Somewhere in Manhattan, a lone peacock struts past the quince and laurel in a churchyard garden; further uptown, a Beaux-Arts mansion opens its doors onto a massive, storied collection of Spanish art; in Brooklyn, hung-over yogis rise and unroll their mats under a ceiling draped in silk. These are the sorts of tranquil scenes toward which Siobhan Wall's "Quiet New York" (Frances Lincoln, out today)— a slim, illustrated guide to the city's "hidden corners and unexpected vistas" — steers both tourists and natives seeking solace and refuge in a city where both are hard to come by.
'Quiet' and 'New York' are two terms rarely uttered in tandem, but why not? These are the days when blogs detail the best places to publicly cry in the city, when it's revealed that, among the nacho stands and Nets gear, the Barclays Center contains a meditation room. In its subtle and unassuming manner, the book — the latest in a series of guides to Quiet London, Amsterdam, and Paris — seeks out uncommon calm everywhere from lesser-known museums to secret gardens and idiosyncratic shops. Beloved stalwarts are listed alongside imperfect idylls — the author is as drawn to the boat wrecks on the battered Greenpoint waterfront as she is to the plotted plantings and medieval tapestries of the Cloisters — but the book's primary criterion for inclusion is a lack of noise. The restaurants and bars Wall mentions play no ambient music; at one establishment, bartenders shush the patrons, and even the resident dog in an East Village guesthouse is described as "placid."
But rather than inspiring stillness, this book will send you wandering — to private collections of art and antiquities, to the sunken Staten Island kitchen where the photographer Alice Austen sifted through her glass-plate negatives, or to the cramped cottage where Edgar Allan Poe lived with his dying wife and wrote of his Annabel Lee; it will take you searching for red-tailed hawks in a bird sanctuary in the Bronx or sitting down with one of the 60,000 books of poetry in a free library overlooking the Hudson River. E.B. White wrote in 1949, "On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy." Even now, as its numbers swell past 8.4 million and its moments of Zen seem increasingly rare, this is no less true.
Related: Finding the Quiet City (Interactive Feature) | Behind City's Painful Din, Culprits High and Low
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