Monday March 16th Manhattan

This was our last day in Manhattan before heading home. I wanted to look at a book which was located in the Butler Library at Columbia University at 116th Street and Broadway. So again this required a ride on the LIRR and the subway. When we arrived we discovered it was school break week at Columbia University and they said the library was closed to outside people for the week. We prevailed and they finally told us how we could get a pass. We followed their direction and were soon able to access the stacks which are open stacks. This required that we visit the branch of the New York Public Library which was two blocks away and use our NYPL Access cards to get a permission paper which we took back to Columbia and they gave us one day passes.

The book I wanted to see was “Index to Abstracts of the Title to The Kip’s Bay Farm by John J. Post of the New York Bar. New York. 1896.” While this book appears to be held by many libraries, they usually only have the first 15 to 20 pages which contain family genealogy. The book itself was prepared as a sort of semi-legal document outlining all of the land transfers and sales between about 1671 and about 1850. There are lots of relationships mentioned and someday it may be useful to read through the three volume set and make and index of names.

After the library we walked a few blocks and visited Grant’s Tomb which is run by the United States Federal Parks Service. We then walked through part of Riverside Park on our way to Broadway and 112th Street to see Tom’s Restaurant (Seinfeld Series).

After that we took the subway to lower Manhattan at Fulton Street. We walked one block to John Street and visited the John Street Methodist Church which is a historic site relating the beginnings of Methodism in the Untied States through Philip Embury and Barbara Heck. They have an interesting museum with some old artifacts.

From there we walked by St. Paul’s Chapel, The World Trade Center site, which is under construction and then walked through Trinity Church graveyard which happened to be open to the public. A couple of famous people buried there are Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton.

We then walked to the end of the island near Battery Park and took a free ride on the Staten Island Ferry. We had a good look at the Statue of Liberty in the daylight for a change. That made a full day so we headed back to Long Island to relax and pack the next day for our trip home. The next day we took a 1o and one half hour drive back to Canada.