Gate in New York City

Too busy watching people, drooling at restaurant menus, and admiring well-used parks and squares, I've missed the city's gates. Luckily, a walk took us down a quiet block in the 70s where we spotted the gate below.

Three Saturday scenes

New York City is one of the world's great walking cities. I learned, from Jen of the Walking Berkeley blog, that walking is one of the best ways to get to know a place. Other influences include my natural inclination to walk, "Looking At Cities" by Allan Jacobs, "Wanderlust" by Rebecca Solnit, and the concept of the flaneur.

On Saturday past, I walked a transect (h/t to Grady Clay) from Bleecker Street to East 15 Street. Why these particular points? Bleecker was the scene of a street fair between Broadway and 6th Avenue and Union Square is the site of a Saturday Greenmarket. The middle point was Washington Square Park, famous for its fountain and as a yard for NYU students.

Bleecker's street fair hosted gyro vendors, New York souvenir sellers, "3 for $10 pashminas" (in this heat?), fresh fruit juice and bonsai stalls (I was tempted by the latter).

The scene was different in Washington Square. There were vendors, but only handful, selling refreshing treats. Sunbathers covered the "Passive Lawn"s while the sun-shy gravitated towards the benches beneath the park's big trees.

Union Square brought everything together: farmers selling produce like orange, purple, and yellow carrots

and food vendors at the Greenmarket, trinket sellers on the East 14th Street plaza, and sunbathers, sitters, and strollers in the park proper. After this transect, done mostly in the sun, and the lack of ice cream at the Greenmarket (there were several dairy stalls), I sought the shade and benches of the park's interior.

Redux: Greenspaces in New York City

This entry was originally published on April 17, 2009. Local ecologist is now written from New York, so we wanted to bring this post to the attention of our readers - old and new.

New York City's most famous greenspace is Central Park designed by Olmsted and Vaux (pronounced Vox). But the city supports more than this (central) park. Here are several types of greenspaces to be found in the city:

Produce at the Union Square (14th Street) Farmers' Market

Another square, to the south - Washington Square Park

Spots of green on the balconies of the old Chelsea Hotel

Mid-block East Village courtyard

Gardens powered by steam at Cooper Union

I was absolutely thrilled to discover the Time Landscape (shown below), a patch of Manhattan woodland created by landscape artist Alan Sonfist in 1978. Learn more about the constructed woodland and the historical ecology of the neighborhood at the NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation website.

Decorating with glass mosaic

It's fitting that the subway art at 110 Street (B/C Line), also known as Cathedral Parkway, is composed of glass tiles. Mosaics and glass work remind me of churches and other places of worship. The name of the mosaic is "Migrations" by the artist Christopher Wynter.

All along Houston, water towers

One of the first things I noticed about our new neighborhood is the water towers along Houston Street. I doubt the towers are still in use but appreciated the fact that they were preserved. I figured the towers provided water before modern plumbing. A web search revealed the following information from the NPR website about the city's water towers:

"New York bedrock doesn't let water travel naturally above six stories," he explained. Until the advent of modern plumbing, water towers were needed to build pressure in the pipes. (quoting Brian Hayes author of Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape)

Here are a few more photographs.

For more about New York's water towers, read "Excuse me, could I please borrow your water tower?" by Ellen Zachos of Garden Bytes from the Big Apple.

New Jersey to the west

Local ecologist is now located in New York City. We are slowly getting to know our neighborhood and the city. When we lived in Berkeley, New Jersey was to the east; now, it's to the west. The waterway in the photograph below is the Hudson River.

Rails to park: New York's High Line

A meandering walk to the Hudson River brought us to Gansevoort Street, the beginning of the High Line, one of New York City's newest parks. Alas, I was without my notebook and camera, so have no detailed observations or photographs to share with you, except to note that the positive reviews of the park are warranted.

Here is a short list of reviews I've enjoyed:

getting high in NYC at Garden Bytes from the Big Apple

City Portraits - The High Line, Chelsea at New York Portraits

and Nicolai Ouroussoff's On High, a Fresh Outlook at the New York Times

Autumn botanical tour in Turkey

Autumn crocus in Turkey courtesy of Holly Chase

Join Holly Chase for an autumn botanical tour in Turkey! Ms. Chase's spring tour in Turkey was attended and blogged about by former NPR broadcaster Ketzel Levine.

Here's what I know of the tour courtesy of Ms. Chase:

• Southwestern Turkey, with optional extension to Cappadocia
• date: October 11 -22, 2009
• tour leader: English-speaking Turkish professor with expertise in Mediterranean & Anatolian flora
• sites: Istanbul, Buldan, Dalyan and more
• a $200 deposit with early sign-up
• full payment is due 45 days before departure (approximately the second half of August)

Intrigued? Contact Holly Chase via phone (941.330.8738 & 860.536.2540), email (holly@hollychase.com), or the Web (http://hollychase.com) for more information.