Pope Francis arrives in New York City on Thursday, with a one-day schedule that includes a visit to an East Harlem school, a drive through Central Park and mass in Madison Square Garden. It’s a packed itinerary. But what if the pope was a tourist, one with some distinct interests, who needed a little guidance around the city?
The rising ocean and the old forest
Pope Francis has an acute interest in climate change – he’s the first to make it part of official church teachings and to describe it as a man-made phenomenon (a sentiment with which a vast majority of the world’s climate scientists agree).
So perhaps he’d like to visit Battery Park at the southernmost tip of Manhattan. There, he’d find an unassuming white hut where climate scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are monitoring ocean levels, and have been since 1850.
The location has proved especially valuable in monitoring rising ocean levels, because Manhattan rests on a foundation of bedrock. In other coastal areas around the country, sea levels are more difficult to monitor because coastal areas are also sinking, a phenomenon scientists attribute to sediment compression. The Battery itself could be forced to change significantly over the next century – sea levels are expected to rise by around one foot per century.
Francis might also like to visit Inwood Hill Park, considered the last natural forest on the island of Manhattan. The native Lenape people foraged for food before the island was purchased by the Dutch in 1626.
The historical center of American immigration
Francis has said he would enter the United States as “a migrant”, part of a continuing interest in the human rights of migrants, extending from Europe’s migration crisis to the Mexican-American border. And by Wednesday, he had already called himself the “son of immigrants”.
A visit to Ellis Island would take him through what was once the corridor for 17 million immigrants coming to America. Before it was closed to immigration processing, Ellis Island was the first place immigrants to the United States stopped.
Even New Yorkers adamantly opposed to crossing the Hudson might see a reason to visit, with the terminal’s views of downtown Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and the ornate Victorian terminal building, a restored brick facility of arched windows and portals.
Less well recognized than Ellis Island is the New Jersey Central Railroad shed, where roughly two-thirds of those immigrants passed through on their journeys to Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio.
The train shed is the real treasure here. Nature has taken back the 20-track wide building, and on a sunny day light spills on to the forest of brush that’s grown under the awning, over the tracks and around fluted cast-iron columns. The shed, decrepit as it is, stands as a monument to the travels many made to the heart of America.
Send the pope to the people
In the late 19th century, the amusement park was an inexpensive place for working-class women to socialize. Pope Francis has called for a “poor church, for the poor”, and called for more involvement of women in the church (though some say he has not achieved this goal). Though Coney Island was not without racism and antisemitism – black Americans and Jewish people were segregated – the amusement park did serve as one of the first places poor women could socialize freely. Today, the Brooklyn beachside peninsula is not only home to several amusement parks, but also to the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team.
Of course, the pope should meet some New Yorkers, and for that he should take in the Bronx. The borough is the most Latino in the city, with more than 54% of its residents or their families originally hailing from Latin America or the Caribbean, most of whom belong to the Catholic church. The Bronx is also New York’s most impoverished borough, with a per-capita income of just over $18,000 (citywide, that number is $32,000).
A taste of home
In case Francis wants to nip out for a slice of pizza, something he has said he misses at the Vatican, two food critics who write the Underground Gourmet column for New York magazine made some recommendations.
In Manhattan, Francis could check out Joe’s Pizza in Greenwich Village. But if he’d like to see what a real Brooklyn slice is like, he might try Di Fara Pizza in Midwood. Columnist Rob Patronite calls Di Fara’s “New York’s ‘ur-slice’ joint” and the owner Domenico DeMarco a “septuagenarian one-man pizza machine”.
If Francis is instead looking for Argentinian cuisine, he might try La Esquina Criolla in Flushing, Queens. The neighborhood is an immigrant enclave, and the restaurant has been dubbed by many reviewers as an “unpretentious place” that serves Argentinian and Uruguayan beefsteaks.
