Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Lower Manhattan

John and I always visit the wonderful Museum of the American Indian when we visit New York City. It's situated at the farthest point south on Manhattan in the old US Customs Building facing Bowling Green, the first public park in the old city.
On a lovely sunny morning we caught the #20 bus down 7th Avenue to Battery Park and got off to stroll the Battery Park Promenade along the Hudson and enjoy the view of the Statue of Liberty in the distance.
We'd never noticed Jim Dine's sculpture The Cat and the Ape along the promenade before. Charming and surreal.
After visiting the museum we wandered north up Broadway to Trinity Church and its churchyard. The present building was built in 1846 but the original church was established earlier and burnt down in 1776 but the original cemetery and still stands.
It's the last resting space of a number of prominent early New Yorkers like Robert  Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, some Revolutionary leaders and early members of the wealthy Astor family.
Some gravestones are too old and worn to identify for whom they were erected.
The graveyard is a ghostly memorial to early New Yorkers situated just a block away from that infamous, modern memorial, Ground Zero.
The grid patterns of Upper Manhattan converge into the winding, crowded streets in this compact, early part of the city. Here 6th Avenue joins itself to West Broadway.
We wandered up to Soho along West Broadway through the Tribeca neighbourhood. So much change and history in such a small area.

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