2 Ave, Gramercy Park

2nd Avenue is not the street you think of when you think of Gramercy Park by any means. It's a typical avenue and doesn't really have any of the charm of architecture or stuffiness of residents that Gramercy is so known for. But, it does run through Gramercy Park so it deserves a fair shot. And, it's New York . . .you can find something cool on just about any street, right?
Right at the northern boundary of Gramercy on 2nd (at 23rd) there are a ton of food involved places. There's a health market, a diner, a Vietnamese place, a meat market . . you really can't go wrong on this block if you need food. I think that's pretty great considering there are some parts of town where one place is hard to find, let alone this kind of variety.
The next block is a pretty typical avenue block to me: a Church, a few random shops and unappealing apartment buildings. I'm not saying this is a bad street to live on because 2nd is pretty good as far as the avenues go . . I just don't like avenues.
Right at 21st street there's a little park (not the Park) that has all of these cool little carvings on the ground that indicate all of the kind of "Peter's" this park could have been named for. It was actually named for a Stuyvesant, but I really do enjoy the Peter and the Wolf square. The next block down has the playground extension of the park with a lot of little eateries and a market across the street. The majority of Gramercy Park is so residential that I commend 2nd Ave for donating all of its space to food.
There's a cool little Italian joint right on the corner of 2nd and 18th that I would highly recommend called Posto. The restaurant is darling and the food is pretty good.
There's a hospital on the corner of 2nd and 18th that looks exactly like a hospital (lot of hospitals on the east side as it turns out). And, directly across the street is a gorgeous building that used to be a hospital but is now apartments. The apartments are really nice but I don't know that I'd want to live in a building where so many people died. I feel like it would just be too creepy at night which is a shame because the building is really cool.
2nd Ave isn't the best place to live in the neighborhood but there are a lot of eateries and little shops so if you live off of 2nd in Gramercy, it's a pretty sweet deal.