I must re-read Bernard Levin’s 1989 book, A Walk up Fifth Avenue, and see what we missed.
We walked almost all the way up the East Side to 104th and the elegant mansion that houses the Museum of the City of New York. We went to see a 35 minute film about the history of the city, narrated by Stanley Tucci, to fill out the picture painted by the guide on the Circle Line boat. It starts early in the 17th century and goes up to date.
110 years after the Great Fire of London it got toasty in New York too. The British had just captured the port and might have started the fire, or the Patriots could have, to deny the city to the Redcoats, but it was probably an accident and a strong wind fanned the flames; nobody knows for sure. Ten to twenty percent of the city was destroyed. Stanley quickly passed over this. He dwelt longer on the horrific condition the city was in around 1980 until some good mayors starting with Michael Bloomberg got a grip. It’s an excellent film but there was not anything else in the museum to interest us.
The stretch of 5th from the Frick to the City of NY Museum is called Museum Mile but the Neue Galerie is closed for restoration work until November. A pity as it has good German and Austrian art from the twentieth century, notably work by Gustav Klimt. We were foolishly enticed into the big white hat box, known as the Guggenheim, where the main circular exhibition ramp was closed for the installation of a new show and the relatively new side extension had Pop Art of minimal interest to me.
Then we headed into Central Park for lunch at The Boathouse on an outdoor terrace above the waterside.