Turtle Bay, Manhattan

Traditional townhouses in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of New York City

Turtle Bay is a neighborhood in New York City, on the east side of Midtown Manhattan. It extends between 41st and 53rd Streets, and eastward from Lexington Avenue to the East River, across from Roosevelt Island. It is the site of the United Nations Headquarters and the Chrysler Building.

Turtle Bay, so named in the 17th century, was a valuable shelter from the often harsh weather of the East River, and it also became a thriving site for shipbuilding. The Turtle Bay neighborhood was originally a 40-acre (160,000 m²) grant given to two Englishmen by the Dutch colonial governor of New Amsterdam in 1639, and named "Turtle Bay Farm". On a knoll overlooking the cove, near 41st Street, the farmhouse was purchased as a summer retreat by Francis Bayard, and in the early 19th century remained the summer villa of Francis Bayard Winthrop. Turtle Creek, or DeVoor's Mill Creek emptied into the cove at what is now 47th Street. To the south lay Kip's Bay farm; to the north, on a bluff, stood James Beekman's "Mount Pleasant", the first of a series of houses and villas with water views stretching away up the shoreline. After the street grid system was initiated in Manhattan, the hilly landscape of the Turtle Bay Farm was graded to create cross-streets and the land was subdivided for residential development.

An army enrollment office was established at Third Avenue and 46th Street, after the first Draft Act was passed during the American Civil War. On July 13, 1863, an angry mob burned the office to the ground and proceeded to riot through the surrounding neighborhood, destroying entire blocks. The New York Draft Riots continued for three days before army troops managed to contain the mob, which had burned and looted much of the city.

After the war's end, the formerly pastoral Turtle Bay neighborhood was developed with brownstones. By 1868 the bay had been entirely filled in by commercial overdevelopment, packed with breweries, gasworks, slaughterhouses, cattle pens, coal yards and railroad piers. With an infusion of poor immigrants in the later part of the 19th century, and the opening of the elevated train lines along Second and Third Avenues, the neighborhood went into decay with crumbling tenement buildings. Much of it was restored in the 1920s, and a large communal garden was established. The huge Waterside Station of the Consolidated Edison Company, producing 367,000 kilowatts of electricity in its coal-fired plant, marked the southern boundary of the neighborhood. By the 1930s, Turtle Bay was "a riverside back yard" for the city, as the WPA Guide to New York City (1939) described it: "huge industrial enterprises— breweries, laundries, abattoirs, power plants— along the water front face squalid tenements not far away from new apartment dwellings attracted to the section by its river view and its central position. The numerous plants shower this district with the heaviest sootfall in the city— 150 tons to the square mile annually". The blighted stretch of sooty darkness beneath the Third Avenue El (demolished 1956) separated the neighborhood from Midtown Manhattan. The clearing of 18 acres of slaughterhouses for the construction of the UN Headquarters in 1946, largely completed by 1952, and the removal of the elevated trains opened the neighborhood up for high-rise office buildings and condominiums. In 1957, the Turtle Bay Association was formed by residents and property owners in hopes of guiding the development to maintain the neighborhood's quality of life. The Association's efforts have resulted in more park and landscaping development, creating the neighborhood's tree-lined and relatively quiet atmosphere.

The Turtle Bay Association

The Turtle Bay Association is a neighborhood non-profit 501(c)3 organization that was founded in 1957 to protest the widening of East 49th Street, which succeeded. It now serves as advocate for residents of Turtle Bay.

Economy

Fujitsu operates an office at 733 Third Avenue. Avianca operates a New York-area sales office in Suite 2525 at 122 East 42nd Street. Ethiopian Airlines operates a sales office at 336 East 45th Street. Delta Air Lines operates a ticketing office in the 2 Grand Central Tower.

In 1975 Trans World Airlines was headquartered in Turtle Bay.

Diplomatic missions

Missions to the United States in Turtle Bay include:

• Consulate-General of the Bahamas
• Consulate-General of Germany
• Consulate-General of Israel in New York
• Consulate-General of Jamaica
• Consulate-General of Luxembourg
• Consulate-General of Saudi Arabia
• Consulate-General of Singapore
• Consulate-General of the United Kingdom
• Consulate-General of Ukraine

Numerous missions to the United Nations are in Turtle Bay, close to the UN. They include:

• Albania
• Andorra
• Antigua and Barbuda
• Argentina
• Australia
• Azerbaijan
• The Bahamas
• Bahrain
• Bangladesh
• Barbados
• Belgium
• Belize
• Bhutan
• Bolivia
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Botswana
• Brazil
• Brunei Darussalam
• Burkina Faso
• Burundi
• Cambodia
• Canada
• Chad
• Chile
• Comoros
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Republic of the Congo
• Costa Rica
• Croatia
• Denmark
• Djibouti
• Dominica
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• Egypt
• Equatorial Guinea
• Eritrea
• Ethiopia
• Finland
• France
• The Gambia
• Georgia
• Germany
• Greece
• Grenada
• Guinea
• Guyana
• Haiti
• Honduras
• Hungary
• Iceland
• India
• Republic of Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Jamaica
• Japan
• Jordan
• Kazakhstan
• Kenya
• Kuwait
• Kyrgyzstan
• Laos
• Latvia
• Lebanon
• Liberia
• Libya
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Malaysia
• Maldives
• Marshall Islands
• Mauritius
• Mexico
• Federated States of Micronesia
• Monaco
• Morocco
• Mozambique
• Nauru
• New Zealand
• North Korea
• Saudi Arabia
• Turkey
• United States (temporary location at 140 East 45th Street, between Third Avenue and Lexington Avenue. A permanent mission building will open across from the United Nations complex)
• Vietnam

In fiction

• Turtle Bay is the setting for a considerable portion of the Kurt Vonnegut science fiction novel Slapstick, as well as the location of the (fictional) painter Dan Gregory's mansion (in the brownstones of the E. 48th between 2nd and 3rd Ave.) in his novel Bluebeard.
• The animated series The Venture Bros.'s pilot episode takes place largely at the UN headquarters and is entitled "The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay".
• Turtle Bay is the location of a certain vacant lot in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, where the Tower takes the form of The Rose. Later, the lot is revealed to be the site of 1 Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza.
• Turtle Bay is the home of fictional character "Stone Barringon" in a series written by Stuart Woods.
• In the song "Stars and The Moon" from the musical revue Songs for a New World by Jason Robert Brown, a rich suitor promises to buy the singer a "townhouse in Turtle Bay."
• Turtle Bay, and specifically Beekman Place (Manhattan) is home to the fictional character "Mame Dennis" in the Novel Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis. It is also featured in the Broadway Show, Musical and Films based on the novel.

External links

• Turtle Bay Association official site

es:Turtle Bay (Manhattan)