BLEEKER STREET
Who knew there was so much money in a cupcake. The stretch of Bleeker Street between Christopher Street and Eighth Avenue has out stripped Bond Street in London and The Champs-Elysees in Paris as one of the most expensive retail streets in the world.
Only some locations on Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue have been able to command a higher price tag than the $6,700 per square foot tag that now hangs on the merchant doors that line Bleeker Street.
The street has become home to big names in the fashion industry, names like Michael Kors, Cynthia Rowley, Marc Jacob
and Ralph Lauren all have shingles facing the street with their names subtly displayed.
Ostentation never appears where real money exists. Let this be a lesson to you Donald Trump.
On this toney stretch of real estate you'll see fashion displayed at its most provocative.
You'll see coach bags displayed with price tags larger than a descent used car
and even the shops for kids exceed the price of a three-course meal with beverages for a birthday party for your seven year-old and thirty of her best friends at your local Applebees.
The draw at the end of the street is still the Magnolia Bakery where the tour buses line up and the Japanese get out with their cameras to take a picture under the awning at 410 Bleeker.
If you go to this swank little area you should also tour the side streets for some of the quaintest architecture New York has to offer.
When I first moved to the city the West Village was still filled with reasonable real estate and an abundance of hippie culture to go along with it.
The village still retains its quirkiness but the price tag is way more silk and cashmere than cotton and denim.
THE JEFFERSON MARKET GARDENS
It's one of the most famous corners in New York City, the intersection of Greenwich, Christopher and Sixth. Shooting Gothic towers to the sky, Jefferson Market, designed by Calvert Vaux and Clarke Withers in 1877
provides the shade and a romantic red brick background for one of Manhattan's most beautiful gardens.
The Jefferson Market Garden now blooms on the site of the former New York Women's House of Detention, a building built adjacent to the market and fittingly torn down so that flowers could grow where previously women had been incarcerated in inhuman facilities.
No longer do you hear the sounds of wailing women screaming from the windows of the jail to people walking below or waiting to hear messages from the loved ones shouting words of longing from the street.
Now beauty prevails where the crumbling house of detention stood.
Glamourous people now sit on benches ringed in tulips reading novels of mystery and squirrels have taken over from the rats take once ruled the street.
THE GALLERY
Photographer unknown
Source: The New York Public Library
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