Back to East 29th Street : where fact and fiction revisit Kips Bay, N.Y.
No Access Until
Permanent Link(s)
Collections
Other Titles
Author(s)
Abstract
Manhattan's East Side has undergone nearly continuous urban changes over the past sixty years. Kips Bay, a very small district or neighborhood in New York's midtown, went from older tenements and lofts to a higher-rise complex of apartments and, along 1st Avenue, to Medical Row dominated by New York University and Bellevue Hospital. Virtually standing unchanged, except right on 29th Street, are the neighborhood religious centers and the author's grade school - P.S. 116.
The author lived in the 300 block on 29th from 1934 to 1937, revisiting the neighborhood now and then. He later moved west. When he returned to the city for a year, he attended Seward Park High School in lower Manhattan. Having left Kips Bay so young - age 9 - he did not retain any friends. As a retired professor of geography, his neighborhood reconstruction and personal memoir have relied on new encounters, the Internet, and, at times, sheer luck. Of the several dozen photos, nearly half were downloaded from the New York City Public Library Digital Photo Gallery.