A Few More Observations On Downtown Manhattan

Working in downtown Manhattan has pluses and minuses. The minuses are that it is kind of a pain in the ass to get to, though in my new digs it is actually a shorter commute than it was from my former digs. The area is very incongruent, as this area of Manhattan was built, or at least the streets were, in the 1600's, which means that there's no rhyme or reason to the roadways. (Remember, it was only in the last two hundred plus years that the machinery necessary for filling in lakes and ponds, blasting away rocks, hills, and/or mountains became available for use in civic planning. Manhattan north of Canal Street is laid out as a grid and is easy to navigate; downtown Manhattan south of Canal has no such ease of navigation.) The streets are unusually narrow, and while the area possesses many tall buildings, the sunlight barely gets through to the street as a result of this narrowness. This can lead to a certain sense of light deprivation. Sadly, the only place where one can see the sky unobstructed is where the World Trade Center once stood, but as this area is still the source of much anger for me, I try to avoid it if I can. One day the anger will subside, but not this day.

On the other hand, downtown Manhattan is steeped in the history of pre-revolutionary America, as well as immediately post-revolutionary America. It's a pretty special thing, particularly since there are only two other cities that have this kind of historical mark on them (Boston and Philadelphia). Federal Hall is one block away from my current place of employment, and during the warmer months it is actually quite thrilling for me, even after all these years, to sit on the same steps where Washington took his oath of office as the first American president (under the Contitution of 1789, that is). Across from Federal Hall are the former headquarters of J.P. Morgan, which were built only four or five stories high, deliberately so; it seems that Morgan wanted the world to know that he was so powerful financially that he didn't need to build a skyscraper. He possessed the air rights above this squat building, and while everyone was clamoring for space all over downtown Manhattan at the time, Morgan was content to take up valuable air space with....nothing. One day in 1921, a horse drawn wagon pulled up in front of the House of Morgan and exploded at a quarter to twelve. The New York Stock Exchange, which was directly across the street from the House of Morgan, hadn't let out its traders for lunch at that point, but six people still lost their lives. Federal Hall, perpendicular to the House of Morgan, still has shards of wood embedded in its walls from that singular act of latter-day terrorism.

Down the block and to the left, if you walk down Broadway towards Battery Park, you run into Bowling Greeen, an oval-shaped park with a fountain in the middle of it. In 1776, Bowling Green was slightly different than it is today. For one, they actually did bowl on Bowling Green (it was kind of like bocce ball, which they still play in Central Park in specially designed "bowling" areas), and a statue of George III stood where the fountain now is. As I wrote previously, zealous patriots dragged down the statue of George III and turned the metal into musket balls. But the most interesting thing about Bowling Green is that the fence that surrounds it today is the same iron-wrought fence that ringed it in 1776, and on the same day that colonial revolutionaries hauled down the statue of George III, they also knocked the imperial crown ornaments off the fence posts. Go there today, feel the tops of the posts, and they're still rough to the touch, jagged and uneven. In some small way, you feel as if you're connecting with history. Good stuff.

Anyway, those are my little downtown Manhattan observations. Nothing controversial today. That said, if any of you happen to find yourself in Old New York, these are the little things that you'll key in on, and they'll make your experience a bit more interesting.