I was in the Lower West Side at the end of August, driving down and back on the same day to move my daughter’s belongings out of her Tribeca apartment. The moving process took longer than expected, no surprise there, so I didn’t have time to walk around the area as I had hoped. Instead, I used my WPA New York City Guide, punched street addresses into my GPS, and attempted to drive to the locations and see what was there today.

Radio Row (photo by Berenice Abbott)

The New York City guide states, “…the character of the neighborhood is derived from produce sheds, crates, smells of fruit and fish of Washington Market, and the amazing variety of retail shops selling radios, pets, garden seeds, fireworks, sporting goods, shoes, textiles, and church supplies.”

These retail and wholesale outlets seem to be long gone. The produce and fishmarkets moved to Hunt’s Point in the Bronx, and many of the remaining disappeared in the construction of the World Trade Center, particularly the radio stores on Cortlandt and the surrounding streets that constituted what was called “Radio Row.”  These stores not only sold radios, but also had boxes and boxes of the different types of vacuum tubes that could be used to repair them, similar to one of the original

Lights of World Trade Center construction at night

Radio Shack stores here in Boston that I remember visiting with my father who was then hunting for tubes to fix our old Philco TV.

As a visiting tourist, it seemed to me that the single-most dominant feature of the Lower West Side is the World Trade Center area. Almost everywhere I tried to get, the GPS took me down streets that led into the site and the new construction. This was ten days before the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, and the lights from what clearly was a 24/7 operation to prepare the site were a beacon in the neighborhood.

The original construction of the WTC forever changed much of the character of the Lower West Side in ways that this new construction would not; it destroyed old retailing districts and also provided much of the fill for the site of Battery Park City, a residential high rise complex that contributed to its rapidly increasing population. The destruction on 9/11 even affected what remained of the features I was searching for that evening.

World Trade Center Construction, 4/2011

“The tiny Church of St. Nicholas (Greek Orthodox), at 155 Cedar Street, between Washington and West Streets, was built in 1820,” stated the Guide. Based on that location, I thought that it might also have been abandoned and destroyed when the World Trade Center was constructed. However, my GPS, while an older model, accepted the address as existing, and so I punched it in and set off to find out if the building at 155 Cedar were still the church. I never got there.

The GPS tried to direct me down streets that were one-way in the wrong direction, clearly having changed their orientation since the 9/11 catastrophe. I had no street map of the area so, with the limited time I had, I chose another site and set off to find it instead.

Later, I still wondered about the church and decided to do some research to learn its fate. Had it actually survived the construction of the World Trade Center, and if I had managed to successfully navigate the streets of Tribeca, would I have found it still standing? The answers were yes, and no.

Church of St. Nicholas as it appeared before 9/11

I learned that St. Nicholas had indeed been constructed in 1820, but first as a boarding house that included a saloon on the first floor. The four-story building was bought and renovated by the Church in the mid-nineteenth century, and remained active, and standing until the events of 9/11.  Then, it was one of the only buildings (perhaps the only one) off the World Trade Center site to suffer such extreme damage that it needed to be demolished.  Today, despite a promise from then-Governor Pataki that the church would receive help to rebuild, the last news article I found indicated that negotiations with the Port Authority appear to have reached a standstill, and thefuture of the church was still in doubt.

Update: The Huffington Post reported on Friday that agreement had been reached to rebuild the Church of St. Nicholas. The deal was brokered by the office of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Here’s the link:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/st-nicholas-greek-orthodo_n_1011428.html

Next: More from the Lower West Side

It took me a while, though, to think through how to focus my blog around a topic that would allow me to be excited about adding new posts on a regular basis. For my whole adult life, I have worked in politics as a campaign consultant and lobbyist. Building a blog around politics and the issues of the day would seem like a natural extension of that experience. However, so much good political analysis is the result of constant engagement on a daily basis with people both inside and outside of the business. In my new life, I have purposefully limited that engagement to focus attention on my fiction. I worry that posts trying to analyze politics from my new perch could soon resemble reactive, frustrated rants rather than thoughtful analysis.

Next, I considered the potential posts that emerge from everyday activities that I enjoy – movies, books, music, cooking, dining out, travel – but, for me, it might suck the enjoyment and spontaneity out of those activities if I had this nagging thought running around in the back of my head, “will this choice make an interesting blog post?” Wouldn’t it be better to find a more consistent focus to the blog and then occasionally insert posts about these activities when something truly moved me to write?

Then, I thought back to an idea I had a few years ago. I had purchased a reprint

My first WPA Guide purchase.

of Massachusetts, A Guide to Its Places and People, the 1937 publication of the Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA (Works Project Administration). I was captivated by its detailed tours of the highways and byways of Massachusetts in the 1930′s. My initial thought was to explore the tours and see what had become of the landmarks from each tour that the writers had highlighted. At one point, I actually spent a day wandering around Newton where we then lived and photographing the locations I could find.

Although that project was pushed aside, I have continued to read more about the WPA, the Writers’ Project, and the guides.

I invested in original copies of the Massachusetts guide and others. In June, while in Maine, I pulled out my copy of the Maine Guide before we went to Waterville where my wife, Barbara Ross, was meeting with her publisher. I spent a few hours wandering around Waterville trying to capture the locations that had been highlighted in 1938. Virtually none existed today. The old campus of Colby College had been torn down, the new campus carved out of what had been empty fields. A boys’ prep school had disappeared, although it appeared that building

This restaurant, and a Maronite Rite Church, were the only visible signs of what had been a large Syrian community in Waterville, ME

had been converted to another use. One home that remained was also the site of the Waterville Historical Association. It had closed for the day, but I was reminded that here was a place to get my questions answered.

This visit confirmed for me that the Guides remain a useful jumping-off point for exploring. There is the first-blush complete randomness of the choices made by the WPA writers and updating how those landmarks appear (or not) today, and their current place in their communities. There are the questions that emerge about what happened in the intervening years and opportunities for follow-up with local historical associations, museum curators, and others. There are also, as pointed out by Christine Bold in her great book, Writers, Plumbers, And Anarchists: The WPA Writer’s Project in Massachusetts, questions that emerge about what was not included in the guides including editorial choices made for length and others perhaps made for political concerns. Lots of potential.

Mostly, this strikes me as just fun. The Guides are approaching their 75th Birthday, and finding ways to use them in my travels open all kinds of exciting possibilities for someone who loves history, local color, and road trips. Occasionally, I expect I will segue into other things that interest me including the fore-mentioned books, movies, dining, etc. I hope you will enjoy.