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Doubting Thomas

Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme
6th century C.E.

Piazza Santa Croce in Gerusalemme 12
06 706 13 053

Take the Metro out to the church of Santa Croce, which holds the treasures that St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, brought back from the Holy Land. See up close a thorn from Christ’s crown of thorns. See wood from the True Cross. See the actual nails that crucified Christ. Best of all, see the actual finger of St. Thomas—yes, the very finger that the doubting saint poked into the side of the living Jesus after the Resurrection.

John Guare
John Guare was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his Obie-, New York Drama Critics’ Circle–, and Tony-winning plays, including House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and A Few Stout Individuals. He teaches playwrit­ing at the Yale School of Drama.

Economy Candy

 

Economy Candy
108 Rivington Street between Ludlow and Essex Streets
800 352 4544, www.economycandy.com

Started in the midst of the post-Depression era when candy still came in barrels, Economy Candy is a rickety little Lower East Side spot owned by Jerry Cohen, a grizzly New York City native with an auctioneer's voice and an attitude to match. This vintage candy warehouse brims lower east side floor to ceiling (literally-a stepladder is required) with jawbreakers, licorice whips, chocolate-covered raisins, root beer barrels, Chiclets, Pixy Stix, kosher gourmet jellybeans, and other Willy Wonka-like delicacies. A favorite of Jerry Lewis, Red Buttons, and Tony Curtis, Economy Candy was described by Gourmet magazine as "the penny-candy store elevated to an art form."

Other favorites include rock-candy swizzle sticks (red, blue, amber, yellow, pink, and green), Jordan Almonds, Atomic Fireballs, candy necklaces, eighteen kinds of halvah, chocolate-covered pretzels (milk, dark, and white), and Pez in every imaginable size and form. In fact, the only candy you won't find here is Chunky. "It's my favorite," says Cohen. "I don't sell it because I'd eat it all day long." At least the man shows some restraint.

Dany Levy
Dany Levy is the founder and editor in chief of Daily Candy, a daily e-mail newsletter dedicated to fashion, trends, and deals of the day.

The Show Folks Shoe Shop Dedicated to Beauty in Footwear

I. Miller Building
1929, Louis H. Friedland
167 West 46th Street at Seventh Avenue

As you stroll down Broadway after your matinee, stop and glance at the inscription on the façade of 167 West 46^th Street (close to the northeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 46th Street), the site of the I. Miller shoe shop that served New Yorkers from 1929 into the 1970s. The words "The Show Folks Shoe Shop Dedicated to Beauty in Footwear" describe I. Miller's two passions-shoes and stars. As an added attraction, four statues by Alexander Stirling Calder (father of Alexander Calder of mobile fame) appear in niches below the inscription. Miller invited the public to vote for their favorite actresses as models. The winners were Ethel Barrymore as Ophelia, Mary Pickford as Little Lord Fauntleroy, Marilyn Miller as Sunny, and Rosa Ponselle as Norma.

Theresa Craig
Theresa Craig is the author of Edith Wharton: A House Full of Rooms-Architecture, Interiors and Gardens. She has taught literature at City University of New York and humanities at the New School University.

Hudson River Powerhouse

Hudson River Powerhouse
1900-1904, McKim, Mead & White
12th Avenue between West 58th and West 59th Streets
646 918 7917; www.hudsonriverpowerhouse.com

The IRT powerhouse is one of the most unusual architectural monuments in America. Designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1900 to power the very first section of the New York City subway system, it was the largest powerhouse in the world, and used the most sophisticated technology in the production of electrical power at that time. The delicately adorned exterior of the powerhouse was designed in the Beaux-Arts style, reflecting the civic minded ideals of the City Beautiful movement. In 1904, The New York Times described it as " . . . an ornament to the west side that enhances rather than diminishes the value of the surrounding property. But for its stacks, it might suggest an art museum or public library rather than a powerhouse."

In 1959, the building was sold to Con Edison for use as a power station for the New York City steam system. The utility promptly built a flat brick addition to the building, covering its western façade. As the demand for steam waned over the last twenty years, Con Edison has decommissioned most of the building and recently demolished the last of the original five smokestacks. The once majestic turbine hall stands largely empty. Decades of neglect have left other scars: steel loading doors have damaged the finely carved terra-cotta friezes and the original building cornice is entirely gone.

Efforts to designate the building a historic landmark, in 1979 and 1990, failed in the face of the powerful public utility. In 2007, The Hudson River Powerhouse Group was formed to lobby the city to designate the powerhouse a landmark, raise funds to restore the building, and re-purpose this once grand powerhouse as a public space. It remains to be seen if this gem will be preserved or demolished.

Basil Walter is the founding partner of Basil Walter Architects (BWA), an international architecture and design firm with offices in New York City and Beijing, China.

Follow the Stroll to Bob Crachit's house

 

A Film Buff's Stroll

For thirty years I worked at Broadcasting House near Oxford Circus, and lived first on the west side of Hampstead Heath, then on the east side, and would often walk the three miles home via Camden Town. The first journey is the one Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson took from Oxford Street to Hampstead in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton to burgle the home of the "king of all blackmailers," who lived at a Gothic mansion on the corner of East Heath Road and Well Road. They subsequently fled from the house, zigzagging across the Heath to emerge presumably on the Highgate Road and catch a cab back to Baker Street.

The second journey is the one walked by the intrepid Richard Hannay in John Buchan's classic conspiracy thriller The Three Hostages, just after World War I, following the first clue that leads him from Oxford Circus via Camden Town to Gospel Oak at the Heath's southeast corner. His walk takes him past the apartment block at 122 Portland Place from which Hannay would later escape, disguised as a milkman, in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps.

The most sublime Hitchcock image from the 1930s is of the unattended horse-drawn milk-float in Park Crescent. You can get to Camden Town by the Nash Terraces of Regent's Park's Outer Circle or Albany Street, from the top of which, at the White House, the Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale ran his espionage ring in the 1960s. Camden Town is where the nine-year-old Charles Dickens lived in Bayham Street, as well as being the home of the Cratchit family in A Christmas Carol and the inner-city area transformed by the coming of the railways in Dombey and Son. At Parkway, Camden Town, is Palmer's Pet Store, above which the Communist leader Bennett lived in Graham Greene's It's a Battlefield. (The black-and white shop front remains intact but inside is now a fashionable café, Yumchaa.)

Going North by the Holmes or the Hannay route takes you through George Orwell territory-in the mid-1930 she lived in Warwick Mansions, Pond Street, 77 Parliament Hill, and 50 Lawford Road, Kentish Town, and worked at a bookshop called Booklover's Corner (immortalised in Keep the Aspidistra Flying) in South End Green, as recorded by a plaque on the corner. At Gospel Oak you'll reach Gordon House Road, along which a psychopathic hitman drives on his way to a killing on the opening page of Ruth Rendell's The Lake of Darkness. Cross over to the Heath and climb to the top of Parliament Hill, where D. H. Lawrence and Frieda watched zeppelins bombing London in World War I, as described in Kangaroo.

Philip French
Philip French is The Observer's film critic, author of Westerns, and co-editor of The Faber Book of Movie Verse. He was named Critic of the Year in the 2009 National Press Awards.

 

Here's how to attend all three notable midnight Masses in Rome

 

Christmas Eve Masses
06 698 83 731; www.vatican.va
Go to the website to obtain tickets in advance for midnight Mass at St. Peter's.

With a bit of planning, and a little luck, it is possible to attend portions of three notable midnight Masses on a single Christmas Eve-one at St. Peter's, another at the Church of San Giovanni in Laterano, and yet another at San Clemente. You'll need a car or a motorino, a map of Rome, and familiarity with the route (this can be achieved by rehearsing the drive between Vatican City and the Lateran, and the Lateran and San Clemente).

It's necessary to buy tickets in advance for the midnight Mass at St. Peter's. Park on the east side of Vatican City to avoid driving all the way around it on your way to the Lateran. After you arrive at St. Peter's, try to stand in the back on the right behind the barrier that creates the aisle across the rear of the basilica. There you will be within a few feet of the procession and the Pope as they begin their march toward the altar. (There is speculation that sometimes the Vatican uses a stand-in for the real Pope. You might be able to confirm this for yourself by seeing the Pope perform the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum at Easter.) This spot also provides for an easy exit, which you should make after you have seen enough (in any case, no later than shortly after the end of the procession has reached the altar and the Pope seems to be only about one inch tall). With a little luck you will arrive at the Lateran in time to see the procession of the living crêche from the baptistery to the church. If you are too late, don't miss the crêche tableau, which follows the Mass, with its live baby Jesus, little-girl angels, and a light show that might remind you of a late-1960s high school dance. On to San Clemente to catch the music at the end of that Mass-and perhaps a new appreciation for the elegance and modesty of medieval church architecture.

If you manage to successfully negotiate the entire agenda, you will have spent an evening contemplating incredible architectural and spiritual contrasts. You will also have the sense of accomplishment of having orches­trated a complicated itinerary that requires luck and a gut sense of timing. You might be left wondering on Christmas morning if fate, chance, or some other force had intervened to make your venture a success.

Don't forget, six days later on New Year's Eve, to eat a hearty portion of lentils to ensure your financial future and complete your Roman holiday.

Matthew Geller
Matthew Geller has produced numerous temporary public artworks in downtown New York City, as well as projects at Wave Hill, in the Bronx, and the Long Island Children’s Museum. He has received fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the National Endowment for
the Arts, and the New York Foundation from the Arts, among others.

Via Giulia During the Christmas Season

 

If you travel to Rome during the Christmas season, I recommend a leisurely walk down the via Giulia. The via Giulia is a long, straight street built by Julius II at the beginning of the sixteenth century. During the Christmas season, decorative lights and piped-in holiday music provide the perfect backdrop for individual Nativity scenes displayed in every storefront window. There must be fifty or more of these crêche displays, so take your time. You can even begin or conclude your passeggiata with a nice dinner at the Taverna Giulia (Vicolo dell'Oro 23). By the end of the evening, you'll agree that this was a little bit of magic during a special time of year.

David LaPalombara is the director of the School of Art
and Professor of Art at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He previously spent an extended period in Italy as a Rome Prize Fellow and Fulbright Fellow.

Moro

 

Moro
34-36 Exmouth Market EC1
020 7833 8336; www.moro.co.uk

Samuel Clark married Samantha Clarke, and the two chefs took a leisurely ramble through Spain and Morocco. They had ravenous appetites, as lovers do, and they ate everything in sight. When they returned to London they couldn't stop craving those flavours, and they began thinking about food in a whole new way. The result was Moro ("Moor"), the restaurant they opened in 1997. The instant you open the door, you are transported into an intensely fragrant, ornate Arab-Spanish world. The authentic, powerful food is based on recipes and cooking methods that have travelled through the centuries. Because the Clarks feel that cooking over live wood or real hardwood charcoal is integral to their shared vision, you'll find a big, wood-burning oven taking pride of place in the kitchen. And although their food is uncomplicated, it is far from crude. A whole sea bass, seasoned with lemon and fennel and roasted in that oven, is drizzled with pan juices and served with a chunky relish made of roughly chopped pistachios and garlic, given added mystery and allure by orange-flower water, lemon, and mint-flavours that have been entwined since antiquity. Gleaming ruby-red seeds from pomegranates, long cultivated in Arabia, transform a rustic parsley-grain tabbouleh into a sumptuous side. The Clarks have a family now, and a second home in Spain, but they still eat everything in sight.

Jane Lear

Jane Lear, a food and travel writer based in New York City, is the former senior articles editor at Gourmet magazine. A contributor to The Gourmet Cookbook: More than 1000 Recipes and Gourmet Today: More than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen, she also co-wrote (with chef Floyd Cardoz) One Spice, Two Spice: American Food, Indian Flavors.

 

Moro is also steeped in Mediterranean culture, in particular, that of Andalucia, where the cuisines of southern Europe and North Africa create a delicious synthesis; last time I ate there I started with quail in flatbread with pistachio sauce, followed it with wood roasted peri-peri chicken with coriander rice and rocket salad, and concluded with fresh raspberries on a bed of Jerez cream. As you eat you can watch the chefs at work in the open kitchen at the far end of the restaurant.

Clive Sinclair

Clive Sinclair, born in London, is the author of novels including Blood Libels and Cosmetic Effects. He is a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the PEN MacMillan Silver Pen.

 

A Connoisseur's Afternoon

 

A Connoisseur’s Afternoon

Jeroboams
50-52 Elizabeth Street SW1
020 7730 8108; www.jeroboams.co.uk

H. R. Stokes
58 Elizabeth Street SW1
020 7730 7073; www.henrystokes.co.uk

Tomtom Cigars
63 Elizabeth Street SW1
020 7730 1790; www.tomtom.co.uk

Fulham News
200 Fulham Road SW10
020 7351 3435

Battersea Park
On the South Bank, across from Chelsea SW11
The Peace Pagoda is by the river in the centre of the park.
www.batterseapark.org

There are very few “secrets” in such a busy, gossipy city as London, but there are some simple, unexploited pleasures. One of mine would be this.

Take a car or a cab to Elizabeth Street in Belgravia, where you will find a lot of what you need to nourish body and soul. At Jeroboams, pick up some good bread and cheese and a bottle of better-than-average white burgundy; a 1996 Meursault would do fine. While the cab is waiting, nip into Henry Stokes’s bookshop at No. 58, a small, village-like affair, but with a well-chosen stock of current titles. Buy something. In the same street, Tomtom Cigars will sell you a Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No. 2. Now divert the cab to Fulham Road, where you will find the world’s best newsagent, Fulham News. Buy an armful of your favourite papers and magazines, then have yourself dropped at the Chelsea Bridge entrance to Battersea Park. I love Battersea Park because of its oddness: it was built on spoil from the excavation of the Royal Docks, and asparagus was cultivated here.

Anyway, select a bench overlooking the river, somewhere near the Peace Pagoda. On a weekday you will have the place entirely to yourself so, if you have remembered your running stuff, hide the food, papers, and books and take a turn around the park’s perimeter. This is about a mile and a half, so not too demanding, but enough to justify the indulgence of the food, drink, smoke, and reading you are now going to enjoy.

The view from your bench is beautiful and evocative:  this is Whistler’s and Wilde’s Thames. It is wonderful in warm sunshine, even lovelier in autumnal mist. From the bench, as you munch your bread and cheese and slurp the wine, you can enjoy one of the best urban views in Britain: Wren’s dignified Royal Hospital and then the gorgeous red brick houses of Chelsea Embankment, these last Britain’s most singular contribution to the history of world architecture. If you have brought two bottles, you can sit and wait and watch the sun go down over the eccentric Albert Bridge and the lumpy old Lots Road Power Station. For less than the price of a pretentious meal in a mediocre restaurant, you have had some of the very best London has to offer.

Stephen Bayley
Stephen Bayley was responsible for the Design Museum and created the Boilerhouse Project at the V & A. His books include Woman as Design, and he is a columnist on The Times. He currently runs a small design business in Soho.

The Roof Gardens

 

The Roof Gardens
1938, Ralph Hancock
99 Kensington High Street w8
020 7937 7994 or 020 7368 3993; www.roofgardens.virgin.com

If you're tiring of the summer crowds in Kensington, turn down shaded Derry Street and look for a large, imposing doorway marked 99 Kensington High Street. It appears to lead to the offices of some well-heeled company, but go inside, sign in at reception, take a lift up to the roof, and then step out into one of London's strangest secret gardens. Floating an improbable thirty metres above the traffic of Kensington High Street, and sprawling out over one and a half acres, the Roof Gardens boast fully grown oak and fruit trees, a stream stocked with fish, and four resident flamingos, named Bill, Ben, Splosh, and Pecks. There are fine views over the crowded cityscape of Kensington and Chelsea. Opened in 1938 atop what was then the Derry and Toms department store (part of the Barkers group), the gardens were created at the behest of Barkers' vice president, and designed by Ralph Hancock (architect of the Gardens of the Nations at Rockefeller Center, New York). Today the Roof Gardens are owned by the Virgin Hotels group and open for public viewing on select days only: phone in advance of your visit to check access, and then wander through a 1930s departmentstore president's dream of a gracious shopping experience.

Helen Gordon
Helen Gordon is a journalist, editor, and the author of Landfall. She was formerly an associate editor at Granta magazine. She lives in East London.