After 25 Years in Soho We’re Movin’ on Up

We’re moving to a new neighborhood that we just love!  We don’t quite know what it’s called …it’s one of those betwixt and between places. But whether you think it’s Murray Hill South, Flatiron or Madison Square Park North, there’s no denying that the neighborhood surrounding the Open Center’s new location … 22 East 30th Street … is a spectacular mix of cultural institutions, ethnic restaurants, and residential blocks lined with brownstones reflecting the opulence of its beginnings – a mix that encapsulates that special quality of contrasts that make our city such a compelling place to live and work.

 

Situated halfway between the Soho and Central Park, it is a study in New York style variety: old and new edifices, high culture and vibrant ethnicity. You’ll love to walk the streets and absorb the energy and diversity of this neighborhood, with Persian carpet shops, French bistros and little India nearby.  You’ll find yourself right there in the ambience of much that makes New York special, beautiful and so very interesting.

 

Looking north, you’ll see the towering spires of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings, so close, reminding us that we are relocating into one of the great business centers of the world.

 

Just around the corner on Madison Avenue, you’ll see the colorful banners fluttering in front of the ornate limestone façades of the Sanford White-designed American Academy of  Dramatic Arts and a few blocks north, the Pierpont Morgan Library – once the home of the financier J.P. Morgan and now home to one of  Manhattan’s finest collections. Legend has it that in 1776, the Murrays, who owned the mansion for which Murray Hill is named, offered the British general a few glasses of wine, allowing George Washington’s troops to sneak up from the Battery Point past the British to Harlem.

 

Turn just a few blocks south and on a summer evening, you hear the strains of jazz coming from Madison Square Park, home to tree-lined paths and dog runs, an outdoor café and famous hot dog stand, with musical performances attended by hundreds of families, singles, office workers, and tourists. It was just here at the park, in an abandoned railroad depot, that P.T. Barnum formed a circus, and it was here that the original Madison Square Garden once stood.

 

One block west at 29th and Fifth Avenue is the famed Marble Collegiate Church, established by Norman Vincent Peale as the home of positive thinking.

 

A neighborhood that has so much to offer – and now it will have the Open Center too, with our bookstore fronting 30th Street just west of Madison and a café in our expansive new lobby. A natural successor to Peale’s positive philosophy, The Open Center brings holistic learning and culture into a neighborhood as old and as new as New York itself.