I think I might have already said but this trip to NYC was all about tasty bites of the Big Apple - food and architecture.
Our last day in this fabulous metropolis we took a walking tour of the Flatiron district. Absolutely wonderful! We passed the house where Edith Wharton lived, learned about the early development of NYC beyond its early settlement days where life centred at the tip of Manhattan Island, how the island was levelled for subsequent development and the west side became land fill. It was in this district that department stores had their beginnings including a huge toy emporium which is now Eataly an indoor upmarket food market plus plus and totally Italian. The rest of the story is in the pix but if you come to NYC do this tour. It was really worthwhile.
The iconic Flatiron building awesome fromany angle. Its location where Broadway and 5th Avenue formed a triangle with 23rd Street - it was a pretty windy corner. This was a place for women to wander back then and the wind funnelled up off New York Harbour would blow the ladies skirts up showing their ankles - shocking. The guys of course hung out there waiting for a glimpse. The cops would move them on but of course the guys would return in what became known as the 23rd Street Skidsoo!!
All buildings over 5 floors had to have a water tower on their roofs to provide adequate water pressure (you can just see one popping out the top of this building). It was a city regulation! And guess who controls the water tower industry, which incidentally were originally all wooden? The Mob who also control or owns garbage collection and scaffolding. Now the latter may not sound too much of a big deal except that there is another city reg that stipulates that all buildings have to undergo a full safety check or their exteriors twice every 10 years and sometimes one can take a few years. One word - scaffolding!! Nice regular and reliable income!
Simply weird
This building, now Eataly, has been many things but started as a toy emporium - Marble, terracotta trim the works. They are slowly uncovering and restoring.
A big chop!
We watched bread making as well as this - he’s making mozzarella, it’s made fresh daily. They also put on cooking demos.
The windows of Eataly are dedicated to the former toy emporium; this bit of the Statue of Liberty is made of Leggo! The construction of the Statue of Liberty was crowd funded. This part of the Statue was taken on a roadshow around the towns of the US to inspire people to contribute - it obviously worked.
Eisenberg’s dates from 1929 and the Wall crash. At that time people could get 100 year leases on buildings for a song. So many small business popped up . Come 2029 there will be an interesting change on the streets of NYC!
We were served with humongous Reuben sandwiches. To die for 😋
The atmosphere was like Pellegrini’s in Melbourne.
This is Seward, the man who bought Alaska from the Russians way back when forva trifling amount. At the time it was called Seward’s Folly but I think it payed off. If the statue looks a little familiar you’d be right. It has Seward’s head stuck on Lincoln’s body- seems they had oodles of statues going to waste. It was a cheap option! It sits in Madison Square Park opposite the Flatiron building.
Beecher’s cheese making right in the city! We had the best cheese toastie!
We finished with dessert - of course! Not our thing but we had this pastry filled with chocolate and coated with honey before baking. It was heavenly.
This delicious thing is a chocolate Rugelach
At the end of the day we walked to Time Square and then collapsed with an ice cold mojito
Lindsay was looking but was definitely NOT tempted to eat- we were stuffed.
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