Meet 30th Street
Standing across from the I.M. Pei apartment complex between First and Second Avenues, the first place I lived with my husband, truly brought me home. Much has certainly changed, but it still felt familiar and comforting to be walking on 30th.
The east side of 30th is filled with educational spaces. NYU’s Langone Medical Center, one of Manhattan’s most highly regarded research hospitals, is located at number 227, and clinics and doctor’s offices are tucked inside stunning townhouses nearby. I also found the unassuming Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, a home for Polish learning that opened its doors during WWII. Just down the street is the Jewish Braille Institute Library, a center filled with published materials for the visually impaired.
The arts, too, find their place on East 30th. Dover Street Market, a seven-story shopping center set up like an art gallery, boasts beautiful fashions, decorative art, and a cute cafe. The Penumbra Foundation Center for Alternative Photography was a fascinating find. In an old-world environment, using techniques from the eighteenth century, pictures are taken and reproduced. Speaking with the director, Geoffrey Berliner, about his deep passion for alternative and historic methods of photography, was a definite highlight of the street.
Good food abounds, both east and west. Between Park and Lexington Avenues, our team spent quite a bit of time with Gabriel Boter, the enthusiastic owner of Pepela (Lost Gem). In a beautifully decorated townhouse, we sampled a variety of delicious traditional Georgian-style food and wine. A bit farther west, The Mason Jar, Wine 30 and the Crooked Knife, lined up on the north side of the street, each offered something different. What they all have in common is good food, good drink and the promise of a good time.
West of Fifth Avenue, I was pleased to step inside J. Levine Books & Judaica (Lost Gem), once again. Over the years, I have purchased numerous books and other traditional Jewish and spiritual items from this family-run store that has been in business for a century. On a more somber note, deep in the bowels of an eclectic office building nearby, the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors remembers one of the darkest periods in history and supports those who lived through the cataclysm.
On the West side, hundreds of wholesalers find their place on 30th Street. Many of them are immigrants to the United States, and their origins were fascinating to hear. Perfume, luggage, and handbags are the most common. Furriers also have a large presence, though they may be “the last of a dying trade.” Once home to a good eight hundred stores, the Fur District has diminished, but there are still plenty of minks, chinchillas, foxes and shearlings to be found in the dozens of shops remaining.
I will always remember the call that I got one day from one of the charming SideWalkers on the Manhattan Sideways team as he stood outside Air Pegasus on the Hudson River. “Betsy, do you know that there is a heliport on 30th Street? I am watching helicopters take off and land, it is so cool.” He sounded like a wide-eyed little boy discovering something special for the very first time. Perhaps I, too, sound this way each time I introduce my readers to another side street.