Downtown: My Manhattan

Pete Hamill's "Downtown: My Manhattan" is part of the latest spate of books that combine personal New York City experience and New York City history, as do Colson Whitehead's "The Colossus of New York" (in a way) and Phillip Lopate's "Waterfront". However, Hamill's is as different from those two other books as those two books are different from each other. I don't know what is causing these authors to write such material--maybe the nostalgia brought about by the horrors of 9/11--but I'm glad they did. Nostalgia is the key word for Hamill's "Downtown". And it is not just the strong, personal nostalgia that Hamill luxuriates in: it's also the nostalgia that every true New Yorker feels for his City. Whether it was the Dutch or British who longed for their roots in the "Old World", as did the Irish, Eastern Europeans, Italians, Asians, Latinos, etc., or the people born here who cherish the memories of people and places now locked forever in the past, New York's ever-changing "scene" quickly compels our present into history. Hamill's sensitivity to this is brilliantly conveyed on every page. However, "Downtown" is by no means a treacly, misty-eyed glimpse backward. It is a studied and educational examination of several of New York's neighborhoods--some well-known, some not. The pieces about the Bowling Green area and Times Square were the most fascinating. What, to me, is special about this history is how it intertwines with other histories: with America's history, with Hamill's history, with my history, and, if you are a New Yorker, your history. I could not put down "Downtown"; in fact, I read it cover to cover in two sittings (I had to go to sleep) and then read it again. It's that amazing a book.

Unlike this Native Son, I am not nor have I ever been a New Yorker. I go there when I want to unwind. With each book, Hamill proves his love for his City. Although I felt I knew this City after starting this wonderful book, I found I didn't know bupkis. This slim volume packs in so much history about the city itself, its evolution into the greatest City in the world, warts and all. Most books I tend to sell or give away once read, after taking notes so I don't forget the essence of the writing. This one, I plan to keep and take with me when I return, using it as a guide to areas I am not familiar with. Near the end, Hamill describes a scene in which he had tears in his eyes after watching the passing parade and reminising about the rejuvenation of a neighborhood. Suffice it to say, I was reading that passage through tears of my own.

. . . the greatest men and women. If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole word." Whitman's words from his Song of the Broad-Axe never left me as I read Pete Hamill's wonderful book of his city, actually my city, Downtown. Downtown is part history, part-memoir. It is not a history of New York City as much as it is a history of Pete Hamill's New York City. It is at once a very personal piece of writing but in its own way Pete's story is one immediately familiar to any New Yorker. The streets we grew up on may be different but each of our individual and distinct stories must share more than a small amount of DNA with every other New Yorker for the last 300 years. I've never met Pete (calling him Hamill just doesn't sound right) but I've known him all my life. Pete is the child of immigrants. His family was part of the great wave of immigration that took the wretched refuse of those teeming shores and carried them not-that-gently to New York since the days of the earliest Dutch settlers. From the famine and oppression of Ireland (Hamill) to the pogroms of Russia (my family) they came. They came from everywhere. Like thousands of other immigrants or children of immigrants, Hamill's family struggled but made a life for itself. My father found his way to one of New York's lower east side settlement houses and learned a trade (music) that served him and his family well his entire life. Like Hamill, I remember the trips as a kid from Brooklyn and, in my case, Queens, New York to that city of proud towers known as Manhattan. "Downtown" is something of a walking guided tour. Hamill describes the building of lower Manhattan and its early history. He plots the expansion of the city north up beyond the original walled street that became Wall Street. He traces the expansion of what he calls downtown up through to 14th Street and Union Square and then on up to 42nd Street and Times Square. Along the way we read of his first trip to the city, the story of his parents' early life and hard times, and Hamill's own life and development. Along the way a few things become obvious. Hamill loves his city even when he is remarkably candid about its shortcomings. In China, the term for one's hometown is `native place'. It is a word soaked with more meaning than home and as I read through Downtown it was clear to me that New York, downtown particularly, was Hamill's native place. For me, it was fascinating to read Hamill's descriptions of life and the development of lower Manhattan through the years. Like Hamill, I spent a good portion of my life working `downtown'. I spent more than a few years in the shipping industry, when that industry shared downtown with the Wall St. crowd. I was a messenger and ran documents to and from every building Hamill describes with accuracy and fondness. From the Old Customs House to 17 Battery Place, 1 Broadway, 25 Broadway 90 West Street and all points in between. I walked to work from

I'm a Manhattanite and can't think of another city where I'd rather live than this melting pot mix of a metropolis. To my mind, Pete Hamill is the quintessential New Yorker. A lifelong resident, former editor-in-chief of both the New York Post and New York Daily News, author of eight books, among them the best selling memoir, "A Drinking Life," and "The Subway Series Reader," Hamill knows more than most about the five boroughs, especially downtown Manhattan. He has certainly paid his dues, or rent, with 14 different residences during his lifetime. (unusual, as New Yorkers usually hold on to their apartments, forever). A cynical newspaperman, from the old school more than the new, Hamill was born in Brooklyn, the son of Irish immigrants. He is struck by those who, like his parents, fought for a brighter future while remembering what they left behind. "That rupture with the immediate past would mark all of them and did not go away as the young immigrants grew old. If anything, the nostalgias were often heightened by the coming of age. Some would wake up in the hot summer nights of New York and for a few moments think they were in Sicily or Mayo or Minsk. Some would think their mothers were at the fireplace in the next room, preparing food. The old food. The food of the Old Country." As a child, looking with wonder for the first time at the gilded spires of Manhattan, from the pedestrian ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge, Hammil asked his mother in an awed voice, "What is it?" "Sure, you remember, Peter," she said. "You've seen it before." And then she smiled. "It's Oz." Hamill's fast paced, fascinating narrative meanders with readers on a tour of lower Manhattan. His view of the city is a pedestrian's - which is the best view, if one doesn't need to be in the driver's seat. Hamill never learned to drive until he was 36. I have to laugh. How typical! What Manhattanite drives their car in NYC?? From the tony haunts of the "Knickerbockers" to the "lost cities" of Five Points, we travel with a most worthy guide. We are still able to see remnants of the British colony, the mansions of the robber barons, and the speakeasies of the 1920s. We wander with the author along the winding streets of Greenwich Village, to the grimy alleys of the meatpacking district, to the cobblestones of South Street Seaport, where the Fulton Street Fish Market and Dock once stood. I was surprised at how far uptown Mr. Hamill's "downtown Manhattan" ventures. But hey, it's his city too....to redefine or define. The author defends himself, "Broadway in my mind is an immense tree," Mr. Hamill explains, "with its roots deep in the soil at the foot of Manhattan, which is why I insist so stubbornly to my friends that the uptown places I cherish on Broadway are actually part of downtown." And if the old Thalia movie theater, at Broadway and 95th Street, is also part of his "downtown" experience, well, he's not the only one who got a first glimpse of Fellini, Kurosawa and Bergman there.

Who knows New York better than former editor-in-chief of the New York Post and the New York Daily News, Pete Hamill? Few, I'll wager. Who possesses a better reportorial eye, or greater ability to spot just the detail that will bring his comment into sharp focus? None, I'll bet. Manhattan has been home to Mr. Hamill for some 70 years, and he seems to have loved every minute of it. There's also a bit of the historian in him as "Downtown" takes us on a journey back in time to some folks and events that have made the Big Apple what it is today. We go from the Bowery of the 1860s to the bohemian enclaves of the 1960s. Night spots are on tap as are remembrances of John Jacob Astor, William Randolph Hearst, and others. The author's personal memories are intertwined with events of the past resulting in a fascinating collage of thoughts and ideas. Mr. Hamill has referred to this work as a grouping of "essays." It's so much more than that, especially when we hear it in his voice. "Downtown" is an intriguing armchair visit to the city that has become emblematic of America. Our visit, while absorbing and enjoyable, is just too brief. - Gail Cooke