Top of the Rock in New York City

Manhattan used to have three high places you could visit - World Trade Center (gone since 11 Sept 2001), Empire State Building (the classic), and then Rockefeller Center, built in the 1930s.  Of these, I have visited World Trade Center and Empire State Building with visiting friends and family years ago, but I never went up in Rockefeller Center until two days ago.  What a treat!  This is where you should be :)

For the record, I am afraid of heights, but Rockefeller Center was no problem.  It didn't move in the wind like World Trade Center did, and it didn't feel claustrophobic and tight like Empire State Building.  We had a calm, clear September day and could see far, far away into New Jersey, New York State ('the Empire State'), Long Island, and Connecticut.  Empire State Building and the new World Trade Center tower are still higher, but the views from this sky scraper is better, I think.  Green Central Park is to the north, Hudson River and the rocky ledge of the Palisades to the west, then southern Manhattan and Statue of Liberty to the south, and Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island to the east.  Fantastic views!

The architecture and design of the building is also classic and wonderful with black floors and shiny brass designs.  Like late Art Deco (PP can fill us in on this, I am sure).  The uppermost floor at level 70 is the roof (called Top of the Rock, of course), and you step out from the elevator straight onto the roof, straight into the sky, but on a big platform... without tall glass round.  Still it felt safe!  The lack of giant hoards of tourists made it nice and pleasant too, plenty of space to look around and see and experience.  Below us, on the other 69 floors are offices, the famous Rainbow Room restaurant (to be reopened next year), and NBC's TV studios.

So, how did it really look like?  Like this! (more photos here)

Walk the High Line

On southern Manhattan on the eastern side of the island in the neighborhoods of Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea and the Meatpacking District are the remnants of an elevated train line. It was used since the 1930s to get the dangerous freight trains off the street, and shipped in produce, meat and wares to stores, warehouses, and markets in lower Manhattan.  As trucks took over this type of transportation, the High Line because less and less used, with the last train delivering frozen turkeys in the 1980s.  Since then it was abandoned and became an eye sore, until a visionary proposed to make it into an elevated long, narrow park.  Imagine a steam locomotive coming by on that elevated railroad.  It once did...

The High Line is a long narrow park, with gorgeous plantings and many places to sit and ponder the city scapes. The first section opened in 2009, and I walked it a few weeks ago.  Two more sections will open (one just did), and when finished it will run from 34 Street all the way past down 13th Street.  In many places, the High Line is the only real green you can see in this urban landscape.

Right next to the High Line are abandoned old factory and warehouse buildings, inhabited only be pigeons and rats (and maybe some homeless people too). You have the urban history within literally hand's and feet's reach, and you walk the line past in time. 

I love the benches, with shapes inspired by railroad sidings ('sidospår' in Swedish).

You can see New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson River from the High Line.  Tugboats, ships, ferry terminals, they are still there.

Parts of the elevated tracks are wider and have been made into meeting spaces and performance scenes.  Even trees are planted up here. I bet they have a large water bill.

This railroad spur once went into this building to unload cargo, but now it is a wildflower meadow.  What a juxtaposition with the industrial, natural and architectural all meeting at one point.

You are not allowed to walk on the tracks, except here. I love 'frogs'.

You can walk under people's bedrooms.  And underneath the High Line is a Bier Garten.

The High Line is really an amazing place.  It brings people outside, and it is green snake oasis in a environment of hot (in the summer) or cold (in the winter) concrete, metal, and glass.  It elevates the whole neighborhood, from just regular dirty New York (with fancy bars and stores mixed in) so something that is awesome. The person that pulled this off and got this done, has done amazing things for southern Manhattan.  Finally some green is back on the island.

I didn't see one weed on my hour-long walk.  There are gardeners everywhere and the plantings are impeccable, made to look natural but with horticultural varieties and species. It is gorgeous, designed, and honestly, not naturally planted, but who cares?  This is really like painting with living plants, and I love it too. And after all, the plants are growing on a railroad track, in the air, on a man made structure.  I was wondering what would happen if you stopped weeding and watering - probably just what happened when the railroad was abandoned in the 1980s.  Weeds and trees came in, and now they are all gone.  Removed for more organized plants and less dirty, less chaotic plant life.

Many more photos from my visit here.

Stamp of the Day: Can you see the stars?

Maybe not, it depends on where you live.  And soon you might not see many stars in most places, due to light pollution.  There is a great article about this on Design Observer: Starry Night. The most stars I have seen recently were in Costa Rica.  It is amazing to think that all those thousands of stars are here in New Jersey too, but we flood them out with lights.  Our township, for example, have parking lights on at the highschool even in the evening when nobody is there.  Neighbors sleep with floodlights on.  Princeton glows with a pink haze some nights. Imagine how many northern lights are being missed because of our electricity obsession. Most of those lights are just wasted electron movements created by coal, oil, gas, or nuclear power.  The article is great, and a good read, so take a look and check out the maps too (Europe included).

 

Stamp of the day are two Swedish stamps from 2009, a star map with the Crab Nebula and a polarimeter.  Nice designs as usual from the Swedish postal service. (Information in Swedish about these stamps)

OK snapshot: Gatukonst (street art)

Seen in Stockholm, Sweden.
LS comment: Nice oil painting!

Chicago memory, part 3 - fake copper

If this had been real copper it would have been gone by now, but it is painted wood on the outside of the historically landmarked Auditorium building in Chicago. It is located on S Michigan Avenue, a street that goes from the fanciest addresses (think 5th Ave in NY) and down south to areas that have been very run down for many, many years (kind of like 5th Avenue in New York going up into Harlem, but here it is southwards). Along S Michigan Avenue are many old classic hotels and buildings, and it is also next to the large city park with the Shedd Aquarium and Field Museum, veterans from the last-last century (that is the 19th century, not 20th..).

On this building, which now seems boarded up, was the tiniest and nicest No trespassing sign I have ever seen - about 4 x 8 cm and in brass.

Chicago memory, part 2 - stacks, tracks and tanks...

The only day during my Chicago trip with acceptable weather was the day I had free from work, so I took the train on the old Union Pacific (I believe, it said UP), trainline with the METRA commuter train north to the suburbs to visit the Chicago Botanic Garden.  More about the garden later, but the trainride was an experience in itself.



The double-decker traincars were something else.  You walk in at the end of the car, and then climb up or down - up to the second floor which are just two narrow strips of floor with a line of seats along each window wall, and open to the level below in the center.  Below there were two rows of seats as on a normal train car.  It was all tiny and low above, but the openness to the level below made you feel not so claustrophobic.  The conductor didn't even bother walking upstairs, he just stretched out his hand from below up to us at our ankle-level to get our tickets.  They sure do things different in Chicago.  Maybe their bridges are too low for a regular double-decker commuter train car?



So, I sat on the top floor, looked out through greenish tinted and dirty train windows, and saw the city go by, through old industry areas, nice little neighborhoods, and they all looked so much cleaner than in the East, even if poor.  I started taking photos of watertanks and smokestacks, one after another.  Old smokestacks used as advertising space, or cell phone towers high or low, and so on.  Old water tanks, which I think are so American because I never see them in any other cities of the world, of various shapes and placement, and sometimes also with advertisement on them.  One had fallen down.



We passed the Morton Salt factory, where they make (made?) the table salt that 'when it rains it pours', so you don't have to deal with clumps in your salt.  I have bought Morton salt many times and it still has the same old nice design on its containers in the supermarket.



And there were train tracks of course, and old and new train things next to them.  Old flat cars and smaller things.  Two diesel engines, one yellow and another red, but very blurry on the photos so not included here.  It was an interesting experience, a real trip through history from a higher point than usual.

Click on the little thumbnails to see the photos larger if you like - there are so many that I added them as thumbnails this time. I apologize for the grittiness of the photos but they were taken through a train window and most at rather high speed.

Gorgeous: small things

This is a teaser for some gorgeous things I saw at the Philadelphia Flower Show today.  This one won an award in the class for miniature gardens.  Nice, don't you think?