Travel Notes

Via Giulia: An Ageless Beauty

A quiet street in the heart of Rome? Believe it.

Located on the southwestern edge of the Campo dei Fiori, Via Giulia has been around for five hundred years — a proud, straight anomaly set cheek by jowl among the narrow gritty warrens of medieval Rome. This intimate little street masks the noise and snarl of modern traffic on the Tiber’s quays.

The result of radical urban planning and architectural genius, Via Giulia owes its existence to Pope Julius II.

Pope Julius, you remember him, he was the character played by Rex Harrison in “The Agony and The Ecstasy.” Franciscan priest, businessman, ruthless warrior, sire of three illegitimate daughters, the real Julius II was into papal power and glory. He was also a visionary and an unrivaled patron of the arts.

His uncle was Pope Sixtus IV. As a result of close family ties to the papacy and not a few bribes, Giuliano della Rovere was elected pope in 1503. He died a scant ten years later, in 1513.

During his tenure, Julius backed the greats: Michelangelo created the Sistine Chapel frescos, Raphael painted his breathtaking rooms in the Vatican Museum and Bramante architected churches and palaces in perfect classic proportion, began St. Peter’s and, as part of Julius’s plan for Rome’s urban renewal, oversaw the construction of three straight-running avenues intended to link the Vatican with the engines of commerce. One of these is Via Giulia.

Step into the street from the Lungotevere dei Tebaldi on the river’s edge near Ponte Sisto and walk northeast to have the best view and light. Or find a bench, relax, munch on a peach or crust of bread, sip some wine and give yourself time to experience this daughter of the Renaissance, bejeweled in long strands of ivy, her walls stained in rich ochre colors. Some of the finest examples of sixteenth-century architectural detail grace the doorways and windows of her palaces.

Today this is a first-class Roman neighborhood, so you will see the cultured citizens of Rome enjoying their city. If you are looking for antiques, Via Giulia has some shops worth your time.

In the distance Michelangelo’s bridge arches overhead. Meant to link the Palazzo Farnese with Villa Farnesina across the Tiber, the project remains unfinished, but the bridge, along with church domes in the distance, lends interesting curves to an otherwise linear view.

Down the street water spews from the mouth of an unsightly Roman mask. The water, however, is delicious and is from Acqua Paola siphoning a much earlier Roman aqueduct that has been bringing water to Rome for almost 2,000 years.

Palaces and churches on Via Giulia:

1. •no. 1 - Palazzo Falconieri designed by Borromini, note the falcons on rooftop.
   

2. •no. 18 - San Eligio, Raphael designed the interior of this church.
   

3. •no. 52 - The Carceri Nuove, Rome’s prison for two centuries once stood here. It was an early attempt at prison reform.
   

4. •no. 66 - Palazzo Sacchetti designed by Vasari, painter, architect, historian, writer, who defined painting as “line and color.” The palace was built for the Sacchetti family, Florentine bankers, Medici contemporaries who rivaled their wealth and power.
   

5. •no. 79 - home of Sangallo, architect
   

6. •no. 86 - a house on land once owned by Raphael
   

Author’s Note: I have been traveling to Rome since the early 1970s and each time I go, I pay a visit to Via Giulia. She has become a friend, and never disappoints.

Columbus Park & Environs

Need playground? Go to one of New York City’s oldest greens, Columbus Park, between Baxter and Mulberry just south of Canal. It was created in the 1890s largely due to the efforts of Jacob Riis, an activist for children’s rights.

The Bend

In 1900 the park gave immigrant children their own special place. Then it was located in “The Bend,” one of The Lower East Side’s notorious slums. If you look on a map, it is easy to see the distinct curve in three streets(Baxter, Mulberry and Mott) that gave the area its name.

Neighborhood Gathering Place

Today Columbus Park is a gathering place for the Asian community. It remains a green space where children can play. If you go on a warm spring Saturday morning, you’ll be treated to a real “slice of the hood.” Women exercise to blaring Chinese hip-hop. Tai-Chi enthusiasts move with silence and measured grace. Mothers rock their babies, children play in the park, others catch up on the news. Pocket crowds watch the locals in a heated game of mahjong. A swordsman in red cloak and plumed hat makes swooshing moves in the air. It is an immigrant place – lively, happy and many-tongued.

Oh When The Saints. Go Marching In . . . .

On the corner of Mosco and Mulberry Streets is a funeral home, one of three in a two-block area. The building has served as a funeral parlor since the nineteenth century when immigrants from Italy waked their dead. Note the exquisite stone-carved detail and the Italian name over the doorway. Overhead is a large plastic sign with Chinese lettering.

Now these mourning parlors have a large clientele, catering to people living all over the New York Metro area.

One Saturday morning while watching the action in Columbus Park, I heard firecrackers and saw a large group coming out of Ng Fook’s. The widow, or so I took her to be, was a small Chinese woman dressed in black silk and flanked by two suited men with sunglasses and solemn expressions. They moved slowly, silently behind two cars, a black convertible filled with flowers and an open-air hearse carrying the casket. Silent mourners. Very loud firecrackers, the latter perhaps having something to do with Chinese burial rites, I told myself. Snarly traffic. Honking horns. More firecrackers.

And walking in front were four men looking and sounding like a band in a Fellini movie, playing trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and bass drum.

The leader, I could tell, liked his pasta. He wore a black tight-fitting suit and a captain’s hat pulled down on his forehead, the visor masking his eyes, emphasizing his cheeks as they rhythmically inflated and deflated like fleshy balloons. He huffed and he puffed and he sweated as he blew his trumpet.

They played Dixieland to a funereal drumbeat, played it earnestly, played it badly, played it to wing a Chinese soul to heaven. Played it, these Italian-American funeral makers, as their fathers had before them and their father’s fathers, too. And the silent mourners walked behind. And the firecrackers raked the air. Oh when the saints. Boom. Go marching in. Boom.

Then the procession rounded a corner, labored up a sudden steep hill and was gone.

A Re-gifted Place

Speaking of residuals, take New Jeannie’s Restaurant down the block. If you get close enough you will see traces of the former Italian restaurant’s name below the present-day sign.

The funeral homes and New Jeannie’s have all been re-gifted. The same spot serving the same purpose, changed to fit the needs of a different ethnic group, but retaining a vestigial tang from yesterday’s crowd. Evidence of America’s melting pot.

Chinese Take Out

On the east side of the park is Mosco Street, narrow and steep. Climb up a few yards and on the left-hand side you’ll find a tiny restaurant noted for its inexpensive but delicious Chinese take away dumplings. Five for $1. Cheapest eatery in Manhattan.

Directions

From Penn Station take the A, J, M or Z trains downtown. Exit at Canal. Walk east and south on Canal to Mulberry. Turn south. Columbus Park is on the west side of Mulberry Street between Bayard and Worth Streets.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

In half an hour on March 25, 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 workers, most of them young Jewish and Italian immigrants employed in making women’s blouses at a sweating factory located on the top floors of a warehouse in Greenwich Village. The building exists today now owned by
New York University.

What Happened

It is believed that someone threw a match into a pile of rags on the eighth floor. In minutes the fire spread to the ninth and tenth floors where seamstresses, cutters and pressers worked in large rooms with long tables.

Trucks arrived from the nearest engine house and extended ladders that did not reach beyond the sixth floor.

Many victims fell to their death from broken windows, their bodies catapulting through the Saturday afternoon sky and breaking the nets held to catch them. Most were trapped behind locked doors and burned to death. A few climbed to safety through a trap door in the roof, then were helped across to an adjacent building by a group of law students. Others escaped because of their proximity to the floor supervisor who had keys to hallway doors. They ran down twisting, smoke-filled wooden stairwells, sustaining minor cuts and God knows what lingering nightmares.

Owners Acquitted

The owners were acquitted of any responsibility for the death or injury to their workers despite the doors being locked at the time of the fire. Although New York’s fire code was primitive – for example, wooden staircases were allowed – the law mandated fire escapes on each floor. They were too flimsy to bear the heat of the fire and the weight of the victims. In addition, floor exit and entry doors opened into the room instead of out to the hall.

A Defining Moment

The tragedy became a defining moment in the city’s union movement, galvanizing garment workers most of whom up to this time had not bothered to attend meetings. Now the members marched, spoke, and became a vocal block demanding improved working conditions, including compensation for overtime. As a result of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, New York’s labor laws are among the strictest in the nation.

Directions to The Asch Building

From Penn Station take the A train downtown to West Fourth Street. Exit at north end of the platform. Walk north to Waverly Place, east on Waverly Place 3 1/2 blocks to Greene Street. At 29 Waverly Place on the northwest corner of Waverly Place and Greene Street.

For more on The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and The Lower East Side, click on The Lower East Side.

Seward Park

When Seward Park was opened in October 1903 an estimated 20,000 kids rushed in. It featured a large running track, a large open play area and a farm garden for children. The original limestone and terra cotta pavilion had a porch with rocking chairs for mothers to sit while watching their children, marble baths, a gym and meeting rooms. The park was renovated in 1941, 1999 and 2001.

Lillian Wald and The OTL

Lillian Wald, 1867 - 1940, founder of The Visiting Nurses and the Henry Street Settlement helped to found the Outdoor Recreation League, a group committed to the upkeep of parks. They raised funds for the improvement of Seward Park which became New York City’s first municipal playground.

Directions

From Penn Station take the A train downtown to West Fourth Street. Follow signs to F train on the lower level. Take F train downtown to East Broadway. Cross street to the park.

Click here.