The Irregular Guide to New York City
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THE IRREGULAR GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY By Kirsten Miller Author of the KIKI STRIKE series TABLE OF CONTENTS MEET THE DEAD Introduction 1. Picnic in a Potter’s Field 2. The Secret Cemetery 3. A Kidnapped Corpse 4. A Headless Ghost 5. The Land of the Dead 6. Other Cemeteries to Visit: Tiniest, African, Quaker POOP Introduction 7. Outhouses and Privies 8. Toxic Muck 9. The Newton Creek Digester Eggs 10. The Houseboats of the Gowanus Canal 11. Bathing in Public THE CITY BENEATH YOUR FEET Introduction 12. Chinatown’s Bloody Tunnels 13. Manhattan’s Underground Cow Tunnels of Death 14. The Abandoned Subway Station 15. The Mystery of Track 61 16. The Rockefeller Escape Route 2 17. The (Almost) Invisible Stream 18. Other Underground Places to Visit: Atlantic Avenue LOST AND FOUND Introduction 19. The Town Brooklyn Swallowed 20. Campbell Apartment 21. Scenic Stops on the Underground Railroad 22. The Secret of the Brooklyn Bridge 23. When Horses Ruled the City’s Streets 24. Hidden Houses 25. Other Hidden Places to Visit: Grove Court, Patchin and Milligan Places, and Pomander Walk HAUNTED HOUSES Introduction 26. The Voice in the Clock 27. The Little Old Lady Who Refuses to Leave 28. The Girl in the Well 29. A Haunting in Hell’s Kitchen 30. Other Haunted Places of Note: The Ear Inn and the Belasco Theater GETTING MESSY Introduction 31. The Earth Room 32. Rat Watching 3 33. Urban Foraging 34. Guerilla Gardening RANDOM WEIRDNESS Introduction 35. The Secret Mail Delivery System 36. Manhattanhenge 37. Manhattan’s Bermuda Triangle 38. The Tugboat Graveyard 39. A Trip Through Time 40. Wormholes: Brooklyn, South Street Seaport, Sylvan Place, Richmondtown SPELLBOUND Introduction 41. Manhattan’s Secret Library of Magic 42. The Speakeasy Bookstore 43. The Treasure Beneath Bryant Park 44. The Library with a Criminal Record 45. The Best Place to Reboot Your Brain BIZARRE BAZAAR Introduction 46. A Cabinet of Curiosities 47. Witchcraft Supplies 48. Chinatown 4 SCAVENGER HUNT Introduction 49. Rooftop Houses 50. Sewer Alligators 51. The Green Man 52. Gargoyles, Grotesques and Caryatids 53. Ghosts of the Past 5 MEET THE DEAD Millions of people call New York City home. While you’re here, you’ll spend so much time trying not to bump into the living that you may forget to pay your respects to our dead. In places like Brooklyn and Queens, graveyards are often easy to find. However, if you visit Manhattan, you might not encounter a single tombstone. Where are all the cemeteries? You will wonder. People have been dying here for more than four hundred years. Where did they all go? Don’t fret. The dead are still here. It’s just that most of their graves lie unmarked. Should you want to pay them a visit, you’ll first have to know where to look. A PICNIC IN A POTTER’S FIELD Washington Square Park is the perfect place for a picnic, so grab yourself a hot dog and hunt for an empty spot on the grass. Before you chow down, have a moment of silence for your unseen hosts. Because even if the park looks empty, you’re not alone. Over twenty thousand people are buried beneath you. Many of Manhattan’s public parks share the same dark history. Before their trees were planted and playgrounds built, they were potter’s fields, where the bodies of the poor or unknown were laid to rest. Washington Square Park houses many such unfortunate souls. (Along with at least one criminal who was hanged nearby.*) Most of the park’s deceased residents were victims of yellow fever, one of the many nasty diseases that ravaged New York in the nineteenth 6 century. Today, the bodies beneath the grass have been largely forgotten—even though their bones don't always stay buried. A few years back when the park was renovated, the remains of several people were unearthed, along with the tombstone of a man named James Jackson, who died in 1799. (Jackson himself was never discovered.) * Hangman’s Elm stands on the Northwest corner of Washington Square Park. It’s believed to be the oldest tree in Manhattan—around 310 years old. Though there are no records of hangings taking place here, legends dating back to the nineteenth century claim that the tree was the site of executions. THE SECRET CEMETERY Before it was discovered by a band of girl geniuses, the Marble Cemetery was one of Manhattan’s best-kept secrets. Even now, few people realize that there is a hidden graveyard right in the heart of the East Village. Its gate is usually locked, so be sure to check the schedule on the cemetery’s website (marblecemetery.org). If you’re lucky, and the Marble Cemetery is open while you’re in town, you definitely won’t want to miss it. The first thing you’ll need to do is find the cemetery’s gate on Second Avenue between 2nd and 3rd Streets. (Don’t get confused and go the other, less interesting, Marble Cemetery around the corner.) Past the graveyard’s entrance is a long, narrow alley. At the end of this passage, you’ll find a large, grass-covered lawn surrounded by an old stone wall (parts of which have collapsed). But you won’t find any tombstones. Why? Because the two thousand people who were buried here in the nineteenth century weren’t given individual graves. 7 Beneath your feet are 156 rooms. Each once belonged to a wealthy New York family whose members intended to spend eternity side-by- side in a cramped marble chamber. (The families’ names are inscribed on plaques set in the graveyard’s walls.) In order to enter the underground vaults, you’d have to lift one of the stone slabs that are set in the grass. (It’s not recommended—and probably illegal—but if you do, be sure to say hello to Augustus Quackenbush.) A KIDNAPPED CORPSE On the corner of 10th Street and Second Avenue, you’ll find St. Mark’s in the Bowery, the second oldest church in Manhattan. Beneath the St. Mark’s churchyards are stone burial vaults. One of these belongs to Peter Stuyvesant, whose spirit is rumored to haunt the vicinity. (If you see a ghost with a wooden leg, that’s probably Pete.) Inside another vault lie the remains of a wealthy businessman named Alexander Stewart, who was buried at St. Mark’s in 1876. Three weeks later, his corpse was stolen and held for ransom. Grave robbing was quite common in the nineteenth century. Back then, if you paid a midnight visit to a New York cemetery, you were likely to spot groups of shovel-wielding thieves tiptoeing around in the dark. These might have been common crooks raiding coffins and pulling the rings off of skeletal fingers. Or they could have been medical students searching for fresh corpses to dissect. But the grave robbers who stole Alexander Stewart’s body from St. Mark’s in the Bowery were after a much bigger prize. $200,000 to be precise. And they got their ransom from his grieving widow. No one knows for sure if the body that was returned to St. Mark’s actually belonged to Mr. Stewart. But rumor has it that his 8 family took special measures to ensure his remains would not be disturbed. It is said that if the vault is ever opened, the church bells will ring, alerting the city that grave robbers are on the prowl once again. A HEADLESS GHOST The oldest church in Manhattan is St. Paul’s Chapel. There are many reasons one might choose to visit this historic place of worship. However, I recommend a tour of its graveyard. Lots of well-known dead people are buried there. But only one of them is missing his head. George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812) was a gifted actor with an unfortunate addiction to alcohol. He died penniless and was buried in a pauper’s grave in St. Paul’s churchyard. Somewhere between his deathbed and the cemetery, Mr. Cooke became separated from his head. Some say he sold his skull to science before he died in order to help pay his medical bills. Others claim Cooke’s doctor took the head as a souvenir. (He wasn’t the only physician to keep a piece of a favorite patient. The practice wasn’t uncommon in those days.) The actor may have been in the grave, but that didn’t prevent his head from returning to the stage. Over the next century or so, Cooke’s skull often appeared in productions of Hamlet. Alas, Poor Yorick! Today, the skull is in the Scott Library at Thomas Jefferson University. Perhaps someone should tell poor Mr. Cooke. They say his headless ghost can still be seen wandering the St. Paul’s cemetery, searching in vain for its missing noggin. 9 THE LAND OF THE DEAD As soon as you pass through the gothic gates of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, you will find yourself in the land of the dead. For almost two hundred years, this is where many of New York’s most famous (and infamous) citizens have been buried. Take one of the paths that snake through the 478 acres of woods and valleys and you’ll see bizarre marble tombs perched atop knolls, forbidding mausoleums built into the hills, and countless ghoulish monuments to the dead. You might even spot the entrances to Green-Wood’s underground catacombs if you know where to look. The cemetery is lovely, peaceful, and delightfully creepy.