John F. Kennedy Boulevard East (or simply Boulevard East, as it's known) slithers high along the edge of the southern Palisade cliffs, linking the towns of Weehawken, West New York, Guttenberg, and North Bergen, New Jersey. Just a mile across the Hudson River from midtown Manhattan, this three-mile long road wedged between the Lincoln Tunnel and George Washington Bridge is dotted with quiet pocket parks perfect for admiring the spectacular view, while also helping to tell the story of a vibrant, changing community.

Start at the southern end of the promenade, where Hamilton Park commemorates the site of the infamous 1804 duel in which Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton dead. Weehawken's popularity among duelists of the time owed less to the scenic vistas and more to the fact that dueling was already outlawed in early 1800's New York, necessitating a quick paddle across the Hudson to the wilds of New Jersey. I couldn't find anything in the park noting the death spot (morbid me!), but a few feet down Hamilton Road, sure enough, was a bust of Hamilton, along with the very rock his head lay on as he died.

There's no shortage of memorials along Boulevard East. A few yards up river, the then largely German-Italian-Slavic post-war community honored their fallen soldiers and sailors; a mile or so further up in West New York, the Cuban community - arising from the next great wave of immigration - has erected monuments to freedom fighter José Martí and latter-day Cuban activists. Today, the dominant ethnic group in the densely packed inner neighborhoods is increasingly Colombian, via the recent exodus that has turned parts of New York and South Florida into little Bogotas, Calis, and Medellins. Turn up 48th or 60th Street towards Park Avenue, and you'll find one result of this: numerous Colombian and Central American restaurants of both the posh and hole-in-the-wall variety, alongside the usual neighborhood Chinese and pizza joints. Too thirsty to walk? Head to Kawabae (at 47th St. and Boulevard East), a friendly, comfortable sushi bar on the bluff's edge where you can sip Japanese beer and munch on California rolls while watching the ferries cross back and forth below.

The towns stitched together by Boulevard East were once home to a world-renowned embroidery industry, while the deep-water port on the Hudson was a vital cog in the Northeastern industrial machine.

Gentrification, having already conquered Hoboken to the south, has grown over Boulevard East like a bejeweled crust and is poised to encroach on the working-class neighborhoods within. Yet Boulevard East remains almost completely residential, with little room for esoteric cafes and swanky bars amongst the hodge-podge of modernist towers, renovated brick co-ops, and faux-Mediterranean villas that leads to picnic-friendly James J. Braddock North Hudson Park at its northernmost point.

A Brooklyn-born friend of mine once remarked unkindly, "The best thing about New Jersey is that you can see New York from there." Take that negatively if you like, but I see things differently after living in the area through the past year. Somewhat less paradoxical than my address - Boulevard East, West New York, New Jersey - was the fact that it is easier to take in New York City from without than from within.

Memorials also abounded along Boulevard East in 9/11's aftermath, like everywhere else in the New York area: burning and burnt-out candles, flowers, flags, poems in English and Spanish, impromptu shrines and pictures of the missing, some of whom may well have lived in the streets nearby. Those tributes are gone now, and midtown and downtown Manhattan may never again resemble sister summits of a mountain range as I once imagined from this vantage point. But looking out from Boulevard East at different times in different seasons will always be like watching a beguiling time-lapse film.

At dawn, the city seems somehow a bit lower, indistinct from the long bands of tobacco-tan clouds behind it, while lit-up jets slowly rise out of JFK across the city. Come midday, the light flattens out, casting no shadow, and the city looks forged out of a single piece, its airspace and waterways once again alive with ferries, helicopters, airplanes, boats and barges like an enormous multi-tiered freeway. Around sunset, it becomes a city of golden glass and steel, profoundly three-dimensional, while cruise ships back out of the docks and sail slowly towards open water. Manhattan at night is still Manhattan At Night, a profile unlike any other in the world.

And then there's the New York skyline of the wee hours. Riding along Boulevard East after a long night out, The City That Never Sleeps looks pretty drowsy, as if someone turned it down with a dimmer switch. It's silent, still, resonant, and bewitching enough to keep you standing at the edge a little longer.

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"Michael Koch refers to 'faux Mediterranean villas' on Boulevard East. I guess it's hip to refer to everything as 'faux' when you don't know it's origins and want to make a faux socio-economic statement. On that stretch of Boulevard East there are, to the best of my knowledge, only two remaining 'Mediterranean'-style villas, one of which (on the corner of 78th St.) is where I grew up and lived the first half of my life. If Mr Koch had gotten himself inside he would have found magnificent, carved, in situ plaster ceilings, not the faux moulded ones so popular with McMansion builders. He might also have found out that the builder was my grandfather, Gaetano Mango, an Italian immigrant building contractor whose large firm built many of the surrounding structures before the Great Depression The villas (some of which were demolished to build the monstrosity known as the Parker Imperial), were built by friends and colleagues of my grandfather. Directly across 78th St. was the Kramer house, the first house built on Boulevard East (1912). Reflecting Mr. Kramer's German origins, it was a solid yellow brick edifice with a forbidding basalt retaining wall. If my birth home seems faux, (I prefer hybrid) it's because my grandfather used a German architect by the name of Lugosh [sic] who had his practice in Union City. Together they built the house my grandparents remembered from their childhoods in Italy. So, if an Italian immigrant builds a house from his memories, is it really 'faux'?

There is a social history on this side of the pond beyond New York. In fact, the whole area Michael describes has suffered from "transhudsonphobia," or the fear of crossing the Hudson River to find nothing of cultural value. Opera groups founded by immigrants foundered because it was so easy to catch the ferry and go to the Met. I want to show that not everything was built in an Old World style so that masses of upwardly mobile oafs could feel cultivated and shopisticated. Michael described the view of New York, which is fine, but I felt he overlooked a lot of the history of the area, which is connected to 'The City'. He described the inner neighborhoods as working class but that is not how they started. They were, and to a large extent still are, middle class. Our block alone had four doctors, two lawyers and a dentist." Tina Lettieri