{"id":5023,"date":"2024-11-11T01:24:19","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T01:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/?p=5023"},"modified":"2024-11-08T01:24:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T01:24:56","slug":"yorkville-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/?p=5023","title":{"rendered":"Yorkville Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, I learned a lot at Yorkville and the Arts<\/em>, a free walking tour sponsored by Friends of the Upper East Side. The Yorkville I remember from childhood centered on East 86th<\/sup> Street where there were many small German shops. My<\/p>\n

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Marzipan pigs<\/p><\/div>\n

favorite was the Elk Candy Company, home of marzipan pigs and a fried egg in a skillet.<\/p>\n

The tour group first walked 95th<\/sup> Street from Park to Lexington Avenue, a beautiful block I had never set foot on before despite living on East 94th<\/sup> street in my earliest years\u00a0 and later at Park and 96th,<\/sup> with my husband and daughters. (How parochial is that?) We paused to admire Al Hirschfeld’s house, still looking spiffy and well-tended. Finding all the \u2018Nina\u2019s\u2019 in his cartoon on the front page of the New York Times was a Sunday ritual.<\/p>\n

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Al Hirschfeld’s cartoon of himself–look for the Nina’s<\/p><\/div>\n

The Marx family\u2014Chico, Zippo, Harpo, Grouch et a<\/em>l and their parents\u2014ten people altogether\u2014lived at 179 East 93rd<\/sup>. Pre-comedic success, theirs was a life of relative poverty as what income they had came from their father, Frenchie, an \u2018incompetent\u2019 tailor. According to our guide, the Marx apartment had running water but no internal toilet or shower so family members went to the 92nd<\/sup> Street Y, (recently rebranded 92NY probably at great cost), to bathe.<\/p>\n

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Zeppo, Groucho, Harpo and Chico (if I got it\u00a0 right)<\/p><\/div>\n

(A link to Groucho, one of the the funniest men ever, singing Lydia the Tattoed Lady} https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uVBBxptpSY8<\/a><\/p>\n

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Painter Helen Frankenthaler and her husband, painter, Robert Motherwell, moved around within the area several times. Both artists needed large spaces for their huge canvasses which accounts for their many housing shifts. Their marriage was a great success until it wasn\u2019t as they divorced after thirteen years.<\/p>\n

Our group moved to 87th<\/sup> street to view the 1868 firehouse rented by Andy Warhol for five months until his lease was revoked. It was a bit of a wreck but for $150 a month I guess Andy made it work. In 1965, the building was bought by art dealer, Daniel Wildenstein, who made it over into a sculpture garden. The exposed east side of the building has a fairly recent caricature of Warhol\u2019s head and wild hair which you can see with some neck craning.<\/p>\n

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Warhol’s 1960 studio built in the 1860w<\/p><\/div>\n

The tour ended at 83rd<\/sup> and York Avenue where the corner building has a mural by Richard Hass.\u00a0 Called Glockenspiel<\/em>, it dates to 2005 when\u00a0 residents of a new luxury condo across 83rd<\/sup> were unhappy with what they deemed a \u2018shabby\u2019 view from their lobby.\u00a0 The condo owners had the mural painted to give the illusion that the neighborhood was sufficiently\u00a0 upscale to justify the apartment prices.<\/p>\n

The lower part of the mural could use a touch-up but the upper sections, that include images of mounted NYPD officers, gargoyles, a sewing machine, and a trompe l’oeil bay window,\u00a0 are in pretty good shape.<\/p>\n

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Note the mounted police officers towards the top of the mural<\/p><\/div>\n

I think Schaller & Weber is the only German business left in an area now given over to the likes of H&M, Shake Shack and P. C Richard\u2019s. What\u2019s left of the old Yorkville survives in memories like this warm German Potato Salad that would stand out at any meal.<\/p>\n

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Warm German Potato Salad<\/strong> courtesy Five Heart Home<\/p>\n

Recipe serves six:<\/p>\n

2 pounds small red potatoes<\/p>\n

1 \u00bd teaspoon salt<\/p>\n

12 ounces bacon<\/p>\n

\u2153 cup cider vinegar<\/p>\n

3 tablespoons granulated sugar (you can get away with two or even less\u2014taste)<\/p>\n

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard<\/p>\n

Freshly ground black pepper<\/p>\n

1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic, about 3 cloves (not as made by me)<\/p>\n

\u00bd cup chopped parsley<\/p>\n

Scrub the potatoes and cut in half so that all pieces are roughly the same size. Put\u00a0 potatoes in a big pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and stir in 1 teaspoon of salt. Reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until potatoes are tender when stabbed with a fork. Drain.<\/p>\n

Leaving potatoes in the pot, return the pot to the still-hot (but turned off) burner. Leave the lid off of the pot and allow the potatoes to steam dry for a couple minutes.<\/p>\n

Set another large pot over medium heat and cut\u00a0 bacon strips into approximately 1-inch pieces. Put\u00a0 bacon into pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until crispy.. When bacon is done, remove with slotted spoon leaving bacon fat in the pot.<\/p>\n

Slowly add vinegar, sugar, mustard, remaining salt, and pepper to the pot of bacon grease. With pot back on the burner, bring the mixture to a simmer, and stir for a couple of minutes. Stir the minced garlic \u00a0(if using) into the mixture and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute, until the garlic starts to turn a light golden.<\/p>\n

Remove pot from heat and toss in sliced potatoes, mixing until potatoes have absorbed all of the liquid. Fold in the cooked bacon pieces and chopped parsley. Put potato salad into serving dish and serve warm. (Don\u2019t let it sit at room temp for more than two hours before refrigerating.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve made this and it\u2019s wonderful. Serve with sausages from Schaller & Weber or hot dogs or pretty much anything (pork loin\/ chicken\/lamb anyone?). I gather that Billie Eilish\u2019s Birds of a Feather<\/em> is currently popular in Germany but Bach\u2019s Brandenberg Concerto would be just as\u2014maybe more\u2014pleasing to some ears. Or an oompah band. Here\u2019s the Brandenburg: https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Brandenburg+concerto#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:f477c2f8,vid:NCPM8DEsvmc,st:0<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, I learned a lot at Yorkville and the Arts, a free walking tour sponsored by Friends of the Upper East Side. The Yorkville I remember from childhood centered on East 86th Street where there were many … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5023"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5037,"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023\/revisions\/5037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marigoldonline.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}