Have You Seen Charles?

Charles Street in the West Village is one of the few streets in Manhattan that you can walk from end to end and one of the many that justify it. Beginning at Greenwich Avenue (not Greenwich Street), walk one block west until you come to a very familiar-looking corner. It’s familiar because the otherwise ordinary building at the corner of Charles and Seventh Avenue is where, every Thursday night for ten years, the cast of “Friends” lived. Directly across Charles Street is Harry Chong’s Barber Shop. Well, not exactly. It was Harry Chong’s laundry for sixty years. Now, it’s a barber shop and the current owners have kept the name because they like the way it’s written on the windows. They also have a taste for taxidermy: inside, a miniature deer head is mounted on one wall and a murder (the correct term) of crows is perched above a mirror. The kind of place where Alfred Hitchcock would go to get his head polished.

The block from Seventh Avenue to West Fourth Street is a short one lined with brownstones on one side and townhouses on the other. A distinction, apart from visual, that only the privileged occupants could explain.

Across West Fourth Street, we come to the Congregation Direch Amuno, a synagogue that’s almost one hundred years old. Though made of stone, it’s very narrow and looks like a strong cantor could blow it down with one good prayer. Further up on that side of the street is a building where the poet, Hart Crane lived. The brass plaque says he was an advertising copywriter before he became a famous author, a career path that society should do everything to encourage. (Throwing yourself off a ship into the Gulf of Mexico, however, should be discouraged.)

The next street that crosses Charles is Bleecker. While the strip of Bleecker near NYU is still a honky-tonk, student ghetto, it gets nicer as you go further west. By the time it reaches Charles, the dives are gone and it's one fashionable and expensive boutique after another, all tucked preciously into one quaint building after another. This stretch of Bleecker is as close as Manhattan gets to Job Lane in Easthampton – or should.

The next block of Charles is a good antidote for the cloying wealth of Bleecker. That’s where you’ll find the headquarters of the NYPD Bomb Squad. In case you have any doubts, it’s spelled out in large, unmistakable letters on a wide, metal garage door, “BOMB SQUAD.” Beneath it is their insignia: a bad guy in a black mask riding an aerial bomb downward over a clock showing the time, “six minutes to midnight.” During the Cold War, that was called “The Doomsday Clock” and was a popular way of signaling impending nuclear disaster. I wouldn’t linger in front of that door, especially if you’re wearing a bulky vest.

Once you cross Hudson, the buildings start playing scale games. At the corner of Greenwich Street (not Greenwich Avenue) is a whitewashed, wooden home, one story high, on a plot of land surrounded by a fence. Suburban in style, it would be considered tiny anywhere except in Manhattan. In this location, only a billionaire could afford it – and wouldn’t. Mayor Bloomberg, for instance, has already turned down Gracie Mansion because his own home is nicer.

Across Greenwich is a vastly larger red brick warehouse that’s been converted into apartments. Next to that is a two and one half story house built in 1834. I say two and one half because the attic has dormer windows. This house also appears to have two front doors, but look closer. The address on the main one is 131, on the much smaller one, down and to the left, 131 ½. Look through the window on that door and you see a narrow passage into a rear courtyard. It’s not a driveway and it’s too low to ride through on a horse, you would have to dismount and walk your horse through it. (Horseway? Trotsky?) Across from that house is a cozy, little coffee house called Mojo. Combining classical-style, cast iron columns and wide, horizontal, wood panels, it seems to straddle the border between SoHo and Big Sur. Next to Mojo is an extremely wide (four windows) brick house and next to that a yellow house with a large, black, metal doorknocker in the shape of lion’s head. The kind that turns into the face of Jacob Marley in “A Christmas Carol.”

The last block of Charles Street before the Hudson River, between Washington and West Streets, is a study in contrasts. On the right is a long, low, motel-style group of attached homes with a running balcony along the second floor. Given the dark, vine-covered and generally distressed nature of the structure, that would be the Bates Motel. At the end of Charles Street, facing the river, is a tall, glittering, glass tower designed by the eminent architect, Richard Meier. One of three such buildings with enviable locations and, no doubt, incredible views, apartments in them have been snapped up by celebrities such as Martha Stewart and Calvin Klein.

But wait, there’s more. A new pier, designed for recreation, extends into the river from the end of Charles Street. It is also home to contrasts: real trees and fake grass; affluent residents and homeless people. The first is intentional, the second probably not, but both groups seem to be coexisting happily – or, at least, quietly. Across the river is New Jersey.