My trip, again, to Manhattan

This is a select expose of Manhattan as I already posted plenty on it in 2008 here.

Because there’s always a new thing to see in Manhattan, and because books are my favorite people (?), I begin this post with this picture of Scribner looming larger than St Patrick’s Cathedral behind it. Literature always comes first for me.

And because art comes hand in hand with literature, I select for you two works of art from the Metropolitan Museum. First I give you James Rosenquist’s House of Fire (1981) that piqued my interest with its reds. 

Next, here’s Francois-Josephy Navez’s The Massacre of the Innocents, “Exhibited to great acclaim at the Brussels Salon of 1824, this work presents the Massacre of the Innocent as an intimate family drama, whose ‘frightening realism’ struck critics.”

Massacre and fire would naturally bring to mind the necessity of presenting you with the 9/11 memorial. The park is not completed yet, but personally, the site touched me more when it was left as ruins of the buildings. Somehow rebuilding this, with all the good intentions meant by it, lessened the emotional effect it left on me the two times I visited after 9/11. (2004 and 2008) 

And from destruction turned to memorial, I take you to nature created by New York in the next three examples. The first is a small hanging garden as part of The Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park, designed by Brian Tolle, Gail Wittwer-Laird, and 1000 Architect in 2002 to commemorate the Great Irish Famine of 1845-52. 

The second is that huge construction called Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux as the Greensward plan in 1858, as viewed all the way in the distance behind the concrete jungle of New York. 1,600 residents of the park area, mostly poor African-Americans and Irish, had to be evicted to construct the park.

The smaller park you see by the green Metlife building is Bryant Park behind the public library, better viewed in the following picture. No detailed history for this one, except to say that by the 1970s the place was nicknamed Needle Park (for clear reasons) until the park was cleaned in the 80s.

The third, and my recent discovery this year, or rather a friend’s discovery pointed to me, is The High Line Park, an old raised railway turned into park. Designed by James Corner, Diller Scofidio, Renfro, Piet Oudolf, Buro Happold, the park opened in 2009, and it runs for 1.5 miles (2.4 km) parallel to 10^th Avenue from Gansevoort St (by 12^th st) to 34^th St.

Oops. Where did Yasmina come from? J

An amazing walk would be from Battery Park to the entrance of this park, by the Hudson river, with a view of New Jersey and many small scattered rest areas on the way. That’s 2.8 miles (4.5 km). That would give you a spectacular 4.3 mile walk that will not disappoint you.

Now enough about nature, real or constructed, and let me end with art and literature. As you walk around West Village, you can't help but gawk at the walls of buildings turned into museums of modern art.

And in close vicinity (specifically on 3^rd st between Avenue B and C) You come across the Nuyorican Poets Café, which, unfortunately, I was only able to visit once due to the short duration of my trip. 

But that one visit made this, now, my most certain future bite at the Big Apple. It was open mic day and we were dazzled by poets and musicians.

And this ends my short slideshow of my favorite city in the world. (Next post will be on the second part of this trip: Boston)