Thursday March 3rd to Tuesday March 8th. I think.
One of the the greatest places to travel if you like big cities. New York. My Southwest voucher paid for half the flight so (aside from all the tasty-but-expensive meals) my trip cost like $70. Pretty sweet. I brought up the idea last fall because of my voucher and because New York is awesome, and conveniently Josh said him and Andrea had been meaning to visit his sister Martha and her husband Chris anyway. So we made it happen. I was stoked to go back to New York. In retrospect I realized I got spoiled in Europe traveling with other architects :)
The weather was chilly but not cold, and pretty sunny aside from the one day it rained, so it was pretty nice. We had a flight at bloody-early-as-hell in the morning, so by the time we even landed in NY at LaGuardia it was only like 11 or something. We got on a bus, took it to a train in Astoria (in Queens) and then took the train to Midtown to meet up with Martha.
We got off the subway here, on Fifth Ave., on the corner of Central Park, blocks from the glass cube Apple Store. The trip was starting off good.
I didn't even realize it was this close and was checking my phone for it, until I realized it was right there. The glass cube. I think purportedly the most profitable Apple Store in the world, at least maybe until they built the Shanghai one that is just like this except a glass TUBE, in the middle of a circular plaza. Pretty awesome looking.
Even if it wasn't an Apple Store, its still a cube made out of glass. Pretty awesome. But I've been to a lot of Apple Stores, so its fun to see more. I saw three in NYC...
And the view down Fifth Ave., south towards the Empire State. You could see the building from all over the place, so it was interesting to see how it showed up in between other buildings. And it gleams. So I took a lotta pictures of it.
Forgive me but this is gonna be mostly buildings (as if most posts aren't). But there are a lot worth taking pictures of in NY. This one just had some folded glass facade.
It was right across the street from where we met Martha after work at the IBM building on Park or Madison Ave., I forget which. In Midtown though. Close to some iconic buildings I wanted to see. Then I just found lots of photo-worthy buildings. Look at this one- it looks like 1920s Vienna.
We hopped in a cab to take us to the PATH, the train that goes to across the river to Hoboken, NJ where Martha lives. So us four and our luggage got in and got a good ride through the city.
I was snapping photos out the window, like this church- the cabby and Martha didn't know what it was...cmon guys throw me a bone :)
This was as close as I got to the Waldorf-Astoria, and probably as close as I'll get to ever living out the movie Serendipity.
We drove right by Grand Central Station (technically Grand Central Terminal, apparently) and I got a good view of it with the Chrysler Building in the background, out the window of the cab. Its actually a much cooler building than the Empire State building, really.
Then we got on foot, briefly, to get on the PATH, right on Broadway near Empire State. We got on/off there quite a few times. I liked this footbridge path thingy overhead connecting buildings, it reminded me of Spain. They do that a lot in Europe, not so much in the US.
Hoboken. The young yuppie suburb of New York basically. Supposedly the most bars per resident (or was it per square mile?) in the country. The first one we saw was a little pub whose entrance was a red phone booth. I dig it.
Martha pointed out Carlos' Bake Shop, where they film Cake Boss, which is apparently a show...about cakes. And bosses...?
It was on the main street in downtown Hoboken, which is very pedestrian- lots of people making the little trek to and from the PATH because they all work in New York. I wouldn't mind working in New York. Or living in New York. I just don't wanna not live in Chicago :) Or live that far from South Bend...I need to make my first million soon so I can get a little apartment in New York and fly back and forth whenever I want. I'm not joking about the million, though I plan on making more than just one.
Also downtown Hoboken- a former bank now occupied by a Walgreens. I never got inside to check it out, but its an interesting reuse of a building for sure. Probably the nicest Walgreens ever!
After we dropped our stuff off at Martha and Chris', we ventured out a bit while Martha worked from home. We checked out Carlos', because the line was almost nonexistent, and Mar said normally it was like around the block (which we learned, it really was, every other day).
I got one of the better cannolis I've ever had. They had a lot of wonderful looking eats though.
We got our pastries and walked out towards the park, to get a good view of the city across the water. And I knew there were some buildings I wanted to see from there too :)
Josh and Andrea and I kept walking around, and found trees lining this jogging path that were all carved up. Someone carved J+A!
As the sun started to go down, the city lit up. This is less than half the skyline. Empire State on the right, with the towers of the Conde Nast buildings and new New York Times buildings on the left end. It was starting to look pretty cool.
Once we got back from wandering around, Chris was home from work so we headed back into the city- they had many plans for us to go to different restaurants and things, and that first night was McSorley's- a bar Josh had been to before, that sells beers in twos only (two 8oz mugs) and all they have is light or dark. I also discovered that it was right across the street from Cooper Union, one of the more well-known architecture schools in the country. And they had a new building, which I could immediately tell whom it was built by. Not terribly attractive. Wish I'd had time to go inside.
Josh decided to carry Andrea into the bar.
Us with our many pairs of mugs of beer. The dark was pretty delicious, and it was only $5 for two beers, so it wasn't too bad. They may have even been almost 10oz.
If it wasn't such an awesome bar, it would have felt like a total dive. It still felt like a dive, but an awesome dive. My dad would like it. Every inch of the walls was covered in framed things, like copies of the Constitution and random old documents and photos and ads. Very interesting.
And the lighting was as warm yellow as it looked, thanks to my sweet sweet camera I was able to capture it. It was lots of small tables and small chairs, crammed together. You made friends with the people sharing your table. Lots of college students from what I gathered...NYU wasn't super far away from there either.
Even the urinals in the bathroom were old and kinda cool looking. They're like giant standing up bathtubs! I always hafta make sure I'm the only one in the bathroom if I'm taking pictures...otherwise yknow, people think thats kinda weird :)
We had quite a few of those double beers (pretty sure every time we went out for drinks or food I spent at least 25 if not 30 bucks- the trip got expensive fast!) This after we spent 20 some at a Cuban place that was pretty good, but took us some roundabout wandering to find, right off Houston St.
We also made some friends, cause Chris showed some of the youngins how to do a waterfall drinking out of two mugs at once with one hand- holding em both so one cascaded into the other while you were drinking out of it. And then we got them to try a three-beer waterfall. Messy, but it worked. Sweet. I have some good videos.
At the end of the night, back into the underground to get home. What a compelling visual! Like something out of The Matrix or something.
The next day- Midtown again. Empire State again. A Flatiron-type building (Broadway is an angled street so it created a few of those wedge-shaped buildings at intersections). The Empire State really is a stately, classic looking building though.
A
AClassic old skyscraper building, before they had artificial ventilation or even much artificial lighting- narrow fingers of the building connected at the back by the hallway to the elevators, narrow so they could get light and ventilation to all the offices/apartments in the building.
This building reminded me of the Norman Foster bank in...Shanghai? Not that attractive, but interesting...not even sure if those external trusses were structural or not, but I certainly hope so. I think so.
We were walking around the whole afternoon (once we finally got going in the morning in Hoboken) and so I was asking politely to stop by different buildings so I could start checking things off my list...and there were like 80 some things on my list.
New York Public Library. I guess this is where part of Ghostbusters was filmed.
Some buildings in Midtown. I forget which building that is but its next to the Conde Nast building, one of many with a tower on top.
Then we found this little square, I forget the name of it, but it had these great trees. And they were taking down some temporary stage in the middle. It was a quaint little place. That looked like they'd probably build a Starbucks there soon.
The we got to Grand Central Station (also my request). You don't realize how many movies its in until you're inside. Wow. And my great camera got the nice warm glow of the old-timey lightbulbs in the chandeliers. Pretty magical.
We also met up here with Andrea's friend Laura who was in town all the way from Panama, visiting friends (part of the reason we went that particular weekend).
Back outside, walking around more, there was a wedding party taking pictures in the middle of the street near the Chrysler Building. And this was their stretch limo. Probably pretty expensive to have a wedding IN NYC :D
We wandered over towards the UN complex so I could check it out, and stopped in some grocery that was actually pretty big inside, and had these incredible pastries and pies and tarts inside. Incredible.
UN. Some newer building, across the street from the soaring curvy concrete buildings you normally see on the news.
We grabbed some coffee and then made our dinner plans, another place Josh had been before, another place totally worth going to. Also in East Village pretty close to Mc Sorley's really, called Panna II, an Indian place FULL of Christmas lights. FULL. Chili peppers, soccer balls, you name it.
See for yourself-
It was so dense with lights that you couldn't even stand all the way up. And the restaurant was only like 10 feet wide too. But it was amazing. Just the lights!
We also had Chris' ND friend Chris Malone with us (sitting by me), who came in for the weekend from Boston to visit/hang out with us. He had come in that afternoon as well and hung out for the weekend, which was a nice bonus- Josh and I knew him from our dorm at ND so it was good to see him.
This is what it looks like from the outside. It was upstairs off the street to the right, and there was another to the left, and two places below it. But apparently the place we went to was the best.
We got there pretty early, like 6pm, and when we left there was a little line down the stairs. The walls were covered in wrapping paper and mirrors, and they would even bring out some tasty banana ice cream if you pretended it was Andrea's birthday, hypothetically, and they'd turn off all the lights and sing some song and clap their hands. The place was nuts.
After that, of course Martha and Chris had more plans for us. We hopped the subway to Brooklyn, to the Brooklyn Brewery. I thought it would be like a tour and a beer, but it was basically warehouse space next to the brewery that they turned into a big bar space. It was a good time.
Here's all the beers they offer.
You basically buy a certain number of poker chips, and turn the chips in for beers. They had big round tables to sit at, so once again you made friends with whoever was by you.
These crazies were playing some horse-racing thing. Wtf.
Another night of double expenses of going out to eat and THEN going out for drinks- bloody hell my jobless pocketbook was hurting, but we were in New York, and there to have fun, and we WERE having fun.
Back in Hoboken, on the way home, we discovered something truly amazing.
A pile of mannequin parts laying in the street for the trash pickup. After Josh and Chris admired a few of the parts, they got to dueling with them- holding legs and arms up like they were swords. Amazing. Some other guys on their way home from the bars got in on the action. One of the fingers broke off on the hand I was poking people with.
The next morning we got breakfast (brunch, really, after two late nights out- McSorleys was LATE...) at this place down the street called the Bagel Smashery. Where they basically make bagel sandwiches and smash em together and toast em. Martha was making a mess out of hers. I think it was Chili Cheese or something delicious like that.
They also had green bagels, because it was the weekend before St. Patty's Day, and that was the weekend Hoboken had their big parade. We went and checked it out- this is the main street (Washington, if I remember right) and across the street you can see Carlos' Cake Shop. And you can see people in the windows up above watching the parade. Cool place to live.
There's Carlos, the Cake Boss. Everyone apparently knew who he was and stuff. Lots of cheers. I've never seen the show but whatever.
We walked down the street just to walk, check out the crowd, and go meet up with one of Andrea's friends really quick. I thought this chicken place's name was hilarious.
Walking back to their apartment afterwards, there was this AWESOME church. Looked Irish. Wish I coulda gone inside.
I think the rest of that day was basically spent hanging out at Chris and Martha's. We played lots and lots of poker, had some beers, ate some great pulled pork they made in the Crock Pot, and generally stayed up too late.
The next morning (not very early though) we headed back into the city, again, on more adventures, to have more meals and drinks and spend more money. Ouch but fun. Some french place in Midtown where we had an early afternoon brunch with Andrea's friend Laura and a couple of her friends also. Chris and Josh got girly flavored mimosas.
After that we were headed up to the Natural History Museum on the Upper West Side. Sounded fun, and would give us a chance to see Central Park and some other buildings nearby, but I was seeing the time rapidly disappear and realized we were spending most of our time eating and drinking and resting and not seeing enough stuff. So I split and said I'd catch up with them at the museum an hour after they got there. I went to Lincoln Center area, where the opera house and Julliard school and other artsy things were, at the southwest corner of Central Park, where there were quite a few things I wanted to see.
This was some plaza space that looks like they use it as amphitheatre space. As you can tell it was raining but that didn't deter me. I was on a mission to see buildings. And thankfully it wasn't that cold.
There was also this random bandshell, I don't even remember where it was, tucked back in between buildings in this little park area.
More big concrete buildings. They have the NYC ballet here- this plaza and fountain were in Black Swan.
Pretty cool blown art glass chandelier thing. By a guy whose name evades me at the moment. But he sells these pieces for like 5 and 6 figures.
Then I was off a few blocks south to see a very important one. Norman Foster's Hearst Tower. That building with the diamonds on it.
Here's a reflection of it in another building. I like reflections.
And there it is. Apparently I should have gone inside, but I didn't even try cause it was Sunday and I figured there was no way it was open. But I shoulda looked through the windows cause it has a two-story atrium. Oh well. Next time. Oops.
The most interesting thing is that those columns go down through the old existing building to hit the ground and hold up the building.
I have no idea what this building was but that's the beauty of just walking around a city- you always stumble across stuff worth seeing. You could see right through the building!
It was the corner post of Columbus Circle, which was basically like a 4 lane roundabout with a big Columbus statue up on a column in the middle. Much like the one in Barcelona, in fact.
There were a TON of cabs there. CNN headquarters I guess is there. I saw a wedding going on way up in some glass-walled huge space.
I headed into Central Park to meander my way up to the museum, through the park so I had a chance to see it. It was cool to see Hearst Tower in the distance, and also cool to see the bedrock all over poking through the grass. Pretty cool- that's why they call Manhattan "The Rock". Yknow, that movie about the prison on the island, it was based in Central Park...yeah no that was Alcatraz.
The museum. That's all I hafta say about that. It was a good museum but made me anxious to be spending time inside a building with all of NYC going on around me.
Afterwards we cut across Central Park, and there was a cool misty view of the city, sort of an abstracted view of the city, worth a picture, worth putting on your wall I think.
We walked past The Met and close to another museum, and I requested we stop by The Guggenheim, which no one else seemed to really know or care about- I said it was maybe one of the most important buildings in the US, which Martha said I said about a bunch of buildings- I said no, I said that about this one multiple times :)
Frank Lloyd Wright. A masterpiece structurally as well.
Through the first floor windows into the atrium space. But the basement windows are cool too. The ridiculous drag is we got there five minutes after it closed- not that we would have bought tickets and gone in, but at least I could have dropped the "I'm an architect" excuse and gotten into the atrium :)
FLW liked embedding these red tiles in his buildings, with his signature on them. Something he picked up in his travels in Japan.
The first floor restaurant, called the...Something, was recently redone I think by Jean Nouvel but I forget for sure. It was definitely design-y.
After that, and the reason we were on the Upper East Side, we were going to catch a train up to the Bronx to go to the original Little Italy. But after getting on the train, we called an audible mid-stream because it was late and we (they) were tired and hungry and it was gonna be too much to get up there, so we changed those plans to the next day and headed back to Midtown. We called Andrea's friend Laura and friends, who were meeting us there, and they met us for Korean BBQ instead. Which was delicious, though once again expensive, and I had a flight of sakes.
Here was some of our little dishes of...stuff.
The last full day we had there was my time to rock. I had most of one day to basically see all of Manhattan from Central Park to Battery Park, on foot. I went in with Martha in the morning to get an early start while Josh and Andrea snoozed.
And I just started taking pictures of interesting buildings. A glass entry added onto a brick building.
I had started out near Empire State and went south to catch the Flatiron Building, which had a nice tribute to the fact that the city's first skyscraper was built by a Chicagoan.
I went inside the Flatiron to check it out. The lobby was almost nonexistent, but it had a small plaque inside and some pictures.
I was walking up Broadway, which has nice median areas for pedestrians, and some little park spots, like where this recycling bin was.
I thought this building was cool for having this glassy area stuck in underneath the older building.
The New York Times Building. By Renzo Piano. I've seen a few of his buildings now. I'd be going there later to meet up with a friend.
This was time number two or three walking through Times Square that day. Its mesmerizing. I love all the digital video screens, most of which were just ads. Not even that many people there, but always busy. Though pretty dead at night.
I went to the New York Times building to meet up with a friend of a friend, who was soon to become just a friend ;) I had never met him, but he was an architect and ND grad and lived in New York, so why not meet up and be friends? And thankfully he had time to walk me around the city for half a day.
The lobby was brightly colored, I enjoyed it.
The elevator button was, after I thought about it, quite amazing... rather than pressing "Up" and then pressing the floor number in the elevator, you pressed the number you wanted on one central keypad, and it told you which elevator car to proceed to. I thought it was pretty interesting.
My friend Jeff took me up in the Times building and showed me the view from a little lawyer's office where he was working.
Back downstairs, the entry. The screen on the outside is made of horizontal ceramic rods that were used to screen the windows, absorb sun and heat.
Jeff and I started walking around. I told him what I wanted to see and where I wanted to go, and he accompanied me and gave bits and pieces of info about different neighborhoods and buildings. Here was the Westin Hotel.
A police tower in Times Square that just stands up and I guess someone sits up there and just watches!
Oh, and apparently these pictures are all SORTS of out of order. I don't know how. I don't care. These are from before I met up with Jeff. M&Ms store with giant tubes of each color.
Rockefeller Center. The Microsoft touch table. It hasn't really caught on but I hadn't even seen it anywhere except demo videos...the whole thing is a touch panel with projectors underneath and you can go through photos, Google Maps, all kinds of stuff. Very responsive, quite awesome. Someday they're envisioning that you could have it at a restaurant and use it to order, and even scan your credit card on it. Sweet. I want one.
I never realized there was a glassy downstairs area where you could watch the ice rink.
I found a little Nintendo Store and went in hoping to see the new 3D Nintendo handheld system. No luck. But they did have a display case with a "Nintendo Museum" in it, which had some old gaming systems I'd never seen...and then also had a Game Boy that survived a bombing in the Persian Gulf. And still works. Totally melted. Crazy!
Also found a Lego Store. Rockefeller Center has quite a few buildings with retail shops all over the block. Can't pass up the chance to see some cool Legos...they had a sign inside, and an Asian family who wanted to take a picture of their kid in front of it. Ha!
They also had a tiny Lego model of the entire Rockefeller Center with ice rink and everything. Do you think that inside the model of the Lego Store down there, there is a tiny tiny tiny model of the Rockefeller Center?
After some of the more touristy stuff, I went on to seek out my architecture stuff. The Seagram Building for example, by Mies van der Rohe. He built a lotta buildings in Chicago and only this one in NY. One thing Chicago has on NYC :)
Then I was looking for the Lever House, another marvel of Modern architecture, cause I knew it was nearby. I wheeled around and- holy crap!- there it was across the street. What a nice location. One of the first famous glass boxes, sealed off from the outside because of the invention of air conditioning. Sitting on a slab that was on columns.
The interesting thing about the slab is that its a total lie. Its actually a donut that has a courtyard in the middle- which is kinda nice, a little break from the busyness of the street. And from in there I was able to get a picture of the Seagram Building across the street at the same time :D
The Casa Lever, the restaurant on the first floor. Also famous just because the interior was designed by an architect, the former curator of the MoMA, who is partly responsible for the US fame of Mies van der Rohe.
This might be St. Patrick's, across the street from the Rockefeller Center. I forget. I think its some other church. Yeah it definitely is, because they were having mass at St. Patrick's when I was there. Why did I just type my entire internal monologue? I should just erase it. Nah I'll leave it. No one reads this anyway.
The MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) was nearby also, so I went to check out the gift shop there because I always heard they had cool stuff- I spent the first few hours of my day just wandering around Midtown because there's so much to see there.
I didn't go into the museum itself because once again, no time. Unfortunate. Some time I'll just spend two days in the city just going to museums.
Back near Times Square (yeah these pictures are just all over the place) here's some more digital billboards. Just love all the bright lights and colors.
A picture from after I met up with Jeff, which I think was around 2 maybe? We walked down 8th street, on the back side of gorgeous lovely Madison Square Garden. Another view of the Empire State Building.
The reason we went over that way was partly because Jeff wanted to stop by a very prestigious architecture firm, one of the most famous in the world- he had interned there. They do very classical looking buildings, so they like hiring people like Jeff who went to ND and can still do watercolors :)
We went up there and walked around the lobby a bit and checked out some of their models, like this one below (all pictures are the same building). Kinda boring but at the same time very detailed. And very large.
The interesting thing is just the day before I had walked right by this street front, so I thought it looked familiar- there was a Best Buy there that I peed at :D
Then when I got back to Chicago I later read an article online about the building and apparently it was the most successful residential development ever in New York City. Its on the southwest corner of Central Park. You'd think in this economy that a huge building like this wouldn't be such a good idea. But they had total sales in condos I think over 1 billion dollars.
Before we went to their firm, we met up with Josh near Madison Square Garden also, who I think was done with accompanying Andrea shopping :) We wandered down 11th street near the western edge of Manhattan until we got to the Highline, which is an old elevated railway line that got turned into a public park recently, and is still getting expanded.
Here is a view of the city from up there.
An architect named Neil Denari, who came and lecture at UIC while I was there, designed and built a little condo building that cantilevered a bit out into the airspace over the Highline. Cool looking building, I liked that you see the giant steel trusses that held it up.
There was also some other giant silvery building nearby there. Not sure who did it but it was uh, very shiny.
This building was next to Denari's. Also kinda interesting. The Denari building was exposed on three sides, so those condos would have great views, because they all look over the Highline and then towards the skyline.
We took a little detour before finally getting up on the Highline, and went to see one of the buildings I was most excited about- Frank Gehry's IAC building. Kind of in a weird place out by the water, on the edge of Chelsea I guess or the Meat Packing District/Hell's Kitchen?
Sweet building though, first one in the world with curved glass that was flat but then was hooked into place in curves because they found glass with a certain amount of flexibility to it.
It looked like billowing sails. It also looked like it had dark bands on top of white glass, but in reality the dark bands were where the glass was clear- the white was made of tiny dots printed on the glass that absorb and reflected sunlight/heat, to keep the building shaded and cooled.
It was also next to another famous architect building, a Jean Nouvel condo with a modular system of panelized windows that created a random kind of effect. And the windows were tilted at different angles, which created interesting reflections and such.
The interesting thing about the Nouvel building is that its all glassy on two sides but then the other two sides were totally flat painted black, like a completely different building. Not precisely sure what he was trying to do here, artistically. Interesting effect.
I thought this tiny little housey thing was amzing. In bright yellow. Its size reminded me of Dublin.
Still walking- I had started out at probably 56th or so, and the Highline was down to like 14th, and then we continued down past that. The first time I was in New York I also enjoyed these things, and while I realize that NYC is much more dense that Chicago, I'm still kinda surprised they don't have any of these things there. Pretty cool.
Dunno what this was but it looked like a cool place to live and an old building. I'm sure places there cost a bloody fortune, much like everything else in NYC.
Here you go, finally some pictures of the Highline. Just a little bench, but I like how it extends right up out of the ground.
Here's what it looked like up there. Stone pavers to walk on that integrated into the existing train rails and then into some natural grasses and stuff, to try and provide some more green space for people in the city. Right then a ton of volunteers were rehabbing the park for the spring, and also working on the expansion project. LOTS of people were working up there!
Now THIS was kinda cool- an art piece up on the Highline, and you were supposed to view those buildings in the above photo, through this thing, which kinda abstracted them. It was odd, but sorta cool at the same time...and seemed like it'd be hard to design just right, but maybe not.
Another part of the Highline that went across a street, where you could see in a little theater-like space and watch the cars drive by through the windows.
The Highline went underneath slash through this building. Can't imagine what it would have been like to work in the building with a train going by. But they stopped using the tracks years ago as far as I know.
Another random cool building. No shortage of those in New York.
A new building on top of an old building. Told you I'd be posting lots of pictures of buildings! I probably should have broken this up into two posts, but whatever.
The Standard Hotel. Apparently its a pretty hip ritzy hotel in other cities too, and this one just opened recently, straddling the Highline. Rooms are quite expensive I'm sure. People said that if you're on the Highline you'll occasionally see a random person like naked in their room opening the curtains, or walking around their room. This part of the park also had quite a bit of stuff growing, which was nice.
This was supposedly some old sleezy bar that had been there forever, according to Jeff. I think he had some story about it but I forget.
These antiqued metal panels were a cool way to update this building, making it look like the front was woven together Good work, architect.
We stopped by the Chelsea Market, which used to be I think a Kraft factory. It was now a ton of little shops inside, a verrrrry long building, happening!
A campus building under construction. Had cool metal panels that were probably laser cut, into viny patterns.
Thankfully Jeff had a secret to show me- a building that wasn't on my radar! Herzog and de Meuron condo, not very big, super expensive, interesting looking.
The first floor was decorated with big metal panels. Then the rest of it had some kind of exterior frame that almost looked like pipes, which if you look close were covered in a greenish transparent polycarbonate or something, which made them look like reflecty balloons or something.
Another nearby building, with a few windows popping out that were a nice gesture, albeit kinda slight.
Continuing on south, my quest to see the most buildings ever in one day on foot...another important building. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, by SANAA who just won the Pritzker Prize last year (the Nobel Prize equivalent of architecture).
Its a bunch of volumes stacked on top of each other, the whole thing covered in kind of a chain-link mesh sorta stuff. Interesting thing is that Soho (especially near the museum) is a very mixed area...there was a pretty derelict looking soup kitchen next door, for example.
We walked past Old St. Patrick's, and it had a little wall around the cemetery or whatever was next to it...which was very old and very wavy.
Also found the Prada Store, the inside designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Josh left us by this time to go meet up with Andrea and Martha after work, to head up to make good on our plans from the night before to go to the original Little Italy in the Bronx. I told em I'd catch up with them.
One of the more unique Apple Stores I've seen, since most are all glass. This one in Soho had to maintain a certain asthetic and also it was a historically protected building, an old post office. So they hadta maintain the facade I think, and decided to do a clever little sign. I just read an article though about how they're buying the adjacent building and expanding.
I don't remember what this building was, but once we emerged from Soho we were near the Financial District, and got to some of the original old architecture, the original skyscrapers of the city. Jeff particularly liked them (and knew who built them, like Somebody Mead and White, which I guess maybe I should have known...)
Ah HA! What I came down here to see- Frank Gehry's Beekman Tower. The tallest building in lower Manhattan (a couple others were uh, knocked down a few years ago :/ ). You can't see in the picture but the base is a brick building that looks completely different, which was a school. Something about a deal he made with the city in order to save taxes or build higher.
I love how the whole building is wavy. Its all stainless steel or titanium panels. And it gleams, I saw it from our plane when we were landing but didn't have my camera ready. Quite the eyecatcher.
Finally, Jeff took me for another treat- the W Hotel, right across from Ground Zero (which is under quite an impressive amount of construction right now- which also made me realize that I should have flown to NY after the twin towers came down to see the carnage simply because its a part of history now and would have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity).
The W had a sweet little lounge/bar up on like the 7th floor so we headed up there. This was the lighting in the lobby, which was also awesome. LEDs hanging from wires.
The bar. SWEET. The ceiling was lined with strips of LEDs in ridges, which looked amazing. Though they had a slight flicker to them and Jeff had heard people were complaining of headaches and such. That's when we noticed that areas of the strips were masked with something or else just off, like they were trying to do something about it.
But the ceiling looked particularly sweet reflected in the glossy black floor, which was a genius idea. It was like being in the ribcage of a neon whale.
And after that I hopped the train all the way at the south end of Manhattan and rode the length of the island and under the river to the Bronx. I got on the wrong line and had to recalculate my plans to get to Little Italy, but it ended up being as far from the stop I was getting off at, just in the other direction. The problem was, the Bronx is kinda ghetto, and I hadta walk 20 minutes by myself at night. But there were no cabs to be had, and I figured I know urban environments enough to gauge whether I'm in danger or not. So I kept an eye on the demographic of the people walking- race (sorry, but its true), age, gender, whether there were children around. Also took note of the buildings, and what condition they were in, as well as the cars parked on the street. Whether the little shops had bars on the windows. Whether there were groups of teenagers walking around in hoodies and suddenly following me :) Which there weren't. The neighborhood definitely got progressively worse, but at some point I knew that I felt a couple blocks from unsafe but that I was only a block or two from being there, so it was okay. I made it :) And we ate delicious Italian food and drank wine, again with Laura and Angela and her boyfriend Nick. And that night was our last hurrah, then we drove home with Chris who met us there with the car, after work. So we gotta go by Yankee Stadium, the Apollo Theater, and see the city from a distance across the bridges.
Here was the overhead train we got off in Astoria to catch the bus and head to the train. Elevated train tracks are a little more rare in NYC than Chicago, I guess they figured it out early on and decided to invest the money in burying all the trains underground.
Coming into Chicago- always love seeing the skyline out the window- I sat on this side of the plane on purpose. I plan ahead :)
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