the club in the song "Life During Wartime." I saw five people from my hometown of Libertyville, Illinois play here in something like seven different bands.

Despite strenuous efforts to keep it open, the club closed in 2006, evicted by its landlord, a homeless shelter. Now John Varvatos, who I guess sells shoes or something, has a boutique here.

313: CB's 313 Galley, CBGB's artier annex.

E 1ST ST       ===>

Avalon Bowery Place

Corner (11 E. 1st): This 2007 development, associated with the larger Avalon Chrystie Place across Houston, spelled the destruction of two historic structures despite the strenuous efforts of neighborhood residents. (See below.) On the plus side, fears that construction would doom the adjacent Liz Christy Garden proved unfounded; the garden seems to be thriving.

Site of McGurk's Suicide Hall

295: Advertised itself as the roughest joint in town (1895-1902); working conditions were so horrific that at least five backroom girls killed themselves by drinking carbolic acid. Later the Liberty Hotel. Torn down in 2005, after residents fought a losing battle to save the historic building from demolition.

Site of Volksgarten

293-291: In the 19th Century, a gathering place for the German-American community that once dominated this neighborhood. Later Wesley Hall, a notable Bowery mission, which was renamed Hadley Hall after Samuel Hadley, the Civil War vet who ran the mission for many years. A venue for labor meetings. For the past 40 years it has housed Stanton Trading, a restaurant supply company. It too was demolished in 2005--respresenting a failure of the Landmark Commission to preserve New York's historic buildings.

Liz Christy Garden

Corner: This beautiful sanctuary, is named for one of the founders of the Green Guerrillas, helped inspire the community garden movement in NYC when it was started in 1973. Features a rare dawn redwood and a turtle pond. Recently saved from being paved over for an unnecessary extension of 1st Street, it survived the construction of Avalon Bowery Place and actually got some funding from the developers to expand into unused space all the way to 2nd Avenue.

West:

Corner: Adams Co. Restaurant Equipment Supply. The Bowery restaurant supply district has been around since the 1930s; one theory is that Skid Row's residents provided a steady supply of cheap labor to unload crates of plates and other heavy wares.

280: Was the Uncle Sam Hotel and Eureka House, two 1890 lodging houses

276: Feature, Inc. art gallery

270: Was Majestic House, lodgings

268: Roger & Sons Food Service Equipment

266: Globe Slicers, new and rebuilt--since 1947. From 1973-75, Deborah Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie lived here; their place became a sort of clubhouse for bands playing at CBGBs.

264: Kos, a members-only club owned by Lenny Kravitz and Denzel Washington. The name is Persian slang meaning ''pussy.''

262: Was Schirmer's Hotel

258: Home of the performance space Dixon Place. I saw Samuel Delaney and John Crowley, two of my favorite writers, read here one night.

250: Paragon Restaurant World, since 1933. Being replaced by an eight-story hotel.

248: Kinco Bakery Showcases & Supplies has a model kitchen for demonstrating baking techniques.

246: Bow Martial Arts

240: Bari Restaurant & Pizzeria Equipment Corp., since 1950--named for the owning family's ancestral town in Italy. Has all your pizzeria needs, including those life-size pizza chef statues.

238: Albanese Meats & Poultry

Corner (1 Prince): Bari Gallery Furnishings

W <===         PRINCE ST

In 1832, the world's first streetcar ran from this intersection to Union Square.

230: Prince New and Used Restaurant Equipment Supplies

226-228: Economy Refrigeration, Heating and Ventilation Supply

The Bunker

222: This 1884 Queen Anne building was the Young Men's Institute, the first YMCA branch in New York City; after the Y moved out in 1932, painter Fernand Leger used it as a studio in 1940-41, and writer William Burroughs used the locker room as his "Bunker" (1975-81), which he shared with painter Mark Rothko. Later the loft was home to abstract expressionist Michael Goldberg, who died here in 2008. The ground floor is Chairs & Stools Etc.

220: City Restaurant Equipment Corps

218: Prince Hotel, flophouse whose owners plan to convert it to luxury condos. At the same address is the Pioneer Bar, reflecting the gentrifiers' self-image as brave frontiersmen.

216: Century Kitchen Equipment Inc.

212: Vegas Co. Bakery Pizzeria and Restaurant Equipment

210: Marks Restaurant Equipment is jammed to the ceiling with kitchen bargains and oddities. Was Sam Tell in the City Food Service Equipment & Supplies.

208: Chair Factory

206: J&D Restaurant Equipment Corp.

204: Admor Restaurant Supplies

202: Paul Ruggiero

200: Supplies Corp.

Germania Bank Building

190 (corner): Built in 1898, designed by Robert Maynicke. Long abandoned by 1966, when it was bought by photographer Jay Maisel, who still lives there with his wife and daughter, the sole occupants of the building's 72 rooms. (Roy Lichtenstein rented out the fourth floor for a while.) The exterior is often used as a canvas for street art; Keith Haring used to chalk babies on it.

Maisel's purchase is seen as a real-estate fairy tale: His $102,000 purchase is now worth $30-50 million. But it was a very different neighborhood in those days: ''Every single thing that can come out of a human body has been left on my doorstep,'' Maisel said.

W <===         SPRING ST

As many as a thousand New Yorkers, victims of an elaborate practical joke, showed up here in August 1824, ready to take part in a project that would saw Manhattan off its bedrock so that the island could be reversed and the "sagging" Battery connected to the Bronx.

188 (corner): A brick building also known as 2-4 Spring.

184: All Care Business Machines

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Avalon Chrystie Place

A long-vacant lot transformed into a residential development that also provides space for the Chinatown YMCA and a University Settlement community office. At the corner with Houston used to be Fred Bunz's hash house, which Jack Kerouac called "the great bum's Howard Johnsons of the Bowery." Pig brains were 15 cents.

275: Was The Nassau, aka The Star, 1890 lodging house

269: M. Levin Inc. Showcases, retail displays since 1901

267: Site of Sammy's Bowery Follies, where tourists could see ''a collection of old-timers, eccentrics, geeks and the more presentable of the bums'' (Low Life). Earlier was John McGurk's The Mug, where the drinks came with knockout drops.

263: Worldwide Food Industry Equipment is on the site of the Hotz Assembly Rooms.

259: Satellite Records, well-stocked dance-music store.

257: In the 1850s, this was the address of the Bowery Concert Hall (later the Melodeon), which offered "Music for the Million." It was also the Palace of Illusions, featuring Lady Mephistopheles.

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245: Bari Restaurant Equipment Depot

241: Sunshine Hotel, flophouse that was once the residence of cannibal Daniel Rakowitz.

New Museum of Contemporary Art

235: Former SoHo institution opened in 2007 in a stylish stack of zinc boxes designed by Sejima + Nishizawa, Tokyo museum specialists. I feel like a party pooper pointing out that the Lower East Side is one of America's most historic neighborhoods --development like this means the Landmarks Commission is not doing its job. Once the address of the London Theater, variety.

231: Daroma Restaurant Equipment; "7 Floors of Restaurant & Kitchen Equipment and Supplies"

Bowery Mission

227-229: A Christian relief effort started in 1879.

225: Salvation Army Chinatown Corps

219-221: Chair Up Inc., restaurant furniture

217: Mission, swanky bar that offers $200 bottle service. The irony curdles.

215 (corner): A&P Restaurant and Deli Equipment

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213: Regent Restaurant Equipment

209: Balter Sales Company has bargains on designer tableware.

207: Congee Bowery, 2005 spinoff of Allen Street's Congee Village. Was Mazer Kitchen Equipment, since 1946. This address was the Comanche Club, the clubhouse of Big Tim Sullivan, Tammany Hall's boss of the Bowery. Of its 1892 opening, the New York Times wrote: "Among those present were Mr. 'Silver Dollar' Smith, Mr. 'Dry Dollar' Sullivan ...and Barney Rourke, the Napoleon of down-town politics." Earlier it was Bertrand Myer's concert saloon, of which an 1890 guidebook noted, "The place is crowded with women nightly, who smoke cigarettes and drink gin."

201: This was the address of Tony Pastor's Opera House, where vaudeville was invented. Later it was the site of the People's Theater, associated with such Yiddish theater greats as Boris Thomashefsky, Rudolph Schildkraut and Max Gabel. Abraham Goldfaden's 1908 funeral drew 75,000 people here.

199: NoLIta Place, luxury apartments named for the North of Little Italy acronym. On the ground floor is a sprawling club complex called BLVD, which includes a basement music space called Crash Mansion.

197: Andrews Hotel; rooms at this flophouse went for $9 a night in 2002.

195: Janos Gat gallery

193: Advance Kitchen Supplies, noted for its wide array of cooking pots, is on the site of Military Hall, a historic assembly space. "Here, in the 1840s, New York City policemen first agreed to wear uniforms and in 1863 the tinsmiths of New York founded the first sheet-metal workers union in the country. In 1868 a group of actors and entertainers founded the Elks, and in 1892 the radical Emma Goldman defended her lover's assassination attempt on Henry Clay Frick."--Curious Shopper's Guide

191: Leader Restaurant Equipment, beautiful imported goods from China and Japan.

185: Was the Savoy Hotel--a flophouse.

183: Bowery Restaurant Supply was The Puritan Hotel, another flophouse-- you could get a room here for 40 cents in 1939.

West:

174: This is the address of Moe, the stool pigeon in Pickup on South Street.

166: Oggi Lighting, designer fixtures from Spain and Italy. The Bowery's lighting district dates back to the 19th Century, when such businesses served the street's then-thriving theater district.

158: Lighting by Gregory, the biggest and one of the best of the many light-fixture stores on the Bowery.

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173 (corner): Lighting Craftsman boasts the biggest selection of Tiffany-style lamps on the East Coast.

169: Was the address of Miner's Bowery Theater. "The entertain- ments given are of a reputable sort, but boisterous," said a guidebook of the time. Now Weiss Hardware.

167: Sino Carpet, New York Store Fixture Co. were the Crystal Hotel.

163: Upstairs from Golt Lighting & Cookware, where you can buy six-foot light-up metal palm trees, is the Malaysia Association. Starting in 1961, the studio of minimalist painter Robert Ryman, where he created many of his major works.

161: European Crystal Chandeliers

155: O'Lampia Studio may be the best lighting store in New York-- but pricey.

153 (corner): This six-story, yellow-and-grey luxury condo went up in 2003. Is Oggi Lighting still here?

West:

Sohotel

148 (corner): A former flophouse that is New York's longest continuously-operated hotel-- operating since at least 1805 under a variety of names, including the Westchester, New Bull's Head, Occidental, Commercial and, more recently, Pioneer. As the Military and Civic Hotel in 1835, it was the headquarters of the Democratic Party's Anti-Monopoly faction. Now houses New York Lighting, chandelier artists.

144: New Generation Lighting, specializing in recess lighting.

142: Light Visions

140: A surviving Federal-style townhouse houses Classic Lighting.

138: Sovereign Lighting, high-end lighting systems for less

136: Light Visions II is in another Federal townhouse.

134: Bowery Interiors is also in a Federal townhouse.

132: Bowery Lighting, well-established shop noted for ornate chandeliers.

Bowery Savings Bank

130: This 1894 landmark was designed by Stanford White; it's thought to have started the fashion for banks that look like Roman temples. It replaced the original Bowery Savings Bank, built here in 1834. Now houses Capitale, an event space with 75-foot ceilings.

126: Well-Timed Wedding

124 (corner): Tu Quynh Pharmacy, recently a Citibank branch, was built in 1902 as the Bowery Bank. You might confuse it with the similarly named Bowery Savings Bank, which wraps around it in an L shape.

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151 (corner): Filaments Inc.; Arts of Dynasties

149: Royal Lighting

147: True Love Wedding Center, Chinese catering hall

143: Grand Hotel, flophouse. Formerly known as Delevan House.

141: Benny's Crystal de Light

137: Lighting Showroom features lamps in the Arts & Crafts tradition.

135: A three-story (plus dormers) Federal-style rowhouse from 1817 was recommended for protection by the Landmark Preservation Commission, but the City Council overturned the designation at the urging of neighborhood councilmember Margaret Chin. It looks like it's going to be replaced by a seven-story bank building.

133: Another Federal-style house.

131: The address of the Pig & Whistle, an 18th Century tavern.

Corner (240 Grand): Kong Kee Food Corp was Winner Coffee.

West:

Best Western Hotel

Corner (231 Grand): An existing office building was expanded to make this franchise branch in 2007. It's owned by the Wok & Roll restaurant group, which is also building the Comfort Inn on Chrystie Street.

118: New York Wedding Center

114: Address of Steve Brodie's saloon, an old Bowery character who dubiously claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge on a bet on July 23, 1883. Irving Berlin supposedly worked here. Now home to Thrust Projects, a gallery.

112: Max Morged & Sons--"successors to" King Glassware, established 1933

110: Sang Kung Restaurant Equipment

108: The site of Al's Bar, the last dive on the Bowery, which closed in 1994.

104: Site of the Roumania Opera-House

102: Triple A Noodle Manufacturing

100: Fu Wong Restaurant

98: The Village Voice named Congee "best new Chinese restaurant" in 2003.

96: Was Victoria House, 1890 lodging house

94: J&S Kitchen Equipment and Supplies; in 1890, was Palma House.

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125 (corner): Grand Street Optical, Quickly Shabu Shabu, Grand City. This corner used to be Moisha's Luncheonette. Upstairs is the Providence Hotel, a flophouse that dates back to 1895. Providence Hotel, a flophouse that dates back to 1895.

123: Century Cafe

121: Tan Tin Hung Supermarket

119: Pho Tu Do, Vietnamese; upstairs is the East Vietnam-Cambodia-Laos Chinese Descent Association.

115: Design Source by Dave Sanders, insiders' bathroom fixtures

113: International Furniture

111: Golden Dragon Boat Cafe & Bakery

107-109: Chinatown Federal Savings Bank

105: The address of Owney Geoghegan's, a late 19th Century dive known as "a rendezvous for professional mendicants." "Raw whisky was sold at ten cents the drink, and pickpockets and lush workers were always there, ready to rob the guest who passed into torpor." The "gorilla-like waiters" would fight each other in the house ring for five-dollar prizes.

101: World Hotel is at the address of Worth's Museum, a 19th Century exhibition of curiosities--including the remains of a rare giant squid.

97: Rice & Spice Thai Cuisine was Big Eat.

95 (corner): Bowery Pharmacy

West:

88 (corner): Diamond Corner is the beginning of a strip of diamond stores here.

86: Corallo Jewelry Center

84: Royal Jewelry Center

82: Paramount Diamond Center

80: International Jewelers

78: 78 Bowery Jewelry Exchange

76: Diamond Center

72: Was Uncas House, 1890 lodging house

70 (corner): New York Jewelers Exchange

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91-93 (corner): Was the Music Palace, the last Chinese-language movie theater in Chinatown; it went dark in 2000 and was demolished in 2006. In 1919, it was the Universal cinema.

85: Gold Fortune Corp.

83: Was The Ardmore, 1890s lodging house.

81: The New York Times describes this as "about the cheapest place to stay in Manhattan": a loft where some 35 Chinese immigrants pay $100-$200 a month for a bed in a tiny cubicle.

75-79: Der Morgen Zhornal, a Yiddish daily, started publishing at this address in 1901. 77 is now the Chinese American Bank; 79 is Kowloon Bay Inc., a grocery, and the Bowery Lodge.

West:

Citizen's Savings Bank

58 (corner): HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Company), most recently Republic National Bank, was built for Citizen's in 1924. The huge bronze dome is a Chinatown landmark.

50: The Atlantic Garden opened here in 1858, and by 1908 it had expanded to Nos. 52-54 as well. Herbert Asbury called it "the most famous of the early Bowery beer halls.... Upstairs and down it provided seats for more than a thousand, and two four-horse drays, working ten hours a day, were scarely able to keep the customers supplied with fresh beer from the brewery." By 1927, it was a movie palace.

Site of Bulls Head Tavern

46-48: Here George Washington partied with General George Clinton after the pair liberated New York from the British on November 25, 1783.

Later, in 1826, the Bowery Theater opened on this site, the first gaslit theater. The first ballet performance in the U.S. took place here on February 7, 1827; H.M.S. Pinafore had its U.S. debut here on June 16, 1879. A mob ransacked the theater on July 9, 1834, in search of British actor George Percy Farren, who had supposedly made anti-American remarks. The theater burned down and was rebuilt several times.

Bowery Boys HQ

36: The address of the Branch Hotel, home of Tom Hyer, considered the heavyweight champion of bare-knuckled boxing from 1841-51, even though he only fought two bouts-- both of which he won. His 1849 fight against Yankee Sullivan was perhaps the most famous match of the 19th Century. Afterwards, he ran the bar here.

That saloon was the headquarters of the Atlantic Guard, better known as the Bowery Boys (or B'hoys), a gang associated with the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party. When the Dead Rabbits, a mainly Irish gang, attacked here on July 4, 1857, it sparked two days of bloody rioting. The Bowery Boys inspired the film Gangs of New York--as well as a series of slapstick films of the 1940s and '50s.

30 (corner): Here was built c. 1826 the North American Hotel, which often hosted political events and was a hangout for the leading actors of its day. Later it was the Moss Hotel, latter the New England Hotel, a disreputable place where the composer Stephen Foster, in the throes of alcoholism, had a fatal accident on January 10, 1864. The composer of "Oh! Susanna," "Old Folks at Home" and "Beautiful Dreamer" died with 38 cents in his pocket. It was torn down in 1895 by the Third Avenue Railroad Company to make room for a cable car power station.

W <===         BAYARD ST

W <===         PELL ST

Edward Mooney House

18 (corner): The oldest surviving townhouse in Manhattan, it was built sometime between 1785 and 1789--in Georgian mixed with foreshadowing of Federal style. In the 1830s and '40s it housed a brothel.

16: This address was the headquarters of the Hip Sing ("Prosperous Union") Tong, one of the two main criminal organizations in Chinatown, whose territory was Pell and Doyers streets. Founded by Mock Duck, a ruthless, ever-smiling killer noted for his technique of squatting in the street and shooting in all directions with his eyes closed. The term ''hatchet man'' comes from the tongs' assassins habit of carrying hatchets in their sleeves. At the headquarters the gang's main hitman, Sing Dock aka "The Scientific Killer," was fatally shot by former protogee Yee Toy on March 12, 1911.

12: At this address, on December 30, 1909, comedian Dop Doy Hong, aka Ah Hoon, was assassinated by members of the Four Brothers crime family, which apparently didn't like his act. The legend about his killers slipping past armed guards is apparently not true.

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Manhattan Bridge Arch and Colonade

Designed by Carrere & Hastings (best known for the New York Public Library), this horseshoe-shaped arcade was built in 1910-15 to provide an impressive entrance to Manhattan. It served as the exterior of Two-Face's lair in the movie Batman Forever.

Confucius Plaza Apartments

This arcing, 44-story highrise was built in 1976 to provide Chinatown with much needed housing. Discrimination in construction hiring here sparked the formation of Asian Americans for Equality.

The complex also includes P.S. 124, Yung Wing Public School, named for the first Chinese graduate of an American university (Yale, class of 1854) and the organizer of the Chinese Educational Mission to bring students from China to study in the U.S.

49: Was the Cafe Logeling, where in 1877 the Manhattan Chess Club was founded. The nation's longest-lasting chess club, its membership included three world champions: Wilhelm Steinitz, Raul Capablanca and Bobby Fischer. It was dissolved in January 2002.

41: Was Windsor House, 1890 lodging house

37-39: Site of the Zoological Institute, a menagerie that was perhaps the U.S.'s first permanent zoo when it opened in 1821. Animal trainer Isaac Van Amburgh, said to be the first person to put his head in a lion's mouth, got his start here.

In 1835, it became the Bowery Amphitheater, where the Virginia Minstrels, who popularized blackface minstrel shows, debuted on February 6, 1843. In 1844 it was The Knickerbocker, by 1857 The Stadt Theatre.

25: Address of the Morgue Saloon, another joint where a teenaged Irving Berlin is said to have sung.

15: Was the Bowery Hotel.

9: Berlin said to have sung here, too.

Confucius Statue

This 15-foot statue depicting the founder of the Chinese ethical system, by sculptor Liu Shih, was put up in 1976 by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which until recently was sort of a private-sector local government for Chinatown. There was some controversy about honoring someone seen as a conservative cultural figure.