READING THE CITY

We think of ghosts as the remains of people who once lived, but we are the ghosts, filling the earth with our emotions and perceptions. It’s just that we’re still embodied while we do it. A friend gave me a literary map with 78 locations on it and I’m visiting them all to see what I learn. Every time, the city reveals something mysterious, provocative and magical. I see the city itself as a book now, the edges of time blurred between us and the people who came before.

A sketch of the Writing Manhattan map I’m using for the journey.

Locations visited so far:

48: The Grand Central Oyster Bar

52: 597 Fifth Avenue, Charles Scribner’s Sons

72: Central Park Sailboat Pond

12: Tiffany and Co.

74: The New Amsterdam Theatre

69: Dag Hammarskjöld Park

60: 454 West 35th St.

6: The Chelsea Hotel

32: Bloomingdale’s

63: The Plaza Hotel

4: Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital

34: 70 Fifth Avenue

13: 400 East 59th St.

51: The Gramercy Park Hotel

35: Spuyten Duyvil & the City of Bones