Very early this morning I jogged down Broadway and then off over to the Lower East Side to an area of the city, between Houston Street  and 23rd Street, that was once a thriving German neighbourhood, known as Kleindeutschland (‘Little Germany’). I came to do some local research for my magnum opus. If you know what you are looking for there are still a number of traces of the area’s German past. These include the Freie Bibliothek und Lesehall (New York’s first free lending library), the German dispensary (both in the picture) and the German-American Shooting Club, with its legend ‘Einickeit Macht Stark’ still proudly emblazoned on the brown stone facade. If you look at a map of New York, you’ll see that Broadway doesn’t at all respect DeWitt Clinton’s grid system. This is because it follows an ancient Lenape pathway – probably the native Indians’ regular route to the end of the island. Thus, as I jogged back up Broadway to our hotel I was following one of the few traces of the island’s original inhabitants.