East 10th Street between 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue

This block is in the East Village and I checked it out the day after a big snow storm. It snowed a lot, like over 2 feet. How many inches exactly? I don’t have that figure in front of me. I’m not your local meteorologist. That’s not the gig I signed up for, okay?

Okay I’m calm now. Sorry about that. As you can see by this poor fellow of a car, there was a lot of snow.

The great thing about all the snow in the city is you can see clearly and appreciate just how much dog pee there is all over the place. And I do appreciate it. Very much. On a related note:

The above photo was taken across the street from our block. Or is it a modern art piece that I photographed in a museum? I'll never tell.

Let’s get positive by looking at our block at its intersection with 3rd Avenue:

Hey, there’s a bank on the corner! Yes, just what Manhattan needs more of. And it has scaffolding too. Nice.

It seems like there’s a bank on just about every block these days. Or a Duane Reade. They should just get it over with and combine the two to make Manhattan one giant bank/one-stop drug store. I can’t believe I found three blocks before this one that didn’t have any banks on them. Okay I’m done ranting.

Here’s a closer look at the bank, and check out those wonderful, smiling faces on the posters:

That’s how happy I am too when I’m at the bank.

On the other corner at 3rd Avenue is Lois Dry Cleaners, and lots of snow:

Then there’s just residential buildings along the block until it intersects with the diagonal-cutting Stuyvesant Street a little more than halfway to 2nd Avenue. Here's some of those residential buildings:

At the intersection with Stuyvesant Street is Abe Lebewohl Triangle:

I learned later that Abe Lebewohl was the owner of the famous Second Avenue Deli, which used to be on East 10th Street and 2nd Avenue. Tragically, he was robbed and killed in the neighborhood in 1996.

There is a park on the intersection with 2nd Avenue that is also named for him:

There's a somber lion statue in the middle of the park:

Next to the park is St. Mark's Church-In-The-Bowery:

The church's website says that it is "the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in New York City and the burial site of Peter Stuyvesant and other founding families of New York." Maybe that's why the intersecting street is called Stuyvesant Street. There's also a Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, which I may or may not have attended. As for the part about "continuous Christian worship," Wikipedia says it goes back over 350 years.

On the corner is this memorial:

According to what I found online, Elizabeth Spingler Van Beuren lived from 1831 to 1908. She was part of a family that lived in the Union Square area from the late 1700's (when it was rural land considered north of the city) into the 20th century. Here's a link with interesting information about her family and the Union Square mansion they lived in for many years:

http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-lost-van-buren-mansion-no-21-w-14th.html

Incidentally, I couldn't tell what kind of structure the actual memorial is. It didn't seem to be a water fountain, unless the snow was covering it. Maybe it's a bird bath? If so, it made me think that a bird bath would be a nice thing to have dedicated to you. It seems more elegant than a statue. It's more subtle and lets birds bathe and drink water. Although statues apparently are good for making birds poop, so I guess both are nice for birds in their own way.

After looking at the church I went to check out the other corner on 2nd Avenue. What's on that corner? If you guessed another bank then you have a sick sense of humor, and you're also correct: 

Did you notice in the photo that there's a cleaners a couple of doors down from the bank? So, to sum up: each side of this block has a bank and a cleaners. You can make your own assumptions about the issues that people in this area have. 

Next to this cleaners, called Danny Cleaners, is a little cafe called Third Rail Coffee. I didn't go in because I didn't feel like it, but it seemed like a nice place. 

I had walked on this block so many times before without noticing the names honored on it or thinking to look up some of its long history. Apparently writing a blog can be more than just a cliched punchline: it can also teach and enlighten. It's still a punchline too, though.