Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in Manhattan towers above its neighbors and, for the most part, stands apart architecturally.
(Photographed the right way, it looks like some sort of cyberpunk corporate headquarters.)
Category: New York
Edge of Central Park Near Mt. Sinai
Central Park is a classic—a place of almost incalculable value to literally millions of people. In that sense, it’s really surreal to find that there’s ever an empty place in it. Sunset on a windy, freezing night night is evidently the time.
Rail Yard
New York’s is a collision of infrastructure from past, present, and future. That’s a cliché by now, but I still enjoy experiencing it firsthand. Here are all three eras connected in one image:
- The Past: Standing on the High Line, a park built on the remains of a freight rail line.
- The Present: The subway rail yard.
- The Future: The Hudson Yards construction site.
Empire Hotel on Broadway
A classic New York street scene: the charm of the Empire Hotel alongside the NYPD and and bags of trash. Maybe the old man’s flyers are right: could the world be ending? (Probably not.)
Brick to Great Heights
Nearly every surface in this image is brick. From the alleyway to the retaining walls to the towers: brick, brick, brick (or pavers). I understand sheathing a structural steel building in glass or densglass or (heaven forbid) “exterior insulation finishing system,” a.k.a. Dryvit, but the kind of person-hours necessary to assemble all of that orderly brick is mind-boggling.
Stealthy Empire State Building
Can a building hide? Or surprise? Or sneak?
The Empire State Building, hiding at the other end of 34th St. in Manhattan, seems to support the possibility. The canonical modern New York street scene, one of luxury cars stuck in traffic and smoke from cooking street meat and old industrial buildings being converted into high-end condos, can still surprise. One step away is another scene built of different buildings and people in view.
Contrary Building
This four-story apartment building was so clearly designed to be flanked by siblings of similar stature. It’s now the contrary holdout on a lot dominated by a monster tower block that threatens to engulf it.
