Entertainment

Tom Brokaw: My historic New York

As one of America’s most distinguished news anchors, Tom Brokaw has a thorough understanding of the city’s importance to our national history. The Upper East Side resident, however, is concerned that many others don’t. “Whenever I go to London, I see the brass plates about who lived there and what happened there,” says Brokaw, whose new show, “The Brokaw Files,” premieres on the Military Channel Thursday and revisits notable moments Brokaw’s witnessed. “I think, ‘Why don’t we do a better job in New York of creating these walks through history?” This is his historic New York.

1. The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, at West 76th Street

This museum is right next to the Museum of Natural History, and it’s a real treasure. It’s relatively new, but they’ve done a phenomenal job of giving everyone an idea of what New York’s place in history is. I interviewed Bob Morgenthau up there. During the big war, he had a ship shot out from under him, and during the course of the interview he described to me how, after he was transferred to the Pacific, he saw the flag flying over Mt. Suribachi and Iwo Jima.

2. The Algonquin Hotel, 59 W. 44th St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues

The Algonquin is a place where everybody should go to pay homage. I always try to go in there to have a drink when I’m passing by, even to have a cup of coffee. I try to conjure up what it must have been like when the round table was going. I’ve been a longtime literary fan, not just of Dorothy Parker, but of [authors like] Sinclair Lewis. He didn’t write a lot about New York, but he did write in New York.

3. The Dakota, 1 W. 72nd St., at Central Park West

When I first came to New York, having grown up in South Dakota, I had to go see the Dakota apartment building. I asked why they named it the Dakota, and they said because it was so far out when it was created, it might as well have been in Dakota, which was still a territory at the time. Now, of course, it’s a destination for John Lennon pilgrims from around the world.

4. Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, at West 79th Street

The Museum of Natural History is one of the great treasures of the world, and it also has a connection to Teddy Roosevelt — it was his father who said we needed to have a world-class museum of natural history. When they laid the cornerstone in 1874, that was a huge statement, and it was where Teddy Roosevelt invested so much of his collection and his time.

5. Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., between 66th and 67th streets

This was the home of a National Guard outfit known as the Silk Stocking Regiment. They were mobilized to help Lincoln in the Civil War, but they treated it like a gentlemen’s club. They have extraordinary rooms upstairs, with lockers with [the soldiers’] names on them. It gives you a real portrait of what New York was like for the wealthier class during the war.

6. The Morgan Library and Museum, 29 E. 36th St., at Madison Avenue

J.P. Morgan (inset) used to start his day in the West Room. I was there doing an event recently with his grandson, and he talked about how, as a schoolboy, he would come in and watch this extraordinary figure in American life get ready for the day — read the morning newspapers, dictate to his secretary. New York is still the financial capital of the world, and here was the guy who helped make it that.

7. Grand Central Terminal, East 42nd Street at Park Avenue

Anyone who grew up from an early age in New York has a fixed image of the city, of Grand Central [Terminal], from all the films of the ’40s and ’50s, especially when the war was on. Grand Central was in all of them, and it never fails to excite me when I walk through there. I use the trains a lot, and I love going there because there’s the majesty of the hall and this mix of people. It has a unique New York character and a life of its own. It changes every day because of the population that pours through there.

8. Cooper Union, 7 E. Seventh St., at Third Avenue

Abraham Lincoln came to Cooper Union in 1860 and gave a speech about slavery, about his position on it. That speech made him the president, because he persuaded the Eastern establishment that he was up to the job. He bought a new suit of clothes, and stayed in a hotel near there. Without that visit, Lincoln may not have gotten to the White House.

ROOSEVELT ISLAND

9. FDR Four Freedoms Park, Roosevelt Island

It is a phenomenal park in the middle of the river, right next to the UN, and it’s [about] the four freedoms, from fear and want to freedom of speech and of worship. It’s a tribute to FDR, and it’s sensational — Louis Kahn, the great architect, did it. It’s a great new asset to New York, and it speaks to FDR’s New York history.

10. Ellis Island

It’s a reminder that we have always been, and will continue to be, an immigrant nation. You stand in that hallway, and put yourself in the shoes of, say, my Irish ancestors, and how they came through in the 1860s during the potato famine. When all that began to pick up at the turn of the century, names were changed, but meticulous records were kept. I went there the night they awarded recognition to Paul Tagliabue, the former NFL commissioner. He got very emotional, because his dad had been an Italian stonecutter, and they found a hand-written record of his father’s passage through Ellis Island.