saturday sandwich

Saturday and Sunday here in the five boroughs was Open House New York, a weekend of free tours of historic and otherwise interesting buildings and sites throughout the city. The more interesting places to visit often require reservations and, because of the general chaos of our current lives, we did not jump on that bandwagon fast enough. However, there were still plenty of neat things to see, including several in Lower Manhattan, which is where we opted to spend our Saturday.

We stopped by two places: Federal Hall, on Wall Street, and the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House at the southwest end of Broadway. If our Saturday was a sandwich, then the OHNY portion of it would unfortunately be the less than stellar slices of bread surrounding a chanced upon and slightly more thrilling piece of meat in the middle. Don't get me wrong -- we had fun. We would have had more fun had the promised scheduled behind-the-scenes tours actually taken place, but we still had a good time. But the intial shock and subsequent curiosity of what we happened as we walked between these two building is what, I think, made the trip into the city all the more worth it.

But don't let me get ahead of myself. First part of the sandwich: Federal Hall.


For the uninitiated, Federal Hall is the spot where George Washington gave his first inaugural address as president, and where he served out the first part of his term, while New York City was the capital of the new nation. I'd been here before, but it was Blake's first visit. Sadly, the Bible on which Washington took the oath of office was away on loan, but we still got to see some interesting things, including a small art exhibit housed on the mezzanine level. Though this is the second building to sit on this location, it still boasts an impressive age of 167 years. The original building was constructed at the turn of the 18th century and used as City Hall. Shortly after the American Revolution it was remodeled and relabeled as Federal Hall and used as the Nation's capitol. In 1842 the current building was erected and served as a Customs House.

Which brings us to our second slice of bread: the Custom House.


Around the turn of the 20th century, the Wall Street Customs House was becoming outdated and inadequate, so a new building was built at Bowling Green, at the end of Broadway. It is a lovely structure, and its location at the base of the Hudson River was ideal, as New York City was (and still is) a major port city. Inside, the artwork along the ceiling of the rotunda depicts sailing vessels of all varieties, and the statues outside represent the various nations and continents with whom the United States trades with. The Customs Service moved in the 1970s to the World Trade Center, but after the events of September 11th, their offices scattered throughout the city. From what I could gather, no customs business is held at the Bowling Green building, which now houses the American Indian Smithsonian Musum.

But enough history. Let's get to that juicy meat in the middle. Near the end of our short walk along Broadway from Federal Hall to the Customs House we noticed a large crowd had gathered near the Bull. Everyone was looking up, and, naturally curious, we did, too. This is what we saw:

You might notice between the tree branches, as we did, a man standing on the window ledge. As we watched this guy frantically pacing back and forth, we instinctively thought the worst: this guy was nuts and he was gonna jump. (Disturbing, yes, but this is New York where anything can happen.) After a few minutes of anxious staring, however, we started noticing the giant lights, cameras, and street signs indicating that a movie was being filmed on location. I'm not sure which Hollywood star was suicidal in this particular instance, but later we saw his dummy hanging limply from a crane.

Apparently in the movie Crazy Guy jumps, landing on a hot dog stand. We watched as they made sure that a dropping dummy would indeed land in its intended location.

See? I told you the middle was a little more exciting.