An abandoned tool shed in Riverside Park

By far the most visible clue that the 28-acre Riverbank State Park sits atop a wastewater treatment plant

Closer look here

Built into the retaining wall that supports Riverside Drive, this beautiful stone arcade in Riverside Park is now off limits to the public.

Don Quixote and his majestic steed Rocinante adorn this niche in the courtyard of Audubon Terrace, a "stupendous neo-Classical complex" of museum buildings (aerial photo here) located off Broadway at the southern edge of Washington Heights. Conceived by Archer M. Huntington, the son of Arabella Huntington (who would become "the richest woman in the world") and stepson of railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington, it was built over the first three decades of the 20th century on part of the former estate of John James Audubon (who is buried nearby in Trinity Church Cemetery). The sculpture above, along with several others in the courtyard, was created by Anna Hyatt Huntington, Archer Huntington's wife.

Formerly home to several cultural institutions, Audubon Terrace has seen its ranks dwindle over the years with the departures of the American Geographical Society (which once housed "the largest private geographical collection in the western hemisphere"), the Museum of the American Indian, and the American Numismatic Society. The Hispanic Society of America and the American Academy of Arts and Letters have held strong, however, each annexing one of the vacated buildings, and Boricua College is now an established presence on the campus as well, having moved in decades ago. (The Church of Our Lady of Esperanza is also located on Audubon Terrace, but it feels like a separate entity, facing out onto the street rather than the common courtyard.)

This heroic statue of the Spanish warrior, sculpted by Anna Hyatt Huntington, stands just to the left of Don Quixote in the courtyard of Audubon Terrace. Here's a wider shot of the magnificent scene.

The only thing I can tell you about this perplexing addition to the courtyard of Audubon Terrace is that, unlike the sculptures seen in the previous two photos, it is almost certainly not the work of Anna Hyatt Huntington.

of the Hispanic Society of America

A street-level doorway on the 156th Street side of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

The George Washington Bridge, the West Side Line, and, off to the left, the Hudson River

Better known as the Little Red Lighthouse, this is the only lighthouse on the island of Manhattan* (not counting the Titanic Memorial Light). It was originally erected in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, where it stood from 1880 to 1917, and it was moved here in 1921, several years before construction began on the neighboring George Washington Bridge. The Coast Guard decommissioned the lighthouse in 1947 or 1948, but the city decided to relight it in 2002.

The lighthouse was immortalized in the pages of the 1942 children's book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, in which the diminutive beacon comes to feel insignificant and unneeded as the massive bridge is built and lit up above it. But on one dangerously foggy night, the bridge calls out:

"Little brother, where is your light?"

"Am I brother of yours, bridge?" wondered the lighthouse. "Your light was so bright that I thought mine was needed no more."

"I call to the airplanes," cried the bridge. "I flash to the ships of the air. But you are still master of the river. Quick, let your light shine again. Each to his own place, little brother."

* There are, however, two other lighthouses in the borough of Manhattan: the Roosevelt Island Lighthouse and the Statue of Liberty, which in its early years was officially operated as a lighthouse — the first one in the US to use electric lights, in fact.

The plaque on the right reads:

THE PORT AUTHORITY OF NY & NJ
TUNNELS, BRIDGES & TERMINALS
MEMORIAL PARK
DEDICATED IN LOVING MEMORY
OF OUR LOST FAMILY
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

and goes on to list (what I assume are) the names of the department members who were killed in the attacks.

The other two boulders bear tablets unrelated to 9/11. The one in the middle memorializes the "significant civic achievements" of Louie Stern, while the one on the left commemorates the lives lost when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into the Rockaways two months after 9/11.

in the disordered city

The north pedestrian path (pictured) on the George Washington Bridge was closed today, while the south one was open. That's been the case every single time I've walked over the bridge, with one glaring exception.

Not the first one we've seen.

This is on the New Jersey side of the GW Bridge, so it doesn't count in the official tally of NYC 9/11 memorials.

Notice how tiny the Little Red Lighthouse looks next to the George Washington Bridge.

Snaking around a suspension cable on the George Washington Bridge

Opened in 1963, this bus terminal — or "concrete butterfly" (aerial view) — was the first structure in the US designed by Pier Luigi Nervi. Like the four towering apartment buildings directly to its east, it was built on top of the Trans-Manhattan Expressway.

Ada Louise Huxtable wrote that this former off-track betting parlor in the George Washington Bridge Bus Station "occupies the most space on the concourse and exudes an air of abandoned hope" — and that was before it closed down in late 2010, along with all the others in the city. To quote a post from two years ago:

After struggling for years, all the NYC OTB parlors were finally shuttered in late 2010. A considerable number of them, however, have managed to eke out a pathetic sort of survival, courtesy of the sluggish economy: their signs and logos, or at least traces of them, still adorn many of the vacant, unrented storefronts that once housed the parlors. The former customers, of course, have had to move on, but what has become of Jesus Leonardo? Not to worry, friends: he just keeps on keepin' on.

When it opened in 1920, the Coliseum (photos) was the city's third-largest theater, a 3,500-seat movie and vaudeville house. It was still showing films as recently as 2011, although it had become a multiplex by that point, with a good chunk of the original theater converted into retail space.

The program from the Coliseum's opening night is available online. It contains several pages of historical information, and even a little social commentary:

Eighteen hundred years ago, the people of the greatest city of that day came to another Coliseum for their "entertainment." The Romans loved a welter of blood. Slaughter was sport. Gladiatorial combats were recreation for the Emperors, the aristocrats and the mob.

"Entertainment?"

We sit in a magnificent palace, luxuriously appointed, and laugh. But we have only lately done with the most murderous war in the history of civilization.

"Civilization?"

Perhaps the Romans laugh.

The program goes on to claim that the theater occupies the former site of "the famous old Blue Bell Tavern, teeming with memories of Colonial days, Revolutionary days, and days when the Republic was young", where "scores of the most celebrated statesmen, diplomats and soldiers America ever produced . . . once had their 'nips' and their beverages prepared for them". For, you see, "the Blue Bell was no ordinary hostelry, where drinks were sipped only by citizenry of low repute and no standing. The Blue Bell was distinctly a tavern with a lineage."

That all sounds a bit overblown, but the Blue Bell was indeed a well-known tavern in then-rural northern Manhattan. It was notable enough that the Museum of the City of New York crafted a small-scale replica of it, "re-created in wax, perfect in even the smallest detail", for a historical exhibit in 1930. And it did stand somewhere around the present-day intersection of Broadway and 181st Street (pictured above), although sources vary on its exact location.

There are two great tales of romance, in which love triumphs over wartime allegiances, that took place at the Blue Bell during the Revolution. The first occurred in the early days of the war, after the Americans had been driven out of Manhattan. Colonel Johann Rall (or Ralle), a commander of German troops fighting for the British, made the Blue Bell his headquarters. And that's when things started to heat up...

[The tavern-keeper] had a pretty sister, whose charms smote one of Ralle's aides so powerfully, that he proposed marriage within twenty-four hours after they first met. He was a fine-looking young Anspacher. He promised to remain in America when the war should be over, and vowed eternal fidelity to her. The maiden's heart was touched, first with sympathy, which speedily became transformed into the tender passion. Her mother consented to the marriage, but her brother stormed. The gallant Ralle, who had passed through a similar experience in his own country, favored the union, and on the evening before his departure from the Blue Bell, the lovers were united in marriage, in the secrecy of the colonel's room, by the chaplain. The bride followed her husband in the chase of Washington across New Jersey, and the young Anspacher was slightly wounded, and was made a prisoner when his commander fell at Trenton. Refusing to be exchanged, he took the oath of allegiance to the newly-declared republic at Morristown, and settled in East Jersey, where many of his descendants are now living.

The second story was recalled in the mid-1800s by Major Robert Burnet, at that time a 90-year-old veteran whose "mind was clear, and [whose] memory of the events of his earlier life was marvelous." At the end of the war, after the Treaty of Paris had been signed and the British were preparing to leave the city, the Americans had re-entered Manhattan and were marching south past the Blue Bell...

Just as the rear-guard had filed past the tavern, a young man, in the uniform of a British soldier, and followed by a modest-looking young woman, rushed out and beckoned to [General George] Washington vehemently. The chief halted, when the young man, in great perturbation of mind, said he was a deserter from the British army, and implored protection. He was placed in charge of Major Burnet, who took the refugee to his quarters. There he learned that the young man was a sergeant . . . who had for some time loved and was betrothed to the young woman who was with him; that her parents, who lived in the city, would not consent to her marriage unless he would stay in this country; that [the couple] had arranged a plan a few days before for a desertion on his part and an elopement on hers; that they were to meet at the Blue Bell and be married, and there wait for the protection of the approaching American troops. Their plan had worked well. She, on pretense of visiting an aunt at Bloomingdale, had made her way on foot to the Blue Bell. He had managed to escape the sentinels at the unfinished hospital, on Broadway, in the darkness of a rainy night, and, under its shadow, had also made his way to the Blue Bell, where they had been married, the day before, [in the clergy-less style] of the Quakers, by declaring, in the presence of witnesses, that they took each other for life companions, as man and wife. He showed Major Burnet their marriage certificate, signed by half a dozen witnesses. The major provided for them that night, and the next day they accompanied the troops into the city. . . .

A bard in Major Burnet's corps composed a number of verses on the occasion, of which the following are all that the veteran remembered:

   " A soldier and a maiden fair,
       Helped by shy little Cupid,
     Fled from the camp and mamma's chair,
       (Such guardians, how stupid!)
     And to the Blue Bell did repair,
       To have themselves a-loopèd

   " In silken cords by Hymen's hand.
       A parson there was lacking;
     So in the Quaker way they wed.
       The bond was signed. Then, smacking
     each other as a nuptial pledge,
       They waited for the backing

   " Of our brave troops, for Sergeant M—
       Was fearful of a banging
     By British guns, should he be caught—
       Perhaps a dreadful hanging."

When these two love stories were told in the pages of Appletons' Journal in 1873, the author summed them up with an unintentional pun that wouldn't take on its second meaning for almost half a century, until the Coliseum was built on or near the site of the tavern: "Twice, at least, the Blue Bell has been the theatre of a clandestine marriage."

That's the Washington Bridge (which is different from the George Washington Bridge) on the left and the Alexander Hamilton Bridge on the right.