New York, New York

This post will be out of sequence again as we just came back from spending several days in New York City. I have more posts to write on Savannah, Norway and many other places and will do so in the future. I have been to New York several times but there is so much to see and do there that I am always happy to return to this city. A couple of months ago the airlines had a special low fare of $150 round trip to NYC so we jumped on it. We landed early afternoon last Tuesday 12 October and returned to Atlanta on Saturday evening 16th October. The weather was good and we had a good view as we landed at La Guardia Airport. After a quick ride in a taxi we were in the heart of Manhattan.

Click on picture to enlarge

Picture from the taxi

Many years ago as I arrived in New York I did not know that decades later I would still visit the city often. At the time I was living in Paris, had been working for a year at a somewhat glamorous job near the Champs Elysées translating lyrics from English into French and seeing many famous singers. I stayed in my parents flat near Montmartre and had a little car. I decided to come to the US to travel, for two years, but asked for a working visa so I could have more money available if needed. I had heard that there were quotas for visas and they took a long time to obtain. I thought I would save my money for two more years then go but I was quite surprised when several weeks after my request I received a letter from the US Embassy telling me that I could come for my visa interview. I asked them if they could delay and they replied they could for 3 months. This is how I had booked a voyage on an ocean liner crossing to America. The French ships were totally booked that August, so I obtained passage on a German ship, the T/S Hanseatic, going from Hamburg to New York with stops in Southampton and Le Havre.

T/S Hanseatic, Hamburg Line

It was an adventure for me, a 21 year old, with no family in the US to decide to come, alone. I already knew I would visit at least 23 different states, and I did. I took many slides of my trip but when we were burglarized years later many boxes of slides were taken. A couple of days ago as I was looking into old boxes I found an old slide box which had been misplaced and not returned to the original boxes (which were stolen.) Below is the very first picture I took from the bridge of the Hanseatic as we approached the New York harbor on 31 August 1961. It is not a good picture but it is the very first picture of the US I now have.

The Statue of Liberté from the T/S Hanseatic, August 1961

My husband bought me a gadget with which I can transfer slides and films onto a digital memory card. This worked quite well but the slide has some damage. These slides are almost 50 years old so it is not so bad. I stayed in New York with a young couple, friends of a friend. They showed me around on the week-end. We went to the Empire State Building and I took some more slides there.

New York Panorama, September 1961

A New Yorker could easily tell that more skyscrapers have been built since then I would think. Last week we took a picture but showing the Empire State Building this time.

New York Panorama, October 2010

While the young couple worked during the week I explored New York alone. I remember taking various city buses from the bottom of Manhattan to Harlem. I would stop, walk around, and then get back on the bus. I walked around Rockefeller Plaza. We went there last week too and they improved the site, adding sculptures, fountains and flowers.

Rockefeller Plaza in 1961

I recall taking the bus to the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park. I had been told that the Cloisters had been built by using five French cloistered abbeys. They were disassembled, shipped to New York and reassembled on top of a hill between 1934 and 1938. The day I visited in September 1961, I remember, there was hardly anyone around and it was cooler than downtown. I could see a bridge from up there, but I don’t know which one it was. (The pictures below are still my 60s slides.)

The Cloisters, September 1961

The American Embassy had given me a blue card, which is called a “Green Card” so I could work. I was a legal “immigrant” but felt more like a tourist on a wonderful trip. Walking on Fifth Avenue was fun. Notice in the picture below how most men had suits – no jeans – and women dresses. I did not own a pair of blue jeans then either!

Manhattan 1961

The slide below shows where the young couple lived at the time, but I don’t remember where in New York this was.

I have always cherished New York as the first US city I visited. After I was married and had children I usually went to France during my vacations. I also went back to New York several times but lately have been going more often. Once, I had tickets to go to France, with a stop in London, departing Atlanta on 12 September 2001. Of course that day all airports were closed because of the tragedy of the day before, the 11th. Instead I went to New York about a month later, in October 2001. I took pictures, with a better film camera, but I have misplaced the photos at this time. I did purchase a postcard, quite a moving one.

In December 2002 my husband and I went back to New York. It snowed and we walked in Central Park, It looked like a fairyland in the snow under the sun, but by evening, it had a mysterious aura.

Central Park, 2003, Rocky Schenck, Photographer, American, contemporary

At my work here in Georgia we had to schedule our vacations in January – I usually took two weeks in spring and two weeks in the fall, the second and third weeks of September. My mother passed away just before Christmas in 2002, so after that I did not go to Paris twice a year as I had been doing. In New York I had been staying at The Gershwin Hotel on East 27th Street, a hotel near the Flatiron Building. Below is a vintage postcard of the Flatiron building, built in 1902, one of the first skyscrapers built in New York.

Flatiron Building, turn of the century postcard

In 2004 I found a hotel in the Upper West Side, near Riverside Park and liked the area a lot. It felt more like a “neighborhood.” I returned in September 2007. From this hotel room I could see on the night of September 11th 2007 the two memorial columns of white light and listen to Mayor Bloomberg on my little television. I took a picture as you can see below.

Mayor Bloomberg on 9/11/2007

I retired in January 2008 so from then on I did not have to keep a firm schedule for my vacation. We returned to New York in November 2008 and had sun the whole time. The leaves in Central Park had glorious gold and red tones.

Central Park in autumn

Last week we returned to the same hotel on the Upper West Side. Our first stop after checking into the hotel is to walk a couple of blocks and stop at a corner grocery called Zabar’s. Their site says: “Zabar's has to be experienced, in person, to truly be understood. You have to see the crowds, hear the banter of our sales help, smell the croissants baking, admire the rich brown hues of our coffee, sample cheese from every corner of the world, enjoy the beauty of hand sliced nova, walk upstairs and see the largest selection of imported copper cookware anywhere... it really is a one of a kind adventure.” This is very true. It is so difficult to resist buying all the tempting cheese, olives and salads they offer. Zabar was established in 1934 by Lillian and Louis Zabar and has been a food landmark in the city ever since. Read Zabar’s story here.

Below are pictures I took there last week after our arrival in New York.

Click on picture to enlarge, then click again on each picture

After turning a corner we arrived in the coffee area. I selected a mixture of Italian espresso and Kenya coffees. I took a picture of the staff blending the coffee.




From our room we have a good view of the Hudson River. It is not easy to take a picture because of the screen on the window but the view in the morning, when the sun rises, is gorgeous.




We do not stay in the room much though as I usually have a plan for each day. I wait until a couple of days before our departure to New York to finalize our schedule there because of the weather (walking on sunny days and museums when it rains). This time we had rain only for a few hours in 4 days. New York is such a hyperactive place that we managed to do a lot during our short stay. My plan was organized by area but also very open so we could change it if we found out about something unexpected. This time we found a small opera house on the Upper East Side performing La Bohème on Friday night. We were lucky to get tickets – that will be in a future post as well as to what we explored.

New York 1955, William Klein, Photographer, American, contemporary

"As for New York City, it is a place apart.
There is not its match in any other country in the world. "
-Pearl S. Buck