What a Difference 3 Years Makes
Below are a couple photos I snapped three years apart of the Lower Manhattan skyline. The top one is from a showroom near Madison Square Park and the bottom one is from the roof above Resolution: 4 Architecture on West 28th Street near Sixth Avenue. The foregrounds may be different, but the buildings on the skyline have similar positions, making the changes that have happened in a pretty short amount of time easy to grasp. I've highlighted the major ones, which include the completion of 8 Spruce Street and two buildings rising at the World Trade Center site.
The most fascinating elements of this image seem to be not the growth of skyscrapers, which has been occurring globally for more than a century now, but the proliferation of rooftop water towers, ostensibly for fire protection. However, a creative, but perhaps provincialist, attitude of Manhattan as the dwelling for the super-rich could envision these towers as eschatological escape pods, dwellings masquerading as monotonous reservoirs against arson and accident when in fact they contain clandestine propulsion devices of escape. Or, they simply could contain secret rooms within them as camera obscuras or observation towers for the investigation of the repetition of the delirious phenomena of the cementitious nature of the surrounds...
ReplyDeleteOr a speakeasy:
ReplyDeletehttp://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/05/20/a_new_york_city_water_tower_doubles_as_a_hidden_speakeasy.php