Just because you may be living it up in style and comfort at Shimmie Horn’s Hotel Belleclaire does not necessarily mean that you might not be in the mood for a real New York-style burger or pizza.
If such a craving does overcome you, you need not wander further away from the Belleclaire than a one minute walk down the street. Located at 2175 Broadway, right off of 77th Street, is Big Nick’s Burger Joint.
Big Nick’s has a full menu for all three meals of the day, but their specialties are certainly their amazing 3-decker club sandwiches, deli sandwiches, and most spectacular of all, a choice of hamburgers as long as a midsummer’s day.
Reasonably priced and uncompromising in quality, Big Nick’s might be just the thing for slumming it on New York’s Upper West Side.
Planning a visit to New York this autumn? The Metropolitan Museum of Art– the “Met” to seasoned New Yorkers- offers some incredible shows over the next coming few months.
Located at 1000 Fifth Avenue, the Met is easy to get to. This quintessentially New York museum is found on the edge of Central Park, between East 81st and 82nd Streets. Shimmie Horn’s Hotel Belleclaire is only a short bus ride across Central Park from the Met, or if the weather is nice, as it is so often at this time of year in New York, take a stroll through the Park until you get to this mighty edifice and bastion of some of the most exquisite art known to man.
Some current exhibitions showing at the Met are:
• The Art of Dissent in 17th Century China: Masterpieces of Ming Loyalist Art from the Chih Lo Lou Collection – Through January 2, 2012
• Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe- Through January 2, 2012
• Wonder of the Age Master Painters of India, 1100–1900- Through January 8, 2012
If you are staying anywhere in New York, at any of Shimmie Horn’s collection of Triumph Hotels, you are not far from the Met. Go visit, you won’t be disappointed.
On 77th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, only one block from Shimmie Horn’s Hotel Belleclaire, is a little playground named for one of the Civil War’s most famous generals, William Tecumseh Sherman.
Since 1952 the park has gone through 4 separate incarnations. It was first developed when the City of New York received the land bordered by Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues on the east and west, and between 77th and 78th streets on the north and south. The land was designated for use for recreational purposes together with a school. The old P.S. 87 was torn down, and the new William T. Sherman School was built, and opened its doors in 1954. The playground had basketball courts, a roller-skating ring, play equipment and a garden from the old school.
In 1970 the site was modernized as an “adventure playground” until it was updated again in May 1987. This third renovation was called “Operation Playground” and incorporated the efforts of a 1,500-member neighborhood association of parents and their children. They raised $55,000 in private monies, and the Department of Parks of NY contributed and additional $30,000. The renowned park designer Robert Leathers drew up a plan which included a maze, tire-bridge, swing, fire engine, tree-house, roller coaster obstacle bridge and a suspension bridge with tunnels. Remarkably the park was built by community volunteers themselves working side-by-side with the Parks Department workers, in only seven days.
Today the park has taken on a fourth renaissance. For $760,000 Councilman Ronnie Eldrigde funded the park’s newest theme, an imaginary journey which children can take from New York City to the 1870s Wild Wild West.
The park is named for General Sherman, who, although born in Ohio in 1820, retired to New York where he lived until his death in 1884. He resided at Broadway and West 70th street, where there is now located Sherman Square, just a few short blocks from Tecumseh Park.
If you are staying at the Hotel Belleclaire, and especially if you have some children in tow, a trip to Tecumseh Park would be great fun.
Just one block away from the elegant Belleclaire Hotel is one of New York City’s designated landmarks, the apartment building known as the Apthorp. It was designed by the renowned architects of Clinton and Russell for the failed politician and absentee landowner William Waldorf Astor.
The Apthorp is in the style of Renaissance Revival, was built between the years 1906 and 1908, and fills the entire block between 78th and 79th Streets and between Broadway and West End Avenue. Today this historic building is a condominium, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Anyone with any interest in architecture, or would just enjoy seeing a quintessential building from the great heyday of New York City development, should stop by the Apthorp and take in a little bit of New York history, design, and style.
No trip is complete to New York without some time in Central Park. Take a carriage ride around, enjoy the Central Park Zoo, or catch some Shakespeare in the Park during the summer months. Central Park always has something interesting going on, whether you’re in for a day or enjoying an extended stay at the Belleclaire Hotel owned by Shimmie Horn.
When you finish strolling through the park, or enjoying some of the many activities there, take some time to go through the Museum of Natural History. This is a day in and of itself, with oodles of interesting things to see and admire. In the evening, enjoy a concert, ballet or opera at Lincoln Center and you’ll have capped off the perfect day in New York.
