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British Invasion Walk: The Hudson River
In
1609 Londoner Henry Hudson, hired by the Dutch East India Company to
find an easy passage to China, sailed his ship, the Halve Maen, into
New York Harbor and then up what is now known as the Hudson River. With
no China in sight, he had to turn back. Hudson's 3rd voyage allowed the
Dutch to claim the region and to establish fur trading. The rest is
history.
Ian Chadwick knows everything about Henry Hudson. See his site here.
One of Hudson's crewmen, Robert Juet, kept a diary of the trip, and it makes fascinating reading. You can read the text here.
All this should help everyone plan for the Quadricentennial in 2009.
The Hudson River Park Trust website is informative, including an excellent self-guided tour of the Greenwich Village waterfront that you can download for later.
By
the way, I am happy to point you to worthy self-guided tours created by
others, especially when it means I don't have to go through all that
work.
I personally don't function well on walking tours
organized in real time and led by actual individuals, because I tend to
ask too many questions, offer too many uninvited comments, and I always
end up wandering off. For this reason, Walking Off the Big Apple
will never offer real tours of New York City. Sorry to disappoint. I
will give you the opportunity, however, to buy WOTBA related items such
as mugs and dog sweaters later this fall.
Image: The Hudson River and present-day New Jersey.
The British Invasion Walk, 72nd St. from the Hudson River to the East River.
British Invasion Walk: Strong Women
Walk from W. 72nd @ Riverside Drive to W. 73rd @ Broadway and visit two important sites:
1. Eleanor Roosevelt Monument. South entrance of Riverside Park at W. 72nd St. and Riverside Drive.
From 1899 to 1902 Eleanor Roosevelt attended the elite Allenswood Academy
outside London. She wanted to stay a fourth year but her pushy family
made her come home for her débutante ball. She never attended college,
a fact she said she often regretted, and so she returned to New York
from England, spending the days in idle and meaningless pastimes and
not amounting to much.
Just kidding.* The American woman who I wish would have stayed away from England, for their sake, is Wallis Simpson.
See a picture of the 8-foot tall Eleanor Roosevelt statue at the Riverside Park Fund website.
2. The Ansonia,
apartment complex at Broadway @ 73rd St. Home to many famous actors and
sports figures in the early decades of the 20th century, among them
actress Billie Burke.
Born in the US, Burke moved to London where her family settled, and she
decided to become an actress while seeing plays in the West End. She
lived in the Ansonia with husband Florence Ziegfeld. Her time in
England, I believe, helps explain why Glinda, the Good Witch, the role
Burke 
plays in The Wizard of Oz,
speaks with such elegant refinement, while the Wicked Witch snarls with
a nasally midwestern accent. Margaret Hamilton was born in Cleveland. I
love Burke in Dinner at Eight, a super New York movie.
The Continental Baths, a landmark in gay history, was located in the basement of the Ansonia in the early 1970s.
American author Theodore Dreiser wrote An American Tragedy while in residence at the Ansonia. The 1951 motion picture A Place in the Sun was based on the novel and starred Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor (b.
27 February 1932, Hampstead, London), and Shelley Winters. Taylor is
one of the most famous British-American movie stars of all time as well
as a passionate humanitarian in the tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt. We
love her. The Ansonia, truly an Oz for the Friends of Dorothy.
Image: Eleanor Roosevelt between King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth. London, England. 23 October. 1942.
Image: Billie Burke as Millicent Jordan in Dinner at Eight (1933)
Image: Elizabeth Taylor in Giant (1956), another WOTBA fave, filmed in Marfa, Texas.
* WOTBA sometimes worries that schoolchildren will find this site and quote passages (unattributed of course) in their homework.
The British Invasion Walk, 72nd St. from the Hudson River to the East River.