Featured this week:
No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World. An award-winning collection of stories about anything and everything New York.
"Wonderful inside tales about New York. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
 |
SMALL TALK
Funeral Wells: gray-bearded with sunken eyes, he'd weep bitter tears at a funeral, while helping himself to your wallet.
Banjo Pete Ellis, who gave up minstrel shows to rob banks. Minstrelsy's loss was crime's gain ... for a while.
Annie Reilly, nicely scarfed with an earnest look: a diligent servant who would fuss over the children and then elope with all the jewelry in the house.
Lord Courtney, a.k.a. Sir Harry Vane of Her Majesty's Lights, a tall and gentlemanly smooth-talking British impostor who dazzled wealthy belles to the point that they snipped buttons from his fake uniform to cherish as mementoes of the Empire, unaware that he was swindling them out of a fortune.
John Larney, a.k.a. Mollie Matches, who in his younger days did drag as a little girl selling matches and picked the pockets of people in large gatherings, before graduating into adult-style burglary.
These are some of the crooks whose mug shots, showing them nicely dressed but with a somewhat miffed expression, appear in the New York City Rogues Gallery of Inspector Thomas F. Byrnes, chief of New York City's Detective Bureau. Accompanying each photo was a brief description to help in identification. This information appears in Byrnes's Professional Criminals of America, published in 1886 and now in the public domain. Though credited with reforming the Detective Bureau, Byrnes was not above beating a thief into a confession, while at the same time accumulating a small fortune with the help of tips and advice from Wall Street friends like Jay Gould. But thanks to Byrnes, we can savor the appearance and activities of the most diligent and colorful rogues of his time, without having to worry about their fingers sneaking into our pockets, or their smooth talk swindling us out of our hard-earned cash.
(For info about the Rogues Gallery and Byrnes I am indebted to Dan Barry's article "Cheats, Swindlers and Ne'er-Do-Wells" in the Metropolitan section of the New York Times of Sunday, February 11, 2018.)
NEW YORK ARCHITECTURE, ITS GLORIES AND HORRORS
Construction in Manhattan is rampant. My own dear bank, that generous dispenser of free candy and tissues, is going to demolish its midtown headquarters in 2019 and build a new world headquarters on the site, the site being Park Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets. The existing building, an oldie built in 1961, has a mere 52 stories; the new one will soar to 70 stories and contain an additional 1 million square feet of office space to accommodate 15,000 employees, compared to the 6,000 now crammed into a building meant for 3,500. This move, says CEO Jamie Dimon, will ensure that the bank operates “in a highly efficient and world-class environment for the 21st century.” That’s good to hear, given the awkward fact of the bank’s losing $6 billion (yes, billion, though some say more) in a single bad trade in 2012. This is the first sky-scratcher to go up under new zoning rules for Midtown East that encourage the development of taller, more modern structures. Mayor Bill de Blasio is happy about the news, almost cackling with approval. Some architects and preservationists lament the loss of the present building, which has no landmark status, but photos show a big box of a thing with lots of gray glass and black steel panels, impressive in its way but, to my mind, disposable. What the new building will look like, I have no inkling. More than just another big box, I hope.
Current construction in Midtown isn’t just BIG BIG BIG; it’s
also TALL TALL TALL. 432 Park Avenue, a
96-story residential tower between 56th and 57th Streets
completed in 2015, tops out at 1396 feet, making it the third tallest building
in the U.S., and the tallest residential building in the world. Its design, they say, was inspired by a 1905
trash can, which gives one pause for thought.
Photos show a squarish skinny tower standing out like a proverbial sore
thumb and overtopping everything around it.
Its condos are now going for up to $17 million, some of them with 10 by
10 foot windows offering spectacular views of Central Park, across whose sacred
green spaces the building’s shadow must at times fall like a sacrilege. “This building is about seeing forever,” said
a real estate broker in 2016, stating that the current real estate demand was for
high in the sky, for “see everywhere.”
Certainly it’s visible from everywhere, which makes some people call it
an eyesore. Worse than that, “a giant
matchstick,” “a toothpick,” “a dried piece of spaghetti.” Yes, critics at first derided the Eiffel
Tower, but the Eiffel had ample grounds around it and wasn’t residential, least
of all with condos at sky-high prices.
Have I seen it? 432, that
is. No, not from ground level, in the
flesh (or should I say concrete?). Who
wants a pain in the neck?
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| It does stand out ... and up. Fashawkss8 |
Another example of
TALL TALL TALL is New York by Gehry, a 76-story residential tower at 8 Spruce
Street in Lower Manhattan, named modestly for its architect, Frank Gehry, which
opened in 2011. Helping to justify its
soaring existence are the first five floors devoted to a school hosting 600
students ranging from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, plus a fourth
floor with play space for the kids.
Above this noble enterprise rise the luxury apartments, now renting from
about $3,000 a month for a studio up to almost $30,000 for a four-bedroom apartment. Rarely available, the 76th floor penthouse
goes for $45,000 a month and offers incredible views (on sunny days) in every
direction; wherever you look, there is New York. The building’s rippled stainless steel façade
is said to glitter in the sun, and reviews have been mostly favorable, some
even calling it the first Lower Manhattan high-rise to match in grandeur that
nearby neo-Gothic wonder that I so love, the Woolworth Building. Certainly it is striking to behold -- much
more so than 432 Park -- with wiggly lines creeping up its sides like skinny
worms, though the top is cut off bluntly, without any crowning spire or glass
pinnacle to shimmeringly dissolve in light.
This is world-renowned architect Frank Gehry’s only New York
achievement. Canadian born and now a
resident of California, he is especially acclaimed for designing the Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which to my eye looks like a rather clunky Cubist
warship, though I’m sure it houses marvels inside.
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| It ain't the Woolworth, but striking it is. giggel |
Not all the new buildings scratch the heavens. The Queens Library at Hunters Point, a Long
Island City waterfront construction on the East River, hugs the ground against
a backdrop of recently built boxlike high-rise condos. Designed by architect Steven Holl, it has
been called “quirky” and “zany,” and it is certainly creatively weird. Still unfinished after many delays, its aluminum-painted
concrete cube of an exterior is said to have a subtle spark, but what catches
the eye is a bunch of big cutouts that look like some angry giant repeatedly punched
through the walls with his fist. The
cutouts let one peek into the interior, and let patrons inside enjoy panoramic
views of Manhattan as they climb or descend a series of bookshelf-flanked
stairs. (Sounds great, but I hope there
are elevators, too.) The location is
spectacular, and unlike the residential towers now cluttering up the Manhattan
skyline, this structure will truly serve the public. At night its glowing presence is flanked by a
giant Pepsi bottle and the letters LONG ISLAND, both of them in bright, brash
light. Hopefully (and a lot of hope has
already been expended), the library will be completed in August 2018 and opened
to the public in 2019. Why the
delays? For one thing, the special glass
needed for the windows had to be manufactured in Germany and glazed in Spain,
where a dockworkers’ strike held it up for six weeks before it was exported to Connecticut, and
then shipped to Long Island City.
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| Yes, it's a library, and yes, it's finished. Just takes a little getting used to. Jim.henderson |
Another weird structure that bulkily hugs the ground is the
Spring Street Salt Shed at the corner of Spring and West Streets, across busy multilane
West Street from the Hudson River.
Completed in 2015, it has been called a “functional piece of
architectural eye candy,” but to me looks like a half-crumpled windowless box. (During one meeting of the Public Design
Commission, Commissioner James Polshek crumpled up a piece of paper and said,
“Do this.”) Supposedly designed to look like a
69-foot-high salt crystal, it can hold up to 5,000 tons of salt imported from
Chile and Argentina. And why all that mountain
of salt? For the Department of
Sanitation (DSNY) to spread on the city’s streets when snowstorms hit, of which
we’ve recently had three within ten days.
Huge doors measuring 35 feet high and 24 feet wide let DSNY trucks go in
to deliver a load of imported salt, and salt spreaders go out to spread the
salt when a snowstorm hits. The
waterfront site exposes the building to the fury of the elements, and the
constant truck traffic could damage the walls, so the walls are six feet thick
and reinforced with steel plating. The
walls now have a blue tint resulting from slag, but in time sunlight will hopefully
turn them the color of salt. For a
structure that is basically functional, the salt shed is a marvel of engineering
and architectural daring. No other salt
shed in the city can compare with it.
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| But does it look like salt? Beyond My Ken |
All these creations, towerlike or squat, come alive at
night, when their lights help create the spectacular nighttime panorama that is
the city of New York. My favorite of the
new buildings is 1 World Trade Center, aka the Freedom Tower, a 104-floor
high-rise dating from 2014 that is 1792 feet high, making it the tallest
building in the Western hemisphere and the sixth tallest in the world. (Unless you discount the antenna, which
reduces the height to 1776 feet. The
exact height depends on how and what you count, and has been
controversial.) It has been hailed as a
symbol of the city’s renascence after the devastation of 9/11. Since I can see it from my south-facing bedroom
and kitchen windows, it is the last thing I see at night and the first in the
morning. At night its windows are ablaze
with light, and the antenna is topped by a red light blinking on and off. I call it my Tower of Light.
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| It's the tall one in the center. On the right is 7 World Trade Center. Antony-22 |
Who lives in these soaring residential towers? What’s it like up there? Are we in another real estate bubble, and if
so, when will it burst? These and
similar questions will be considered in another post. But now I want to sign off calmly with my
thoughts on my Tower of Light.
BROWDERBOOKS
All books are available online as indicated, or from the author.
1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World (Mill City Press, 2015). Winner of the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. All about anything and everything New York: alcoholics, abortionists, greenmarkets, Occupy Wall Street, the Gay Pride Parade, my mugging in Central Park, peyote visions, and an artist who made art of a blackened human toe. In her Reader Views review, Sheri Hoyte called it "a delightful treasure chest full of short stories about New York City."
If you love the city (or hate it), this may be the book for you. An award winner, it sold well at BookCon 2017.
Review
"If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you. Cliff Browder has a way with his writing that makes the city I lived in for 40 plus years come alive in a new and delightful way. A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint." Five-star Amazon customer review by Bill L.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
|
2. Bill Hope: His Story (Anaphora Literary Press, 2017), the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a persistent and undying hope.
For readers who like historical fiction and a fast-moving story.
Reviews
"A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure. A must read." Five-star Amazon customer review by nicole w brown.
"This was a fun book. The main character seemed like a cross between Huck Finn and a Charles Dickens character. I would recommend this." Four-star LibraryThing review by stephvin.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
3. Dark Knowledge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2018), the third novel in the Metropolis series. Adult and young adult. A fast-moving historical novel about New York City and the slave trade, with the sights and sounds and smells of the waterfront.
The back cover summary:
New York City, late 1860s. When young Chris Harmony learns that members of his family may have been involved in the illegal pre-Civil War slave trade, taking slaves from Africa to Cuba, he is appalled. Determined to learn the truth, he begins an investigation that takes him into a dingy waterfront saloon, musty old maritime records that yield startling secrets, and elegant brownstone parlors that may have been furnished by the trade. Since those once involved dread exposure, he meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered. Chris has vivid fantasies of the suffering slaves on the ships and their savage revolts. How could seemingly respectable people be involved in so abhorrent a trade, and how did they avoid exposure? And what price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?
Early reviews
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"A lively and entertaining tale. The writing styles, plot, pace and character development were excellent." Four-star LibraryThing early review by BridgitDavis.
"At first the plot ... seemed a bit contrived, but I was soon swept up in the tale." Four-star LibraryThing early review by snash.
"I am glad that I have read this book as it goes into great detail and the presentation is amazing. The Author obviously knows his stuff." Four-star LibraryThing early review by Moiser20.
4. The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a respectably raised young man who chooses to become a male prostitute in late 1860s New York and falls in love with his most difficult client.
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, if you like, but no porn (I don't do porn). Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
What was the gay scene like in nineteenth-century New York? Gay romance, if you like, but no porn (I don't do porn). Women have read it and reviewed it. (The cover illustration doesn't hurt.)
Reviews
"At times amusing, gritty, heartfelt and a little sexy -- this would make a great summer read." Four-star Amazon customer review by BobW.
"Really more of a fantasy of a 19th century gay life than any kind of historical representation of the same." Three-star Goodreads review by Rachel.
"The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters. Highly recommended." Five-star Goodreads review by Nan Hawthorne.
Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
* * * *
Coming soon: Wonder: Can we find it in New York?
© 2018 Clifford Browder
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