Pam's Tall Tales

Gardens in the Sky: New Yorkers Rooftop Hideaways

Summer is here!  New Yorkers are making the most of the pleasant breezy weather and sunshine to enjoy their little hidden gardens and balconies before the next heat wave brings the sweaty season that will drive us back indoors to the air conditioners.

The new Athena rental building on 34th St. has a block long rooftop garden and water towers disgusied as ships funnels. The little pockets of green to the left in the background belong to the gardens of the Kips Bay neighborhood of old Brownstones. Kips Bay was fomerly an inlet of the East River, now reclaimed, that was named after a dutch farmer Jacobus Hendrickson Kip (1631-1690) whose farm occupied the area.  The British army, under General Howe, landed here in 1776 during the revolutionary war. They routed the Americans forcing them to retreat from Manhattan. At the turn of the century it was home to 10,000 Italian immigrants.  This is probably why we have the best Itaian deli in Manhattan, Todaros.

Roof garden on The Athena Building, 34th between 2nd and 3rd Ave in the Murray Hill neighborhood. (click on all images to expand them)

 

One block north are some of the loveliest roof gardens.   Each apartment in the smaller co-ops flanking 35th St. has its own little private hideaway terrace.

Rooftops 35th between 2nd and 3rd

 

The little oasis of greenery, shown below, stands on top of Kips Bay's first Green Building at 303, E33rd St., which opened this year and boasts geothermal heating and a bike room among other features. This building was constructed on the site of the old catholic school.  Twenty five years ago there was a church, a school and an extended monastery that occupied the entire block.  The original church was built in 1916 to serve the Italian immigrants living in Kips Bay.  The school and monastery were closed after the catholic churches financial troubles some years back and all the land was sold for development. But, as part of the deal, a new church has been built just to the left of the garden.  This green building stands opposite two parallel buildings: Kips Bay Towers designed in 1965 by I. M. Pei.  They enclose a private three acre square garden stretching from 30th to 33rd St. built above the parking garage for the towers.  I.M. Pei chose to place fifty saplings in the garden instead of a Picasso sculpture.

Green Building on 33rd St between 1st and 2nd

 

One block north the buildings flanking 34th St. on the corner of 1st Ave host communal landscaped terraces for picnics and sunbathing. Some of Kips Bay Towers saplings can be seen in the background.

 

Rooftops flanking 34th St. on corner of 1st Ave

 

 

The dark brown rental building on the corner of 34th St. and 2nd Ave has just opened their rooftop swimming pool for the season.

 

Swimming on 34th St!

The  eclectic young pagan neighbors of the Chinese embassy who live above the local dive bar "The Pinetree Lodge" were partying on their rooftop overlooking St. Vartan park.  The New York Times described the bar as: "This lovably goofy bar is a small maze of comfy rooms with so many trophy heads mounted on the walls that you’d think they’d snagged taxidermist rights for the Central Park Zoo."

The Chinese embassy nextdoor used to be a perfume factory with a beautiful pink brick facade but they covered it in pink marble when they converted it.

Happy Summer Solstice!

35th St. partying above the treetops of St. Vartan's Park

 

A Lullaby in Bayonne

Yesterday we did our duty as grandparents and what a pleasant languorous day it was.  Our daughter the dog groomer texted in a panic:  twenty-five baying clients and no babysitter.  So we got up early, heaved old Jack into the car, his husky pride hurt by now having to be lifted, and headed out.

Magnolia trees, Bayonne NJ

We stopped at Todaros, the best deli in New York. They had just roasted their wonderful coffee and the aroma was wafting onto the sidewalk. New York breakfasts have to be the most generous in the world and fill you with a sense of wellbeing – you can dine like a millionaire for 99c.  We picked up coffee with lox and bagels to go and heavenly orange blossom and cappuccino muffins. As we zipped along the FDR we had the road to ourselves, New York was sleeping and drowsy, the sky was a perfect blue, the East River sparkled. We dove into the Holland Tunnel and under the Hudson emerging on the other side into bright rays of sunshine.

If you’ve ever made the mistake of flying in to Newark, or watched The Sopranos, you will know that the opening scene - is an accurate depiction of the New Jersey Turnpike on a grim day – a bleak and ugly desecration.  But in spring, Nature fights back vigorously - New Jersey becomes verdant and lives up to its licence plate moniker "New Jersey - The Garden State"!

By 9:00 o’clock we were sitting in the shade of a pair of beautiful sturdy old magnolia trees. The day was a lullaby of pleasantness, the sun warming your skin, the aroma of charcoal grills being fired up for summer cookouts.

After Skyping Gt. granddad in the rainy handle of Cheshire’s teapot, Baby Graham lay on the dog bed in the dappled sunlight taking in his first sight of leaves wafting with a gentle lilt and flutter in the breeze. 

The dogs, displaced, slumbered nearby and Dave snoozed under his newspaper……

Jack

Tal always handsome in his stripey pyjamas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the lazy afternoon wore on we left poor old Jack, his legs too shaky to walk, to sleep next to the grill, dreaming of steaks gone by and willing more to come, and took a stroll down to the park. Bayonne is an old working town on a thin peninsula of New Jersey, a finger pointing towards Staten Island in the middle of New York Harbor.  From one side you see the back of Lady Liberty holding her torch against the New York sky-line. The opposite side presents vistas of Bayonne's strange iron bridges linking to the main land and New Jersey’s docklands in Elizabeth nestled by the airport.    

The dock cranes on the NJ shore always make me smile, standing like giraffes or bent over like giant grazing dinosaurs.

Port Sunlight, Lord Leverhulme and Holden Heaven.

 

Port Sunlight houses opposite the school

My dear demented sister (DDS) can’t resist a sisterly lark.  So, on my last day in the UK, after her  victory in the kitchen the day before, she generously offered to drive me  to the Wirral to dig up the relatives, both dead and living.  Aged Parent waved us off.  We could tell he was thinking “at last I’ve got rid of those damn daughters”.  We felt like school children on an outing. 

On discovering that the Mersey got in the way of my proposed route DDS summarily dismissed me from my duties as the map-reader and turned on the GPS. Her bloke, “The Soul of Patience” had it set to one of those irritatingly sultry voices designed to appeal to men, “Bosoms Galore” as we refer to her. As she issued her  instruction to: “take the third exit at the next roundabout” in that sensuous but commanding tone that suggested sadomasochistic practices might result if you disobeyed, I began to think fondly of New York, where more in tune to modern sensibilities, taxi cabs have taped every New York "character", from Woody Allen to Mayor Bloomberg, delivering wise cracks in a thick Brooklyn accent to get us to “Buckle up”.  That said, Bosoms Galore did her job efficiently, whipping us along to Port Sunlight in under an hour. And of course as it was raining buckets. So what else could we do but take cover in the Museum Shop and Tea Rooms and tuck into a plate of toasted teacakes dripping with butter?

We had come to find Gt. Grandma Holden and her husband Thomas. Thomas and Elizabeth were first cousins and descend from a long line of Holdens who sailed the Mersey on Flats.  Thomas was first mate on the barge that brought William Hesketh Lever down the Mersey in search of a site for his new Lever Bros soapworks. He also brought the party from Liverpool for the laying of the first sod of Port Sunlight village. Lever took a liking to him and offered him the job of captain of the company barge “Lifebuoy”.  Newly wed, Thomas and Elizabeth moved into one of the first five houses built in Lever’s model village.

Lever had an eye for architecture and the enlightened belief that beauty is important in peoples daily lives.  The architects were given free rein and as a result my Gt. Grandparents had the good fortune to live their adult lives in a beautiful setting. Three generations grew up in a security that was unprecedented among their Penketh clan. I have read extensively about Lord Leverhulme and, for me, William Hesketh is a paragon of virtue.  Although his favorite saying was reported to be “we won’t argue, I’m right” his autocratic approach was nevertheless benign. His respect and care for his workers is evident and tangible everywhere in Port Sunlight. Lever gave back to those who worked for him entering into a paternalistic co-partnership with those who created his wealth. All CEOs should be made to read his biography and speeches. I love him to bits and keep his picture in my apartment.

Elizabeth and Thomas Holden's Port Sunlight Homes

Armed with family photos and census records we engaged the staff at the museum shop, who excitedly tried to put us through to the village historian. Unfortunately, he was out for the day, so we decided instead to photograph each of the houses that Thomas and Elizabeth had lived in. They started out at 2 Bolton Road. #2-6 were hit by a bomb in WWII that missed its designated target: the glycerine end of the soap factory operation. Their neighbors houses however remain.  Edward Wainwright, the soap boiler who invented the famous Lifebuoy, lived at #3.   Edward knew the value of his lather and kept his soap recipe a family secret passing it along to his son. Across the street at #1 on the corner of Greendale Rd lived the civil engineer, Ralph Vickers who built the Lever Bros factory.

1891 census for Bolton Rd Port Sunlight

Bolton Road Cottages

A few years later, Thomas and Elizabeth and their elder children moved along the village perimeter to 27, Greendale Road. As their family expanded they moved again to 11, Bath St. a Dutch looking terraced house with a village green out front.  We have a postcard of this group of houses taken by the village photographer George Davies. However, as Davies had a tendency to place his own family members in his photographs, it is not clear if it shows Elizabeth. Their next home was just around the corner at 1 Riverside drive and it is here that Thomas died at a relatively young age of a head infection despite the fact that Lever had provided Port Sunlight with its own cottage hospital and the village had health statstistics far superior to those of the surrounding area. 

11 Bath St. Port Sunlight Village

 

1 riverside, Port Sunlight

 

16 Windy banks, Port Sunlight

When Thomas died, Lever stepped in and gave Elizabeth and her elder children work that allowed them to stay in the village.  My grandmother, Maggie, became a soap wrapper, her elder sister, Nelly, worked in the cardboard box department, and her younger brother, Thomas became a toilet soap trimmer.  The family moved to 16 Windy Banks immediately opposite the site where the Lady Lever Art Gallery was later to be constructed.

Building the Lady Lever Art Gallery was a magnificent gesture that WHL made in remembrance of his childhood sweetheart and wife, who he had met in kindergarten back in Bolton and loved deeply. It is a beautiful building and was constructed for the noble cause of  betterment of his workers living in the village. However, I struggle to find anthing good to say about its contents and I can’t help wondering if perhaps he also wanted to get rid of all that dreadful stuff out of his living room. William Hesketh is absolutely my kind of man, I would marry him on the spot, but his wife deserves a medal for living with his appalling art collection. My paternal grandmother took me to the art gallery when I was seven and, although it was most worthy of Nine to do so, it nearly ruined my love of art – all those heavy overbearing Victorian furnishings, frightening black sculptures and consumptive Burne-Jones women. And that is  before we get to the famous dying goat. As a child I hated it and thirty minutes in there was enough to tell me my feelings haven’t changed. DDS and I did a swift tour, made a guilty donation out of respect for what WHL had done for our family, but decided we preferred real graveyards to this mausoleum.

We entered the church gate and suddenly it became clear: this was the church in the one surviving photo of our parents wedding.  Although Mum twittered on forever about Port Sunlight somehow she forgot to tell us why the place mattered to her and only after she died did we piece it together. From photos and records we rediscovered that her Grandma lived here, her mother grew up here, and that she herself, went to school and married all within its secure boundaries.  When she died my father produced a picture of her as a young girl sitting on the mall with her bicycle and our distant cousin, Paul, gave us another of Uncle Norman at Windy Banks with the Art gallery in the background.

Thomas, Elizabeth, Albert and Horace Holden

The War Memorial, Port Sunlight

We found Thomas and Elizabeth in the graveyard lying next to a yew tree with their sons: Albert, disabled since infancy, who died a year after his mother, and poor young Horace.  Lord Leverhulme, ever the paternal guardian, lay close by with his wife. Seven hundred men from Port Sunlight signed up for the WWI madness. Four hundred perished in the mud of the Somme. Horace made it back alive but died unexpectedly the day before he was to due to return home from a military hospital in Aberdeen. Horace is etched on the war memorial. 

As the afternoon drew to a close we set off for Penketh to find Elizabeth’s parents, John and Mary Holden, her sister, Alice, and her grandparents, Sam and Alice Chatterton. Bosoms Galore performed magnificently, parting the Mersey like a greek sprite, to bring us to Gt Sankey, the burial site of the ancients.  The Holdens were nothing if not prolific.  There are currently over 16,500 Holdens in the UK and 1.3 million world-wide not counting those clandestine Holdens, like us, who descend from the female line disguised by other surnames. All Holdens in the world trace their ancestry to this small area of Lancashire. Their men are lanky Lancashire lads, "long drinks of water" as they say up here, who die young. In contrast, their women are as strong as oxes and live to receive the queens telegram. The Holden tale is therefore  one of formidable young widows working as washerwomen raising dozens of children by the strength of their backs. 

With no cemetery map to guide us, we divided up and systematically scoured every headstone. DDS found them all, each one bedded under a thick carpet of bluebells.  And here is where the desecration began. Aflame with success DDS became insatiable.  She wanted more Holdens. Holdens to rise from the dead!  “Come Out Ye Holdens” she shouted trampling through the bluebells, sweeping them aside to reveal the names of occupants of every plot.  For sure the Holdens below were cursing their offspring.  Fortunately the ominous weather kept the neighbors indoors so that I could drag her off before we got arrested.  

John and Mary Holden in the bluebells

We drove on to the church. The parish records show that this tiny graveyard holds hundreds of Holdens in unmarked graves going back to the 1600s. It is in fact “Holden Heaven” and I have visited it a ghostly fashion from New York via Google Earth on many occasions - always with an eerie disquieted feeling of “there they all are” and “so this is where it all ends” in a rainy plot of Lancashire smaller than a football field. The old churchyard had been landscaped but we found ancient Holdens lying about on the church path strewn among their neighbors the Athertons their headstones used as paving.  A few large raised tombs had been preserved at the edge of the churchyard and just as we clambered up to read their names the minister appeared. He had come to investigate what these strange looking women were up to and, seeing we were a pair of middle-aged old hags, clearly suspected sorcery might be afoot. It didn’t help that at this point DDS hid behind a shrub, nor that I blathered out that I was from New York and, in true American style, had twenty minutes to track down every Holden on the planet.  Detecting my Cheshire accent he expressed some skepticism about this explanation - remembering I had my work ID badge I pulled it out in proof - at this he chuckled, got into the spirit of project and gave me the number of the village lay preacher and local historian.  This was just as well as DDS chose precisely this moment to scream like a banshee from behind the bush “THERES MORE OF THEM OVER HERE”.  He laughed and abandoning all Holden souls to the clutches of their offspring returned to the vestry.  We should all be so sought after in death!  

Having done what we could to resurrect the dead we set off to meet the living. Our distant cousin, Paul, shares the same Gt. Gt. grandparents. We had never met before but have emailed twice a week for two years in the common pursuit of our kin. Paul descends from Elizabeth’s sister, Alice, and has given us pictures from her photo album.  He is an absolute wiz at tracking down headstones, local newspaper articles and generally great at putting flesh on our ancestors bones.  Remarkably, despite our common gene pool, Paul shows no signs of the madness that concentrated itself in our particular branch. For example, he has escaped the alleles for wearing strange hats needing to live on barges. In fact, he was delightfully normal all round. We had a nice chat with Paul and his wife who kindly took us on an evening tour of Penketh cottages where our clog-making cobbler, lock-keeper, barge-sailing captains and washer-women relatives lived.  As the dusk gathered we waved goodbye and set Bosoms Galore to guide us home though the night to Congleton. 

Port Sunlight School

 

Cookery in Congleton

On these trips home, for reasons that I can’t fathom, I have become “the fly-in cook”.  For the last five years I’ve crossed the Atlantic to feed the five thousand.  Cooking in Aged Parents kitchen is not easy.  First, as a loyal card-carrying employee of the Midlands Electricity Board, Aged Parent refused to have gas in the house.  This means his offspring must master the dastardly infrared electric cooker. Passive aggressive is the only word for it:  the menace refuses to heat, then when your back is turned it boils, burns and charcoals everything in sight.  Second, all my recipes are in New York where we function in Fahrenheit not Celsius, and then there’s the wretched convection adjustment to calculate in. Not to mention Aged Parents love affair with Delia, who in my humble opinion -- as a professional biochemist -- can’t cook to save her life. I cleave to the Elizabeth David school myself: all recipes can be greatly improved by ditching the herbs and throwing in a glass of wine. 

Over the years I’ve learnt to tame the cooker beast.  But the real spanner in the works is Aged Parent and his cantankerous ways.  Aged Parent has a burning desire to die with only one knife and fork left in the house. He has a great need to rid himself of all earthly goods.  Oxfam has benefitted greatly from this tic and the local birds are the fattest flock of starlings in East Cheshire.  I have been caught out enough times now -- missing some key ingredient like salt or flour or a rolling pin -- that before I leave New York for JFK I go online to Ocado and order everything, bar the kitchen sink, to be delivered before I land. Still, this doesn’t stop Aged Parent from taking advantage of the time difference to eat some item critical for culinary success, like the cheese plate that he took a fancy to last Xmas, or, more often, stashing it somewhere, never to be seen again, all the while claiming Ocado forgot to deliver it.   

Is Aged Parent grateful for all of this cooking – not a bit.  He moans about how much food he’ll be left with after the visit is over and how long it will take him and the starlings to eat their way through it. Worst of all, in his desire to be rid of all life’s shackles and accoutrement, he’s taken to throwing away any booze that’s left after we depart.  My siblings and I have tried to hide it away in unlikely places so that we can count on a nip in future visits. But Aged Parent must scour the house because it’s always gone. He found it under the stairs -- where he must have got down on his ancient hands and knees to drag it out -- and he found it in the shed.  Of course, it’s entirely possible that he drinks the lot himself to recover from our visits.  For a while, when he was learning how to order his groceries online, we shared the same password and, while checking that he knew what he was doing in this digital world, I found myself privy to his substantial weekly Jonnie Walker orders. He claimed they were “on offer” and that he only bought them by the crate-load because he had to get his order up to qualify for free delivery. Aged parent is quite the master fibber.

Anyway, we are never sure if he likes our rowdy get togethers or not. But we like it, so he doesn’t really get a say in the matter. When the Morris clan assembles we make a lot of noise, Aged Parent removes his hearing aids and hides in his bedroom, and we get in the kitchen and cook.  That is, I cook.   My brother-in-law, “The Soul of Patience”, claims to be my obedient slave in this enterprise, but, under the guise of Sous Chef, he abuses his position to gain access to the cooking sherry and consumes vast amounts of liquor while peeling the odd carrot. And as for DDS, who, by the way, is certified not only as incurably insane but also as a fully qualified chef, -- she languishes on the sofa waiting for the “CRISE de NERFS” to happen. The “CRISE de NERFS” is always caused by the fact that Aged Parent has disposed of, consumed, or left to rot, at least one vital ingredient. I am sure that he and DDS conspire to bring this about.  As soon as she arrives he pretends to be frail and complains how terrible it’s been to go shopping with the Chef.  She encourages this, pampers, pets and plays the “good daughter” to the ungrateful old goat, and then she waits, knowingly, on the sofa for the moment when the doors start banging and shouts of “where’s the damn flour” or “what did he do with the bloody vinegar” reach a certain volume. Then, in she breezes, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and asks, “is everything is under control?” Of course she doesn’t lift a finger until you are reduced to begging.   And only then, when the roast for ten is burning, or the gravy is tar, or smoke is bellowing out the back door, does she roll up her sleeves and transform herself into the TOTAL TYRANT that she was born to be. Let me tell you, Pol Pot takes lessons from my sister.  Commands are issued: MUSTARD she cries.  We scuttle to obey. Then HERBS DE PROVENCE she’ll scream, or WOUCESTERSHIRE SAUCE.  The Soul of Patience, who by this point is usually so inebriated that he can hardly stand, is treated abominably:  MICROWAVE THIS, WARM THOSE PLATES, STIR THAT. Ours is not to question why -- no insubordination is tolerated in the ranks -- otherwise, and it has happened so we know, she’ll flounce out of the kitchen, and we’ll be back to trying to rustle up a substitute for eggs in an omelette.

This trip was no exception.  There I was, beating through the rain with the umbrella for the third time to the local supermarket, the one that catering to old fogies has never heard of an olive, trying to put together two three-course meals for ravenous flesh-eating siblings and a vegetarian-in-law. Aged Parent was being uncooperative and kept insisting that there was nothing wrong with thawing out a few of his “Wiltshire Farm” frozen dinners to feed the ravenous horde and what was all the fuss about. As Aged Parent eats like a bird he thinks we should all do the same and because he has no teeth that means we would be on gruel all week. 

I decided to start the night before Bro and DDS were to descend. The kitchen to myself, I set about to beat the stove into submission. I smote it with two soups and a Bolognese large enough that Aged Parent could freeze down enough bird-like portions to get him through to June, a Goulash for supper the next day and a Ratatouille for the vegetarian.  In the morning I slathered the bird in bacon and got it in the oven, baked two apple pies – one for those with teeth and another for those without, and while in pastry mode slapped together a quiche for good measure, then sat down and had a fortifying sherry. Big Bro arrived and was put to work hauling in the chairs from the garage and setting the table.  This he does well. But, when tasked with “decorating the soup”, a certain mental paralysis ensued that required he first break open the wine and give this foreign concept some thought. The Soul of Patience had deserted his post – his excuse for going AWOL this year was “staying home to feed the cats” when in truth he’d “had enough of driving the old bag around Romsey the weekend before”. Despite his absence, things were going smoothly.  That is until the point when DDS came through the door. Then, they got seriously out of hand. The apple pies were brown but the chicken wasn’t, the cooker had a midday power surge and incinerated the gravy.  DDS looked at my sweaty brow with a little smirk and waited. Not until I pointed out that her “divine intervention” was necessary to save us from Aged Parents 91 year-old packet of BISTO, did she spring into action.

And then she was off, like a racehorse at the starting post, screaming MUSTARD, HONEY, ESSENCE OF MUSHROOM, HERBS DE PROVENCE.  I slaved to keep up. Bro emerged from the dining room announcing “one for the chef”. As I reached for the glass the LITTLE MINX seeing her opportunity to dominate claimed this was now her due, swiped it from his hand and downed the lot. At this, my sister-in-law, "The Only Sane Member of our Family", sensing the need to intervene to prevent sororicide, found where Aged Parent had hidden the plates and took charge of the “dishing out”. At last we sat down to eat. Aged Parent, resuming the role of patriarch, gave a magnanimous "Toast to The Chef(s)", we all fought to claim credit for the gravy, Bro proclaimed his soup decoration to be the artistic post-modern masterpiece of the century, and a merry feast was had by all in Congleton once more!