Whistle Stop Manhattan - 1998

New York in daylight is a completely different place to the one in the dark, the sky is no longer alight. The traffic flows seem less urgent. The paintwork is faded, the signs look out of date, maybe graphic design has not reached America or maybe it’s just not important here. Piles of rubbish ‘garbage’ are collected by independent men driving huge ‘prehistoric garbage trucks’ of the type that would not look out of place at a British fairground or vintage traction rally. There are no limited companies here they are all incorporated so the Sanitation Department operators’ names have the suffix ‘inc’.

The subway is ancient and confusing, the entrances into the netherword are inconspicuous flights of steps going downward from the street corners. There are no automatic ticket machines here, tokens are sold by a conductor sitting in a little kiosk. The lines are only marked by letters as are the trains, the trains, stainless steel cars without the graffiti usually associated with New York, run through the large, featureless spaces, some stopping at all stations, some at very few, confusing to the visitor but seemingly simple to the native. Eventually making it back up to the surface to meet Dominic and Dick our native guides from Ibstock (our Sponsors) for a whistle stop guided tour of Mid-town.

Mid-Town is the business district dominated by Empire State and Chrysler. Empire State seeminly on wheels as it disappears then reappears as you turn the corner. The street is the domain of Jewish businessmen and jewellery shop owners in a perpetual rush in sharp contrast with night time. The tour takes in lots of revolving doors, lots of marble at Grand Central Station  a huge concourse with crowds of people, deli stands, news stands but seemingly no relationship to tracks. A revolving door set in a wall of glass and corten steel, deposits you into the lobby of The Ford Foundation with spectacular indoor garden. All around Blocks crash into the ground without really knowing how to meet it, a kind of ‘pumped up architecture’ buildings inflated by the amount of money available at the time of construction. Neo-Gothic Cathedrals (St Patricks), nestle between blocky skyscrapers as through dropped in from a giant model kit in the sky. At one place an exception to this, a plaza the opens up from the street edge to form the base for the Seagram building best know in the Architecture book as the seminal work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Walking westwards from St Patricks and the Seagram plaza, any impression of the grid being regular and flat is quickly dispelled by the topography, it seems that the grid is completely at odds with rise and fall of ground. The sight of steel structure on the facade of a building up ahead announces another crossing of the ever present flow of traffic, standing at the street edge waiting for the sign to change from ‘DON’T WALK’ to ‘WALK’ a quick look round, the neon is extinguished but the shape is of the place unmistakable, welcome to Times Square in daylight! Lunch at a Deli, you cannot just go and buy a sandwich, turkey, bolloni, pastrami, salami, pepperoni, pickles is piled up between two halves of a loaf expertly held together by a wooden skewer in an combination that needs far more than a ladder to climb...may be here some time.