Memory Lane

On this first day of fall, I find myself wandering around in lower Manhattan. There is a decided, chill in the air, which feels nice after the long hot summer. I got in late last night. My first meeting is right down here in lower Manhattan, but it’s not until 1 PM so after working out and having a late complementary breakfast at my hotel, I find myself wandering around old familiar places.

Of all the places I passed, I very quickly ran across Century 21, which is a long-standing fixture in this part of town as a old-fashioned department store that sells deeply-discounted, slightly out of style brands of clothing. I stopped in to look around both for old time sake and to see if I could find either or both a handkerchief (which I forgot to bring) and a tie (which I very specifically chose not to bring, and I’m now having some pangs of regret). I don’t know whether Century 21 is any different from any other clothing stores, and I did check with a quick look through Banana Republic, but it seems nobody buys either handkerchiefs or ties anymore. That alone is enough to make me feel old during this trip through memory lane since both were fundamental requirements of the uniform when I started working in New York those many years ago. I remember how my mother used to say that she never came to New York without wearing white gloves and I remember how dated that sounded at the time. I’m sure my reminiscences about ties and handkerchiefs sounds the same to my kids…and imagine how they would react to knowing we had to wear tie shoes to work and not loafers…

I hadn’t noticed this before, but it seems that my 1 o’clock meeting with this particular law firm is located at 135 Liberty St. That shouldn’t strike anyone as terribly unusual except that that’s the place where I entered the Bankers Trust Company training program in the summer of 1976. It was a building called One BT Plaza and its address was 130 Liberty St. It seems that this building that I’m going to is in the exact location of the old One BT Plaza except they had the good grace to change the street address from 130 to 135. So I first walked into this building 50 years ago, and there’s no way that that doesn’t make you feel old. When I got there, all I could see was a memorial across from the WTC fountains memorial. I did a quick check and it turns out the firm is in

One Liberty Plaza, just up the street (so much for Meta’s new Muse agentic AI, which had directed me to the wrong address!). For some strange reason that made me feel better since One liberty Plaza was built in 1973 and still looks good (I think I still look OK after 50 years). You see the original World Trade Center complex was built over several years and was finished in 1973, so when I arrived in 1976 it was all very new. Our building at One BT Plaza was considered state of the art at the time and was even connected to WTC by a skybridge, but when the trade centers collapsed, they left a 17 story gash in the exterior of that building which resulted in a serious mold problem that forced the owners in the building to tear it down. Once upon the high floor in one liberty Plaza, where we were meeting the views of Lieberman Manhattan in New York Harbor or particularly reminiscent to me not just because of my training program days at one BT Plaza, but also because the apartment I lived in in 1990 in battery Park city because of the 10 years I spent living in the Seaport because of the two stents I spent working at 19 State Street looking out at New York Harbor and because of the two years kim and I lived at the base of Manhattan across from battery Park once again, looking out at New York Harbor. Oh and yes, there was the three years we spent living on Staten Island looking at lower Manhattan across New York Harbor. Who could forget that in other words, lower Manhattan and particular holds a lot of memories for me and it truly is a walk down memory lane for me to walk around these streets.

After that meeting, I needed to go up to Grand Central and the good news is that I was very close to the four and five trains (a.k.a. the Lexington Avenue line). I was never a habitual SUBWAY user when I lived in Manhattan but it very much seemed like the way to go today. For years I’ve used the expression “that in $.50 will get you on the subway” as a way of being dismissive about whatever I was talking about. Over the years I’ve had to change that to $1.00, $2.00 and so on. In fact, I recently decided that I should change the expression to “that and a MetroCard will get you on the subway”. But now it turns out that even that is anachronistic because I’m only does the system no longer take SUBWAY tokens it no longer takes Metro cards. Now it’s all about one tap with your phone and Apple Pay. So I guess the new expression needs to be “that and Apple Pay will get you on the subway”. Oddly enough that doesn’t make me feel so old as it makes me feel empowered so I’m glad I guess I’m more or less with it when it comes to tech change.

I’m heading up to Grand Central to meet two old buddies for dinner at one of our favorite steakhouses Bobby Vans. The walk up from the subway and through Grand Central terminal during rush-hour certainly brought back lots of memories since I used to pass through that space almost every day in the early part of my career. You see my first summer assignment at Bankers Trust was it 280 Park Ave. and I was living in Queens so I used to take the number seven train from Grand Central to Bayside. I can honestly say that Grand Central Terminal hasn’t changed a bit in 50 years, although I’m sure behind the scenes that’s not entirely true.

The parts of Manhattan that are most familiar to me and evoke the most memories are the downtown area and the Grand Central area, which just happened to be where I spent the day today. Unlike Kim, I don’t really miss New York City but a nice day like today. I do find this trip down memory lane more pleasant than not.