Welcome

Richard and his sister, Erna, on the roof of 1582 First Avenue in 1937.

On the Sidewalks of New York is a memoir by Richard Paul Poethig, who was born in 1925 into a working-class, German-American family in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan. It tells the story of Richard’s journey from an “old law” tenement on 80th Street; to Good Will Sunday School (Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church’s mission on the East Side); to the College of Wooster in Ohio in 1945 before the end of World War II; to Union Theological Seminary in New York where he met his wife, Eunice, and graduated with an Masters of Divinity.

You may read the memoir on this website, or listen to Richard reading it. On  Richard’s blog you can read musings from his later years.

Banner Photo: Richard’s Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen on the street in Yorkville. Yorkville was the name given to the midsection of Manhattan’s East Side, an area which runs roughly from 72nd to 92nd Street, from the East River to Central Park.