A Flatiron Fling

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A Quick Stay in the East 20s at Fifth Avenue, Manhattan

The problem with living near New York City is the same as the problem with living in New York City: One tends to limit oneself to a particular neighborhood, whether it’s the one in which you reside (I used to joke when living on the Upper East Side that I needn’t go beyond a 10-block radius to have all my needs met, but really, it was more like a five-block radius) or the one that you’re visiting for a short time. If you’ve flown to New York City from some place far away, you’ll likely spend a week here and be willing to head uptown, downtown, east, west, everywhere. For short-termers like me, parts of the city have been elusive in recent years as they didn’t necessarily mesh with my other plans for a long weekend or a day trip.

Recently, though, I had to be in Chelsea for business, so spent a weekend enjoying the Carlton Hotel in Murray Hill on Madison Avenue at East 29th Street. For dinner, we walked to Les Halles Brasserie for a quick taste of France. While I was off at a conference, the Brawny Sherpa, ever the carnivore, got to know the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street and Fifth and strolled through Madison Square Park before lunching at Rocco Steakhouse. Later, we had prosecco and oysters at Millesime back at the Carlton.

The Brawny Sherpa strolled the neighborhood, discovering what’s left of Limelight, finding the Teddy Roosevelt birthplace under renovation, and then introducing me to the Church of the Transfiguration, an Episcopal Church accessible to the acting crowd when other places of organized religion weren’t quite so welcoming. We tried to visit the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church on the corner of Fifth and 29th but were a few minutes to late, so we amused ourselves by looking at the matryoshka dolls at Saint-Petersburg Manhattan, also on Fifth between 28th and 29th.

This is a delightful little neighborhood and we would have liked to linger even more. I can only hope that future business will bring me nearby.

Flatiron Building, 175 Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street

Carlton Hotel, 88 Madison Avenue, at 29th Street

Saint-Petersburg Manhattan, 261 Fifth Avenue between 28th and 29th Streets

Les Halles Brasserie, 411 Park Avenue South at 29th Street

Limelight, 656 Sixth Avenue at West 20th Street

Rocco Steakhouse, 72 Madison Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets

Theodore Roosevelt birthplace, 28 East 20th Street

Church of the Transfiguration, 1 East 29th Street

—Lori Tripoli

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• Whiskey and Sliders in Midtown West

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