Gramercy Park,New York

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Gramercy Park, NY

New Orleans Times Picayune's TRAVEL Section 1/25/04

The Empire State building, beautifully illuminated in red, white and blue, was visible through a friend's apartment window in the Gramercy Park District and the New York Life building's steeple glowed against the night sky. A steady rain had begun late that afternoon, and I watched as a bolt of lightening struck the rod atop the Empire State’s spire creating a Frankenstein effect.

The next morning the view from our hotel window nearby revealed a New York skyline reduced to a mere abstract form by an early spring snowstorm that had arrived after rain

My wife, Stella, who had been ill, looked up at me with tired eyes. “Don’t kiss me," she admonished. She then warned me to be careful walking to an exhibit of my paintings five blocks away at the National Arts Club facing Gramercy Park.

Standing under the awning at the hotel entrance on East 15th Street, I could feel the cold and see a close-up of the heavily falling snow. The top of the Con Edison tower with its four clocks was just one block away, but barely visible. Pulling my hat down over my ears, I left the sanctuary of the awning, and turned the corner of East 15th onto Irving Place. A blast of icy wind struck me full in the face, almost wrenching the umbrella inside-out.

Usually Irving Place is a pleasant street for a stroll, but this April morning I couldn't see Gramercy Park, only five blocks away. Parked cars were covered with snow and moving cars sloshed slowly through the street. Sound was muted, something hard to imagine in New York City.

April weather in New York is notoriously unpredictable, but this was ridiculous!

Accessible with keys

Gramercy Park, a private park accessible only to those with keys, is usually overlooked by tourists. The park is between East 20th and East 21st streets and Park and Lexington avenues, and Irving Place ends at East 20th, right in the middle of the park's southern border. While some say Gramercy park District, the neighborhood around the park, overlaps the nearby Flatiron District, and others give different borders, the most frequently given perimeters for the Gramercy Park District are East 14th to East 23rd streets and Park Avenue to Second Avenue.

Whatever the season or weather, Gramercy Park District is a wonderful nook in lower midtown Manhattan. Its grace and charm and sense of history remain largely intact, despite the incursion of the flamboyant, contemporary era. Peter Stuyvesant bought the land in 1651 from the Dutch West India Co., and almost 200 years and five owners later, it was sold to Samuel Ruggles, a successful lawyer, who gave up his practice to devote himself to city development, especially open spaces.

He laid out Gramercy Park and much of the surrounding district the same year he bought the land, in 1831, and the area quickly became one of the city's most desirable places to live. Over the years it has retained much of its neighborhood atmosphere, and has been home to many famous people, more than a few of them writers, artists and actors.

Oscar Wilde's agent

Not all of the buildings remain, and reportedly none still is occupied by a single family, but some of the original houses and apartments are still intact. Among the most architecturally notable is No. 49 Irving Place, at 17th Street. Built around 1845 as a Greek Revival house, it was remodeled in the 1850s, when a canopied porch, intricate entry and cast iron work were added. Among its more colorful residents were Elise de Wolfe, who was said to be America's first interior decorator, and her partner, Elisabeth "Bessie" Marbury, a literary agent to, among others, Oscar Wilde and playwright George Bernard Shaw. She is still quoted for lines such as "a caress is better than a career," "the richer your friends, the more they will cost you," and "I have always found that events which seemed at the time disastrous ultimately developed into positive blessings." The two women lived at 49 Irving Place from 1892 to 1911.

A Web site for New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission reported that it was during this time that the rumor started that author Washington Irving, best known for his stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," once lived in the house; there's even a bronze plaque referring to Irving near the entrance.

While most authorities now say Irving never lived in Gramercy Park, it is said that he was a friend of developer Samuel Ruggles, who named the street after him. The Washington Irving High School is at 40 Irving Place.

O. Henry's home and tavern

Remembering Stella's words of caution - I had a double knee replacement last year - I walked gingerly along the sidewalk, carefully stepping into existing footprints. Snow and wind slashed down the street from the north, burning my face and hands, but still, I felt exhilarated.

Directly in front of me, was No. 55 Irving Place, home from 1903 to 1907 of William Sydney Porter; master of the short story with a surprise ending. His fans know him by his pen name, O’Henry. Porter resided here during the first part of the 20^th century and it is said he frequently sat and looked at people from his second floor window and wrote storied about them. He is also said to have been a regular at Healy's Cafe - now Pete's Tavern - at the corner of East 18th Street. I could see it only dimly through the snow, but I remembered hearing that Porter would sit in his favorite booth near the front entrance, and drink with friends, then write, often into early morning.

Today, Pete’s still is a good place to have a drink or enjoy a meal. The first tavern opened in this building in 1864, and it has retained much of its 19^th century charm, including tile floors, pressed tin ceilings and brick walls.

'Block Beautiful'

Two streets farther on 19^th is the "Block Beautiful". The street between Irving Place and Third Avenue that's considered to be the loveliest in the Gramercy Park District.

There's a melange of architectural styles among the 19^th and early 20^th century buildings that face each other along the tree-lined street. Actresses Helen Hayes, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, and Ethel Barrymore lived at various times at No. 132. George Bellows, one of America’s renowned painters, lived and worked at No. 146 until his death in 1925.

I decided to get a sandwich to take with me to eat later at the exhibition, and headed toward Park Avenue. Within less than 100 feet, I was in a more familiar New York. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper and street were clogged with warmly dressed, fast-walking pedestrians, a good portion of them on their cell phones.

At the corner of Park and East 20th, I squinted north into the snow, but it was impossible to see much in the distance. Calvary Episcopal Church, a large edifice built in the 1840s, stands at 21st and Park, and has a brown facade, but today it looked as gray as the sky. Designed in a Gothic Revival style, the church had early generations of the Roosevelt, Astor and Vanderbilt families as members of its congregation.

A man selling bagels from a mobile booth tried to warm up by hunching over heat rising from his coming from his equipment and steam from his coffee maker, while a line of New Yorkers waited for their on-the-go breakfasts.

East 20th Street becomes Gramercy Park South along the southern end of the park. Turning onto Gramercy Park South, I passed No. 10, once the home and studio of renowned painter Robert Henri, leader of the "Ash Can" school of art, a group of realist artists in the first decade of the 20th century; they believed in "art for life's sake" instead of the popularly quoted "art for art's sake," and taught that the mundane -- even tenements, saloons and city streets -- could be beautiful.

Iron and lacework balconies

Two of my favorite houses in the district are No. 3 and No. 4 on Gramercy Park West. These red brick structures were built in the 1840s, and are embellished with iron and lacework porches reminiscent of the balconies in our French Quarter in New Orleans. James Harper, founder of Harpers Publishing House and former mayor of New York, lived at No. 4 from 1847 until his death in 1869.

Directly across the park, No. 34 Gramercy Park East is a brown multistoried structure built in 1883 by a group of investors; it was the first co-op apartment house in Manhattan. A plaque on the building states that actor James Cagney lived there from 1965 to 1968. Next door, at No. 36, a pair of helmeted, silver metal knights stand guard in front of an ornate building that was once home to the colorful John Ringling of circus fame.

The park is private, with keys available only to residents; members of the Players and National Arts clubs; guests of the Gramercy Park Hotel, although sometimes others borrow a key from well-appointed friends. Stella and I are members of the National Arts Club, but I didn't feel like bothering to get the key, so I tried to take photographs through the iron fence that surrounds the little square. But it nearly was impossible with the wind and snow tugging at my umbrella. Just inside the fence, a bed of yellow tulips peeked from beneath their white blanket.

The Players Club

In the center of the park, a statue of Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, brother of Abraham Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, faces the Players Club, which he founded in 1887. A private club for actors and devotees of the theater, it is ensconced in a magnificent building dating from 1844. Noted architect Stanford White, who designed houses for many of America's most famous families, including the Astors and the Vanderbilts, volunteered to redesign the building as his contribution to the club.

As the snow continued to fall in a veritable blizzard, I was reminded that it was only yesterday, when the sun was shining brightly, that I stood on the opposite side of the park, near Lexington Avenue, which Ruggles named after the battle of Lexington in the American Revolution.

The Gramercy Park Hotel is on that northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and Gramercy Park North. Construction on the hotel that towers over the green park began in 1923, and in the years since, the hotel has been associated with notables such as the Kennedy family patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, who lived there for a while with his family, including the son who later was President John F. Kennedy. Humphrey Bogart married Helen Menken in 1926 on the hotel's Roof Garden (Lauren Bacall came later); humorist S.J. Perelman called it home his last few years; and baseball legend Babe Ruth was, as the hotel's Web site puts it, "politely asked on more than one occasion to leave our famous bar."

Stanford White's history

The land on which the hotel stands was once the site of the home of Stanford White, where his wife lived and he apparently visited from time to time. In addition to his architectural legacy, White leaves another, more notorious one. He was a womanizer who led a double life, one with his wife and the other with countless girlfriends, whom he took to his "bachelor" pad -- complete with a red velvet swing -- on the second floor of Madison Square Garden, which he designed. His sensational 1906 murder by a jealous husband of a former mistress took place in a rooftop supper club theater at Madison Square Garden, and is credited with being part of the inspiration behind E.L. Doctorow's novel and later the play and movie "Ragtime," as well as "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing."

When I slipped into the Gramercy Park Hotel's lobby, I was delighted to see it had changed little since Stella and I last stayed there. Recently restored, it still looked like the set for a 1930s movie.

Back outside, I recalled that in yesterday's sunlight, the Chrysler Building had seemed to shimmer in the distance; joggers, with strain showing in their faces, ran monotonous circles around Gramercy Park; and a woman pushed a grocery basket piled high with clothes, atop of which sat a tiny dog, looking condescendingly regal. "Riding your dog?" I couldn't help but ask. She smiled and continued on her way.

In today's snow, I didn't see a single jogger, nor did I see the smug little dog.

I arrived at my destination, The National Arts Club, a National Historic Landmark at 15 Gramercy Park South. Built in 1844, its warm brown façade is one of the more beautiful in the area. New York Gov. Samuel Tilden bought the building for $37,500 in 1863, along with the lot behind it on 19th Street. Eleven years later, he purchased the house next door, built at the same time, and converted both into a single residence still known as the Tilden Mansion. Two years after his second purchase, he was the Democratic Party's nominee for president, and, reminiscent of the last U.S. presidential election, won the popular vote, but lost the election in the Electoral College by one vote; though colleagues begged him, he refused to contest the election.

Members of The National Arts Club, which was founded in 1893 by Charles de Kay, literary and art critic for 18 years at The New York Times, bought the building in 1906. Tilden's large dining room was converted into a gallery, as were two other rooms, and public exhibitions are held all year at this private club for artists and those who support the arts. Its stated mission is to stimulate and "promote public interest in the arts and educate the American people in the fine arts."

Camera flopping around my neck, gripping my umbrella tightly and with fist clenched on the brown bag holding my pastrami sandwich, I crossed the street to The National Arts Club, welcomed by the lights shining through its large bay window.

I wanted to sit in the warm room on the other side of that window for a few minutes and watch the snow fall in the park.

It was good to be back in New York City. Rolland Golden IF YOU GO TO NEW YORK - Click to read suggestions