Welcome back to New York. The New York you're used to seeing in late December is not quite the one you'll find in late January. There'll be no Christmas decorations in the department stores, but there will be January sales. The New York City Ballet will have packed away the Nutcracker, but they will be dancing “Fancy Free” and seventeen other glorious works. (Check with Lincoln Center (212-546-2654) for event listings). Many museum special exhibitions will have closed with the end of 2002, but others — including the Metropolitan Museum's blockbuster on Leonardo da Vinci — await you.
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This is a great time to revisit the extraordinary permanent collections of your favorite museums, and an even better time to visit ones you've always meant to explore — and there will be fewer people pushing between you and the art. In fact, there should be fewer tourists trying to get into your restaurants of choice and the plays you want to see. And there are always New York's “greatest hits”: Times Square, a carriage ride through Central Park (particularly beautiful if there's snow), a drink by the fire at “21,” tea in the Palm Court at the Plaza, ice skating in Rockefeller Center, the Diamond District, gleaming Grand Central, the stores on Fifth and Madison Avenues. And there's a spirit of renewal.
Lower Manhattan has shaken off much of the look and feel of destruction and despair that surrounded Ground Zero. You can view the site by taking the number 4 or 5 subway to Fulton Street and walking to Liberty Street. You can also look out from the newly restored glass Winter Garden of the adjacent World Financial Center (directly across West Street) with its new grove of giant palm trees. Visit, too, the sanctuary of St. Paul's Chapel across from the site at Broadway and Fulton. The church, where George Washington worshiped, emerged miraculously intact but covered in dust. For eight months it served as safe haven, mess hall and barracks for the hundreds of workers who toiled at Ground Zero. Everything has been freshly painted — except for the pews. The scuff marks left by dusty boots while exhausted rescue workers took quick naps will remain as a memorial to their efforts.
Many businesses and residents of the area have moved back; others, like the new Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park, have moved in. Stores, like the giant Century 21 at 22 Cortlandt Street, which discounts apparel from t-shirts to French couture, are back in business. Restaurants have reopened, including Bouley at 120 West Broadway, which Chef David Bouley had turned into a canteen to feed hundreds of rescue workers. Other notable restaurants in the area include Robert de Niro's Tribeca Grill (375 Greenwich), Nobu (105 Hudson), Odeon (145 West Broadway), Balthazar (at 80 Spring Street in Soho), Le Zinc (at 139 Duane St.), and the recently spiffed-up Fraunces Tavern (54 Pearl Street), which looks much like it did when Washington bade farewell to his troops in an upper room. Open only for dinner, the maritime antiques-filled Bayard's (One Hanover Square) is in the old Cotton Exchange.
Another historic building with a new mission is the old Customs House at One Bowling Green, now the Museum of the American Indian. Visit the museum and then join the free 90-minute walking tour of lower Manhattan that departs at noon Thursdays and Saturdays. (For information, call 212-606-4064.) Pre-Revolutionary Castle Clinton in Battery Park (with its beautiful view of New York Harbor) is where one buys ferry tickets to the Statue of Liberty and to Ellis Island. The Ellis Island Museum has interactive displays for tracking down immigrant ancestors. To see how many of those immigrants lived, visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 90 Orchard Street. (call ahead to make reservations for your visit). To see edgy art by some of their descendants go to the New Museum of Contemporary Art on Broadway between Houston and Prince.
New York has museums celebrating almost everything, and the museum that has something from almost every period of art history is the Metropolitan Museum, on Fifth Ave. at 82nd. No matter how many times you go there, there will likely be things you've not noticed before — perhaps the serene Chinese scholar's house and garden. And there is that 120-piece international loan exhibition on “Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman.” Near the Met on upper Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile are the Jewish Museum (at 92nd), now featuring the works of Adolph Gottlieb; the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design (at 91st, in Andrew Carnegie's home), Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim (at 89th); the Whitney (at 75th), and the Frick mansion (at 70th). Open just over a year is the Neue Galerie (at 86th Street), dedicated to the turn-of-the-20th century art and design of Austria and Germany — with works by, among others, artists Klimt and Schiele and designers Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann. The Neue Galerie's Café Sabarsky pays delicious homage to Vienna.
Forup-to-this-minute art, go to the Chelsea gallery district. Concentrated in the West 20s from 10th to 11th Avenue are more than 170 galleries. Note the Dia Center for the Arts, Max Protetch and Sonnabend on West 22nd; and Gagosian and Barbara Gladstone on West 24th. There are also huge buildings crammed with galleries on 20th and 26th Streets. Walk around and take in the scene, particularly on Saturday. Artists, despite their starving image, like good food — try the Empire Diner on 10th Avenue at 22nd Street, Bottino (246 Tenth Ave.), the Red Cat (227 Tenth Avenue) and Sandro's (200 Ninth Avenue). A bit farther down is The Park (118 Tenth Avenue). Below 14th Street is the trendy meat-packing district where you'll find Pastis at 9th Avenue and Little West 12th Steet. If all the art and eating get to be too much, try out the sports facilities at the giant Chelsea Piers complex along the Hudson River at 23rd St. where you can practice your golf swing, go roller and ice skating or rock climbing.
For adventures in other art forms, check out readings by poets and writers. The Half King at 505 W. 23rd, near the galleries, presents writers of fiction and non-fiction on Monday nights at 7:00. The Cornelia Street Café (29 Cornelia Street), with delicious food and a fireplace upstairs, is celebrating its 25th year of presenting musicians (like Suzanne Vega), writers (Eve Ensler debuted “The Vagina Monologues” here) and poets in its downstairs, brick-walled West Village space every night (except Monday) at 6:00 and 9:00.
The most interesting theater can often be found Off and Off-Off Broadway. At 45 Bleecker Theater, Bob Balaban (“Gosford Park”) is directing a rotating line-up of top stars in “The Exonerated,” about death row inmates cleared by DNA testing. The Signature Theatre Co. is presenting Lanford Wilson's “Talley's Folly,” at 555 W. 42nd Street, with Cynthia Nixon (of “Sex and the City”). The Manhattan Theater Club (at City Center, 131 W. 55th) is presenting “Kimberly Akimbo,” a tragi-comic tale of a teenager with a rapid-aging disease, starring “Saturday Night Live's” Ana Gasteyer. La Mama Experimental Theater (74 E.4th at Second Ave.) is presenting “The Devils of Loudun,” (about mad possession, sin and redemption — perhaps too much of a busman's holiday.)
Ann Ray Martin is currently a freelance journalist. She is a graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism and a former associate editor of Newsweek, for which she wrote about the Arts. APsaA member Andrea Weiss, who is a member of the Committee on Outreach for Scientific and Educational Programs, asked her journalist friend Martin to write this article for TAP, and Martin graciously agreed.
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But Broadway is still the theatrical heart of New York, and the season's first hit, “Hairspray,” is joined by Baz Luhrmann's “La Boheme,” “Man of La Mancha (with Brian Stokes Mitchell), ”Our Town“ (with Paul Newman), Michael Crawford in ”Dance of the Vampires,“ Carol Burnett's autobiographical play ”Hollywood Arms,“ and Nora Ephron's ”Imaginary Friends,“ with Swoozie Kurtz as Lillian Hellman and Cherry Jones as Mary McCarthy. And there's ”Movin' Out,“ Twyla Tharp's dancers interpreting the songs of Billy Joel. For most long-running shows, get bargain tickets by going to the Hit Show Club's office, at 630 Ninth Avenue (between 44th and 45th), suite 808 (phone 212-581-4211), for ”twofers,“ the coupons that allow you to buy seats at the box office for almost two-for-one. For soldout hits try calling Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids' Caretix Hotline (212-840-0770, ext. 229). These are full price and then some — but the fee is for a good cause. For dining before or after the show, try Blue Fin (1567 Broadway), Thalia (Eighth Avenue at 50th St.), DB Bistro Moderne (55 W. 44th St.), Ilo (40 W. 40th), District (130 W. 46th), Esca (43rd and 9th Ave.); and the legendary Sardi's (234 W. 44th Street).
Lincoln Center, on Broadway in the low 60s, has, in addition to the New York City Ballet at the New York State Theater, the Metropolitan Opera in full voice with Janecek's “Jenufa,” Mozart's “Don Giovanni” and Verdi's “Aida.” At Avery Fisher Hall, conductor Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic will be joined by soprano Jane Eaglen and violin wunderkind Midori. The Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse has Itzhak Perlman, and the Vivian Beaumont Theater is serving up “Dinner at Eight.” Favorite restaurants in the area include Café Fiorella and Josephina (across from Lincoln Center's plaza), Café des Artistes (1 W. 67th.), Picholine (35 W. 64th), Rosa Mexicano (Columbus and 62nd Street), and the three-star Jean Georges (1 Central Park West.) Farther uptown, in Bill Clinton's new neighborhood, is Harlem's Apollo Theater (125th and Seventh Avenue), where you can take a back-stage tour. Call Billy Mitchell at 212-531-5337 for details. While in Harlem, enjoy Sylvia's (328 Lenox Ave.) down-home ribs, chicken, collard greens and sweet-potato pie. (Bill reportedly does.)
This is just a sampling of what New York has put together for your visit — so come, explore, enjoy.
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