My New York Guidebook – 8. West midtown

WEST MIDTOWN
(west of 6th Avenue, between 34th and 59th Street)

There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man’s bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.
(Thomas Wolfe)

“Midtown”’s western side is a lot more run down than its eastern counterpart. There are no sparkling glass palaces here, it’s mostly a strange mix of tenement houses, peep-shows, theatres, small shops and steaming manhole covers.

Pennsylvania Station, an important subway and train station, is on the corner of 7th Avenue and 34th Street. Next to or rather above it is Madison Square Gardens, where there are excellent sport and music events. When there is nothing going on, it still can be visited inside via an organized (and expensive) tour. A much better experience is if we can get tickets to a New York Knicks basketball game. The season lasts from late autumn to late spring and tickets are generally sold out in a couple of days for the whole season but it’s always worth a try. A game feels more like a party than a sporting event. Whistles, drums, frenzy – a fantastic experience.

Behind Madison Square Garden there is a huge neo-classicist building on 8th Avenue, the city’s main post office. The more malicious said that they built it so huge so their slogan would fit on the façade – “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”.

Across Penn Station stands one of the world’s largest department stores, Macy’s. The men’s section is towards 7th Avenue, while the women’s one is on the Broadway side with selections on 9 floors.

Herald Square with more shops is at the crossing of Broadway and 6th Avenue. The yearly Thanksgiving Parade was first organized in 1924 by workers at Macy’s, they wanted a European style spectacular parade. This was such a success that it became a tradition. Here are a few photos about the Thanksgiving Parade and the Christmas Fair. The department store’s most famous role was in the movie “Miracle on the 34th Street”.

A few steps from Times Square (corner of 6th Avenue and 43rd Street) stands the building of the International Center of Photography with excellent exhibitions. The center was founded in 1974 by our compatriot, Cornell Capa, to preserve the work of famous photojournalists like his brother, Robert Capa. Beside the exhibitions, there is also a school, a research center and a library in the building.

At the meeting of 7th Avenue and Broadway is Times Square, the heart of the city – the most visited tourist attraction in the world. Here is the queue of people every afternoon looking for theatre tickets for the evening, here is where New Year’s Eve is celebrated since 1907, here we can find the longest white or black limos, the sometimes perplexing large billboards sparkle, and the never sleepy city is at its most hectic here. A few years ago, the majority of the square was closed off to traffic so that you could leisurely have a coffee at the tables. The square got its name from the headquarters of the New York Times which used to be in the triangular building at the northern corner of the square. Only the ground floor shops are occupied in the skyscraper, otherwise it’s empty because it’s totally covered by billboards – which bring enough revenue to keep it like this.

There is a Ben & Jerry’s store on Times Square (41 Times Square, others are at 151 W34th Street and the Rockefeller Center). They offer not only one of the best ice cream, the company itself is fun. On the day of the stock exchange crash, October 19, 1987, they had their ice cream cart out on Wall Street, a few hours after the dramatic decline stock prices, from which they were giving out their new ice cream creation for free to the upset brokers. They called the new flavour “economic crunch” . . .

There are two rare Michelin starred restaurants in the Times Square area. These are two simple Chinese restaurants which at first glance don’t seem to different from the ones you can find on every corner, they even deliver. One of them is Lan Sheng at 60 W39th Street (corner of 6th Avenue), the other is Café China at 13 E37th Street (between Madison and 5th Avenue) and both are open till 10 pm. I don’t know if there are any other Michelin starred restaurants in the world with such low prices, but these two are amongst the cheapest for sure.

The so called Broadway Theatres are in the area bordered by Broadway, 8th Avenue, 41st Street and 57th Street. They show the most well-known productions, sometimes the same one for years. Currently there are about 35-40 working theatres in the area, others were either closed down or the building was turned to some other use. Even if you can’t get tickets it’s still worth to stroll around here in the evening to look at the crowds.

Walking west from Times Square, we end up in the Hell’s Kitchen area. It’s one of the poorest and least safe neighbourhoods of the city. Mostly down on their luck Italians, Greeks, Irish and Central-Americans live here. The area was renamed Clinton but that didn’t improve the lives of its inhabitants. There are no famous sights here, I would suggest this area for those who like to walk around places out of the tourists’ path. It’s fairly safe during the day but best avoided at night.

At the end of Manhattan’s W46th Street, next to the port on the Hudson there is the Intrepid, a II World War aircraft carrier, and the Gowler submarine which serve as a museum since 1982 (Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum). You can find numerous instruments of battle from around the world on the deck of the Intrepid, and since 2011 even the Enterprise spaceship is exhibited in this museum. Stern Hall shows the giant aircraft carriers while the Technologies Hall introduces the rockets of the future. (If you don’t want to walk too much, you can take the M50 bus here from 49th Street going west and later the bus takes you back to Broadway via 50th Street).

The closest interesting restaurant to Intrepid is the Meskerem at 468 W47th Street (by 10th Avenue). It’s a great Ethiopian restaurant, best visited at lunch time (between 11:30 and 3:30 weekdays) when we can try the specially spiced dishes for a good price. They also have an outlet in SOHO at 124 MacDougal Street, 777-8111.

Carnegie Hall is on the corner of 57th Street and 7th Avenue. It was financed by Andrew Carnegie and is a space for high standard musical productions. The acoustics of this terracotta and brick Renaissance building is one of the best in the world. Since its opening, numerous famous musicians played here, for example, Caruso, Tchaikovsky, Bernstein, Mahler or the big names in jazz: Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald or Charlie Parker. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones also appeared here and famous speeches were given in its hallowed halls, like a lecture by Albert Einstein or Martin Luther King’s last public speech. Just like Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall was saved from demolition by the outcry of New Yorkers.  The land it stands on was worth a huge amount so a new office building was proposed in its place but the city’s residents, who although sometimes don’t seem to care, in these instances, protest loudly and won’t let their much loved buildings go. The head of the opposition, growing from the beginning of the fifties, was Isaac Stern, a violinist. In 1976 on the 85th birthday of Carnegie Hall, a charity concert (which was later call the concert of the century) was organized and Leonard Bernstein conducted the Messiah and then talked about with emotion in his voice how he started his career here as a pianist playing with the ballet dancers. The concert collected 1.2 million dollars. Instead of demolition, the building was renovated in 1985 so now it welcomes its famous artists and the elegant audience with an even more beautiful façade and larger entrance hall.

There are lots of souvenir shops in the area where you can pick up an I love New York t-shirt, an ashtray, a lighter, socks or who knows what else (but remember, all these are much cheaper in Chinatown on Canal Street).

Carnegie Delicatessen at 854 7th Avenue (by 55th Street) matches the fame of Carnegie Hall. Their cheesecake is high on the must have list. Watch out – it’s easy to get addicted.

You can find Columbus Circle at the meeting of 8th Avenue and Central Park South, basically at the southwest corner of Central Park. The name of the sculpture on the corner of the square near the park is Maine Monument and it’s in remembrance of the seamen who died in 1898 when their ship capsized. In the middle of the square Columbus watches the roundabout and the horse drawn carriages hunting for tourists. In building #2 of the square is the Museum of Arts and Design, an excellent contemporary design museum.

The 3 Michelin starred restaurant, Jean Georges, is at Columbus Circle and its lunch menu might have the world’s best price-value ratio (2 dishes for $38). However, if someone, like me, is “ok” with eating at the chef’s more informal restaurant, the Nougatine, which is also there, then he can get 3 dishes for $28. Three-star standard, wall-to-wall windows and views to Central Park . . . On my visit there was much joy, they just learned that they received four stars from the authoritative New York Times.