Leonard Street between Varick and Hudson

Sometimes you just want to eat at a diner. 

I'm even happy at mediocre diners, but the Square Diner in Tribeca is a good one. And it's a real diner, which unfortunately can be difficult to find in Manhattan.  But there's still some out there.

 
They have fountain drinks and everything. I had a chocolate egg cream.

Throughout my life I haven't generally been familiar with the egg cream. We have been strangers, and that is mostly my doing. I think I've always found the name intimidating: is it like a milkshake, with milk and ice cream, but then they drop a raw egg in it? That doesn't sound appealing. 

But an egg cream turns out to be milk, seltzer, and chocolate or vanilla syrup. Whoever came up with the name "egg cream" needed some marketing lessons. Or maybe just wanted all the egg creams to his or herself.

By the way, the Square Diner wonderfully has both the chocolate and vanilla egg cream options. I was tempted to go with vanilla, since I actually prefer vanilla for ice cream and milkshakes these days, but the chocolate somehow seemed more classic and I thought I should try that first. 

The carbonated aspect took some getting used to but I really enjoyed it. I'm excited to try the vanilla one soon. 

The food there was also terrific.

They weren't stingy with the pickles. Yes! 

For me, the best part of a meal is that moment when everything is sitting there in front of you and you know you're about to have all that enjoyment. It's a nice feeling. 

You may have noticed from one or two of the photos that I visited this block at night. Part of the reason was that it just worked out that way, but also I thought it would be a nice change and an experiment to see how the photos came out and how the mood of my experience was altered. 

I must say I enjoyed the night mood during my visit. Even though the weather was pretty bad, with cold and rain and winds, nighttime in Manhattan can be a special place. It's a chance to walk around practically alone and in peace where so many thousands would be jostling during the day. 

The rain can even add to the magical feel and create a dreamy effect in the photos, along with the streetlights' distortions.

Some fog in the sky added to the romanticism.

I remember being younger and listening to The Velvet Underground in my headphones as I walked through Manhattan at night in a cold drizzle, thinking, Now I better understand this music and this city. I imagine it would be like listening to The Doors in Los Angeles or reading Bukowski in, well, Los Angeles. 

On the left side of the above photo, I found something oddly beautiful about the big empty construction site lit up at night. 

Here are some looks at a thin island called Finn Square, across the street from the diner at the merging of Varick Street and West Broadway.

I assume that stand-alone object is a piece of art, but I'm not fully sure.  

There is a Starbucks at the top right of the above photo. It is on the corner opposite the Square Diner on Leonard Street. 

 
Starbucks is a coffee chain that offers regular and espresso coffees, with flavored options for the drinks and also some pastries. They have places to sit and... I just realized that my detailed description of what's in a Starbucks is probably unnecessary.  

Along Leonard Street is the Juilliard Building.

Look out! There's a murderous donkey peering out one of the windows! On second thought it's probably just a stuffed animal. Still scary looking, though. 

According to an article in The New York Times from 2000, several buildings were combined around that time to form a building of condominiums. It was named after Augustus D. Juilliard (1836-1919) because he and his wife Helen sold dry goods and had a warehouse there. He is the same person who the Juilliard School was named after, which is a school for the performing arts that he was a patron of. These buildings on Leonard Street date back to the 19th century. 

Closer to the Hudson Street side of the block are two real estate companies. One is called Douglas Elliman Real Estate, established in 1911.

They had many properties displayed in their windows, but they were lit up so brightly that it actually hurt to look at them. In the photo they just look like rectangular lights. But I guess they know what they're doing since they've been around over 100 years. 

On the other side of the street is Warburg, which was established in 1896. Wow, I was impressed by 1911, but 1896 is even better. 

Here's the entrance around the corner on Hudson Street:

A little ways up on this building was some interesting metalwork, seen in the lower part of this photo:

I guess the address below wasn't good enough to get its own number:

How sad.

That's about it, here's one last look at the area with the Square Diner and Finn Square:

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North Moore Street between Varick and West Broadway

I thought it would be fun to write about the block with one of the coolest things in lower Manhattan: the firehouse they used in Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, not only was there scaffolding on it, but it was covering pretty much the whole building:

Hey, I finally found a block in Manhattan with construction on it. My long search is over. Seriously though, in the case of a firehouse I just hope everything gets fixed up and they get the best building possible.

The firehouse is Hook and Ladder Company 8, and the sidewalk in front has two Ghostbusters-inspired illustrations. Here’s one:

And the other:

Pretty cool, even under all the scaffolding.

The fire hydrant on the corner also has a nice touch to it:

I remembered there being a plaque on the building that might have been Ghostbusters-related, though I’m not certain about that. Anyway there definitely was a plaque and now there’s just a trace of it:

Not sure why it's not there.

I didn’t remember beforehand what else was on this block but I figured there must be a cafe or shop of some kind that I could also check out. However, the rest of this small street is really only apartment buildings. Here’s a look at the side of the block without the firehouse on it:

And here’s a shot of the intersection of North Moore and West Broadway taken from West Broadway:

The block on West Broadway that it intersects with has some nice local stores, including a few eateries (I’ve never written the word “eateries” before and I’ve certainly never said it out loud), a bar or two and a clothing shop on the corner. Here is part of that street:

But enough about that block and back to ours.

After looking at the firehouse for a few minutes I barely spotted a memorial street sign over the sidewalk scaffolding that says “Lieutenant Vincent G. Halloran Street.”

I wish there was a plaque there saying a bit about Lieutenant Halloran. I see memorial street names throughout Manhattan, which is great, but it would be even better if they all had accompanying plaques saying a little about the person. That way each person could be remembered and appreciated more thoroughly and with more understanding of who they were. But the memorial street signs are certainly a nice gesture in themselves.

Later at home I searched online and learned from the site linked to below that Lieutenant Vincent Gerard Halloran died on duty on September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center, where he was leading an effort to evacuate the North Tower. He had five kids and his wife was pregnant with another when he died. Here’s the link:


http://www.legacy.com/sept11/story.aspx?personid=128619


After learning about a heroic man like Lieutenant Halloran, it really puts the Ghostbusters sightseeing and scaffolding and lots of life’s trivialities in perspective. I think it’s still okay to want to see the building from Ghostbusters, but the first association of the building should be with Lieutenant Vincent G. Halloran and all the firefighters from Hook and Ladder Company 8 past, present, and future, who risk their lives for us all.