#park ave.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Cornelia Prime and Katrinka Suydam in front of a car on Park Avenue, 1920s.

Photo: George Rinhart via Corbis/Getty Images/KTVZ

[laskinpublishing]

Donald Neal Laskin’s Uncalled for Commentary on Just About Anything That’s Often None of His Business

The Ghost on the Third Floor

It was a brownstone on East 36th between Park and Third Avenues in Manhattan. At the time, the mid-1970s, the block still looked like something out of another age when it was rumored the Roosevelts, possibly Theodore or Eleanor before she married Franklin, lived there, maybe in the very brownstone Marie and I were moving into.

We were renting a third-floor apartment, really a converted bedroom, from Howard whom we later dubbed “Howard the Hammer”. But, that story’s going to have to wait for another post.

Howard lived in the brownstone with his girlfriend, using the first two floors for his company and subletting the rest.

Taking the stairs to the third floor landing, our apartment was on the left. Directly across was another converted bedroom. Between the two was a bathroom that the tenants of the other apartment would use since theirs didn’t have one. Because of this arrangement, Howard had no luck finding renters.

Our place was spacious for a bedroom, but tiny for an apartment. A good chunk of one wall was taken up by a newly installed sink with a pencil-thin water flow and a tiny two-burner stove under which was a small refrigerator.

What instantly won us over was the working fireplace complete with mantel. However, an even bigger selling point literally was the President Taft-sized bathtub in a bathroom that was roughly half the size of the bedroom.

So with a couple of suitcases of clothes, a bag of groceries, an air mattress, and a hatchet to turn the odds and ends of scrap Howard’s employees left in the front yard into kindling, we became Manhattanites.

Day one in the new place passed uneventfully. Same with day two. It was getting toward midnight on day three. The fire in the hearth was down to a few smoldering embers leaving the room pitch black.

That’s when we heard it.

Notice how ghost stories are always set in old houses with long histories like the one we moved into?

The doorknob was being jiggled back and forth. Was Howard out prowling at midnight?

By the time I rolled off the air mattress onto the floor, got to my feet and reached the door, the noise had stopped. I checked the landing. There was no one on the stairs, the bathroom door was open and no one was inside. I walked to the empty apartment across from us and tried the door. It was locked.

I remarked as I got into bed, “Must’ve been the wind.”

Though neither of us believed it, by the next night the incident was largely forgotten, that is, until midnight when the doorknob began turning.

Like the first time, I made it to the door just as the jiggling stopped. I checked the landing, hallway bathroom and the other apartment.

When I returned, I looked at Marie, shrugged my shoulders and settled back into bed. Blaming the wind this time would definitely have sounded like a lot of hot air.

The next night, with midnight rapidly approaching, I was on an adrenalin and scotch high. Armed with my hatchet, I waited by the door. Then it happened.

I grabbed the door handle and whipped it open, hatchet raised.

The figure before me was pale, ashen faced. Stumbling backward a voice mumbled a barely audible apology as he turned away and went into the other apartment locking the door.

After a brief conversation with Howard the next morning, it all became clear. Our ghost was one of Howard’s employees that he’d given permission to crash in the apartment across from us. After a night of drinking, he would make it up the stairs and go to the bathroom. Coming out, he’d get himself turned around and try to open our door till it dawned on him it was the wrong one.

By the time I got to the landing, he’d gone into the other apartment and locked the door, The Ghost on the Third Floor — vanished.

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[laurennnxx]

700!!

I’ve got 700 followers now :-) thanks!

I made a little playlist for you guys—no particular theme or anything, just some good songs!

 -My Iron Lung—Radiohead

-Evening Sun—The Strokes

-She Teaches Art?—Park Ave.

-Panic—The Smiths

-Falling Out of Love at This Volume—Bright Eyes

-Harness Your Hopes—Pavement

-Rinse. Repeat.—Free Throw

-Back On the Chain Gang—The Pretenders

-The Noise of Carpet—Stereolab

-Swingin Party—The Replacements

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Looking north up Park Avenue from the Grand Central Portal at 46th St, ca. 1925.

Photo: Underwood & Underwood via pixels.com

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Lighted Christmas trees brighten Park Avenue at dusk, 1950.

Photo: Getty Images/Esquire

[newyorkthegoldenage]

While spectators look on, one of 30 Christmas trees along Park Avenue are lit up in dedication to those who have died in the Korean War, December 12, 1953.

Photo: Mel Finkelstein for the NY Journal American via the Univ. of Texas

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The Park Avenue Society Fair, for the benefit of crippled children, opened on May 16, 1922. Left to right: Mrs. Harry Martin, Mrs. Robert Lovett, Mrs. Charles Higgins, and Mrs. Allan Bakewell, whose main worry is to sell at good prices all the peanuts they can.

Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images/Fine Art America

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The Park Avenue median before it was narrowed to make way for more traffic lanes, 1926.

Photo: Sueddeutsche Zeitung/Alamy/Curbed