A Great Gatsby Boat Tour of Manhasset Bay

 

This lovely lady is Eleanor Cox Nihill and we were very fortunate to take her Great Gatsby Boat Tour of Manhasset Bay this past Saturday. As we've posted on Travalanche,  my mate and I have lived in Great Neck, Long Island for the past several years, which happens to be the town where F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote most of The Great Gatsby, and where the first theatrical adaptation of the book premiered. The book is based on local settings. Many of the places he wrote about are long gone, and just about all of the fabulous mansions that remain are very inaccessible to the public. By contrast with my home turf of Newport, where just about all of the old mansions are museums near the main drag and available to tour for the price of a ticket, Great Neck's big houses are all in private hands and quite far from the center of town. The only way to see them (unless invited) is from the air or from the bay. So I was overjoyed to finally have this opportunity at the invitation of mutual friend Kevin Fitzpatrick, who also came along and assisted Ellie with the tour's narration. Here's me, my fabulous wife, and K-Fitz prior to launch:

And here's Kev workin' the crowd. 

I confess I was enjoying myself way too much to take a lot of careful notes about which house went with which celebrity. I've ID'd a couple that I remembered below. A full list of the celebrities who lived in Great Neck is in my 2018 post here. And here are some of the shacks we gawked at on Satiddy, photographed from a distance on a crappy phone camera. (Note: plenty of these houses are undoubtedly more recent than the Roaring 20s, as well)

The summer residence, at one point, of FDR when he was Governor of New York.

The one time home of millionaire Edwin S. Marks. The notable feature of this property is the display of one of the old Grand Central Station eagle statues (right)

A mansion that was used in the movie Carlito's Way. 

This was Sid Caesar's place (under renovation at the moment)

Unless I'm mistaken this place was once owned by Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, who had many much more fabulous places on Long Island and at Newport. He's a distant relation of mine, descended from Rhode Island war hero Oliver Hazard Perry, who was from my hometown. 

The Yankee in me especially loves the tasteful simplicity of this one and the next one, which are likely from the earlier era when the area first began to attract folks from the city. Hey, I'm not greedy -- I wouldn't ask for much more than this! 

Towards the end, these nuts passed us. I don't think it would take much more than a rogue minnow to swamp this thing. It's never too early to day-drink on a raft that suggests an entirely different island 1,500 miles away! 

Hey, I see another boat just about to take off! It's a future Great Gatsby Boat Tour! There are still a couple of upcoming excursions that haven't sold out. Get yer tickets here. 

A Peek Inside the General Theological Seminary

Most New Yorkers have walked the perimeter of the General Theological Seminary in Chelsea and wondered what was inside. Occupying the entire block between 20th and 21st Streets, 9th and 10th Avenues, the imposing complex is not open to the public, and has the look of a cloister. That look is intentional, of course, as it’s where the Episcopal Church has trained clerics for nearly two centuries. On December 5 (Krampusnacht, no less) your intrepid reporter had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the interior on a special tour sponsored by the GTS and Untapped Cities, and jointly led by the Dean of the School Michael W. DeLashmutt and Clement Clarke Moore expert Pamela McColl.

DeLashmutt center, McColl Speaking 

The occasion for this rare tour is the upcoming bicentennial of the publications of Moore’s poem, usually known by the title “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”. What’s the connection? you may wonder. The entire neighborhood of Chelsea was once the Moore family’s farm; the area now occupied by the GTS was the apple orchard. Moore’s father was a Bishop in the church and for a time President of King’s College, which later became Columbia. The seminary opened at its present location in 1827. Clement Clark Moore taught there for many years.

The Close

In 1878, Dean Eugene Augustus Hoffman expanded the campus, with a grand design that arranged building around a quadrangle in the manner of the Quad at Oxford. The impressive Chapel of the Good Shepherd opened to worshippers a decade later. 

Chapel Interior 

New construction and expansion continued throughout the 20th century. The present era finds the institution on a time of consolidation and retrenchment, the most obvious illustration of which is the High Line Hotel, which is in a building sold by the GTS in 2010. 

Benediction and Dismissal

The Woodstock (CT) Fair

Labor Day weekend is always the time of the Woodstock Fair in Connecticut's "Quiet Corner". My mother was from that area and I went a few times as a child. It was a larger event than our local fairs in Rhode Island, though I'm sure much tinier than what folks in most parts of the country are used to. In any case, I rated it as one of the few exciting live events I attended as a child. So I was ecstatic when my son and I found ourselves in the area this year, just in time to catch it. Here are some snaps I took. 

Catching Up With Coney!

July 5 is P.T. Barnum's birthday and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate it then by spending a couple of hours with Dick Zigun, Coney Island's unofficial unelected mayor, who just so happens to be from Barnum's pet city of Bridgeport! Dick recently separated from the organization he founded, Coney Island USA as we reported here, but he now has an excellent job doing some bookings and promotions at Luna Park. 

As it happens, Luna Park is expanding yet again, adding several new rides, including yet another roller coaster, a festive new gateway entrance, and a flume to replace the one that Coney lost when Astroland folded in 2010. Dick showed me some of the work in progress:

 

July 5 happens to be the day after the big annual hot dog contest sponsored by Nathan's. Before heading home, I took the opportunity to sample one of the leftover franks that Joey Chestnut hadn't already consumed: 

A Walk Through West Side History (Mine and New York's)

I had, like, hours to kill this weekend, and so I did something I haven't done since quite some time before the start of Covid (which is well over two years), and that's spend some leisurely, unhurried time enjoying the sights of Manhattan. A morning Saturday appointment on the Lower East Side ended early, and I had four hours until a matinee curtain in Chelsea (for this, as a matter of fact), so I made my way westerly. It was a gorgeous spring day, a perfect day to engage with my surroundings as I like to do as a long time resident with many memories, but also as a cultural tourist who is especially interested in history and art. 

Several months ago I learned about some relatives of mine, a great-great aunt and her family, who had lived and worked in New York City since shortly after the Civil War. I had wanted to spend some quality time in areas I knew where they lived (my recent post about Flushing, Queens, last August was part of that process.) So...for a time (1890s), these family members lived on West 13th Street, possibly here:

This location is exciting to me as someone writes about old time show business, because it SO close to the old Rialto on Union Square (14th-17th Streets), which meant that my family was about a block's walk from Tony Pastor's vaudeville house (literally located in Tammany Hall), Keith's Union Square, Huber's Museum, et al. They MUST have attended shows there, right??? It's also located a block from Cinema Village, where I used to work when I first moved to the city

Around the corner is an extremely important place in American cinematic history. Originally known as the Hackett Carhart Building, located at 841 Broadway, starting in 1895 this address was the first location of Biograph Studios, today most famous for the films of D.W. Griffith, although he didn't start working there until the company had moved a few blocks away in 1906. But for over a decade this movie studio, one of the first in America after Edison's, operated here. Apparently there are still tracks on the roof of this building which crews had used for dolly shots. (The studio was on the roof, in order to take advantage of the sunlight). 

I love the fact that nowadays the Union Square Regal Cinemas multiplex is across the street (it was to my back as I took this photo). And that it's just a few blocks up Broadway from Tisch School of the Arts, where I studied film-making just about a century after Biograph first hung out a shingle at the location.. 

After this pilgrimage I walked through Washington Square Park as I invariably do when I'm in the neighborhood, just to see what's going on, as it's always full of stimulating life and music.  Further west, I passed Jefferson Library where we presented our Mae West program in 2018, and Waverly Diner, my go-to spot for business meetings when I'm producing shows and the like, and then the wonderful Stonewall National Monument, which still has a photo exhibit up from 2019, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the famous riot. This put me in the vicinity of one of my favorite downtown theatre companies, the Axis Theatre, located in the same venue as Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company. 

Out of curiosity, I walked a couple of blocks down Seventh Ave to see what's up with the Actor's Playhouse, where my Charles Manson musical Willy Nilly played in 2009. Shortly after that show it seems to have ceased being a theatre and was briefly a music venue. As you can see from the photo below, it is still branded as a playhouse, with fancy new frontage, and when I looked in the window I could see the same stairs that led up into the audience, but I can't find any reference online to it having been a functioning theatre any time recent. 

From here I went back to Christopher Street, and continued west, past St John's Church, where I was pleased to see my old friend Dan Bianchi and his company RadioTheatre are reviving their production of King Kong, set to open May 25. Then, all the way west, past the New Ohio Theatre (which produced plays of mine at the OLD Ohio Theatre in Soho, 20 years ago), and then I was at West Street, ready for my jaunt north. 

The stretch of West Street between Jane and Bethune Streets is now special to me, as it was the location of my great-great uncle Alonzo Decker's lumberyard, Decker and Rapp, which was then on the waterfront. (He is a different Alonzo Decker than the co-founder of Black and Decker power tools, but I have strong reason to believe he was one of his cousins. At any rate: this one is the same guy who lived on 13th Street, above) The lumberyard's location is a clear testament to how river-based New York's economy once was. It is, after all, the reason there is a city here in the first place. Alonzo's father had worked on canal boats upstate. The Hudson River was used much more to move freight around back then. Looking across the water from here, one sees Hoboken Terminal, reminding us that barges and ferries once were how people got across in the days before before bridges and tunnels. Then everything switched to trains, which is why the High Line and Hudson Yards  (not to mention the Meat Packing district) are just a short walk away from here. I'm sure workers were constantly moving freight such as lumber and cattle from barges to train cars all day long. 

The thrilling thing is, I've lived and worked close to the location of the lumberyard a lot in the past; I wish I'd known back then that had this personal significance. Right around the corner is the Westbeth Center, where I performed as J.R. Brinkley in 2018, and where I met and interviewed Charles Ludlam's leading lady Black-Eyed Susan earlier that year, and where 30 years earlier I used to go see performance artists like Frank Maya and Carmelita Tropicana perform when I lived on Greenwich Street in nearby Tribeca. Also Westbeth was the original home of Theater for the New City, where I have worked on and off over the past 15 years or so. 

From Bethune and West Streets of course I had a clear view across the street to one of NYC's Newest tourist attractions, "Little Island", which opened nearly a year ago, in the depth of the Covid pandemic. Located at Pier 55, it's a beautifully designed artificial island, across from the end of 14th Street. This was my first opportunity to visit the place, so I went there in the same spirit as the tourists, and snapped many a photo: 

This outdoor amphitheater looks promising, eh? A GREAT place to stage stuff! 

The vista above is from just a little bit North. Pier 57 proves to be nearly as exciting. It's the location of City Winery, where so many of my friends put on burlesque shows, as well as a new rooftop park, which is described as "NYC's largest" 

I don't often venture to take "art photos" but one of the views from the roof offered this irresistible shot

Little Island, foreground; the new Whitney Museum, left; Lower Manhattan with new World Trade Center in the distance. 

I stopped taking pictures after this, but didn't stop walking. Just north is Pier 59, where I once attended a Community Board Meeting about playground funding as a reporter for Chelsea Now in 2016. I seldom do "hard, non-arts news" of this sort, so the event was more memorable than it might have been, and also Martha Stewart was there (kind of). My article, for the morbidly curious, is here. 

From here, I crossed the street to make a pilgrimage to the site where my first plays were produced in New York in 1988 and 1989. On 11th Ave, just south of West 23rd Street, there used to be an off-off venue called the Sanford Meisner Theatre, where the Vortex Theatre was based. At the time, this location seemed like the edge of nowhere, which it was. Now with Hudson River Park so vital, it doesn't seem quite so remote. Unfortunately, the theatre was torn down a few years ago. It is now the site of Cortland Condominiums, a building designed by Robert A.M. Stern. 

23rd Street put me near an entrance to the High Line and I walked it up to Hudson Yards (which I am chagrined to discover I've never blogged about here, though I did photograph and share impressions on social media when they opened. They're both old news now! High Line opened in 2009; Hudson Yards in 2019). 

Then it was back down to 27th Street to the McKittrick Hotel, which I wrote about recently here, to review the new solo show starring Downton Abbey's Lesley Nicol, more about which here. You'll notice my face is somewhat red in my photo with Nicol -- it's because I'd been walking in the sun for four hours! 

And I'm liable to go back to the area soon! My old friends at the Lightship Lilac (which I've blogged about here, here, and here) are due for their post-Covid reopening at Pier 25 in May!. It's a very good place to go to learn about New York's nautical history, as are two of my favorite other places, the South Street Seaport Museum, and Brooklyn's Waterfront Museum a.k.a. the Showboat Barge. 

And -- I can't believe anyone NEEDS to say this, but apparently one does. Don't go to any of these places unless you're vaxed and boosted, and please wear a mask when indoors. Covid-19, including the newer, "milder" variations KILLS the vulnerable, and can have bad long term effects even among the healthy. If you don't care about your own health, please consider the fate of others. It's not a joke, it's not alarmism. I've lost two friends to it, and dozens of friends have lost parents and other loved ones. LOST. As in DEAD. Go out and live life (like I did, gratefully, this weekend), but just do it without being Typhoid Mary. Despite what Tucker Carlson says, you have no "right" to kill other people. You really don't.