NEIGHBORHOOD TIME-TRAVELING, PT. 7: "CLOSE-UP" (1946)

 When I started watching Close-Up, the 1948 movie about a Nazi war criminal and the newsreel cameraman who films him, it was a delight to discover it was filmed in New York. 

But I snapped to attention when learning Mr. Nazi was going to escape the law via seaplane from the East River at 93rd Street. That's my neighborhood!  

It was time for another now and then comparison.

The Nazi and his cohort, after kidnapping our hero, turn onto 1st Avenue from 92nd St in front of Greenberg & Son Tires. We have a good view of a Mobilgas station (yes, that's how the brand name was spelled for decades). Note the clothesline hanging from the apartment -- cheaper than buying a dryer. Look to the last group of apartment buildings in the background on the southeast side. That's where I lived from 1983 to 1990, walking up and down five flights of stairs every day. No wonder my quads and calves are in such superb condition!

Today, the same area is a mix of the old and new. The stores and apartment buildings on the north side were replaced by the Stanley Issacs public housing complex, currently behind scaffolding and a protective fence. The gas station on the south side is now an apartment building with businesses on the first floor. But the brownstones on the next two blocks remain. That high rise on the far right used to be another gas station which was still there when I lived on York Avenue.

Now we have a view of the west side of 1st Avenue. Having left the car, the guys walk north. Likely to the surprise of most locals today, 1st Avenue used to be a two-way street (now it runs north exclusively). Note how the street used to be "paved" with beautiful Belgian blocks, kind of the flat cousin of cobblestones. See the building in the background with the archway entrance to the left of the Nazi in the homburg hat? That was Public School 151. 

Dull pavement replaced the Belgian blocks. Dull high rise on the north side replaced the brownstones. On the south side of 92nd, some of the old buildings remain, although a grocery store has replaced the school, which moved to East 88th long ago. And look at those high rises towering over the area! That could be any city -- no personality at all.

The three guys turn east onto 93rd, so I'm pegging this shot to be about one building east of the corner of 1st Avenue. What appears to be a basket of clothes is left unattended outside Planet Quality Laundry. An adolescent girl plays with a yo-yo on her building's stoop as a woman goes out on errands. By the way, do kids play with yo-yos anymore? Does anybody still make yo-yos?

Uhh... well, although it's difficult to see behind the temporary fence, scaffolding and netting, this whole block is public housing now.

The three guys (only one of whom is visible here) are now in the middle of 93rd. Until five years before Close-Up's production, this was the location of Adam Happel Ironworks. It was likely still a factory of some sort in 1948.

Not much to see here, I guess...

Aaaaand... further east on 93rd. This seems to be the Sanitation garage. (A garbage truck almost plows into the guys as they approach the corner. This kind of thing still happens occasionally.) You might as well look at the previous photo to get an idea of what it looks like now, so let's move on.

We're near the very end of East 93rd. Keep it under your hat, but a shootout is going to happen momentarily inside that coal storage building. The Nazi will escape, with our hero in hot, or at least very warm, pursuit.

Well, at least this portion of the block provides something slightly different to look at.

As a cool Ford Woodie passes by, our hero runs from the coal storage building and across York Avenue. Note the water tower in the left background. You still see these all over Manhattan, as ubiquitous as fire escapes.

The coal garage has been replaced by yet another high rise. You can see the public housing in the background. The brick driveway in the foreground of the previous photo is gone due to the construction of a road that serves as an on/off ramp for the FDR Drive. I positioned myself there during a brief lull in traffic. You're welcome.

The chase is about to continue across the Franklin Delano Roosevelt East River Drive, a/k/a The FDR. The impressive building in the background belongs to New York Edison Company, later renamed Consolidated Edison, a/k/a Con Ed. The pillar on the left is the dedication to the Drive's construction in 1936, when it was called simply the East River Drive. The building behind the pillar is the Riverside Fuel Co. A humble traffic light on the right seems unnecessary. Seems like a pleasure to drive here, right?

Yikes! What a difference eight decades makes. A cement divider now keeps the north- and southbound traffic apart, eliminating the need for the traffic light. The Riverside Fuel Co. has been replaced by the public housing that dwarfs the once-majestic pillar on the left. The Edison building in the previous photo is also long gone, because who wants beautiful buildings when dull is so much more desirable? 

Following a shoot-out between the cops and the Nazi, our hero takes a breather. Across the East River are two bridges: the Triborough in the foreground, and the Hell Gate behind it.

Well, at least the bridges are still there. But it wouldn't be New York City without a name change honoring a Democrat. Behold in the foreground the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, so renamed in 2008. Other than traffic reporters, everybody still calls it the Triborough. The buildings on the left side of the island in front of the bridge seem to be gone, as trees have been planted there. What's puzzling is that the bridge now has suspension wires where none existed before. If anyone has an explanation, don't be shy.

Our hero is now on the other side of the path with his wacky sidekick. Again, the lack of traffic is beautiful, allowing us a good view of the Municipal Asphalt Plant, built in 1944. I bet you think it's gone now.

Nope! But the city shut it down in 1968. In 1984, it was reconstructed as the cleverly-named Asphalt Green, which, to quote its website, is "a nonprofit organization that provides high-quality sports, swim, and fitness instruction and programs to New York City children and adults." My wife goes there at least three times a week for various classes; I don't. Note the overpass blocking its view. We'll get to that in a moment.

Our hero can't seem to decide which side of the path he wants to be on. That's his boss talking to him. Behind them is the Marine Transfer Station, built in 1940, where the city's garbage was put on barges to be taken somewhere New Yorkers didn't want to know from. It was torn down in the 1990s. Today, things are different...

Construction on a gleaming NEW waste transfer was approved during the end of Mayor Mike Bloomberg's administration and completed in March 2019. The overpass behind it is for the benefit of garbage trucks dumping their load there. Note that the straight fence in the previous photo is now curved, and new greenery (brown in January) is protected by a little wooden fence. We'll take nature anywhere we can.

At Close-Up's fadeout, the wacky newsreel assistant falls into the sidecar of the police motorcycle as it zooms down John Finley Walkway. Always leave 'em laughing, right? The pillar in the background on the left is the twin of the other one seen an earlier photo. I've never seen a tugboat docked along the Walkway as is here. And I'm pretty sure the NYPD no longer uses those sidecar cycles. Man, that Edison building is scary massive.

 The smooth path is now hexagonal tiles. Note the auto overpass on the FDR Drive in the background. The single bench in the previous photo has been replaced by two facing each other in an area carved out from the lawn. The drab white building in the center-left background is Metropolitan Hospital. The brownish apartment building on the right was built in 2018. The sliver of the white building you see to its right was (and perhaps still is) connected in some way to Mt. Sinai Hospital. Believe it or not, my daughter took tennis lessons on its roof. At least if somebody fell off, there were medical personnel available. 

Oh, and I haven't seen any cops pursue Nazis trying to escape in seaplanes here anymore. So there's one good change.

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Just for the heck of it, here's a city tax property photo of 1st Avenue at 90th Street taken in 1939, seven years before the release of Close-Up. 

The building second from the right is where I lived for seven years. A machine shop can be seen on the first floor. For the first few years I lived there, it was a bodega that also dealt drugs. A sixth floor was added several years ago, and the long railroad-style apartments have been cut in half to double their number and triple the rent. 

I moved there 35 years after the release of Close-Up; forty years have elapsed since then. Good Lord.