Deep in the Batcave

Thanks to my incredible friend Alex and the wonders of Picasa, I can now pepper my blog posts with pictures. This is particularly lucky, as I went exploring this weekend.

I went back to the Hall of Fame yesterday. My friend Justin was visiting, and he'd never been there, so we took a little walk. As always, it was deserted.

He chose to have his picture taken with Thomas Jefferson.

Here's a random picture of the Poe bust. I took it a few months ago, when I first visited the Hall of Fame:

Doesn't Poe have the coolest plinth? I love the little raven and (presumably black) cat. The rest of the plinths are unadorned.

I really like the word "plinth." Unfortunately, I can't use it very often.

As we were leaving, I noticed a pathway that led underneath the colonnade. Following it down, we came to an unmarked door that was open. As there were no "Keep Out" or "No Trespassing" signs posted, Justin and I assumed that we were permitted to look around. We went down a creepy hallway:

It was incredibly hot in the hallway, as the numerous radiators were all turned on full-strength. I was a little nervous about meeting a janitor or security guard, but figured that I could bluff may way through, if need be. My bigger worry was that we might meet a homeless person who had chosen to move in. However, the hallway was pretty clean, apart from the occasional empty water bottle or candy bar wrapper.

We soon came to to another hallway, which had cell-like doors:

We couldn't understand why this section looked like a prison or insane asylum. Some of the cells were filled with files:

While others looked like creepy musical practice rooms:

And still others looked like 19th-century court rooms, complete with gallery:

We eventually came to a huge auditorium. It was beautiful, and was in great shape. It was clear that it was used regularly. Access to the upper level was blocked with velvet ropes, so we stayed on the lower floor:

After we left, we wandered up another stairwell. This one was more ornate:

It led into the library. I'd been inside the library before, but hadn't wandered around too much, as it is a little forbidding.

From the outside, the library looks like the Pantheon. Inside, it is circular, with beautiful marble columns. It has four floors, and is capped with a rotunda, which features statues of the muses ringing the interior:

Behind the columns, the walls have compartments painted with the names of famous authors. Justin noticed that one of the compartments in the Ancient Roman literature section was pushed back, revealing a room behind it:

As there were no signs warning us to not trespass or keep out, Justin and I determined that this was a legitimate place to wander. On the other side of the door, we found room after room of empty bookshelves:



Some of them reminded me of the creepy gothic house in Edward Scissorhands:

We carefully watched our step. It was clear that there has been minimal maintenance in this library since NYU moved out in 1973. There were places where the wooden floor looked untrustworthy, and some of the glass brick tiles were cracked. Still, it was an amazing library, with little reading rooms and places in which the stacks continued through the floor:

There were also beautiful stained-glass walls:

For all of the deterioration, the library was in surprisingly good shape. Considering the fact that it has been neglected for the last 30+ years, it's amazing how well it has held together. Stanford White really knew what he was doing!

After walking from floor to floor, we finally found ourselves at the top of the library, in the rotunda:

Apparently, they have tours of the old library. I'm going to have to look into it, as I really want the wife to take a peek. I wonder if they'll let us walk all the way up to the rotunda.

Hall of Fame for Great Americans

My friend John came for a brief visit last weekend. As I tend to do whenever I've got a captive audience, I set out to expose him to some of the wonders of the Bronx. In John's case, this was a little harder than usual, as he lived in New York for several years, and even stayed in the Bronx for a while, so he's seen a lot of what the green borough has to offer.

(I'm field-testing nicknames for the Bronx. Given that it has far more parkland and undeveloped lots than any of the other boroughs, I think "The Green Borough" might be the best bet. At any rate, it sounds a lot better than "The Economically-Depressed Borough," "The Drinking Booze from a Paper Bag Borough," or "The Borough Where You're Most Likely to Get Stabbed.")

At any rate, John's been to Woodlawn and many of the parks and, since it was a blustery day, we didn't want to venture too far from shelter. We started off with a visit to Poe's Cottage, where Edgar Allen Poe lived from 1846 to 1849, and which deserves its own huge post. Since we still had a lot of time when we were done, I decided to take him to The Hall of Fame for Great Americans.

The Hall of Fame sounds very impressive, and John must have thought that I had gotten lost as I led him to it. It is on the campus of Bronx Community College, and the neighborhood around it is pretty rough. He had to have been even more surprised when I told him that we had to walk a little further, as one of the entrances offered "the best view of the campus."

To his credit, John was game, and he went the extra mile. When the campus security guard let us in, John was on the phone with a buddy, but I watched him scanning the campus as we walked past beautiful buildings and well-kept lawns. When he was finished with his phone call, he said "THIS is a community college?"

His confusion was understandable. Bronx Community College began life as the estate of a wealthy landowner. In 1894, New York University, looking to expand from its cramped space in lower Manhattan, purchased the land. Attempting to create a first-rate campus, the University hired Stanford White, the pre-eminent architect of his time, to design the school. White built a collection of beautiful halls, which were inspired by classical structures. I think the coolest one is the library, which looks like the Pantheon, and has incredible cast-bronze doors.

Around the library, White built a curving colonnade, which became the home of the Hall of Fame. It's easy to imagine the enthusiasm that went into the walkway. To begin with, there's the name, which is beautifully excessive, but borders on the redundant. After all, it's not like anybody's going to build a Hall of Fame for mediocre Americans.

That's what Presidential libraries are for.

Then there was the selection process. Although NYU administered the Hall of Fame, the selections were made by an independent review board, and private citizens and regional groups waged huge, expensive campaigns to get their favorite candidates elected. This, combined with the dedication and popularity of the Daughters of the Confederacy, helps explain why Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee managed to get into the Hall of Fame, but Henry Ford and Sacagawea didn't.

In an article about the Hall of Fame, R. Rubin noted that, in its heyday, the hall of fame was more prestigious than the Nobel Prize, which is borne out in its description as "A Secular Shrine" for the United States. However, the declining neighborhood and looming bankruptcy conspired to make NYU sell the University Heights campus to New York City. In 1973, the campus became Bronx Community College.

The Hall of Fame got lost in the mix. The state of New York occasionally earmarks funds for its upkeep, but the private donations that used to keep it going have long since dried up. Added to this, people have simply forgotten about the Hall of Fame. I've visited it three times and have never seen more than one or two other visitors there. I imagine that it was once a busy spot, but now it tends toward the quiet and contemplative.

My wife and I have established a couple of traditions for our visits. One of these is making fun of some of the inductees, and expressing disbelief at the heroes of prior ages. We also like to laugh at some of the more outrageous busts. The most ridiculous one is Alexander Hamilton, which looks like a cross between Julius Caesar and Rocky from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. On this last trip, John and I pulled out a ten-dollar bill for comparison purposes and agreed that the Romanesque, nude Hamilton bore no relation whatsoever to the guy on the money. John surmised that some of Aaron Burr's descendants might have been responsible for the horrifying likeness.

Our other Hall of Fame tradition is making our guest choose his or her favorite Hall of Famer. Afterwards, of course, we photograph the two of them together. My hero was Edgar Allen Poe. When I first visited the Hall of Fame, his bust sported a perfect spider web over one eye. Poe, a spider web, a secluded old monument, a windy hillside in the Bronx...what's not to love?

After a great deal of deliberation, John chose Mark Twain, and I decided that it's interesting to find out who your friends' heroes are.