In 1986 my great-uncle Peter passed away and was waked in what had been the old neighborhood, East 29th Street, near Second Avenue, at the Gannon Funeral Home. Peter was of course Jimmy's uncle, his father's brother, my grandfather's brother. I love it when I can understand aunts and uncles. Cousins are a whole different story.
Peter was a good bit younger than my grandfather John. The best I was ever able to peg Peter's age was from an Ellis Island ship manifest that shows him entering the country from Greece, with my grandfather, in 1912. My grandfather had already been in the country several years, and had already started a family, by then having two sons.
The manifest showed the age for Panayouti, Greek for Peter, as 18, so the feeling is he was born in 1894. He would have been 92 when he passed away.
My uncle Peter and his brother were the brothers in the family flower shop, Royal Flower Shop on East 18th Street, on three different East 18th Street corners for over 50 years. Peter never married, and being a bachelor when WW II rolled around, he was drafted, even though he was over 40. If you had a pulse and were not married with a family, you were drafted.
Peter never was sent overseas, but he did complete his service time in Kentucky in the Quartermaster corps, getting an honorable discharge with the word "excellent" as to his character.
The family's beginnings were 32nd Street and 2nd Avenue,. To the best of my knowledge Peter lived with his brother and sister-in-law and his nephews. He never learned to read or write English, and I was never sure he even knew how to read and write Greek, but he of course spoke both languages.
When my uncle Jimmy reached Gannon's he was 70, and I remember him remarking that he didn't recognize the old neighborhood—"there are so many tall buildings now." When Jimmy split from family's second apartment over the flower shop at 148 East 18th Street, he lived in Brooklyn. Of course he would come by, but not often. If there's one thing my father's family was, it wasn't close. Everyone had their own orbits.
Since my retirement in 2011 I do not go into the City every workday. I might go in now every 4-6 weeks for medical and dental appointments, with a haircut thrown in, and some shopping. I'm never gone so long that things look totally new, but I do take in things I might not have when I traveled in every day.
I'm almost like a tourist who finds themselves looking up; looking up at the number of construction cranes; looking at the number of construction sheds I have to walk under; the latest piece of street real estate that has been blocked off for pedestrians. Just the other day I became aware of two steel ping-pong tables with metal nets that were set up in the Herald Square area. Regulation, full-size 9' x 5' tables. No balls or paddles. Bring your own and start to play. My guess is someone will want to play "winners" next.
On my way to a medical appointment on East 37th Street, hard by the Midtown Tunnel, just off 2nd Avenue, I happened to walk east on a block I hadn't walked east on for a while. I purposely try and do this so I can see what's new. It was in doing this I came across an East Side building, two buildings really, connected high up by an enclosed walkway that were my best guess just east of First Avenue. One of the buildings was significantly slanted high up.
There isn't any building being built in New York that doesn't try and promote "water view" of either the East or Hudson Rivers. Even a sliver of flowing water is enough to justify charging more. Thus the height of these buildings. All are trying to out jump, or shoulder out a competing view.
Even an empty lot I passed on 36th Street and 2nd Avenue showed a rendition of what they expected the view to be of the East River: twinkling lights, bridges lit with necklaces of lighting, vast views east showing stretches of Queens, and more lights; certain sophistication guaranteed. Act now to buy a condo.
I laughed. The East River never appealed to me aesthetically. Grey water. Perhaps the nighttime sky is nice. After all, New York does look better in the dark, but the views seemed way over-hyped. How long before your view from the 33rd floor will just be another view? But your expenses will still be the same.
When I worked at One World Trade Center 29th floor, my cubicle was right by a south facing window. I actually had a decent waterway view, and sometimes would pay attention to a mammoth cruise ship coming up the Hudson, but for the most part, it was just where I worked.
The biggest kick I used to get was when the robotic window washing machine descended up and down the panel of windows, before moving on to another section. The apparatus was guided by tracks on the roof. And on the 29th floor, there were 81 stories above me, another thing that I got a huge kick out of. I wasn't even very high up.
The medical office I visited was in the Corinthian, at 345 East 37th Street, an incredible large building that is straining to give its tenants a view of the East River and Queens. And of course traffic going in and out of the Midtown Tunnel, because that's right by the front door. Someone I'm sure has taken time lapse photos from their window of the moving red and white lights, usually not moving very fast.
NYU Langone seems to be in more places in NYC than Starbucks. They have the first three floors of this building, and a separate entrance apart from the residential side.
Walking east to my appointment and looking up I couldn't help think I'm now as old as my Uncle Jimmy was in 1986 when he came into Gannon's funeral home and remarked on the buildings in the old neighborhood.
Con Edison saw horses at excavation sites used to say: "Dig We Must For A Growing New York." The joke used to be New York will be a great place to live whenever they finish it.
That's not going to be anytime soon.
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