The Tour of Lower Manhattan

April 5, 2020 

This is the 1st St. garden I saw during my walking today

 Today Atlas had to get back to their normal life (going to work), so I was on my own. Looking for the name of a street on Google Maps yesterday, I saw Ghostbuster's Headquarters labeled. Intrigued, I looked it up, and it is a fire station in Tribeca whose exterior was used in the Ghostbusters movie in 1984 as the trio's headquarters. Well, it was hyped online, so I thought I'd check it out. First, though, I spent some time in my hotel room indulging myself by reading a bit. Then I decided to walk to see the neighborhoods along the way. 

This is actually the no. 8 Hook and Ladder, but they kept the Ghostbusters sign on the front!

I think this is an older sign painted on the sidewalk in front of the building.

This is probably a newer one.

Near the Ghostbuster's Headquarters is a "skybridge" between two buildings at the 3rd floor. In Minnesota, we call them skyways and they link many of the downtown buildings at the second story to make getting around downtown in the cold weather easier and warmer (though there is some controversy about them cutting down on the all-important food traffic at street level). Well, this "skybridge" used to connect two hospital buildings--one was the emergency center and the other was the main building of the hospital. The hospital is long-gone, so it now connects two loft apartments. You have to buy both to get the use of the skybridge. 

The "skybridge"

This is a drawing of the planned Canal Street from 1805

This is what Canal St. ended up looking like

part of the Tribeca neighborhood

I had scheduled a walking tour through the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side for the afternoon, so I walked through Chinatown from the west coast of Manhattan to the east coast. Near the tenement museum is my favorite bagel place--Kossar's, so I left a little early to stop by for a bagel since they close at 3:00. I had my favorite everything bagel, toasted, with cream cheese and a cup of black tea. Luckily the line wasn't too long. There was a table on the sidewalk in front of the shop, so I took advantage of that to eat my bagel and drink my tea. It was lovely sitting in the sunshine, people-watching and eating my bagel for lunch while so many other people in the world were at work (and I wasn't!). 

Here it is, I've been waiting for this!

Ta-da! Yum!

Manhattan court buildings.  Evidently, each borough has its own courts.

I wonder if this is the street from Dr. Suess'
"And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street"

After that, I still had almost an hour until my tour, so I wandered around the area before checking in for my tour and browsing the gift shop (it's a great gift shop!). As with many other places you go, you have to show proof of COVID vaccination or negative results from a recent test. The tour was amazing! The tenement museum teaches the history of the area using the actual people who have lived there. They have researched all of the people and show you photos of the historical documents. You can book a tour for a specific time period or theme. The walking tour I booked was "Building on the Lower East Side". The earlier tours had many more people, but ours, being the last tour of the day, had only 4 people including the tour guide. We walked the streets of the area. Each of us had a receiver with headphones and the guide spoke into a microphone since we were outside with traffic and city noise. For those of us with a hearing loss or other hearing issues, it was really helpful. He also had the documents on large laminated cards that he carried with and we scanned the QR code to have our own copy to look at on our phones (a COVID precaution still in place). I already love looking at old buildings and wondering what life was like when they were built and since and this tour did some of that. He explained what happened in the late 1800s and on. Each time things were torn down and something else built, the new things was supposed to improve upon the problems of the old, but of course was not perfect and caused its own problems. After the tour I walked back to the museum with the tour guide, talking about buildings and then bought a few things I had my eye on in the gift shop. 

The red house was evidently built by John Jacob Astor as a single family
home for his family; the shop was added later.  And this was the edge of the city.
Farmland lay past this!

The thing in the middle is the only remaining part of the original
Williamsburg bridge

Then I walked back to Greenwich Village to rest in my hotel a bit. 

Things I saw on my walk back to Greenwich Village.  Look at the creatures on this building!

These pop-up testing sites are everywhere!  Right on the sidewalks!

Then looked at Google Maps for dinner ideas. I wanted a salad, but ended up going to a tiny little fish and chips shop (A Salt and Battery) that just had a bit of counter to eat at.  

Around 9:30 Atlas said that they were finishing up at work and where to meet them--we had planned to go out for a drink to celebrate my last night.  They got there first only to find out that there was a two hour wait, so they texted me to meet them at a place next to their apartment in Brooklyn.  I had just reached the original stop, so I had to exit the station, cross the street (it was raining by now) and take that train back to union station and take a downtown train to Brooklyn.  Ack!  Well, I got there and we spent a few hours talking before they closed.  Then I had to make my way back to the hotel at 1:30 in the morning.  I followed my app, only to get to the station where I had to change trains to find out that my train wasn't coming--there were workers down on the tracks!  So I wandered, trying to find a train to take uptown in a nearly empty train station.  I was bewildered and really had to find a bathroom!  Finally found that my train was running again and made my way back to the hotel (and a bathroom--kind of a close call!).  

One last night in New York with Atlas