Manhattan End-to-End via #1

Let's take a little trip. Let's travel from one end of Manhattan to the other.

Let's traverse this narrow thirteen-mile island that fascinates and captures the imaginations of peoples around the world.

And let's do it via the #1 subway line, noting the most signficant stops along the way, subway stations that are more than just various gateways into Manhttan -- they are portals into American culture, history, and power. 

Now there's something important to remember: Manhattan technically extends beyond Manhattan Island. There is a small neighborhood just north of the island called Marble Hill that is legally part of the Borough of Manhattan. So as we look north from the bottom of Marble Hill, we can look north towards the Bronx.

Then we turn around and see  the northern tip of Manhattan island as well as the bridge with the crosswalk and subway tracks that will take us into it.

Now we'll go upstairs to the Marble Hill 225th Street station and take a look at the subway route on the #1 that we'll be following (as well as map of the geographic route we'll be crossing).

Now the train has rattled into the station, we get on and sit down, and we're off!

After a few stops we hit 181th street street. This is where we'll find the George Washington Bridge. Dubbed "the world's busiest bridge," this northern-most expanse connects the city to the rest of America, with cars flowing in and out of NYC and the rest of the continent. It's also, apparently, a popular place for some lost souls to end their lives -- sometimes to dark, comic effect. 

Few more stops and we hit 137th street and City College. 

This public college in the heart of Harlem is one of the great institutions for American learning. For over a century, poor kids from all over NYC could go to City College and pursue the American dream. The students and graduates of City are extraordinary: ten Nobel Prize winners, mayors, Supreme Court justices, US Senators and Secretaries of State, Oscar-winners, Emmy-winners, Pulitzer Prize-winners, astronauts and founders of big companies, and so many more! Heck, even fictional people have gone to City College: Gordon Gekko from Wall Street and Don Draper from Mad Men most notably.

Also, it's where both of my parents worked for almost 40 years, met, fell in love, and produced Mr NYC.

One more stop and we're in Harlem, above ground, at 125th Street.

What else can I say about Harlem, the capital of the black American experience, where great black artists and pioneers lived and worked. Also, it's also one of the hearts of American culture with Apollo Theater and the Cotton Club.

One more stop and we're at 116th street and Columbia University.

One of the seven Ivy League Universities, this institution of higher learning pre-dates the United States itself, originally chartered in 1754 by King George II (hence the original name King's College). Besides being a great and famous university, Columbia has been a site for brilliance and controversy, where great minds have flowered and fought over decades. 

Now we chug down past several stops on the Upper West Side to 66th street and Lincoln Center. 

Home to ballet, opera, symphonies, musicals and plays, Lincoln Center is the multi-theater complex that, along with Broadway, defines NYC as the cultural capital of America. While encompassing only a few small blocks, its impact across America is massive -- including the many performances that are broadcast from there. I have personal recollections of performing at Lincoln Center and have blogged about it a lot -- including my own experience in partaking in a live broadcast. 

One more stop and we're all 59th Street and Columbus Circle.

The site of the big memorial to Christopher Columbus, it is one of the crossroads of Manhattan, with different avenues intersecting and hugging the lower southwest portion of Central Park. It is also, to my knowledge, the only traffic circle in all over NYC. And these days it is now home to the massive Time Warner building that looms over it.

Two more stops and we're in the most square in all the world -- Times Square. 

Dubbed the "Crossroads of the World" it is the very center of American culture, bedecked with electronic billboards, Broadway theaters, massive chain restaurants -- for many it is New York City, the heart of the heart of it all. And, obviously, it's where the world celebrates New Year's every year.

A quick one-stop and we're at Penn Station on 34th street -- or Pennsylvania Station as it's officlally known.

If the George Washington Bridge is the city's businest car-route into America, Penn is the easily the busiest railway route. Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Railroad all go through it, a central hub that connects the outer-edges of Long Island to the West Coast of the United States.

Penn Station also has a tortured history -- the once gorgeous station was torn down in the 1960s and replaced by a dingy undeground hovel. In the last twenty-years it has been dramatically rebuilt and re-imagined, a vast improvement of what it was but a sad reminder of what we could have had if we had only preserved the original. Hey, at least the new Penn Station now has a Dunkin' Donuts!

Now we go down several stops and hit Christopher Street -- Stonewall Station. 

Christopher Street is actually a quiet, beautiful area of Greenwich Village but it is now of the iconic birth place of American gay rights movement. On June 28th, 1969, right after the death of gay icon Judy Garland, the Stonewall Inn was raided by cops -- and for the first time, gay people fought back. It took decades for gay rights to be enshrined into American culture and law but it has triumphed mightly. And it all started on this small block of Manhattan.

Our journey is almost over but we have one more stop until the end -- the World Trade Center.

Of course it used to be the World Trade Centers -- until September 11, 2001 when it became Ground Zero, then, after an extensive rebuilding, One World Trade Center. 

The story of this patch of Lower Manhattan is one of great triumph and tragedy in American history, where George Washington celebrated his victory in the American Revolution and where American was also brutally attacked two centuries later. It's the symbol of American financial power and dominance. Its where Manhattan and NYC began and where it grew out from. It is the complicated heart and soul of the world's greatest nation and its greatest city.

 

And now we come of the end of our journey. We reach the South Ferry-Whitehall Station aka. the Battery, and we pop up out of our seat and go upstairs into the very southern edge of Manhattan. 

We're right across the street from the entraces to the Governor's Island and Staten Island Ferrys, and we can see (and smell) the vastness of New York Harbor, the watery gateway to city and the force that unites the five boroughs. 

And then we walk down a few blocks, turning to look uptown to see where we came from ...

... and then we look down to the southern tip of Manhattan with the rest of NYC and America beyond it.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip along the #1 subway line, seeing the amazing stops and spots of Americana along the way. You can do it yourself in just under and hour. And I hope, maybe, that you learned something!