Our plan for today had us visiting the New York Historical, but it didn’t open until 11am and we weren’t going to sit around doing nothing all morning, so we hopped on the subway and headed uptown to the Trinity Cemetery and Mausoleum at 155th and Broadway. We only saw the Easterly Division of the cemetery, but while we were there, we visited two mayors and one illustrator, as well as the monument to the Battle of Washington Heights which was fought on the cemetery grounds.

We wanted to visit the Church of the Intercession, which anchors the Easterly Division grounds, but it didn’t look open.

I would have liked to visit the Astors in the Westerly Division across Broadway, but it was already after 11, so we decided to let them wait and went to the New York Historical (formerly the “New-York Historical Society” until a recent rebranding). The only thing I knew I wanted to see there was the Robert Caro exhibit, but there was a lot more to see than that, beginning on the stairs leading up to the Caro exhibit on the second floor.

Before we got to the Caro exhibit, we got distracted by New York, New York: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection of artwork featuring New York City itself. Here are a few samples.

The Caro exhibit (“Turn Every Page”: Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive) was smaller than I expected it to be, but I spent quite a while reading through the displays.

They had a few excerpts from “The Power Broker” in the display; I thought about buying a copy from the museum shop, but it’s far too heavy to haul back on this trip.

A docent joined us while we were looking at the museum’s collection of silver and told us some fascinating stories about the history of silver in America and, in particular, an ice cream dish which was part of a 1,250-piece dinner service commissioned from Tiffany & Co. by “silver king” John W. Mackay (1831-1902) for his wife, Marie Louise Hungerford Mackay (1843-1928). Irving Berlin and Mark Twain made guest appearances in the story, too. I didn’t take a picture of the dish, but it’s on the museum’s website:

The docent told us that we had to go see the Gallery of Tiffany Lamps – and he was right. It was beautiful.

The fourth floor had a large exhibit titled Objects Tell Stories, which deserved half a day by itself. Here’s one small sample from 9/11.

We finished our visit to the museum with a trip to the Oval Office and Hall of Presidents.

As we left the museum, Diane stopped for a photo with Lincoln.

We enjoy watching Only Murders in the Building, so we had to walk a few blocks to see the Anconia – well, the Belnord, which is where they shoot the exteriors for the show.

I wanted to go into the courtyard for better photos, but the doorman came out to send us away.

This evening, we took a Bowery Boys Ghost Tour in lower Manhattan. We’d been to many of the same places on Sunday, but the stories were new, and the guide was a blast.

The tour finished outside Blood Manor, a haunted house attraction…but our guide told us the real story of the place. Matthew Brady, the Civil War photographer, lived there both before and after the war – but he had to leave the place because he said the spirits of the slain soldiers he’d photographed on the battlefields were haunting him.

I’ll pass on visiting the inside of the place – the story outside was spooky enough!

One of the reasons we added time in New York to our trip was to explore some of the places that the Bowery Boys talk about in their podcast. Today, we followed their footsteps (well, mostly) from their podcast about Inwood and Marble Hill at the north end of Manhattan, beginning with a long ride on the A train to 207th Street Station – we had the car to ourselves for the last few minutes of the ride.

We emerged onto 207th Street and strolled north a couple of blocks until we entered Inwood Hill Park, the northernmost park in Manhattan, home of the last natural forest and last salt marsh on the island.

We followed along with the podcast and visited the Indian Caves as well as the rock which claims to be the site of the “sale” of the island to Peter Minuit (it wasn’t the real site, if there was one).

We strolled along the Spuyten Duyvil creek, which was having a quiet morning.

One of the local experts who was interviewed on the podcast gives presentations at Inwood Farm restaurant, so we decided to go there for lunch. Diane had a healthy meal, but I enjoyed a $23 Burger and Beer lunch, a price which would be hard to match at home, much less elsewhere in Manhattan!

The restaurant has various community events, including a recent auction for breast cancer awareness.

The next stop in the podcast was Isham Park, which had been an estate in the 19th Century. It was donated to the city to be a park; the main residence was supposed to be a history museum, but Robert Moses had it destroyed instead.

The entrance to the park was at milepost 12 on the Albany Post Road; the marker is somewhat the worse for time, but it’s still there.

We stopped by the largest Irish Catholic church in the area, the Church of the Good Shepherd and looked at the outside of the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, which was closed for the day.

Then it was off to Fort Tryon Park and The Cloisters, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. The Cloisters is dedicated to medieval art, and the park is just very pretty.

We left the park about 5pm and headed back to Midtown for an early dinner at The Casual Greek. We’d tried to go there the past two nights, but it’s a 15-minute walk from our hotel, and we got distracted by other restaurants both times. This time, we got all the way there and had a very pleasant dinner indeed.

We walked back to our hotel by way of 42nd Street so we could pay our respects to the Daily News and Commodore Vanderbilt before calling it a night.