Reading NYC

• 2012-11-10

  

  Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
  210 (East) 10th Street

  A Mr. Stokes, of 210 Tenth Street, happen’d upon the poor Victim, a mulatto Woman, whilst on his morning constitutional. (Seth Grahame-Smith)

• 2012-09-17

  

  “The Reverie of Poor Susan”
  Wood Street

  At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,

  Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:

  Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard

  In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

  ‘Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees

  A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

  Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,

  And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

  Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,

  Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;

  And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove’s,

  The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

  She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade,

  The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:

  The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,

  And the colours have all passed away from her eyes!

  (William Wordsworth)

• 2012-04-19

  “The Biggest City in the World”
  504 Court Street

  It was 10 o’clock when I reached the Italian-American grocery operated by [Mrs. Anna di Massa Agnese’s] son, Salvatore Agnese, at 504 Court Street, but the old woman was still upstairs, sleeping happily in a big feather-bed. (Joseph Mitchell)

• 2011-10-19

  

  The Catcher in the Rye
  Radio City
  

  I had quite a bit of time to kill till ten o’clock, so what I did, I went to the movies at Radio City. It was probably the worst thing I could’ve done, but it was near, and I couldn’t think of anything else. (J. D. Salinger)

• 2011-10-03

  

  Outliers
  Court Street, downtown Brooklyn

  [Maurice Janklow] got his law degree and set up practice on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn. He was an elegant man who dressed in a homburg and Brooks Brothers suits. In the summer, he wore a straw boater. (Malcolm Gladwell)

• 2011-09-02

  

  Dreams from My Father
  Manhattan Housing Court

  [Sadik] would offer me lodging again when I gave up the apartment on 109th for lack of heat, and accompany me to Housing Court when it turned out that the sublessors of my second apartment had failed to pay the rent and run off with my deposit. (Barack Obama)

• 2011-08-05

  

  The Three Musketeers
  25 rue Vaugirard

  “Do you know where the duchesse de Chevreuse and the duke of Buckingham are now concealed?”
  “No, monseigneur; my people could tell me nothing on that head.”
  “But I know.”
  “You, monseigneur?”
  “Yes, or at least I guess. They were, one in the Rue Vaugirard, No. 25; the other in the Rue de la Harpe, No. 75.”

  (Alexandre Dumas)
  
  ED. The building numbers on rue de la Harpe end in the 40s.

• 2010-12-23

  

  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
  Williamsburg Library

  The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feelings she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library paste and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass. (Betty Smith)