One If By Land, Two If By Sea

One If By Land, Two If By Sea from Restaurants In NYC

One if by Land, Two if by Sea is a restaurant located in the heart of New York City's West Village on Barrow Street. It's a romantic room, with rich wood decor, white linen tablecloths, ornately framed oil paintings of old dead people, a grand piano and ghosts...

Well, the ghosts may not be all that romantic, but they do add to the ambiance. Some of paranormal phenomena is just poltergeist pranking: picture frames tilting, devices turning themselves on and off, icy drafts (and we don't mean imported ales) by the bar, flying plates, chairs being pulled out from under people, flickering lights, footsteps heard coming from an empty attic, cold spots, staff members being shoved by unseen hands (sometimes down steps), orbs and that sort of ghostly tomfoolery.

Minor ethereal annoyances, to be sure. But the waitstaff has caught glimpses of shadows out of the corner of their eye, and waiters have even gone to serve customers who turned out to be hungry specters instead of warm bodies. It's enough that some workers have handed in their resignations on the spot.

But there are a lot more things going bump in the New York night than misty forms and incarnate mischief. Mediums have identified 23 spirits who call the restaurant home. The physics say they are from a variety of eras, but are all aware of one other.

In the Constitution Room, diners who are loud or argumentative usually request being seated in another of the restaurant's rooms without knowing why. The answer is simple. The room is the haunt of a former Ziegfeld Follies girl who passed away in the building and didn't approve of uncivil tongues. The staff lights candles for her gentle soul.

The Mezzanine is the stomping grounds of a lady entity in a nineteenth century black dress who appears late at night. One of the balcony tables is sometimes occupied by the specter of an African-American man. Another shadow is a woman dressed in a black gown who walks down the staircase, but never up. The speculation is that she broke her neck falling down the steps.

There's a spirit who inhabits the restaurant office. Another regular apparition is of a man who enjoys sitting by the fireplace, and yet another of a ghostie who is generally spotted by the front door. Others have noted the distinctive perfume scent of a dearly departed patron in the ladies’ room. Every nook seems to have its own lore...or at least 23 of them do.

But Aaron Burr and his daughter Theodosia Burr Alston are the pair most identified with the restaurant, and in fact the building is claimed to be Burr's old carriage house. There's a big honking portrait of Aaron in the house to drive home the connection. Yet with the proximity and all the baggage old Aaron carried around (that duel definitely brought on some bad juju), the jury is still out on whether he is one of the many other worlders who frequent the hideaway, although the court of popular opinion says yea.

Theodosia has quite a story, though. The tale goes that she traveled by ship from South Carolina to visit her dad at home, but was captured by pirates off North Carolina who made her walk the plank. But she made it to New York in spirit, and it's said she now has taken up residence in the restaurant, the closest remaining part of her home.

She's said to have a thing for jewelry, and her usual manifestation is to yank off the earrings of lady patrons, especially at the bar (although in this day and age, she may start targeting the guys, too.)

So if you're looking for a nice, lights down low dinner in the Big Apple with your inamorata, head to One If By Land. Who knows who the two of you will get to split that last bottle of wine with? Oh, and have her wear clip-on earrings, just to be on the safe side.

The Palace Theater Ghost

Palace Theater - 1920's from Wikipedia
H&H felt a bit artsy today, and where better to scratch that itch than at the Great White Way?

We pointed the jalopy towards Manhattan and the Palace Theater. It can be found in the heart of Broadway, between 46th & 47th Streets, near Times Square, at 1564 Broadway.

The structure is kinda blah now, dwarfed by the Marriott Marquis hotel built in the 1980s on one side and a commercial building on the other. Indeed, the theater is practically invisible behind a tidal wave of huge billboards, tucked under the skyscrapers surrounding it, and only its marquee is easily visible from the street. But it is magnificent inside, fully restored to its 1913 classical splendor, and can handle 1,784 patrons.

The Palace opened on March 24, 1913, as a vaudeville showcase. It was built by promoter Mark Beck, who called the finished theater, "the Valhalla of vaudeville."

After a shaky start, the popularity of the theatre skyrocketed after Sarah Bernhard was booked to perform there, putting it on the show biz map. From 1915-1930, all the top stars, including Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Helen Keller, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Harry Houdini and Fanny Brice tread its boards, among many other top rank show-stoppers.

And not just the biggies showed up. Lesser acts from across the country shared the dream to "play the Palace" in Times Square. Jugglers, comedians, dancers of all stripes and even animal acts would do their thing on the sidewalk in front of the Palace, hoping to catch the eye of a promoter or booking agent.

Radio, movies, and the Great Depression took their toll on the genre, though. In 1931, despite high powered acts such as Kate Smith, Burns and Allen, Sophie Tucker and William Demarest, the theater owners saw the writing on the wall, and the Palace became a movie house.

In the 1950s, an attempt to revive live entertainment was made, and stars like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland were booked, but it wasn't enough to pay the bills. It looked like curtains for the old vaudeville house.

But in the 1960s the Palace Theater was renovated, and it reopened as a true theater in 1966, hosting musicals. The opener was "Sweet Charity," and it just recently finished a long run of the stage edition of "Legally Blonde." And that's cool, because the aura of the old acts still remain, and they again have an audience.

And we're not talking about septuagenarian hoofers on the oldies circuit - we're talking the 100 or so ghosts that are supposed to haunt the Palace Theater.

There are said to be a couple of spooks in the orchestra pit. One is a white-gowned cellist who still plucks her ghostly strings, and who was spotted, accorded to industry lore, by actress Andrea McArdle when she was performing "Beauty and the Beast" at the Palace in 1999.

Another phenomena from the band's seating area is the phantom pianist. The Steinway starts to play, while the keys can be seen dancing up and down. The only thing missing is someone on the bench!

The Palace is home to a pair of spectral kids who are still reliving their theater days. A sad-looking little girl who looks down from the balcony has been reported, along with a boy who rolls toy trucks on the landing behind the mezzanine.

Sightings have been claimed of a man in a brown suit who walks quickly past the office doors at night, no doubt a worried manager counting the house to this day. Who knows - maybe it's Mark Beck, keeping an eye on his house.

There's also the presence of George, a former manager that hung himself by the "fly door." It's reported that when you pass the spot where he ended it all, you can smell the burning cigarettes he used to chain smoke.

And, of course, we have one of the Theater's most famous spooks, Judy Garland herself. Apparently, she never made it over the rainbow.

Her eternal hang-out is near a door that was built especially for her at the rear of the orchestra, used for her private entrances and exits onstage. It's said that she can be seen peeking out the door before vanishing. She's still crowd-conscious after all these years.

One ghost you hope to never see is the spirit of a vaudeville acrobat who, according to Palace legend, fell and broke his neck. He's Louis Borsalino, better known as the infamous "Palace Ghost."

The story is that in the 1950's, a well known high wire act of the era, "The Four Casting Pearls," had a gig at the Palace . But tragedy struck when tight rope walker Louis Borsalino, who was performing without a net, fell to his death to the floor below.

Stagehands say that when the theater is empty, Borsalino's apparition can be seen swinging from the rafters. He lets out a blood-curdling scream, then re-enacts his nose dive. With any luck, you don't catch a glimpse of his ghost; those who do are rumored to die shortly thereafter.

But did he really meet his Maker at the Palace?

The real story, as written in the New York Times, reported that Borsalino was only injured when he fell 18 feet during his performance on August 28, 1935, before a crowd of 800. But hey, though the story of his death is a little more dramatic, the Times article doesn't rule him out of haunting the site of his greatest professional flop.

Some believe that the restless spirit of Louis Borsalino is still embarrassed because he fell in such a famous venue, and will keep on trying to wow the crowd and finish the act to restore his rep, even in death. No luck yet, but we hope he'll keep on plugging away until he reaches the other side.

The show must go on at the Palace.

NYC's Haunted Hotels

Hotel Chelsea from Wikipedia Commons
The sun's out, the top's down, the wind's blowing in our hair, and we're cruising catty-corner across Ohio, Pennsylvania and the Empire State. We're heading for the Big Apple.

H&H is ready to gawk. We're hot to see Ellis Island, to find out if any of our forebears are haunting the portal to the Promised Land. But first, we need a place to crash.

The old Brittany Hotel on East Tenth Street looks like a fine place to park our bags. Built in 1929, it's right by the spook-laden Washington Square Park and has all the amenities we're looking for in a rent-a-room. It's penthouse was once a speakeasy, and its guests included Walter Winchell, Jerry Garcia, and Al Pacino.

What? It's a New York University dorm now? Will my 1971 Pitt ID get me a spot to flop? OK, OK, quit pushin', I'm going.

Just as well, we suppose. Old hotel regulars and the dorm residents have reported hearing mysterious music, bodiless footsteps, and the sense of being watched. The basement is supposed to be an especially eerie maze, and the penthouse is said to host a noisy, never-ending ghost gala. Party on, phantom dudes!

One roomie even reported being transported at warp speed by a house spook through the Brittany electrical system in a dream and deposited in his room's smoke detector - which woke him up when it went off. So that's how they get around!

Well, we'll just get a room in the stately Grosvenor Hotel on Fifth Avenue, opened in 1925. Dang! NYU bought up this grand old dame in 1964, made it a dorm and named it Rubin Hall. Where's a man to lay his head? Do we have to enroll at NYU to get a bed in the City that never sleeps?

Hmmm...on second thought, we might not get a good night's rest there, either. It seems the shades of former Grosvenor boarders have taken up in one of the dorm's rooms. According to rumors among Rubin students and staff, an older couple, who were the last two people to leave the building after the University bought it, have returned to reclaim their familiar former digs in the afterlife.

In another case, after learning from a Rubin RA that her room, #903, was haunted, a NYU student used her Ouija board to contact the ghost. During their chat, she discovered that the spook's name was Al and believes he was a bootlegger in the 1930s. Now that they're on a first-name basis, he doesn't lock her in the bathroom anymore. Spirits are such comedians!

One alleged ghostie there has been debunked, though. Samuel Clemens (you may know him as Mark Twain), who according to local lore does haunt the halls of the old Breevort apartments (the "Death House") down the street, doesn't hang out in the Grosvenor. He was supposed to have lived there, but since he died 15 years before it was built...

Maybe the Hotel des Artistes on 67th Street in Central Park West will have a vacancy. Oooops, just looked at the rates...H&H will be moving on. But first, a stop in its cafe for a cold one before we continue our search.

There we hear about the bar's famous spook. The help is mum, but the regulars tell of a cloudlike apparition that reaches out and touches the paying customers as it goes by. No one is really sure who the downstairs drinking hole shadow is, but the list of suspects is pretty impressive - Marcel Duchamp, Isadora Duncan, and Fiorella LaGuardia are just a few of the names under the scope.

Off we trudge to Manhattan, and the artsy Algonquin Hotel. It opened for business in 1902 and was an instant drawing card for the literary set. Across the street from the Ziegfield Folly foxes, it was also close at hand to famed eateries like Delmonico's and crowd magnets Times Square and the Great White Way.

It drew all kinds of big-time literati and actors, but its most famous crew was the acid-tongued wits of the Round Table (aka, the "Vicious Circle"), who met for lunch every day and after the shows at the Algonquin during the 1920s. Among them were Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, Heywood Broun, George Kaufman and Edna Ferber, part of a cast of dozens eager to puncture whatever show biz balloon that happened to float by.

Besides injuring the pride of countless performers, they continue to scare the pants off of innocent hotel guests. Some of the visitors claimed to have seen the ghosts of the Round Table's members lurking around the hotel halls and bar, the Oak Room, where patrons have reportedly channeled some of their famous quips. Ah, the power of spectral suggestion.

The historic Algonquin was renovated in 2004, and the updates seemed to have displeased the hotel's resident spirits. Eerie noises emanated from a 13th floor room on the night the work was completed (a hotel with a 13th floor? It deserves to be haunted!) At 3 AM, a picture of Dorothy Parker fell off the wall and shattered. Maybe her shade was a bit tipsy at that hour.

The resident cat, Matilda, is apparently well-acquainted with the sarcastic spooks.

"The cat seems to know things the rest of us don't know," Barbara McGurn, hotel historian, told Fox News in 2005. "She could be looking at people she sees whom we can't. I think she tries to make peace among the various ghosts of characters who stayed here and lived here and partied here."

The Algonquin ghost tale is so much a part of the hotel's history that every New Year's Eve, at the stroke of midnight, the kitchen staff marches around the building banging pots and pans in an effort to chase the building's apparitions to a quieter locale. It hasn't worked, so far.

As is our wont, we stopped for a beverage before inquiring about a room. The room was nice, the crowd friendly, and the bar tab for a C.C. and soda was $15. We continued on our search. We wonder if NYC has any hostels?

Hey, there's another joint. We'll try our luck here, at the Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street. It was built in 1883 as an early co-op, and it sports a guest list of cutting edge artists a mile long.

In fact, Leonard Cohen penned a song about it, "Chelsea Hotel," and Andy Warhol was inspired by its muse when he filmed "Chelsea Girl." There are at least 50 references to the Hotel Chelsea in films, songs, and books, according to Wikipedia.

As Janis Joplin said: "A lot of funky things happen at the Chelsea." Maybe she was alluding to actress Sarah Bernhardt, who used to sleep in a coffin when she lived there. But most of the funkiness can be attributed to its cast of artists who checked in, but never checked out of their NYC home. It's said that half of its rooms host a spectral presence.

John Ritchie, better known as Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, may or may not have knifed his lady in Room #100 of the hotel in 1978, but he's stayed on. It's said that you can share a ride with him occasionally on the building elevator, even though he died of a heroin OD in 1979.

Welsh poet Dylan Thomas spent his final days on the planet in an alcoholic daze. He died in the hotel after drinking himself into a stupor at the nearby White Horse Tavern and being carried back to the crib by his bar room buds. Local lore claims that his soused specter haunts both spots now.

The spooks of writers Eugene O'Neill and Thomas Wolfe have also been reported as loitering in the Algonquin. Its bar, the Star Lounge, has troubles with its electrical system, noises clattering from its back room, and lights that flicker on and off that it blames on the paranormal. And, according to a visiting psychic, it has it's own spook, an unhappy older lady that left life but couldn't bear to part with her lounge lizard friends partying downstairs.

Maybe we'll pass on this place, too. Looks like we'll spend the night curled up in the back seat of the ol' clunker. We don't think there are any spooks there, except maybe for the ghost of a Primanti Brother's sandwich.

The Ellis Island expedition? Nary a spirit to be found. Just the residual phenomena of children's laughter and crying, voices, and footsteps are all that's reported from those hallowed halls. It seems like everyone was in such a hurry to get on with their new life that they all moved on, body and soul.

Too bad. I really would have liked to have one more chat with grandpap Rocco.