Category: My neighborhood

A moment of respite before the helicopters intrude. I started a peaceful Sunday morning with coffee and stretching in the garden. Then a tennis lesson at the Central Park courts. There’s nothing as gratifying as being a beginner at something. Your learning is visible – like filling up a knapsack of new words or gestures…

For decades, the old mansion has stood empty. Looming there on the corner of West 85th Street and Central Park West, its ground floor windows blurred out by brown paper and painter’s tape. A sign on the basement window warns politely that all who venture near are on camera. But the people who venture near,…

I moved to this block 26 years ago. February 1, 1997. I saw the place on a frigid January evening. No one had lived in the apartment for many years. The building owners were German and had kept the ground floor flat for themselves. But they had died several years earlier, and their children held…