Recently on Facebook, I viewed some really great photographs of New York City, in the 70’s and 80’s. My favorites were of Washington Square Park, located in the borough of Manhattan, in Greenwich Village. I lived in the Village for twenty years, and spent a great deal of time wandering through Washington Square Park. On any given day you could watch people playing chess and checkers, people roller skating, or just sitting by the fountain, near the arch, listening to musicians playing. Now, to a lot of people, that’s old and nostalgic. To me, my fond remembrances of the park was when I was growing up in the 40’s, which was the start of my education.
On Saturdays, my father and I would go for our weekly adventure, to the borough of Manhattan. If it involved visiting one of my three favorite museums, our trip would start at Washington Square Park. We would take the IRT subway, from where we lived in Brooklyn, and get off on the west side of Manhattan at the Greenwich Village, Christopher Street/Sheridan Square station.
From the station on 7th Avenue we walked over to Washington Square Park, and then to the Washington Arch located at the start of 5th Avenue where our bus ride to any of the three museums would start. In the 40’s and 50’s all the avenue streets, which run north/south on Manhattan Island, were all two-way thoroughfares. The bus system in New York at that time was the Green Bus Lines which was a private company that the city leased. The busses would drive under the arch and stop near the fountain.
We could have taken the subway to any one of the three museums, but the bus ride was very special. You see they had double-decker buses very similar to the ones in London. Since we were always early, the buses were empty, so we were able to sit up-top, and right in the first seat. The view was fantastic. We were above the street traffic, looking down with a clear view in all directions. You could see the cars streaming in both directions, the people walking along Fifth Avenue looking at the store windows. I still remember that the stop lights on Fifth Avenue were different than those on all the other streets in the city. They were very slim with no hoods shading the lights, silver in color, and on top of every light was a statue of Winged Mercury.
There were three museums in particular that were my favorites and we visited them countless times. The Museum of Modern Art, located on West 53rd Street just off 5th Avenue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located on 5th Avenue at 82nd Street, and the American Museum of Natural History, located on Central Part West at 79th Street.
Our trips to the Museum of Modern Art always started with watching silent movies. My father loved Charlie Chapman, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. It really helped me later in my film career to see these comedic geniuses at work. When television came to our home, it was Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows which he loved. He liked, what I call, smart humor that Sid, along with Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris performed every week for an hour and a half. The writing was brilliant. Besides Sid and Carl, there was Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen creating the skits.
After the movies we would wander through the museum, and he introduced me to the works of Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin, Claude Monet, Cezanne, Seurat, and Picasso. On all of our museum trips we never used the bus to go back to Greenwich Village, and the start of our bus trip, but just walked over to the nearest subway station for the ride home.
Trips to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, was way up on Fifth Avenue, and as with all of our museum trips we always started in Greenwich Village. The Met is a very large museum set on the edge of the east side of Central Park. The fantastic art works by Rembrandt, Degas, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Greek and Roman sculpture were not the only interests that the museum held for me. There was the Egyptian treasures and the arms and armor exhibits. I think that at my young age these were probably the most fascinating to see. You could imagine a young boy looking at a knight in full armor astride an armored charger, fantasizing about those times, and then walking through an Egyptian tomb, viewing cases of mummies. I feel that these experiences really stirred my imagination, and creativity by having me constantly looking at the world around me.
Although the American Museum of Natural History is not actually an art museum, it does have an enormous collection of art represented in carvings, jewelry, and artifacts made by various indigenous peoples. Although located on the west side of Central Park at 79th Street, the bus ride to the museum took the same route up 5th Avenue, but turned west on 59th Street which is the southern end of Central Park and across to Central Park West. From there it was straight up to the entrance at 79th Street. There is so much to see in this museum that just focusing on one exhibition can take an entire day or more. That’s why this museum is probably the one that we frequented the most. Even though we tried to see a different exhibit each time we visited like the Mammals, Birds, Reptiles or Ocean life, any trip would not be complete with at least a short visit to the Dinosaur Exhibit, and a look at the enormous Blue Whale hanging from the ceiling. This museum really influenced me, and my interest later in life, of how we as peoples have been and are still destroying our planet’s resources.
There were other museums as well as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, and just wonderful and interesting buildings historically, and architecturally to view and visit. All these experiences were the building blocks for my interest in the arts which translated later to my choice of career. I felt at the time, and still do, that I was very lucky to be brought-up in New York City and to be exposed to all it has to offer.
