DUMBO

DUMBO stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, a name the residents invented in the nineteen seventies specifically because it sounded stupid. They were artists who had moved into abandoned warehouses and they wanted to discourage developers from taking the neighbourhood seriously. It did not work.

Stand at the corner of Washington and Water Streets and look north. The Manhattan Bridge frames the Empire State Building perfectly between its stone pillars. It is one of the most photographed views in New York, and it works because of an accident of urban geometry that nobody planned.

The cobblestone streets are original — nineteenth-century Belgian block laid for horse-drawn carts serving the waterfront warehouses. Jane's Carousel, visible beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, is a nineteen twenty-two Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel that was bought at auction in nineteen eighty-four by Jane Walentas, who spent over twenty years restoring it by hand — scraping away sixty-two years of paint with an X-acto knife to reveal the original colour palette and carvings. It opened to the public in two thousand and eleven, housed in a glass pavilion designed by Jean Nouvel.

Walk here after crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. The transition from the bridge's Gothic stone towers to the neighbourhood's industrial brick is one of the best sequences in any city.