Turtle Bay: 48th Street between 3rd and 2nd avenues.

A good portion of this block comprises the Turtle Bay Gardens Historic District, a pocket of roughly 20 townhouses wedged between Midtown East and the diplomatic machinery of the United Nations, just to the east. (This block is also home to consulates too, including Malta and Jamaica.)

Take a look on Google Maps here.

767 Third Avenue | 1981

This is a handsome 39-story tower built by developer Melvyn Kaufman and design by Fox & Fowle (now FxFowle, which also designed a very similar building at 55 Broadway in Lower Manhattan). It’s nice enough, but the real action is at the street.

If smells are your thing, you’ll want to visit the lobby, which was renovated a couple of years ago and now features notes of notes of “white tea, citrus, thyme, jasmine, and amber.” The building is about half-empty today though and is set to be converted to apartments in the coming years, according to The Real Deal.

But outside, the privately owned public plaza is anchored by a three-story chess board that claims to be the largest in the world.¹ On Wednesdays at noon, workers in a cherry picker move a single piece to continue an ongoing match, according to Atlas Obscura. And at one point, there were some old-timey cars parked in front of the lobby too, but those seem to have disappeared.

William Lescaze House | 1934

With its curves, glass block walls, and streamlined design, this former brownstone is widely considered to be the first “modern” house built in New York City and one of the first International-style buildings in the United States.

Swiss-born architect William Lescaze stripped down a Civil War-era brownstone and aggressively reworked it to fit a philosophy of functionality, creating a combined home and studio, according to the Society of Architectural Historians.

It’s generally considered New York’s first private residence, with central air conditioning, which allowed for the extensive use of glass blocks. In his book, “The Making of an architect,” Lescaze noted the “three months of agony” waiting for the city to sign off on the new tool in his architectural arsenal:

They add to the amount of daylight without adding to the fuel bill, they let daylight through yet obscured the uninteresting view of the nine-story apartment house across the ''street, and they deadened street noises. An enterprising manufacturer agreed to make the first American glass blocks for us in his plant in Illinois. But what an epic battle we had with the Code! It lasted at least three months, back and forth.

Lescaze died here in 1969. In recent years, the owners have tried to renovate the rear of the landmarked building, to the chagrin of some preservationists. (These interior photos from a 2018 property listing are worth a look.)

Lescaze had gone on to design a few other buildings in New York City and elsewhere. (The PSFS Building in Philly goes hard.) In the 1960s, 30 years after building his house, he designed 777 Third Avenue on a corner just two doors down from this house.

228 East 48th Street | 1899

After taking a couple of photos of this classic Italianate rowhouse, it was a nice surprise to learn that it was the former home of writer Kurt Vonnegut and his family.

He moved to East 48th Street in 1973, and lived and wrote here until his death in 2007. He wrote “Slapstick” while living here, noting of the neighborhood: “I am still not clear how I got here. There are no turtles. There is no bay.”

On a snowy January day in 2000, a German consular official² noticed smoke coming from the townhouse and ran over to help Vonnegut try to douse the flames, which were started by a lit cigarette, according to the New York Post. Eventually the firefighters arrived to put out the fire.

Speaking the following year at a public memorial for neighborhood firefighters killed in the September 11 attacks, the writer recalled the firefighters who helped save his house: “Whether some who did that for me are dead now I have not dared to ask.”

Turtle Bay Gardens

The rowhouses on this stretch are part of Turtle Bay Gardens, a distinctive enclave of older rowhouses that were assembled and renovated in the 1920s. There are nine here, with the rest one block north on East 49th.

What sets this apart from other mini historical districts isn’t just the coordinated facades, but the shared rear gardens that were merged into a single communal green space accessible only to residents.

Over the years, some of these have been home to an impressive roster of tenants including Stephen Sondheim, Bob Dylan, and Mary Kate Olsen. Rather than summarize the rich history of this place, I strongly recommend reading this insanely exhaustive article in Curbed.

What’s Good: I’ll be honest here: I picked this block only because I wanted to take photos of the Lescaze House. But after a few trips, I was convinced this stretch was too quiet and too boring. But after doing the research, it turns out to be fascinating, even if it doesn’t scream for attention at first glance. Happy to be proved wrong. So it goes.

What’s Not: Even considering all of the history, this stretch can be a little bland—but that’s probably a good thing, if you live there.

Block rating: 5.5/10