Exhausting East Side

            Our next stop, SpaHa AKA Spanish Harlem. East Side part two. Today we headed towards the Museum Mile for more art and education on the diverse, rich culture that makes up New York City. Today we are headed to El Museo del Barrio. El Museo del Barrio is one of the city’s outstanding small, sharply focused museums; the only museum in the city devoted to Puerto Ricans, Caribbean, and Latin-American culture (BG, 376). It is located at the edge of Spanish Harlem or El Barrio meaning the neighborhood. El Museo was founded in 1969 by community activists, teachers, and artists, mainly Puerto Ricans. It operated first from a classroom in a public school, and then moved to several storefronts until it found a long term home in the present building, originally a settlement house for the Heckscher Foundation for Children and now owned by the city (BG, 376).

            When had a walking tour with Megan our tour guide, who introduced us to the education, history, culture, and art of Spanish Harlem. She showed us the many works of art through the streets that tells the story of Spanish Harlem. One piece that stood out was called “The Spirit of East Harlem”. This mural is located at east 104^th street and Lexington Avenue; it was painted over 25 years ago and represents the simple life of Spanish Harlem way back when. The mural portrayed the daily life of the community with children playing, the elderly, men playing dominoes, a few relaxing and others looking out the window. After our lovely tour we headed back to the museum to check out the pieces of art. Some I have to say were very very interesting. After this we were off to experience the best part of every class, LUNCH! Woohoo!! A few of us headed down to El Paso for some Spanish culture food. BURRITOS! The food was very good, after that I was stuffed.

            After an enjoyable relaxing lunch, we then headed right next door from El Museo del Barrio to the Museum of the city of New York. The Museum of the City of New York offers exhibitions that explore the city’s complex history from its early days as a Dutch colony to its present eminence. Founded in 1923, the museum’s collections contain more than three million artifacts (BG, 376). We got to see exhibits from 9/11 and the Twin Towers and then sat down to watch a short film about how New York City came to be, starting from the early European settlers to present day. Throughout this short film, I’m not going to lie I took a short nap but still knew what was going on in the film.

            I was very happy that I took this short nap because after we walked out of the museum we were in for a surprise. This crazy surprise constituted by Merritta was to walk through the entire central park! I was both thrilled and worried. Thrilled because we get to visit Strawberry Field, which we were not able to visit the first time because mother nature rained on our parade and worried because here we are getting ready to walk the entire central park, over 100 blocks, 843 acres, it gets dark out earlier and will my wee lil legs ever make it. So Central Park is the heartland of Manhattan, 843 acres set aside for the recreation of New Yorkers and visitors alike. Although the park seems natural, the largest surviving piece of Manhattan unencrusted with asphalt and masonry, its landscape and scenery are completely man made, based on designs by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux (BG, 279).

            We started Central Park at the Vanderbilt Gate on east 106st in the Conservatory Garden. The six-acre Conservatory Garden, the parks only formal garden, is named for an elaborate greenhouse torn down in 1934 during the Depression as a cost cutting measure. After it started up and fell into despair again in 1982 Lynden B. Miller, a painter and garden designer, took over, and the following year the Central Park Conservatory began restoring the perennial beds and planting wild flowers. Today the Conservatory Garden, with its magnificent displays of blooms and fine collections of perennials, draws people to admire the plants, contemplate nature, and even get married (BG, 297). We stopped at west 72^nd St. by Strawberry Fields. The 2.5 acre near Central Park West and the 72^nd St park entrance is called Strawberry Fields to honor John Lennon, the songwriter, singer, and member of the Beatles, who was assassinated in the courtyard of the nearby Dakota Apartments in 1980 (BG, 290).

            We then walked over to the front of the apartment building to the entrance of the courtyard where John Lennon was assassinated. After here we were done. But in order to get home we had to walk about 20 more blocks in order to get to a train station to head home. We all trotted down to 59^th and Columbus Circle where the majority of us went down and caught the train back to Penn Station and a few of them walked back to 34^th street and Penn Station. An overall fun but exhausting day.