Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: Once a farm

Today we walked a lovely little pocket of lower Midtown, called Murray Hill, after Robert Murray, an Irish shipping magnate who first owned much of the area, and built himself a grand home and farm here in the 1800s, where Park Avenue hits 36th street today.

His home has gone, of course, but his family, who came after him, tried to control the type of development that moved into the neighbourhood and designed a Restrictive Agreement in 1847, minimising commercial development in the area and asking for homes to be of brick or stone. This encouraged an influx of middle class families to come to the area and they built some delightful row houses, many of which are still around today. They tend to be narrow in the frontage, often just as wide as two windows, with lovely stoops decorated with iron railings. These are particularly gorgeous as a few of them still have their original mansard roofs.

The locals, then as now, would have had an easy walk to church as the Church of the Incarnation, has been on site here since 1865. The parish has drawn up a booklet on all the wonderful historic pieces still to be found inside the church that they would all have enjoyed, including this gorgeous pilgrim stained glass window, created by the local jeweller, Louis Tiffany.

There were some interesting neighbours, too, among the elite. J P Morgan lived just a block or so away, close to an area now called Morgan Court. Morgan Court, an apartment complex with a beautiful Art Deco entrance, was actually where his Carriage House used to stand.

His horses would enter through here to be stabled in the back. Now, however, rising up from this beautiful Art Deco renovation is the tall ‘Sliver’ building, where Sharon Stone’s character, Carly Norris, lived, so the restrictions did not work when the developer built this long narrow odd building in this bit of air space. However, some of the locals, who hated this building, followed their earlier neighbours, and were successful in having new restrictions set in place so that buildings such as 'the Sliver' would no longer be approved for Murray Hill.

Not far from his home and Carriage House, J P Morgan built himself a library to house his enormous collection of books. This is now a brilliant little museum with a really elegant collection that we wanted to explore, but happened not to opened on Easter Monday, sadly.

On the corner opposite the library was the home of Joseph Lamar who made a fortune during the California gold rush days. He and his daughter lived here and had nine servants to attend to their every need, and to their beautiful home, which included an art gallery, a ballroom and a concert hall as well as quarters for their servants. Today it is the home of the Consular General of Poland.

Further along is a home that was originally built as a stable for one of J P Morgan’s partners. It has two lovely horse heads surrounded by wreaths on its facade, looking as if he backed a few winners. A gorgeous building. A home today.

One of the neighbours plots, across the road, is equally charming. This is a remodelled office and home sharing this great bit of front garden space in a prime part of New York city. Such luxury. The house behind the low set wall, is too well hidden to view, but it was, according to the plaque on the fence, built in 1840. Albeit renovated since.

Grand Central Terminal was really close for these residents, not far, also, from one of the best breakfast joints in New York City at Pershing Square cafe, tucked down under a bridge arch.

Grand Central is enormous. Built, in 1871, by our ferryman owner from our first day in New York, Cornelius Vanderbilt. He grew up and did well. And we are very lucky to still have this terminal. Moves were afoot several decades ago to have it crumbled and replaced, but Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, among others, won a long battle to save it. We could have spent a day here there was so much to see.

The terrific sculpture, Transportation, atop the entrance consists of three Roman gods: Hercules, Mercury and Minerva, surrounding another glass piece by Tiffany, a huge stained glass clock, there to help passengers not be late. Tiffany really made a mark.

The main hall concourse is still dripping with its original massive chandeliers along with the stunning time piece sitting atop a brass information booth that is set for accuracy against naval operating time. All under the most exquisite azure ceiling hand-painted with constellations of some 2,500 twinkling stars.

A remnant we were delighted to find were the wall murals on the arched ceiling of one of the track passages. This was painted during the Depression by unemployed artists funded under Franklin Delaware Roosevelt's government sponsored project to help them claw their way out of desperate times. It continues the transportation theme, and is one of the rare pieces of funded art remaining from that period.

After my first ever bowl of Matzoh ball soup for lunch, which was surprisingly delicious, we explored some of the taller buildings in this part of Lower Midtown.

The Socony-Mobil was one: stunning for its facade of stainless steel which was so expensive to use at the time, but it was subsidised by the steel producers, who had begun panicking over the continued popularity of the aluminium in construction being built, so donated these steel building panels in the hope that it would start a rush on stainless steel.

The wonderful old Art Deco structure that is the Daily News was another that we spent time ogling. Or the Daily Planet if you are a Superman and Lois Lane fan. The relief on the front facade is all of three stories tall. Very imposing. And the first level was built to a height of ten stories, to hold the weighty demands of the heavy printing presses which were set there in 1929. Today its foyer houses one of the world’s largest globes.

The Daily News survives today as it always did as one of the country's first ever tabloids. Over half a million people still buy a copy on a daily basis and the paper is still profitable. Amazing in this age of electronic news.

It has been an interesting walk today. An area of the city where we have found many things lasting longer than elsewhere. Thanks, mainly, to folk in the community who worked hard attempting to hang on to bits of their past that could be passed on to others. Amazing to think that it was all once a farm.