It's hard to know why a work of art endures and continues to captivate across generations, but Alice in Wonderland has certainly done that, and not just with children and psychedelic enthusiasts. The fantastical, often trippy characters are about as embedded in our collective subconscious as any figures from any stories in the English language.
Lewis Carroll's real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and he was a British mathematician. He wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and then its 1871 sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
The first book recently celebrated its 150th anniversary. The world has changed a lot since 1865, perhaps more than any other stretch of time in human history. In 1865 I don't think they even had the internet.
So why have the stories and their characters endured for so long? I wouldn't know how to begin trying to answer that, but what I do know is that New York City has paid tribute to Alice and co. in a few different ways.
At the 50th Street subway station on the 1 train there are four ceramic mosaics that pay tribute to Carroll's characters, with two on the uptown platform and two on the downtown side. The 1994 works are by Liliana Porter and are called "Alice: The Way Out."
This last one is the most surreal and my favorite of the bunch:
Perhaps the most well-known Alice tribute in the city is the statue in Central Park, near the entrance at East 76th Street and Fifth Avenue.
It is was presented to the city in 1959 by the George and Margarita Delacorte Foundation. The immediate area where the statue is located is called the Margarita Delacorte Memorial.
George Delacorte was a philanthropist who made many other contributions to the city, including the clock near the Central Park Zoo with a carousel of dancing, musical animals.
This statue is a popular tourist spot. When I visited recently there were many people, both adults and children, taking photos and climbing on the figures. A tour group stopped by, and a nearby sign offered information on a free celebrity audio guide from Whoopi Goldberg.
I appreciated the statue's attention to detail, including having ridges on the undersides of the mushrooms.
A third Alice tribute is a very short walk from this statue: just inside the previously mentioned park entrance at East 76th Street is a children's playground that features Alice in Wonderland figures as part of a water spraying fountain.
Coming back to the statue area, it is at the northern edge of a pond called Conservatory Water.
And as a final note, there is a statue of Hans Christian Andersen along the western edge of the pond. He was a Danish writer best known for his fairy tales, which included "The Ugly Duckling," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Emperor's New Clothes."
The open book in the statue shows a passage from "The Ugly Duckling," and there is an inscription on the top hat next to Andersen that credits the architect and sculptor.
There is also an inscription on the back of the statue, which reads, "This monument is the gift of the children of Denmark and New York City and their friends/1956/Sponsored by The Danish-American Women's Association/Baroness Alma Dahlerup founder."
This statue had fewer visitors than Alice and was a quiet area along the water that would be nice to visit or just for a short break during the day. In fact, the entire pond area is relaxing, and the two fairy tale statues certainly add to its charm.
The subway station at 50th Street might not be quite as relaxing, but the Alice mosaics are worth slowing down for if you happen to be passing by.
When spring finally arrives in New York and brings warm weather and nature's bloom, there's nothing like a garden in which to relax and find peaceful solace away from the chaotic streets.
Unless, that is, you suffer from stupid, stupid seasonal allergies. Then it's not as much fun to sit amid all the harmful foliage. I seem to have an issue with tree pollen, which was at high levels for much of May.
But allergies aside, urban gardens are valuable and necessary for mental and spiritual health. This post looks at the garden of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, which is on Hudson Street in the West Village.
Just inside the entrance is the main garden area, which is a big square bursting with plants, trees and flowers of all kinds. There are stone pathways along the perimeter that also connect to an open central space, and benches scattered throughout.
At the back corner, away from the two abutting streets, Hudson and Barrow, the stone path leads further into the grounds of the church where there is a smaller space with a couple of benches. Beyond that is a final little courtyard with more places to sit, a small grass area, and an old brick wall. This back area is closest to the church building and its school.
I enjoyed the ivy that covered buildings in the front and back areas of the garden.
I tried coming here a few months ago for the blog but there was so much noisy construction around it that I had to leave. This time there wasn't any such noise and the new luxury building nearby seemed to have been completed. There were, however, other signs of ongoing construction. There always seem to be in Lower Manhattan these days.
The West Village has been experiencing rising rents and high-end construction for so many years that it now just seems to be the way things are. Of course these things go in cycles, but who knows how long it will be before prices become more reasonable.
Further up the block on Hudson Street is the church building, which predates all the modern luxury development, having been here since 1820 and experiencing many different iterations of the area.
At its origins the church was on farmland and in a neighborhood that was seen as an escape from the diseases of the city, which was then just the very lowest parts of Manhattan. The church was called St. Luke in the Fields to promote its rural setting.
The West Village has long since been incorporated into the city life of New York, though even with its recent changes it is still a little more relaxed than much of Manhattan and its buildings not quite as towering and domineering. Nevertheless the church's garden now provides a welcome escape for the public from the surrounding blocks and neighborhood.
Hopefully it won't be replaced by luxury offices and apartments any time soon.
