John's Boxing Club: 
   A South Bronx Field of Dreams

Bobby Gleason's gym, now a parking lot, located to the right

Ray Kinsella’s built his Field of Dreams, a baseball diamond, on his Iowa cornfield. In the 1989 movie of the same name, a voice told Kinsella, played by Kevin Costner, “If you build it, he will come.” Kinsella did and deceased ballplayers emerged from the cornstalks behind the outfield.


Pashk Gjini, a seventeen-year-old Albanian immigrant has his Field of Dreams in a run-down former post office in the South Bronx. Located on a desolate stretch of Westchester Avenue John’s Boxing Club is surrounded by a parking lot and elevated subway tracks. In America’s poorest Congressional districts the American dream thrives.


Pashk came to the US at 8. His older brother Gjin, 34, arrived in the late 1990’s. In 2004 Ginj took over the Jerome Boxing Club, founded about 1981, and renamed it John after his son.

Pashk and  banner of world ranked  Clottey and Agbeko, 

At 13 Pashk began working at the club on fight nights. He collected admissions, cash only, at the front door. In 2008 he started working part-time. Pashk, who has a brown belt, said, “I was teaching martial arts but my brother needed me.”


Pashk manages John’s part-time after classes at Cardinal Hayes High School. He captains their playoff soccer team and belongs to the Martin Scorsese Media Center. Scorsese, a Hayes graduate, won an Oscar for Raging Bull, about Bronx native Jake LaMotta.


 “Owning a business is my dream. Pashk pays his tuition with the money he earns. Pashk learned the business with little input from Gjin, a tile setter. “I thought I was too young to work here. My brother believed in me.”


Soon Pashk computerized the business. “Before we kept names and dues on index cards in a box, in no special order.”  He created a website, a Facebook page, used You Tube to showcase events, and listed the gym on search engines. He handed out fliers. He sold tee shirts and hoodies with John’s name. When he broke even he gave the rest away. “Let people wear them instead of collecting dust on a shelf. It’s free advertisement,” Pashk said. His efforts paid off. Membership swelled to over 400 from about 125.


Accepted by several local colleges he plans to study business. A wiry built six-footer, the sandy-hairedPashk spoke no English when he arrived. Today he speaks fluently. He is polite, bright and personable. He deals with the club’s many personalities in a friendly and engaging manner.

Photo from Jerome Boxing Club's heyday. Lamboy in photo.

Boxing clubs once dotted the city’s neighborhoods. They lacked the amenities and sparkle of Equinox or Crunch. Places like Stillman’s, Gleason’s, (original one was next door to John’s) or Gramercy Gym captured the city’s gritty underbelly. They became office or hangout for gangsters, bookies, promoters, hustlers, trainers, pro and amateur fighters, wanna-be-tough guys and boxing devotees.

Sparring session in first ring. Boxers and trainers watch

One Thursday afternoon in late December thirty people work out. Two fighters pound the heavy bags with the intensity of prizefighters. Two jump rope; a fifth, strapped with weights, climbs the tread master. Another weaves his body as if avoiding imaginary punches while popping the N-bag; a seventh pummels a speed bag. A woman zaps her trainer’s padded gloves with hard jabs; a pair of boxers spars in each ring watched by their trainers.


Lulu Arroyo, of Harlem, joined John’s that day. She paid three months dues and extra for a trainer. John costs $50 per month. Trainers charge $35 a week. “My uncle told me this is the place to learn boxing and prepare for the golden gloves,” Ms. Arroyo said. When asked about the mostly male environment she said, “Here they respect boxers male or female.”

John’s members come from Brooklyn, Manhattan and other parts of the Bronx. They are fast food workers, messengers, security guards, immigrants, firemen, cops, teachers, single mothers and golden gloves hopefuls. They hail from Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. Mike Tyson and Roberto Duran have here. CSI NY and Nike filmed here. Evander Holyfield made a commercial.

Nigerian Blessing Afolayan 

John is home to former IBF champions from Ghana, Joshua Clottey and Joseph Agbeko. A huge banner with their photos hangs on the wall by the main ring.

“Imagine “The Hitter” fought world champ Manny Pacquico in Cowboys stadium before 53,000 on Showtime,” Pashk said referring to Clottey who lost the 2010 fight. Albanian heavyweight, two-time Golden Gloves champ Stivens Bujaj calls John home.


John’s trainers are ex-pros or amateurs. Boxing is in their blood. Understanding Allah, Lorenzo Cidd, Billy Giles, Don Kirschner, and Edwin Viruet bring character and soul. Viruet won 31 fights. He fought Roberto Duran twice, once for the lightweight title. Eastside boxing blog www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=480&more=1 described the Puerto Rican born, Viruet as fearless. Howard Cosell called him courageous and classy. With the grace and movement of Muhammad Ali taunted Duran and smashed him in the face before losing a close decision.
Viruet has trained Wesley Snipes and gangster Sammy Gravano. A boxer’s life is hard. Dreams are fleeting. Today Mr. Viruet squeezes by on social security and food stamps.


Blessing Afolayan trains three to four times a week. He balances work, a family with hard workouts. His girlfriend and their infant sit nearby as he works out.

Afolayan, a native of Nigeria, with a rich boxing tradition, has a 7-2 amateur record. He rips the heavy bag relentlessly. He wants to turn pro soon. “Good fighters here. Good history,” he said. Others like Marcial Lamboy, 55, come here to stay in shape. Lamboy boxed in the Spanish gloves and has trained at this site for 30 years.

Dedicated Lamboy veteran of Jerome Boxing Club

At 80, Don Kirschner is the elder statesman. He is a trainer, an ex-Marine Corp boxer and  co-manager. A South Bronx native, Kirschner and his two brothers trained at Cus D’Amato’s Gramercy Gym for 25 cents apiece. He remembers watching champions Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres. “Cus told a trainer ‘take the three blondies and start them with uppercuts. I want perfection.’”

Kirschner in club's office filled with boxing photos

He teaches principles he learned from D’Amato. He cautions boxers to always defend themselves. “I stress jabs. Counter a punch with your forearm and cover your face. Don’t get hit.”

John is a family affair. “Fathers and daughters train here; couples work out together. Mothers sign up sons to keep them out of trouble,” he said.

The monthly fee is less than at other places yet it is a hardship for many. Kirschner often waves his fee.

Don K, referee,  singer's Noam Weisntein's (L) CD 

With his blonde wavy hair he looks younger than his years. He is sharp-minded and insightful. His hands are cat-quick. His air punches attest to this. He asks boxers “Why do you come here? Do you see yourself as a boxer,” he said “Honesty, concentration and inspiration builds confidence.”

Kirschner said two types come here: those who want to become boxers and kids who want to defend themselves against bullies.

“The bully learns boxing is hard and he is not so tough,” he said.

Membership has fallen as the club fights to survive. The club has had a month-to-month agreement with the city since 2011 and will close soon. A new development is planned for the site.

“John is important to many people. The area has many problems and few resources,” Pashk said. “It gives people an interest, a place to come and feel good and do something positive.”

Kirschner sums it up best.  “We dream of turning pro, training the next champ. We dream to do better. Dreams offer hope.”


Photos by Rudi Papiri; Jerome Boxing Club photo from Marcial Lamboy.
Editor's Note: John's Boxing Club, at 436 Westchester Avenue (between Bergen and Brook), Bronx, NY closes at the end of February. John's is moving one block away to 450 E. 149th St. Located on the second floor the new site will have about 5,000 square feet. The grand opening is slated for March 5.

Bill Toledo, Navajo Code Talker, 
Tells His Story in the East Village

Everyone knew the moment he entered Cooper’s Craft  Kitchen in the East Village.  The words “he’s here,” passed from one person to the next. Even the weekly Thursday night football gang, with beer mugs in hand, watching ESPN on the television intently, turned to the entrance where Bill Henry Toledo stood.

Bill Toledo, a World War ll veteran and a Navajo Code Talker came to New York City as part of LaSalle’s Academy’s, an all-boy’s high school on East 6th Street, annual Veteran’s Day celebration.  Mr.Toledo, joined by several other Code Talkers, visited the school earlier that day and shared their remarkable story with the students. The next day, November 11th, the Code Talkers marched in the city’s annual Veteran’s Day parade.

The 87-year-old Toledo, wearing a red garrison military cap with yellow braids and adorned with USMC insignias, wore a turquoise, black onyx necktie pendant. He stood straight, with shoulders back as he greeted well-wishers with a firm hand shake. Personable, sharp-minded and energetic Mr. Toledo looked younger than his years. 

“Early in the war the Japanese broke every code we had,” Toledo said. “This gave them a huge advantage.”

Most codes dated back to the Civil War. Armed with many fluent English speakers the Japanese cracked all codes and even used the information gathered against the Allies. The U.S. military devised intricate codes, which often took an hour or more to decipher a simple message.

Philip Johnston, a son of a Protestant Missionary, grew up on a Navajo reservation. He played with Navajo children and spoke the language fluently.

Later Johnston became an engineer for the city of Los Angeles. When he read a story about the military working with Native Americans to develop a new code he went to Camp Elliot, near San Diego to suggest the Navajo language. His selling points: it is an unwritten language, extremely complex with no alphabet, no symbols and is spoken only among the Navajo in the Southwest. Less than 30 non-Navajos spoke the language.

The Navajo had no translation for words like radar, hand grenade, and tank. Johnston’s suggested using Navajo words. For example radar became - owl, potato - hand grenade, turtle - tank. The code contained 200 terms initially but grew to 600. Navajo code talkers translated code quickly and effectively. At Iwo Jima six coders worked around the clock receiving and sending over 800 messages without one mistake.

In early 1942 the Marine Corps created a special code unit and recruited 29 men from the Navajo reservation, reverently known as the “original 29.”

At 18, living on the Navajo reservation near Albuquerque, New Mexico and a member of the Ta’neezabnii Clan meaning the Tangled People, Toledo part of the second wave of code talkers, enlisted in October 1942 with his cousin Preston and his uncle Frank.

Toledo did boot camp at Camp Elliott and studied code at Camp Pendleton. He went to Guadalcanal with the Third Marine Division for jungle training and first saw action with the invasion of Bougainville, Philippines in November 1943.

 “Our mission was highly confidential. Except for the officers no one knew why we were there,” Toledo said.

On Bougainville a fellow Marine mistook Toledo for a Japanese soldier. “He poked me with his rifle. He marched me back to our commander in camp,” Toledo said. “He told him he captured a prisoner. The commander was real mad and assigned me a bodyguard although I did not find out that was his job until after the war.”

Toledo took part in the battles on Guam and Iwo Jima where over 1700 and 6000 Americans died respectively. He almost became a statistic. One night on Guam, after an attack destroyed his company’s communications system, Toledo ran messages from headquarters to the front line. “A sniper took shots at me,” Toledo said. “Snipers picked off several Marines that day.”

Another time Toledo found himself in the middle of a minefield. Aided by other soldiers he retraced his steps and escaped unharmed.

Toledo and his 3^rd Marine Division landed on Iwo Jima, just eight square miles in size, two days after the first Marines landed. “We thought things would go okay. It took 36 days of tough fighting. The Japanese built tunnels connecting the entire island,” Toledo said.

A machine gun fortification atop a hill, killed many Marines unable to take cover in the barren landscape destroyed by earlier bombing runs. Given a message by his commander Toledo quickly translated the message. Minutes later a marine artillery unit wiped it out.

“This was the last hill before we reached the end of the island,” he said.

On Iwo Jima a commander tapped Frank and five other servicemen to raise the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi. Summoned for coding, Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian, replaced Frank, in what became the war's most memorable photo.

With their still mission highly classified, the code talkers returned home from the war prohibited from speaking about their heroics. “I told my family and friends nothing about my work,” Toledo said.

In 1968 the government declassified the operation. In 2000, the original 29 received Congressional Gold Medals. The Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2007 awarded medals to all code talkers.

Bill Toledo and the code talkers travel the country telling their story. The Navajo Code Talker Foundation is building a museum to preserve and document the Code Talker’s huge war contributions.

“We volunteered and we wanted to help our country. Our efforts put the Navajo on the map of our country’s history,” Toledo said. “Of the 420 code talkers who served less than 50 are still alive. The museum will keep their memory alive for future generations.”

To learn more about the Navajo Code Talkers or to help with the building of the Navajo Code Talkers Museum and Veteran Center see info below:

The Navajo Code Talkers Foundation, Inc. P.O. Box 1266, Window Rock, AZ 86515; email: info@navajocodetalkers.org.  


Photo of Bill Toledo by Rudi Papiri

The Daffodil Project 9/11 Memorial: 
One Dutchman's Gift of Hope, 
Renewal, and Beauty 

This year Mother Nature played the biggest Halloween trick of all. The calendar said autumn. The weather screamed winter. A freak storm dumped 30 inches of snow on parts of North Jersey, Massachusetts and New Hampshire two days before Halloween. New York City lucked out. Only 2.9 inches of snow fell on Central Park, the first time since1869 the city had more than an inch in October and thousands of residents lost power. The storm damaged almost 1000 trees in Central Park. 

Amid the snow, slush and downed trees spring has indeed arrived. Thanks to city’s “The Daffodil Project” the weary spirits of thousands of volunteers from several hundred-community groups have perked up some.

Founded in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, the project is an ongoing memorial honoring the lives of those who died and adds beauty and color to the city, often where there is very little. Four million daffodils bloom in parks, community gardens, along highways and in front of schools, and libraries each spring.

The project began immediately following 9/11 with Hans van Waardenburg of B&K Fowerbulbs, a major tulip bulb supplier in Holland, his way of lending emotional support.

Devastated by what he saw on television he contacted his friend Lynden B. Miller, a public garden designer in New York City and director of The Conservatory Garden in Central Park. He wanted the help and wanted to know what could he do. She asked if he had any extra bulbs. He did. He shipped 500,000 right away. In addition he got the city of Rotterdam and its Port Authority to donate 500,000 daffodils and 90,000 yellow tulip bulbs. That year the city received 1.5 million bulbs from local and other international donors.

Weeks after 9/11 the parks department and the Partnership for Parks organized a planting day. Ten thousand volunteers planted 250,000 bulbs that first day in late October.

Why Daffodils? Miller and van Waardenburg choose daffodils instead of tulips, a symbol of Holland, because squirrels eat tulips. Daffodils are recurring flowers and their vibrant colors embrace renewal and spring. They are well suited for the tough city landscape. They are resilient. They split off to form new flowers and require minimal care. And they are pollution resistant, a key point for congested city streets.

The Daffodil Project impacts all five boroughs. Groups from McCarren Park in Greenpoint Brooklyn, to Curtis High School on Staten Island, the Soundview Community Center in the Bronx, the Long Island City Community Garden in Queens, and the tree pits of the West 55^th Block Association in Manhattan have all taken advantage of this free program.

A few years after van Waardenburg sent his first shipment of bulbs, Joseph Temeczko, a Polish immigrant and Minnesotan handyman, followed with his own generous gift. He willed his entire estate of $1.4 million to New York City. The city spruced up Columbus Park in Chinatown and other public spaces in lower Manhattan and set aside $300,000 for the Daffodil  Project. Mr. Temeczko, a Nazi prisoner of war survivor, died a month after 9/ll while tending his garden.

Van Waardenburg continues to donate bulbs – almost four million to date – shipped by Con Edison. Other corporate sponsors have stepped in to help.

This year New Yorkers for Parks distributed bulbs on October 16 at Union Square Park. From mid-October to mid-November volunteers will plop bulbs – 250 allotted to each group - into their gardens and community spaces and look forward to April or May when they bloom and the daffodils blanket the city.

In 2007 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg named the daffodil the city’s official flower.

For more information go to: New Yorker For Parks

Garden Hardware: A Family Shop is the Nuts and Bolts of Hell's Kitchen 

When Bob Orgel moved his store, Garden Hardware, from Eighth to Tenth Avenue in October 2005, it marked another change to hell's Kitchen ever-shifting landscape.

Garden Hardware, founded by his grandfather Nathan Mandell and his father Bertram, opened in 1955.

His family’s presence on Eighth Avenue dates back even before ten. His grandmother Fay, a sharp businesswoman, bought the three-story building near 48^th Street, which housed the business, in the early 1940's. She also owned a brownstone at 306 West 48th Street. The backyard abutted the store, and housed the popular Swiss restaurant Mont Blanc, which has since moved across the street.

She opened Fay's corset shop. It closed shortly after World War II when this accoutrement went out of fashion. The store remained vacant for a couple of years before the family converted it to a hardware store.

Hell’s Kitchen has had several "rows" or themed blocks. Two of the city's most popular venues, Restaurant and Theater Rows are still thriving. Eighth Avenue had its own unofficial "mini row" featuring hardware stores. This ended when Orgel moved his business.

At one time at least six hardware stores operated on Eighth Avenue or its side streets. Each one had carved its own niche. W.H. Silver near 50th Street specialized in the movie and film trade; West End Hardware, located just off Eighth on 48^th served industrial customers; Longacre, located at the current site of the Food Emporium, at 49^th, supplied the old Madison Square Garden, then across the avenue at what is now World Wide Plaza; Silver and Sons, near West 45th catered to the Broadway theaters; and Times Square Hardware on the northwest corner of 42nd, which housed a bank for many years, now a 24/7 Duane Reade.

His grandfather and father carried specialty products for the hospital, hotel and restaurant industries. They also had a large client base of midtown office workers and westside residents.

Different businesses often require specific types of hardware. "The businesses we supplied though different had similar needs. We handled plumbing, electrical supplies plus pieces for doors, tables, bathrooms and so forth. You name it. We had it. We carried the oddball stuff they could only find here. After all, "What is a restaurant? It is a glorified hotel," Orgel said.

Garden Hardware has built a solid reputation over the years. Among their clients are top tier restaurants like Le Bernardin and The Four Seasons. It also supplied the famous Mama Leone's, once the busiest eatery in the country. It closed in the early 90's. Garden still supplies the parent company Restaurant Associates.

In the mid-90's, with the demise of Silver & Sons, Garden Hardware added the Broadway theaters to its list of clients.

When asked which shows and theaters have accounts with him Orgel said, "All of them. We do every single Broadway show, several off-Broadway and some TV and movie productions." He cites Le Miz and Phantom as his first shows.

The late Mickey Fox, a theatrical carpenter and stagehand, gave Orgel his entree to Broadway.

"One day Mickey called and said he needed a few things and that I should start stacking supplies for stagehands," Orgel said.  "Shortly after that Mickey faxed over his list. It turned out to be forty pages long. The pages kept coming and coming. Many of the things he needed I had never heard of before. And at that time I had twenty years in the business. The theatrical industry calls it by their name, and we in hardware had a different term for it.

"For example they call a cable clamp a Crosby. We say eye bolt, they say shoulder eye bolt, which actually is a much higher rated item," he added.

Orgel began working at the store part-time at 18. He made deliveries and got to know the neighborhood. His mother had lived on West 49th Street and had attended P.S. 17 just around the corner from the store. When Orgel, who grew up in Queens and Nassau County, finished college at the New York Institute of Technology, he began working full-time. Although he studied architecture for a time and then advertising he felt destined for the business.

Garden is an old-fashioned city hardware store filled with nuts, bolts, wrenches, screwdrivers, locks, paints and all the important things needed to maintain, repair or build your home or business. It is not the place where you walk around with a shopping basket. The aisles are cluttered with merchandise. The ceiling high shelves are packed with thousands of items. It is the place to go when you cannot find what you want anywhere else, or where you should have gone to in the first place.

Orgel’s knowledge in hardware supplies and repair is impressive. He is soft-spoken and humble but he knows-it-all and readily dispenses advice and the steps to complete a project, big or small, when asked. He is Hell’s Kitchen’s answer to WNYC radio “how-to home repair” gurus Al and Larry Ubell.

A slim 40-story glass tower now fills the old Garden Hardware site. The building remains unoccupied and has never housed a tenant. After all it is difficult to replace the Orgel family and their business.

Garden Hardware and Supply Company: 701 Tenth Avenue New York 10036;  212-247-2889; opened Mon-Sat.

Farley Post Office: Neither Snow, nor Rain can Age a McKim, Mead, White Classic
                  

Photo taken from the 31st side of the Farley Post Office facing north.

When you emerge from the crowded gloomy subterranean world of Pennsylvania Station at 33^rd Street, relieved you survived its madness, you cannot help notice the grandeur of the James A. Farley Post Office building across Eighth Avenue.

Completed in 1913 and built on eight acres of land over the Pennsylvania (now Amtrak) rail tracks, this impressive beaux-arts style building features a two-block long staircase, extending almost its entire length.

From street level you climb thirty-one steps to reach twenty 53-foot high fluted columns topped off with lavish capitals.  The columns line the top step and form the world’s longest Corinthian colonnade. Behind them are intricately designed steel-laced grills just above the entrances. This leads to the two-block long service lobby parallel to Eighth Avenue with small rotundas at each end. The layered beauty of its slightly arched coffered ceilings and rich marble floors create a visual escape when waiting on long postal lines.

Designed by McKim, Mead and White who also built one of this country’s great buildings, the late Pennsylvania Station and preceded the train station at the same location. It had the same classic Roman style and enormity, but smaller columns.

The firm succeeded in creating a Roman Forum setting in midtown. Both buildings stretched from 31st to 33^rd Streets; Penn Station from Eighth to Seventh Avenues, and Penn Terminal, its original name until 1918 when it became the General Post Office, from Eighth mid block to Ninth Avenue.

Surrounded by a moat on the south and north sides that allowed natural lighting for the workers on the lower level, the post office doubled in size in 1934 reaching Ninth Avenue. Now underutilized it once housed thousands of postal employees. It also had a medical office, gym, photo studio, cafeteria and a jail.  Future plans call for converting to a rail and retail hub for Amtrak and called the Daniel Patrick Moynihan station.

Named the James A. Farley Post Office in 1982, after the 53^rd Postmaster General, it has a small Post Office museum and an Operation Santa post during the holidays. Made famous in the 1947 movie “Miracle on 34^th Street” the Farley building had 24/7 service windows until a few years ago now closed due to postal cutbacks.  On tax day, usually April 15, thousands of last-minute filers fill the lobby and the steps waiting to post their tax returns,

Prominently inscribed on the front of the building above the columns are the words

 “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Suggested by a McKim architect it is often mistaken as the official U.S. postal motto, though it derives from “Herodotus’ Histories” about the Greeks expedition against the Persians about 500 B.C.


It is listed on the National Register of Historical Places and it is a New York City Landmark.

(This is the third and last segment of  NYC buildings to visit part of my Elk Hotel alternatives)

5 Madison Avenue: A Venetian Classic Graces Madison Square Park

5 Madison Avenue and North Annex (Credit Swisse) from 23rd and 5th Ave.

Casting a watchful eye over the serenity and beauty of Madison Square Park and its lush green lawns, colorful landscaping flowers, cherished monuments, European styled walkways and lamp posts, and magnificent century old trees, is the Metropolitan Life Tower. 

Designed by Pierre L. LeBrun of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, the tower built in 1909, now known as Five Madison Avenue, is often over shadowed by its more famous neighbor, the Flat Iron building, on the Fifth Avenue side of the park.

Modeled after the campanile of St. Mark’s Square in Venice, the 52-story tower, at 700 feet and one inch, dwarfs its 325-foot Italian counterpart. The tallest structure in the world until 1913, when surpassed by the Woolworth building, it served as the world headquarters for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company until 2005. The tower is an add-on to the company’s block long 15 story “East Wing” built in 1893.

Part of the tower’s beauty is its sense of scale. It does not overwhelm Madison Square Park or its surroundings. With its stately clean design it feels as it rises from the park.  Only when you stand within a half block of it do you realize how tall it really is.

Built in the Renaissance style dolphin head balustrades and lion heads once decorated the tower. It lost much of its ornamental detailing during its 1964 renovation including its Tuckahoe marble façade replaced with limestone.

Used in the building of many older city structures including the Federal Building on Wall Street and the Washington Arch in the Village, Tuckahoe is a white marble of high quality found in deposits along the Bronx River in Westchester County. 

The tower still retains many distinct features. The most notable are the clocks, one on each of its four sides, located on floors 25 to 27. They measure 26.5 feet in diameter and are larger than London’s Big Ben. The clocks are inlaid with white and blue mosaic. The minute hands weigh half a ton and the numbers are four feet long.

Each floor contains three bays with three windows. This alignment graces the tower’s four sides and are bracketed by layered textured corners. This pattern extends to the arcaded loggia on the 31^st floor. Above the loggia is a pyramid style roof with small rounded English windows. A gilded cupola tops off the tower. It has what is often referred to as “an eternal light” since it remains lit even after the rest of the building’s outer lights go dark.

A three-year restoration project completed in 2002, added a multi-colored lighting system. Much like the Empire State building the tower is draped in different colors depending on holidays and special events.

The original Met Life complex also included a north annex, a 32-story building one block north. The insurance giant had initially planned a 100-story building for that site but canceled plans due to the depression. Credit Suisse occupies it today.

Future plans for the tower have varied between luxury residences and a boutique hotel.

Five Madison Avenue is a National Historic and a New York City landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
*Second part of a three part story: Elk Hotel alternatives.

Location: Five Madison Avenue between 23^rd and 24^th Streets.

Cooper Union: Lincoln, Roosevelt, 
Clinton and Obama Spoke Here

Main entrance of Cooper Union on the building's south side. 

“Fasincating” is not how I would describe the Elk, a dive hotel on West 42^nd Street in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City. When a friend planned her trip to the city she searched the Internet looking for things to do. And she found the Elk, a grungy hotel (see related story in this blog) on the corner of 42^nd and Ninth Avenue.

After reading Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York and Shooting New York blogs she sent me the following email,  “I find it fascinating that this hotel has remained unchanged for over a hundred years.” Immediately I thought if 100 is the magic number then she is coming to the right city. New York has many important old buildings.

If she had asked me to name three alternate choices without giving it much thought I would suggest the following. (P.S. none are are on any tourist guide’s A-list of must-see places.) They are essential to the fabric of New York, all architecturally, culturally and historically noteworthy, and I like them. The buildings and their ages are: Cooper Union, 152; Met Life Tower, 101; James Farley Post Office, although only 98 years old, work began on it in 1910. 

Cooper Union Foundation Building: Founded in 1859, by industrialist Peter Cooper in 1859, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, is tuition-free private college renowned for its three schools of architecture, art and engineering. Cooper, along with Samuel Morse, laid the first transatlantic cable. He built America’s first steam railroad engine the Tom Thumb.

With its Italianate designed facade Cooper Union is often described as a “high-rise brownstone.”

Built in a style popular with cast-iron builders it is the oldest standing steel beam framed building in America. Cooper, an iron maker as well, used rolled-iron I beams for structural support in the building.

Presidents Ulysses Grant, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton and most recently Barack Obama have given major addresses in the historic 900-seat Great Hall, located in the basement. Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln gave his “Might is Right” speech on February 27, 1860. Attended by many luminaries including Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, Lincoln received rave reviews, which paved his way to the presidency.

Thomas Edison, World Trade Center architect Daniel Libeskind, sculptor George Segal studied here. Felix Frankfurter spent hours in the library. The NAACP and the Red Cross began here. It is a U.S. Historic Landmark and on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

**MY ELK HOTEL ALTERNATIVES...what one should see in NYC besides the ELK HOTEL (see Elk article in my blog). First of a three part story of 100 year-old buildings to check out.

Cooper Union is located at 7 East 7^th Street between 3 & 4^th Avenues, steps away from funky St. Mark’s Place between 3^rd and Avenue A.