This is a follow-up to my Saturday post on guerilla libraries.
Here’s the Little Free Library located at 935 Bloomfield Ave. At that part of town Bloomfield is mostly a residential street, lined with brownstones as you can see in the photo below. This is a fairly swanky part of town.
That’s looking roughly North. If we move out into the street a bit and then look to the East, we can see 935, with the library box to the left of the stairs:
Though I didn’t check, I would guess that that’s a single-family brownstone, though there might be a separate apartment in the basement. I assume all of the brownstones were originally constructed as single-family dwellings, but some have been converted for multiple families. Here’s someone looking at books in the library;
And here’s the official plaque:
Now I’ve got to walk two blocks East and then one block North, which brings me to the southwest corner of Elysian Park, at Hudson and 10th. Elysian Park is a small triangular park in what was Elysian Fields in the 19th century. Local lore has it that the first baseball games were played here. Who knows, local lore may be right about that. The Wikipedia entry points out:
Historian Tom Gilbert said, “The Elysian Fields [was] a kind of laboratory of transportation, leisure and recreation. Disneyland, Central Park, Coney Island and the modern baseball park can all claim the Elysian Fields as an ancestor.”
Most of the fields have given way to construction. Elysian Park is what’s left of the original park.
Here’s the library box at the corner, looking roughly Northeast into the park:
Now we turn around a look Northwest toward Hudson Street:
Here’s the official plaque:
Notice that “This little free library is brought to you by Choc O Pain Tea Building.” What, pray tell is the Choc O Pain Tea Building? Choco O Pain is a small local chain of bakeries with attached cafes. One of them is located in the Hudson Tea Building, which is five blocks north of here, on Fifteenth Street. Hudson Tea was originally built by the Maxwell Tea Company. It is now luxury condominiums.
Why didn’t Choco O Pain locate its Little Free Library near its location in Hudson Tea? I don’t know. But, while that building is easily accessible, it’s at the northern edge of Hoboken. Elysian Park is certainly more heavily traveled and more convenient for a larger population.
The guy below has strung a tight rope between two large trees in the park and is practicing his craft. The skyscrapers in the background are across the Hudson River in Manhattan. When I moved to Hoboken several years ago, they didn’t exist.
Walking further into the corner, we can see the Empire State Building at the left:
Now, see that slanted building to the right of center? (Click on the photo to enlarge it.) Just to the left of that you can see the top of the Met Life Tower, which was constructed early in the 20th century. It was the world’s tallest building until 1913.
Fans of Kim Stanley Robinson – I’m thinking of you, Leanne – will recognize that building as the primary setting of New York 2140, a post global-warming science fiction novel. In that novel the sea has risen 50 feet, so the lower floors of the Met Life Building are under water, as is most of Lower Manhattan. And most of Hoboken as well. I checked a topographical map. The location of that Little Free Library is currently 13 meters above sea level, which means that it would have been submerged in Robinson’s novel.
Were any books left in it when the residents of Hoboken finally left the area? I wonder what sea creatures took up residence there? Perhaps a small predator will use it to scout the area for food.
