Full on and Flat out in New York Part 1

Full on and Flat out in New York

Today's blog is one from the archives. Birmingham School of Architecture runs a study visit to New York very year for the fifth year students, in 1998 it was the time for my year group. The piece was originally written for an exhibition/reception that our year group held for our sponsors Ibstock, where ‘Flights’ the bar that was frequented during our stay was recreated in the studio. Some may even remember this..enjoy!

On the approach from JFK, international airport dominated by the TWA terminal by Saarinen, a magnificent play of organic forms in concrete, however seems much smaller in the aggregate than in the architecture books. Cruising through Queens, the manufactured memories of New York, Empire State, World Trade Centre, Chrysler and Brooklyn Bridge become visible for the first time, igniting the skyline. The term the  ‘city that never sleeps’ feels appropriate with the electrified, seemingly endless, backdrop dominating the view. The classic view featured in so many movies and TV shows the backdrop to so much ‘culture', it becomes difficult to tell the difference between fact and fiction at this point.
The constant flows of traffic, reminiscent of Aston expressway and Spaghetti Junction at rush hour, passing through highway intersections large and complex enough to make ‘Spaghetti’ seem like a bootlace by comparison, filtering towards one of the many tunnels to pass beneath the Hudson River. Entering Manhattan : once through the tunnel the real New York reveals itself, a very gritty downtrodden town, used, very well used,  it is the former Dutch colony, New Amsterdam,  the fabled grid is non-existent, traffic is everywhere very slow moving, the daily migration of millions who inhabit Manhattan only between the hours of 8am and 8pm, that is so often talked about is here for real.
Chelsea International Hostel, situated downtown on the grid at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twentieth street, Victorian looking brick buildings with Georgian styled sliding sash windows, home for the next nine days. It is like Sesame Street, or is it with its ‘Starsky and Hutch’ with its tenth precinct police station. Steel fire escapes adorn the facades of the surrounding buildings, would this be allowed in England? Bags of rubbish (garbage) inhabit the pavements (sidewalks) whilst well built men walk along holding hands with small dogs on leads. It sounds like ‘the clangers’ or a space invader convention with all the whooping and zapping of police car sirens.
The roads are very uneven, completely different from the impression that the grid gives. Steam escapes through manholes into the night air as it is expelled from the world below. The clatter of subway trains issue from beneath metal gratings in the sidewalk. The New York yellow cab is ever present although not the classic Cadillac as seen in the movies. The Empire state building marks its presence on the skyline bathed in artificial light, blue for Greek day, ready to disappear from view as it is approached from its resident block, it is amazing how it is possible to walk past the entrance without actually noticing it as it is squeezed in between jewellers’ shops.
It is so cold that sheets of ice are falling down from the spire onto the viewing platform so the night-time view over Manhattan has to wait for a while. Ice-skaters in the Rockerfeller Plaza listen to music in headphones seemingly in a world of their own within a winter wonderland surrounded by Christmas trees with fairy lights despite it being April.
The volume of traffic increases as it comes from three directions in the midst of building sized advertisements to converge where Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street at Times Square.
Walking back downtown the Grid that has become synonymous with New York dissolves into the former New Amsterdam, the air rich with the smell of garlic in the Italian restaurant dominated area, ‘Little Italy?’ A Philippino jazz singer with a British passport called Annie, the singer not the passport, sings softly whilst the pasta based feast is served, along with Budweiser, yep this is America, if you want beer it has to be Bud!  Walking back up-town a brief conversation with a spare change person…’dimes, quarters, cents, anything to help someone have a bed for the night’ …a lot more positive than the English ‘spare change sir’ but the problem is still the same.
A stop for a drink on the way up, a skeleton stands guard in the revolving door to the ‘City Gallery of the Macabre’ whilst Doctor Shroud (looks like Mr Munster) welcomes visitors to his gallery, likes to talk about the Royal family to the unsuspecting Englishman, and introduces us to his own collection of macabre art, a bit like Madame Tussauds’ ‘Chamber of Horrors’ in London, although a conversation with one of the waitresses reveals that Doctor Shroud is an actor and this gallery is part of a chain, so the experience is not quite so unique as it seems...