box 7: back in new york

When I returned to New York for the start of my first Ph.D. semester, it was to a new apartment, or rather a room in a larger apartment. The arrangement was thanks to a friend from Colgate, David Hartwell, about whom I'll have lots to write in later posts. A year previously David had begun studies at Columbia himself, having finished his Master's at Colgate, and thanks to a family connection he had rented this room from Sidney (I don't recall his last name), a widower in his later 60s who had a large apartment on W. 86th St. between Amsterdam and Columbus. David was now moving on to grander digs (more on that in a future post), and he worked it out for me to be Sidney's tenant. My rent was a very reasonable $60 a month, if I recall correctly--and I had a doorman, my only time living in New York or anywhere else. (The cost could be measured against my teaching fellowship at Columbia: I taught two sections of first-year English for $5500 a year, which paid for my tuition with $1500 left over for living expenses.)

Sidney's rule was that I could have no visitors, though he did relax that on a few occasions. I had kitchen privileges, except for using dishes from the kosher cupboard, and he kindly allowed me to use his TV once a week to watch the new Star Trek. I was

also allowed to look through the books in his living room, including a first edition of Ulysses and an 18th-Century copy of Johnson's Dictionary. When he had company, such as his daughter or his good friend, a psychotherapist who became his fiancée, I was sometimes invited to join them. (On one occasion we snacked on the big beluga caviar--I think the only time I've ever encountered that salty-fishy delicacy.)

I see that I took a few pictures of my room, and that Gary and Mary Gordon visited at least once. I'm not sure why they took my picture standing in front of an art reproduction that I've always liked (and still have in my office), Charles Burchfield's November Evening.--maybe I'd just had it framed. Incidentally, that aqua-colored radio had good sound for its size, and served me well for my New York years.

The view from the 12th floor front windows was pretty grand, as the top photo shows, looking toward the Hudson and New Jersey, Below are a few more window shots at different seasons and times of day:

The kitchen window in the back didn't have a "good view" in the usual sense, but there was at least a sort of urban grunge vibe that some might find poetic:

The building's location was outstanding: 3 subway stops north to Columbia, 3 south to Lincoln Center, and a short walk west to Riverside Park or east to Central Park. I liked the imposing church on 86th and Amsterdam, same block as the building. Below that you'll see a street view looking west from Central Park:

One day that fall I went for a walk in Central Park with Bill Holmes, a good college friend who was studying Greek and Roman Classics at Harvard. Bill had come down to spend Thanksgiving with me during our Master's year, since we couldn't afford to fly to Cleveland (we went to Ye Waverly Inn for an old-fashioned turkey dinner), and I had visited him more than once in Cambridge. Here he is during the walk:

Our walk started at the W. 86th park entrance and went east toward the Reservoir:

Our route continued past Belvedere Castle and the Obelisk, and down toward the boating lake:

My favorite pictures on this walk feature rowers, one with some Manhattan skyline barely visible in the autumn haze:

This was the longest sequence of pictures I had taken so far with my little Instamatic; maybe I was feeling flush enough to afford more rolls of film and their development. No doubt the sunny autumn day was an encouragement. In any case, I spent only one semester on W. 86th St., because Sidney and his fiancée decided to get married, with her giving up her own apartment. The place is still incredibly vivid in my mind, as if I had lived there for years instead of about five months (till the end of January 1967). The pictures above are my only photographic record of the apartment and its immediate vicinity. But I did take other photos during those months, which I'll aim to display in my next post.