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Finding The Great Gatsby in New York
- by aliciak
- -
- August 11, 2009
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The roaring 20's may be but a faint whisper, but the images and characters put forth by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby live on, in and beyond the high school classroom that probably introduced our impressionable minds to his Jazz Age tales. What is it about this book? Well, I'm not an English teacher anymore, so I'll go easy with the questions. Instead a guide to what survives in the city from this time period! And the various locales in Manhattan, Queens and Long Island that made up the settings of the book. Oh that American dream, symbolized by the green light at the end of Daisy's dock, gone horribly wrong.
Gatsby + Daisy
Hittin' The Books
Because I am a dedicated Guidetripper, I reread The Great Gatsby just to write this guide! Okay, I have something to admit: I’m a bookworm. So being “forced” to read doesn’t really exist in my mind. I’ve read The Great Gatsby 3 or 4 times now, and for about a year in high school, I read the last 2 pages every single night before bed. Why? Because they are beautifully and poignantly written and I was floored each time my eyes perused the same words.
“And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
The Beginning of the Film Version of The Great Gatsby
The 1970’s version with Robert Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy is one of those rare books-turned-into-movies that I absolutely love. Most of the characters and visuals are exactly what I imagined while reading the words.
Setting the Scene
East Egg and West Egg are fictional names for the Long Island peninsulas Great Neck and Manhasset Neck, respectively. Nick Carraway, who narrates the book, lives in West Egg, “the less fashionable of the two,” but also home to his neighbor Gatsby of course. Daisy and Tom Buchanan live among the “white palaces” of East Egg.
Most of the book takes place in Long Island, but there are several driving jaunts to Manhattan by way of Queens.
The Great Gatsby in and around New York
Manhasset is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in Nassau County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the town population was 8,362. Manhasset is a Native American term that translates to "the island neighborhood."
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Manhasset, NY".
Manhasset is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in Nassau County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the town population was 8,362. Manhasset is a Native American term that translates to "the island neighborhood."
Great Neck is a village in Nassau County, New York, in the USA, on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the village population was 9,538.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Great Neck, NY".
Great Neck is a village in Nassau County, New York, in the USA, on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the village population was 9,538.The Village of Great Neck is in the Town of North Hempstead. The term Great Neck is also commonly applied to the entire peninsula on the north shore, comprising a residential community of some 40,000 people made up of nine villages as well as unincorporated portions of North Hempstead (and a few hamlets). There is no governing entity which encompasses this larger Great Neck, but it is unified as a postal zone, a water district or two, a school district, and a park district.Great Neck is within easy commuting distance of Manhattan's Penn Station on the Port Washington Branch of the Long Island Rail Road via the Great Neck station, which offers round-the-clock service, and features frequent rush hour express service.
The Valley of Ashes
4701 111th Street Queens, NY 11368
Or as it is known today, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, site of the World’s Fair remnants, Queens Museum, Hall of Science and events like the U.S. Open. In Fitzgerald’s day, it was a cinder dump that had to be passed through to get from “East” or “West Egg” to Manhattan. It’s one of the many memorable scene descriptions:
“…a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.”
"blue and gigantic--their retinas are one yard high"
Who can forget the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleberg?!? Even though Fitzgerald incorrectly writes that “their retinas are one yard high” (you can’t see this part of the eye!), the eyes of God/watching over the aforementioned dump meaning is clear.
Although we can’t tell exactly what Fitzgerald may have imagined them to look like, you do see a lot of these old eye glass “signs” around New York, usually in front of glasses shops or optometrists’ offices. Because I am a Great Gatsby fan, I think of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg every time I spot one!
"Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge."
Queensboro Bridge
500 East 59th Street New York, NY 10022
After passing by the Valley of Ashes, it was onto the Queensboro Bridge in order to get to Manhattan. When Nick makes the trip to the city with Gatsby for a lunch date in a car described as a “green leather conservatory,” Fitzgerald writes:
“Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”
Now that I think about it, this quote has a similar ring to the words at the end of the book that I quoted way up above. The theme of promise and beauty found in the American landscape, that has since gone the way of the Valley of Ashes, as will our bodies and even our dreams. Uplifting, yes?
Listen to Simon & Garfunkel's 59th Street Bridge Song
The Queensboro Bridge is often referred to as the 59th Street Bridge, and Simon & Garfunkel’s 59th Street Bridge Song is often referred to as Feelin’ Groovy. Give it a listen!
Governors Island instead of Long Island
Sure, you can visit the “West Egg” of Fitzgerald’s mind, but it won’t recreate the 1920’s for you, and definitely not the fantastical scene of one of Gatsby’s popular parties. The closest thing New York has today is Governors Island’s Jazz Age Lawn Parties! Vintage cloche hats, flapper dresses, 1920’s dance steps and Packard roadsters.
"Men and girls came and went like moths."
Governors Island is always idyllic, almost anachronistic, so the two Jazz Age Lawn Parties in Great Gatsby style actually fit perfectly. I am incredibly sad I had to miss them, but “tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther,” or in other words, I will be practicing my swing dancing in preparation for next year’s parties!
A Whole Guide Devoted To Governors Island
Because you can dress up like Daisy any time you please and frolic around the island in a white dress and say whimsical things!
"People were not invited--they went there."
There are a few other venues of note, most mentioned in the book and still in existence some 80 years later.
Gatsby's Bar & Restaurant
63 Spring St, New York, NY 10012
(Not in the book!!!) Gatsby’s Bar is packed like a Gatsby party on the weekends, so I guess that’s appropriate. The crowd can leave much to be desired, as opposed to the pretty people who pranced around Gatsby’s lawn in the book. Two different kinds of obnoxious, but maybe one in the same? Some sort of need for excitement that may or not be fulfilled, but one can be sure liquor will be involved.
“The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.”
(Not in the book!!!) Gatsby’s Bar is packed like a Gatsby party on the weekends, so I guess that’s appropriate. The crowd can leave much to be desired, as opposed to the pretty people who pranced around Gatsby’s lawn in the book. Two different kinds of obnoxious, but maybe one in the same? Some sort of need for excitement that may or not be fulfilled, but one can be sure liquor will be involved.
“The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.”
Yale Club
50 Vanderbilt Ave Lbby 1, New York, NY 10017
Nick has dinner here and calls it “the gloomiest event of my day.”
Nick has dinner here and calls it “the gloomiest event of my day.”
The Mystique of Fifth Avenue
Nick Carraway’s thoughts:
“I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove.”
But then:
“At the enchanted metropolitan twilight, I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others.”
I think this captures the dichotomy of New York so well: it’s a city full of possibilities but can be overwhelmingly lonely.
Gin Rickey recipe
Only upon reading The Great Gatsby this last time did I realize that MY drink, a gin rickey, or what I always call a gin & soda when I order it at a bar, was there all along! Gatsby, Tom, Daisy Jordan and Nick are in the tense scene:
“We all drank in long greedy swallows.”
Gin Rickey
ice1/2 lemon or 1/4 lime1 1/2 ounces ginchilled club soda
Put ice into a highball glass and squeeze in the juice of the lime or lemon, dropping it in afterwards. Add gin, fill with club soda and stir.
Plaza Hotel
5 Avenue & 59, New York, NY 10001
Nick and the ephemeral Jordan Baker (for which 2 people in my high school class of 33 were named!) go here midway through the book, and later, Nick, Jordan, Gatsby, Daisy and Tom all come before the fatal car crash that kills Tom’s mistress.
Nick and the ephemeral Jordan Baker (for which 2 people in my high school class of 33 were named!) go here midway through the book, and later, Nick, Jordan, Gatsby, Daisy and Tom all come before the fatal car crash that kills Tom’s mistress.
Mint Julep
While drinking these at the Plaza Hotel, Jordan says:
“I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s away. There’s something very sensuous about it—overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.”
Central Park
5th Ave & 59th St, Manhattan, NY 10024
A few drives are taken through the park, yet another part of New York that sometimes makes you feel anachronistic if you’re near the ravine, or close to the old buildings like the Dairy.
“The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties and the clear voices of little girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.”
A few drives are taken through the park, yet another part of New York that sometimes makes you feel anachronistic if you’re near the ravine, or close to the old buildings like the Dairy.
“The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties and the clear voices of little girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.”
The Tragic Ending...
Gatsby takes the fall for Daisy, who accidentally kills her husband’s mistress while driving. In return, the mistress’ crazed and disturbed husband kills Gatsby and them himself.
“…he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…”
What Now?
The Great Gatsby’s images and characters may seem out of place now, but the essential themes and lessons remain relevant. Whether it’s getting caught up with that single green light, a pursuit of a dream or a love that is spoiled or falling prey to the glitz of fame and wealth, Fitzgerald sprinkles the book with hints that we will continue to do so and that the American Dream is already too warped to be salvaged.
Nick: You can’t repeat the past.Gatsby: Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
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This is so fab. Just more temptation to come and visit Governors Island!
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