New York City (Fodor's, 2012) - Fodor's [24]
MOVIE-PERFECT BUT WITH A SHADY PAST
To the right off restaurant-lined Pell Street is alley-size Doyers Street, the site of early-20th-century gang wars and today a favorite location for film shoots. Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst had a heart-to-heart talk in Spider-Man 2, and Woody Allen used it in two of his films, Alice and Small Time Crooks.
Quirky, angled, and authentic, this curving roadway is where you can find Chinatown’s oldest teahouse, dating from 1920, Nom Wah Tea Parlor (13 Doyers St. | 212/962–6047). There’s also a relatively hidden and grungy underground passage, formerly a storage place for liquor and now lined with Chinese travel agencies and other very low-tech businesses (don’t expect to see signs in English). The street makes a sharp angle (according to legend, it was built this way by Chinatown merchants to thwart straight-flying ghosts who brought bad luck; history says it’s because the street was once the entryway to brewer Heinreich Doyers’s elegant home) before it reaches the Bowery, a point known as “Bloody Angle” because of the visibility-challenged victims’ inability to anticipate a gang’s attacks from the corner.
The Bowery itself was once lined with theaters and taverns, but earned a reputation well into the late 20th century as the city’s skid row. The Bowery Mission is still there, but today the street is a busy commercial thoroughfare with several restaurant-equipment and lighting stores, and is also the home of the New Museum, in the Lower East Side, which houses contemporary art exhibitions. The oldest row building in New York City, the Edward Mooney House, is at 18 Bowery on the corner of Pell Street. Erected in 1785 by Edward Mooney, the house was a residence until the 1820s, and was at one time or another a hotel, tavern, pool hall, restaurant, and bank. Today, it’s a historic landmark and opened to the public.
STAR POWER AND STELLAR LOOKS
Walking the photogenic streets of TriBeCa, full of cast-iron factories as well as a time-defying stretch of Federal row houses on Harrison Street, you can understand why everyone from Robert De Niro to J.F.K. Jr. has bought apartments here.
The two-block-long Staple Street, with its connecting overhead walkway, is a favorite of urban cinematographers. At 60 Hudson Street is the Art Deco Western Union Building—try to sneak a peek at its magnificent lobby.
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TOP ATTRACTIONS IN CHINATOWN AND TRIBECA
Harrison Street.
One of TriBeCa’s most compelling attractions isn’t a collection of monuments or destinations as much as its having a different feel from the rest of the city. With cobblestone streets like Greenwich and Washington and a more subdued pace, it’s a chance to get a fleeting glimpse of age in a city determined to constantly reinvent itself. Take a deep breath, take it all in, and make sure not to miss the Federal-style houses on Harrison Street that were relocated here in the 1970s. | TriBeCa | Subway: 1 to Franklin St.
Hudson River Park.
If the chaos of New York City starts to get to you and you need a new perspective, take a walk along the Hudson River. Parts of the five-mile area from Battery Place to 59th Street are still being renovated to create a park with a unifying style, but you have the opportunity to rent bicycles and explore the bike paths, take boat excursions, and use the basketball courts and batting cages. The TriBeCa portion consists of Piers 25 and 26. | TriBeCa | Subway: 1 to Franklin St.
WORTH NOTING IN CHINATOWN AND TRIBECA
Columbus Park.
People-watching is the thing in this park. If you swing by in the morning, you’ll see men and women practicing tai chi; the afternoons bring intense games of mah-jongg. In the mid-19th century the park was known as Five Points—the point where Mulberry Street, Anthony (now Worth) Street, Cross (now Park) Street, Orange (now Baxter) Street, and Little Water Street (no longer in existence) intersected—and was notoriously ruled by dangerous