New York Songlines: 63rd Street

South:

Corner (60 Riverside Blvd): The Aldyn, a 40-story condo/rental hybrid from 2010. It boasts a two-lane bowling alley and a rock-climbing wall in its basement. Residents have included baseball legend Alex Rodriguez and NBA coach Jason Kidd. The penthouse was owned by a Venezuelan mogul who was on ICE's most-wanted list, who sold it to a member of the Qatar royal family.

400 (corner): The Ashley, 23 stories from 2010.

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Corner (80 Riverside Blvd): The Rushmore, twin-towered 42-story building by Costas Kondylis, built 2008.

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Block (75 West End): West End Towers is a 1994 development with a thousand apartments, named for its two towers.

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West End Park

This two-and-a-half-acre park is a privately owned public space—a public amenity created by the developers of West End Towers across the street. Noted for its sculpture of a rhinoceros balancing on their snout, watched by a nearby salamander; it's called Newton & Darwin, and it was created by artist Nobi Shioya in 1975.

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Amsterdam Houses

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243: Jazz great Thelonious Monk lived most of his adult life in this apartment building.

Samuel Bennerson Playground was built in 1945 as the Amsterdam Playground, and renamed in 1990 to honor a community leader

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Conceived in 1955 by the Mayor's Slum Clearance Committee (chaired by Robert Moses) as the centerpiece of efforts to remake the then-impoverished Lincoln Square neighborhood (the West Side of West Side Story). The Center's first president was John D. Rockefeller III; President Dwight Eisenhower broke ground for it in 1959, with its first building, Philharmonic Hall, opening in 1962 as the home of the New York Philharmonic.

Damrosch Park

The park has housed events like the Big Apple Circus and Fashion Week (from 2010–14), though neighbors complained that such activities deprived the neighborood of its park.

New York State Theater

Please don't call it the David H. Koch Theater—David Koch is a James Bond villain doing his utmost to destroy the planet.

Metropolitan Opera House

The Met, the largest repertory opera house in the world with its 3,850, was built in 1966 to replace the Metropolitan Opera's old home at Broadway and 39th Street. It was designed by Wallace Harrison, who was the lead architect for the UN complex and designed several buildings for Rockefeller Center, among other works.

The interior features two imposing murals by Marc Chagall, The Sources of Music and The Triumph of Music.

In the summer, the Met serves as home to the American Ballet Theatre.

The Met features in such films as Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Moonstruck (1987) and The Producers (2005).

Lincoln Center Fountain

The focal point of Lincoln Center Plaza, the fountain was originally designed by Philip Johnson and dedicated in 1964. It was redesigned by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in 2009; the new designed doubled the height of the fountain's jets, to 60 feet.

The fountain appears in numerous films set in NYC, including The Producers (1967), Sweet Charity (1969), Godspell (1973), Manhattan (1979), Ghostbusters (1984) and Moonstruck (1987).

Photo: Wally Gobetz.

South:

Empire Hotel

1889 (corner): The original Empire Hotel on this site was an 1889 building bought by hotelier Herbert DuPuy in 1908. In 1923, DuPuy opened a new 15-story building here, complete with iconic rooftop neon sign.

Composer Aaron Copland lived here from 1936–47, where he wrote Fanfare for the Common Man and Appalachian Spring. Lyricist Al Dubin (1891–1945), who wrote the words for such standards as "42nd Street," "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," "We're in the Money," "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," "I Only Have Eyes for You" and "Lullaby of Broaday," spent the last few years of his life here.

There's a branch of the legendary PJ Clarke's saloon in the hotel.

In the TV show Gossip Girl, the hotel is owned by one of the main characters.

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Dante Park

Also here is TimeSculpture (1999) by architect Philip Johnson.

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There's a street sign on this corner designating the block of 63rd between Broadway and Central Park West as Sesame Street—because the show's offices are on the block.

1890 (block): 30 Lincoln Plaza, also known as 30 W 63rd, is a 33-story apartment building from 1978— designed, like its next-door neighbor up Broadway, by Philip Birnbaum.

From 1981 to 2018, the basement was home to Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, which showcased art house fare, both international (Fellini's City of Women opened the theater ) and domestic (Thin Blue Line and Mulholland Drive both premiered here). The building's owner, who declined to renew the Lincoln Plaza's lease, promised a cinema of some sort will return after renovations—hmph.

Breads Bakery here features the Concord Cake, a recreation of the mousse/meringue cake the owner grew up having for birthdays from Soutine on 70th Street, which closed in 2012.

22: From 1914 through 1957, there was a Thomas Lamb-designed theater here that went by several names, but was most famous as Daley's 63rd Street Theatre. Here Shuffle Along, a Black-written musical with a jazz score by Eubie Blake, premiered in 1921 and ran for 504 performances. The show helped spark the Harlem Renaissance and launched the careers of Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson, among others. (Harry Truman later used the show's "I'm Just Wild About Harry" as his campaign song.)

In 1926, Mae West's Sex premiered here; the NYPD shutting it down for obscenity helped make West a star.

Corner (25 CPW): Century Apartments, a 1931 Art Deco building that has been home to Alexis Smith, Ethel Merman, Algonquin Roundtable playwright Marc Connelly, the Gershwins' mother and Isabella Rossellini, as well as David Dunlap, the NYT's "Building Blocks" columnist.

It was built on the site of the Century Theatre, originally known as the New Theatre, built in 1906 to house a noncommerical repertory theater on the lines of Paris's Comedie Francaise; the WPA Guide called it "New York's most spectacularly unsuccessful theater." Run by Winthrop Ames, this "Temple to Snobbism" mounted only two seasons. As the Century, it was managed for a time by Florence Zeigfield, who opened a nightclub, the Cocoanut Grove, on the roof. The Carrère and Hastings–designed building was demolished in 1931.

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One Lincoln Plaza

Block (20 W 64th): Forty-three floors built in 1974, this apartment complex designed by Philip Birnbaum was the first major construction following the development of Lincoln Center, and it still dominates the area. The AIA Guide calls it a "behemoth" with "no redeeming social or architectural significance.... What an urbanistic mistake!” On the other hand, while acknowledging that its looks are "a bit prosaic," Carter Horsley says it has "excellent" form that "holds the angled street-line of Broadway very well." The arcade along Broadway features the restaurants Boulud Epicerie, Boulud Bar, Fiorello and The Smith.

Commercial tenants at One Lincoln Plaza include Sesame Workshop, the producers of Sesame Street; the actors union SAG-AFTRA; and the musical copyright enforcer ASCAP, which has been headquartered here since 1974.

15: The Park Laurel, a 41-story pyramid-topped condo towere built in 2000, designed by Beyer Blinder Belle and Costas Kondylis. It incorporates the landmarked five-story Romanesque facade of the McBurney School.

The school, a project of the West Side YMCA, was located here from 1929 until it closed its doors in 1988. Its alumni include actors Henry Winkler and Robert De Niro, physician Lewis Thomas, journalist Ted Koppel, musician Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, author J.D. Salinger, songwriter Johnny Marks, and financiers Bruce Wasserstein and Felix Rohatyn.

West Side YMCA

5: Founded in 1896, this branch of the Young Man's Christian Association moved here in 1930, into a building (now a landmark) designed by Dwight James Baum—best known as the architect of the Ringling Mansion in Sarasota, Florida. It's got 397 guestrooms (one of Manhattan's best lodging deals), a state-of-the-art gym and a large pool with mosaic tiles donated by King Alfonso of Spain.

Ethical Culture School

Corner (33 CPW): Founded as a free kinder- garten by Felix Adler in 1878, by 1880 it had expanded into the Workingman's School, which was reorganized as the Ethical Culture Schools in 1895. This brick and limestone building, designed by Carrère & Hastings (with Robert D. Kohn as associate architect), opened in 1904, and today houses the school's K-5 program. The school's high school is now in the Fieldston neighborhood in the Bronx, so it's is often referred to as the Fieldston School.

The school's startling list of alumni includes Jill Abram- son, Diane Arbus, Roy Cohn, Sofia Coppola, David Denby, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Walter Koenig, Sean Ono Lennon, Robert Moses, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Muriel Rukeyser, Gil Scott-Heron, Stephen Sondheim and Barbara Walters.

Heckscher Kickball Field

Umpire Rock

Heckscher Playground

The oldest and largest of Central Park's 22 playgrounds, it was opened in 1926 to address a perceived lack of opportunities for active play in the park.

Heckscher Ballfields

Lounging Rock

Wollman Rink

In summertime it was a concert venue, the Wollman Theater; Jean Shepherd hosted a series of jazz concerts in 1957 featuring the likes of Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and the Dave Brubeck Quartet. From 1967 to 1980, concerts here were sponsored by Rheingold, Schaefer and finally Dr. Pepper; acts included Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Bob Marley, Frank Zappa, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Miles Davis etc.

When the rink needed repair in the 1980s, Donald Trump insisted on taking control of the project, promising to donate his profits to charity. Instead, he pocketed $9 million a year for operating this rink and one at the north end of the park; the city, which owns the rinks, got $2 million. It's been suggested that the rink project put Trump on the road to the presidency. His concession to run the rinks expired in 2021.

In summertime from 2003-19, the rink was the site of Victorian Gardens, an amusement park operated by the managers of Luna Park in Coney Island. Now in the summer it's used for pickleball courts, called CityPickle.

The rink appears in numerous movies, including Love Story (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), Home Alone 2 (1992) and Serendipity (2001).

Green Gap Arch

An 81-foot span built in 1861 from Alberta sandstone. It was closed to the public in 1988, and is now used for storage.

Chess and Checkers House

This was the site of the Kinderberg, or Children's Mountain, a rustic shelter built as part of the response to complaints that the original park design didn't have enough to offer kids. It was replaced by the current structure in 1952, a visitors center where one can borrow not only chess and checkers sets but also backgammon boards and dominos. The pergola was added in 1986 to provide shade for players.

The Dairy

Inscope Arch

The arch appears in Home Alone 2—but it's a set, not shot on location.

Wien Walk

It's named for Lawrence Wien, a real estate lawyer who once owned the Empire State Building and the Plaza Hotel. He gave millions of dollars to Central Park and other nonprofit causes, particularly Columbia University.

Central Park Zoo

The zoo dates back to the earliest days of the park, when people used to donate miscellaneous animals which were displayed near the Mall. It was chartered by the New York Assembly in 1864, making it the second-oldest public zoo in the country (after Philadelphia's), and the oldest zoo in New York.

In 1865, around the time it acquired a trio of Cape buffalo General William Sherman had picked up during his march through Georgia, the menagerie was moved to the Arsenal. Against the opposition of Central Park architects Olmsted and Vaux, permanent enclosures were built on the site of the present Zoo in 1870.

In 1934, new enclosures for the animals were designed by Aymar Embury, who designed hundreds of projects for Robert Moses. Some of his neo-Georgian brick and limestone buildings, arranged in a quadrangle around the sea lion tank, still remain, but the depressing menagerie-style cages were eliminated in a 1988 redesign by Kevin Roche, Dinkeloo, after the New York Zoological Society took over the facility.

The zoo's best-known resident was Gus the polar bear, whose psychological issues stemming from captivity, and his keepers' efforts to treat his neuroses, made him his species' most famous individual--the subject of books, a play, even a song by The Tragically Hip. He died in 2013, at the advanced age of 27, one of very few bears to get a New York Times obituary. His enclosure now holds grizzly bears, who seem to fare better in captivity.

Other zoo notables include Roy and Silo, a same-sex chinstrap penguin couple. (They have since broken up.) Also on view are sea lions, snow monkeys, red panda and dozens of species in an indoor rainforest. Since 2009, the zoo has been home to three rare snow leopards.

A perfect symbol of wildness captured by civilization, the zoo features in such films as Madagascar, The Day After Tomorrow, Jack Nicholson's Wolf and Woody Allen's Alice; books like Mr. Popper's Penguins and Catcher in the Rye; and the Simon & Garfunkel song "At the Zoo."

The Arsenal

One of only two buildings in Central Park that are older than the park itself, The Arsenal was, as its name suggests, originally used to store arms for the New York State National Guard. It replaced a former repository located in what's now Madison Square Park; it was constructed between 1847 and 1851 in a project overseen by state comptroller Millard Fillmore, who later became president. It was designed by architect Martin E. Thompson to look like a medieval fortress, with a crenulated cornice.

In 1857, it was bought by the city and turned into an administrative office and police station for the nascent park. In 1859, it began to accumulate a collection of animals donated by notables like PT Barnum, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and August Belmont—a menagerie that was evicted in 1871 as unsafe and smelly.

From 1869 to 1877, it was a temporary home for the American Museum of Natural History, as well as a dinosaur reconstruction studio. It also served as an art gallery and the site of Central Park's weather station, relocated to Belvedere Castle in 1918.

South:

Corner (817 5th Ave): A George B. Post condo building from 1925. Cranky millionaire Abe Hirschfeld tried to sell his apartment here to ex-President Richard Nixon in 1979; when other residents blocked the sale, Hirschfeld kept Nixon's $92,500 deposit. Among those who did get approved were casino billionaire Steve Wynn and actor Richard Gere. In the film Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino visits a lady friend here.

2: Mansion built in 1921 for baking soda tycoon William Ziegler, Jr., designed by Frederick Sterner. He sold it to impresario David Belasco in 1926, who put a 300-bed actors' hospital here. A Woolworth heir purchased it in 1929 and donated it to the New York Academy of Sciences in 1949. Ukrainian-born oligarch Len Blavatnik bought the building in 2005.

10: Oscar Hammerstein II moved to this five-story brick house in 1948, dividing his time between here and a farm in Pennsylvania. He wrote some of his most famous musicals with Richard Rodgers while living here, including South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music. His stepdaughter Susan Blanchard married actor Henry Fonda here on December 27, 1950 (NNY).

14: A brownstone mansion built in 1873, designed by JG and RB Lynd.

16: A brownstone Beaux Arts townhouse from 1876. Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick lived here in 1965-66; she was badly burned when she fell asleep while smoking in bed in October 1966. She later moved to the Chelsea Hotel.

Earlier, Zsa Zsa Gabor lived here with her mother.

18: Another brownstone mansion, like No. 16 designed by Gage Inslee in 1876.

Corner (706 Madison): The Bank of New York's 63rd Street office, a "charming" (AIA Guide) neo-Federal building from 1922. Where the bank used to have a garden are now ATMs.

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Corner (820 5th Ave): A 1916 apartment building by Starrett & Van Vleck. The AIA Guide calls this and its southern neighbor "two of the great eclectic apartment houses of New York." Former New York governor and defeated presidential candidate Al Smith lived here from the late 1930s until his death in 1944. Herbert Lehman, New York governor from 1933-42, made this his home-away-from-Albany. CBS founder William Paley lived here from 1965 until 1990, when he died in his 20-room duplex. Other residents have included ballroom dancer Arthur Murray and designer Tommy Hilfiger.

11: The Edmond J. Safra Synagogue, designed by Thierry Despont, was completed in 2003, made from rusticated Israeli limestone. Safra was a Lebanese-Brazilian billionaire who built synagogues around the world; in 1999, he died in a fire in his home in Monaco, apparently deliberately set by his nurse who hoped to heroically rescue his boss.

15: Elias Asiel House, built in 1901, designed by John H. Duncan. The AIA Guide praises its "exquisite, delicately carved limestone window enframements." Asiel was the father-in-law of department store founder Lyman Bloomingdale.

17: Also built in 1901, but the AIA Guide disapproves of the replacement of the mansard roof with a glass-fronted penthouse. Was singer Neil Diamond responsible? He used to live up there.

Corner (710 Madison): Graff New York, jewelers

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26 (corner): The Leonari, built in 1902 as a 12-story neo-classical apartment hotel, designed by Buchman & Fox.

Lowell Hotel

28: An understated 17-story luxury hotel built in 1927. AIA The entrance mosaic is by Bertram Hartman.

Dorothy Parker lived here in 1932-33, when she produced some of the best short stories of her career. Columnist Walter Lippmann lived here from 1970 until his death in 1974.

From 1980-2013, The Post House was in the hotel, a steakhouse owned by the Smith and Wollinsky folks. It's now home to Club Macanudo, a fancy cigar bar opened in 1996.

36: A five-story clubhouse from 1930, designed by Cross & Cross for the Hangar Club, an association of wealthy New Yorkers with an interest in aviation. The keystone of the second floor central window features the face of Mercury, the club's emblem. Publisher Nelson Doubleday gave a luncheon for HG Wells here in October 1931.

The club disbanded in 1939; the property was bought in 1941 by the Missionary Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, who opened the Assisium School here, a businesss school for girls.

The school was closed by the Archdiocese in the 1980s. The building became a private residence in 2003.

Corner (570 Park): 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.

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Corner (711 Madison): Panerai Boutique, watches

49: A four-story white building from 1910. Artist Maxfield Parrish lived here in 1918-19 (NNY).

Corner (580 Park): This 14-story building went up in 1923, designed by JER Carpenter. Journalist Edward R. Murrow owned an apartment here.

South:

Corner (575 Park): 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).

120: On the sidewalk here on December 5, 1933, at 5:35 p.m., Herbert Chase was arrested for public intoxication--the first person to be so cited after the repeal of Prohibition, which had officially ended three minutes earlier (AATT).

130 (corner): A 15-story white-brick building from 1965. Baron de Rothschild has lived here (SW).

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3rd Church of Christ, Scientist

Corner (585 Park): 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!

Halston House

101: Originally built as a carriage house in 1881, this structure was radically redesigned in 1968 by Modernist architect Paul Rudolph. Its dramatic interiors include a floating staircase and a sunken living room with a 32-foor ceiling. From 1974 to 1990, it was owned by the designer Halston, who threw famous parties here with the likes of Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Bianca Jagger and Liza Minnelli, the last of whom was a frequent houseguest. Halston sold it to German photographer Gunter Sachs, who in 2019 sold it to designer Tom Ford.

123: This Beaux Arts building, designed by Trowbridge & Livington, was built in 1901 to serve as both a carriage house for financier Clinton Ledyard Blair and as a studio for society portrait artist John White Alexander. In 1953, the building was purchased by the Gurdjieff Foundation, which promotes the teachings of Armenia-born mystic George Gurdjieff; it was still the group's headquarters 70 years later.

125: A nine-story red-brick building from 1923. Producer Samuel Goldwyn had an apartment here in the 1920s, soon after he merged his studio into MGM. Charlie Chaplin picked him up here for a blind date with a "rich and beautiful" lady, who turned out to be Goldwyn's friend Sid Grauman (of Chinese Theatre fame) dressed in drag (NNYES).

135 (corner): J. Pocker, "bespoke frames and prints since 1926."

South:

Barbizon 63

140 (corner): From 1928 until 1981, this was the Barbizon Hotel for Women, a residential hotel that sought out young, attractive women in the arts, resulting in a roster of tenants that reads like the Hollywood Walk of Fame: Actors Lauren Bacall, Candice Bergen, Joan Crawford, Nanette Fabray, Farrah Fawcett, Tippi Hedren, Jennifer Jones, Grace Kelly, Cloris Leachman, Ali MacGraw, Liza Minnelli, Phylicia Rashad, Nancy Davis (Reagan), Cybill Shepherd, Jaclyn Smith, Elaine Stritch, Gene Tierney have lived here, among many others, as well as writers Ann Beattie, Joan Didion, Peggy Noonan, Sylvia Plath (who fictionalized it as The Amazon in The Bell Jar) and Eudora Welty.

154: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was sworn in for his first term as mayor here on January 1, 1934, in the home of Judge Samuel Seabury, a political reformer who had brought down Mayor Jimmy Walker two years earlier.

158: Playwright George S. Kaufman lived here from 1929 until 1932, where he co-wrote Once in a Lifetime (with Moss Hart), The Band Wagon, Of Thee I Sing and Dinner at Eight (NNYES). Earlier this was the home of Peggy Hopkins Joyce, an actress and model known for her six marriages and lavish lifestyle.

135 (corner): A five-story building from 1910.

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139: Seventeen stories of red brick from 1962. Talkshow host Sally Jessy Raphael has lived here (SW).

153: This Spanish Revival townhouse, designed by Frederick Sterner and completed in 1919, was given by Anne Harriman Vanderbilt as a wedding present for her daughter Barbara Rutherford when she married Cyril Hatch. After the couple's divorce in 1921, it was bought by Broadway producer Charles B. Dillingham, partner of Florenz Zeigfeld and agent of Irene Castle. In 1928, it was sold to aeronautical engineer Charles Lanier Lawrance, who designed the engines used by Admiral Byrd and Amelia Earhart.

Exotic dancer Gypsy Rose Lee bought the house in 1940, who added frescos to the walls and gold monograms to the doors. She lived here until her death in 1970.

Artist Jasper Johns bought the place in the 1980s, and sold it to director Spike Lee in 1998.

South:

Corner (1065 3rd Ave): Black Press Coffee

220: The Blake, 13 stories of white brick from 1963. Stan Lee lived on the top floor here from 1975-1980, after he became publisher of Marvel Comics.

230: Bravo Gianni

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Corner (1071 3rd Ave): Learning Express Toys

213: PS 267 East Side Elementary School

245: Chris' Cafe, coffeeshop

Corner (1201 2nd Ave): Was Veritable, well-regarded diner that closed in 2024 after seven years—five of those years covered by scaffolding.

South:

316 (corner): The 63rd Street Studios are rehearsal spaces for the dance department of Marymount Manhattan College. Formerly was home to the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance; this was the last studio where Graham herself taught.

S <=   QUEENSBORO BRIDGE

Corner (1149 1st Ave): Moti Mahal Delux, Indian

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Corner (340 E 64th): The St Tropez, 34 floors of dark-brown brick that went up in 1964, is considered the city's first condo tower.

South:

Corner (1144 1st Ave): George Souther Greek was Totoya Japanese/Sushi Yugen.

Sutton Terrace

430-450: Three 12-story apartment buildings, constructed by Tishman Realty in 1950 on the site that formerly housed Con Edison gas tanks; HI Feldman was the architect.

Martha Graham lived in 430, down the street from her dance studio.

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1152 (corner): This was the location of the original TGI Friday's, which opened here in March 1965—often cited as the first singles bar. (It was after the brand was franchised nationwide that it became associated with family dining.) The exterior was used in the 1988 Tom Cruise film Cocktail—though the interior was a soundstage in Toronto.

Before it launched a nightlife revolution, the space was The Good Tavern—"a dirty old First Avenue bar with a bullet hole in the window." according to TGIF founder Alan Stillman. In 1992 it became Boxers, the UES outpost of a Village restaurant that is still there on West 4th. Later it became the Baker Street Pub, a sports bar named for Sherlock Holmes' address in London. In 2022 it morphed into Irregulars, a more subtle Holmes reference.

425: The Royal York, a 13-story complex from 1956. Screen star Myrna Loy lived her for decades before her death in 1993.

South:

500 (corner): Faculty House, academic housing for Rockefeller University. A "stylish" (AIA Guide) 26-story building designed by Horace Ginsberg, from 1975.

504 (corner): Scholars Residence, another Rockefeller U building that extends over the FDR Drive--the AIA Guide calls it "an architectural and engineering tour de force." Designed by Abramowitz Harris & Kingsland, its 38 stories were built in 1989.

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This four-block-long riverfront park honors probably the most important New Yorker you may never have heard of. Green proposed uniting the five boroughs into one city in 1868, and was president of the Consolidation Inquiry Committee that finally achieved that goal in 1898.

As president of the Central Park Board of Commissioners from 1857 until 1871, he was a key voice in selecting Olmsted and Vaux's Greensward Plan and realizing the designers' vision. He also pushed for creating Riverside, Morningside and Fort Washington parks.

He helped found the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx and Central Park zoos. He was an early voice for historical preservation and helped save City Hall.

Despite being arguably the most influential leader in New York City's history, he's virtually unknown today; it's a sad irony that he was murdered in 1903--by a killer who mistook him for somebody else.

The path along the East River that starts here and stretches to 125th Street is named for John Huston Finley (1863-1940), president of CUNY and later commissioner of education for the state of New York. He was for a short period the editor of the New York Times. He was fond of walking the perimeter of Manhattan. (Photo: Gigi NYC)