Rockefeller Center

We did pass through Times Square a few times during our trip to New York, and it was as crowded and hectic as it always is. We didn't have much desire to visit any of the tourist trap stores there, so we didn't linger there too long.



It was slightly more busy that the last time I was here, way back in 2006. On that visit, a huge blizzard dumped several feet of snow. We passed through Times Square the morning after, and the streets were nearly empty (something that probably doesn't happen all that often).



We visited Times Square while on our way to Rockefeller Center, the sprawling complex of 19 buildings that stretches across 22 acres of Midtown Manhattan. The center of the complex is Rockefeller Plaza, which was crowded with tourists watching the skaters on the ice rink. The plaza is also home to the 18 foot tall bronze statue of Prometheus, which was placed there in 1934. Although from this angle, the statue looks like a bro trying to photobomb a picture taken by someone on the ice skating rink.



Another famous statue in Rockefeller Center is Atlas, holding the celestial vault on his shoulders.



The statue was placed in 1936 and stands just across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral.



We headed across the street and had a look inside the cathedral. St. Patrick's is listed as the largest gothic Roman Catholic Cathedral in the country. It took 21 years to build (thanks to a little delay in construction during the Civil War), and was completed in 1879. The spires on the front of the church are 330 feet tall, and were the tallest structures in the city when they were built.



Inside, the church seats 2,400 people and has an organ with 7,855 pipes. There are also 2,800 stained glass panels inside the cathedral.



We went back by Rockefeller Center another night, when all the buildings were lit as brightly as a lighthouse. Here's another shot of the Cathedral...



And another of the Atlas statue...



One of my favorite recent TV shows was 30 Rock, so I was happy to have another look around. We actually planned on going to a taping of a show while we were in New York, of either The Tonight Show or the Late Show. But The Olympics were going on, so most of the shows were on a little break.







We returned to Rockefeller Center again, late one night after seeing an off-Broadway play (Avenue Q, which was hilarious). It was around 10:30, but we decided to go ahead and use our CityPass and go to the Top Of The Rock observation area. We didn't really have time to visit there again, and we figured we'd be there when it would definitely not be as crowded as the Empire State Building had been. Unfortunately, the upper levels of the Top of the Rock were closed, so we could only look at the view through thick plexiglass. Oh well, it was still a pretty great view.



The observation area is called Top Of the Rock, because you are literally at the very top of the 70-story 30 Rockefeller Center building. It also provides a pretty great view of the Empire State Building and the One World Trade Center Building.





And one last shot - a closer view of the Empire State Building and the One World Trade Center Building, taken while awkwardly looking through a gap in the glass panels that was just big enough for the camera lens to peek through. We would visit the World Trade Center Building, and the 9/11 memorial, on the next day of our trip.

Empire State Building

One of our next stops in New York was the Empire State Building. It’s a popular tourist spot, with about 4 million people visiting the Observation Deck every year. But there's a good reason it's so crowded, the views from the top are amazing. I was eager to visit the building again, on my last visit to New York in 2006 we did go to the Observation Deck but the outside viewing areas were closed after a storm dumped a bunch of snow the night before. We had the rare privilege of having the entire place to ourselves (other than the handful of extremely bored workers who were stationed there). Here’s the view through the windows on that visit, with the snow piled up. It makes you wonder how do they get rid of all that snow? It’s not like you can just toss it over the side.



The Empire State Building is 102 stories tall, and was built in 1931. With the antenna, it top outs at an impressive 1,454 feet tall. When it opened it held the title of tallest building in the world, a distinction it held until the World Trade Center was built in 1970. It’s now the 39th tallest building in the world, and the fifth tallest in the US.



And a view of the lobby, which is surprisingly small for such a huge building.



Then we headed up the elevator, through security, then through a rope maze and then finally to the Observation Deck. We had tried to time our visit so we would be there around sunset. But we weren’t the only ones who had that idea, the deck was already crowded with people all fighting for a spot along the railing. I managed to find a spot along the rail and tried to get a few pictures. This is looking down towards Madison Square Park and the Flatiron and Met Life Buildings.



And a wider view, with Lower Manhattan off in the distance.



I reluctantly gave up my spot along the rail, and headed to the other side of the deck. This is the view looking north, towards the UN Building and the Chrysler Building. Somewhere under all of the skyscrapers is Grand Central Station.



And then a zoomed in view, showing the variety of buildings and architecture. From this vantage point, you can definitely see how dense the city is.



It had gotten more and more crowded on the deck, but this pigeon had a good idea to land on the other side of the rail where it had the ledge all to itself. From there it had a great view, and was looking over the city like Batman (or Birdman?).



Construction began on the Empire State Building in 1930, just at the beginning of the Great Depression. At the peak of construction, about 3,500 people were working on the building. It was completed remarkably fast, in just over a year, at a cost of nearly $41 million. The building has a grand total of 2,248,355 square feet of space, along with 6,514 windows and 73 elevators. There is a race every year where people run up the stairs to the 86th floor (which is 1,576 steps – no thanks).



If you’d like to rent space in the Empire State Building, the average cost is about $53 per square foot. So if you wanted to, perhaps, rent an entire floor of the building it’d only cost about $1,378,000 or so for a year. Some of the companies that lease space there include Walgreens, Bank of America and LinkedIn.





It was cloudy during most of our time in New York, but luckily on the day we were at the top of the Empire State Building we were treated to a pretty nice sunset. Low clouds reflected the pastel pinks and oranges as the sun sank below New Jersey.





Tripods aren’t allowed in the observation deck, since they would take up so much space. But I did bring in a little table-top tripod with me that I tried out, perched on the ledge with the camera lens peaking through the railing. The tripod was too small and flimsy to really do a good job supporting the camera, but it worked for a few shots.



And a closer view of downtown, with the One World Trade Center building dominating the skyline. If you look closely, you can see the arch in Washington Square Park lit up.



And a wider view, also showing the Flatiron Building.



The Observation Deck got really crowded around sunset, with a crush of people pressing in on the railing. It was a little frustrating standing up there, since people would literally squeeze right in front of you to try to get in the same place that you were standing. It was a fight to keep a spot on the railing, and I was glad to step back to the other side of the deck, which wasn’t as crowded.



And looking towards Times Square:



And the view looking north again, where you can see the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, Times Square and Central Park.



And then the view looking west, towards Madison Square Garden, Penn Station and the new Hudson Yard development. Beyond that is the Hudson River, and then New Jersey.



Another close-up view of the city, which looks like a screenshot from a SimCity game.



It was starting to get dark, so I got a few last shots before we left the crush of people and headed to the elevators. This is the view looking north, with a bright splash of light emanating up from Times Square.



And the view looking south, with the last bit of daylight fading away over the city.

Flatiron Building

One of the next places we visited was the Flatiron Building. The distinctive triangle-shaped building has been one of the most famous skyscrapers in the city since it was first built, way back in 1902.



I wanted to visit here again, since the building was covered in scaffolding on my last visit to New York in 2006. It is a beautiful old building, and there is a reason why people have been taking pictures of it for decades. My Aunt actually had a poster of a photo taken in 1904 by Edward Steichen, and I had that shot in mind when I was walking around the building taking pictures. This is my shot that was inspired by his photo (it's different, the area around the Flatiron has changed slightly in the past 104 years.



The Flatiron was one of the tallest buildings in the city when it was built, but surprisingly it was not well-received at the time. People at first called it "Burnham's Folly," after the famous architect who designed it, Daniel Burnham. Many assumed the building's odd shape and its height would cause it to collapse. But of course that never happened, and the building is one of the most iconic buildings in New York. In the years since it was built, it has been used in countless movies and TV shows to serve as a emblem of New York City. My favorite example is that the Flatiron was the home of Channel 6, the workplace of April O'Neil in the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.





The Flatiron stands right by Madison Square, a city park that is surrounded by some of the city's first skyscrapers. The park opened in 1847, and is named after President James Madison.





One of the most prominent buildings along Madison Square is the Met Life Tower, which was the tallest building in the world when it opened in 1909. It lost the title just a few years later in 1913, when the Woolworth Building was constructed in Lower Manhattan. The building was designed to look similar to the St Mark's Campanile in Venice.



The statue here is of William Seward, who was a governor and senator from New York who also served as the Secretary of State from 1861-1869 (and was nearly killed as part of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln). Here's another shot of the statue, taken during my visit in 2006 after a blizzard.



And one last shot from Madison Square, with a view of another famous New York landmark off in the distance.

Grand Central Station

Earlier this month, Caroline and I were able to take a little vacation up to New York City. We were looking forward to it, since it would be the first trip we've taken without a toddler in tow. And while we love Jonah dearly, it was nice to be able to travel without catering to the whims of a toddler. We were able to sleep in some, to not have to worry about navigating a large city with a small child, and to not have to be back at the hotel for an early bedtime. We missed him while we were away, but he was well taken care of by his Aunt and Grandparents back home.

I was also looking forward to visiting New York again. I had only been there once before, way back in 2006. But we were only there for just a weekend, so we didn't get to see too much. Also, a blizzard moved in while we were there and dumped about three feet of snow on the city. It made things a little bit more interesting while getting around the city, but it was amazing to see the city with all that snow.



The weather looked like it was going to be a little bit nicer during the time we were there (it did snow, but it didn't really accumulate much). Our hotel was located right by Grand Central Station, so we ended up passing through there quite often. It really is a grand old building, and it's easy to see why it's one of the most visited tourist attractions in the country (with an estimated 21.9 million visitors passing through it every year).



Despite being over a hundred years old, Grand Central Station still holds the title of largest train station in the world with 44 platforms. The terminal opened in 1913, and cost $43 million to build (it would cost about $1 billion today to build it). Why so expensive? The construction required the excavation of nearly 3.2 million cubic yards of earth, digging to a depth of 45 feet to allow for the train yards, platforms and utilities. The massive construction used 118,597 tons of steel to create the station's structure and about 33 miles of track. At the peak of construction, 10,000 people were working around the clock to build the terminal.

The heart of Grand Central is the Main Concourse, which was crowded with travelers and tourists on each of our visits. The concourse is definitely large enough to contain all of the crowds, with a massive ceiling that is 125 feet high. In the center of the concourse is this large brass clock, with several claims that the clock face is made of opal and has been valued somewhere between $10 to $20 million dollars.



But for all of its scale and grandeur, the station was nearly torn down. After World War II, there was a steep decline in rail travel and there were many who thought the terminal had outlived its usefulness. In 1953, there was a proposal to tear it down and replace it with a 80 story skyscraper designed by I.M. Pei. That plan never came to fruition, but decades of neglect began to take its toll on the building. In 1968, another skyscraper proposal was developed that would have destroyed most of the building's facade. The plans faced some steep opposition, including from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who wrote: "Is it not cruel to let our city die by degrees, stripped of all her proud monuments, until there will be nothing left of all her history and beauty to inspire our children? If they are not inspired by the past of our city, where will they find the strength to fight for her future? Americans care about their past, but for short term gain they ignore it and tear down everything that matters. Maybe... this is the time to take a stand, to reverse the tide, so that we won't all end up in a uniform world of steel and glass boxes."



It worked, and the building was again spared the wrecking ball. Grand Central Station was granted landmark status, and finally a massive restoration and clean-up began in the 1990s that removed all of the massive billboards that used to clutter the grand building's interior. The station's ceiling received a cleaning, revealing again the elaborate astronomical designs that had been obscured by a thick layer of tar and nicotine from several decades worth of cigarette smoke.



It's hard to imagine a New York City without Grand Central Station, and it was an amazing place to walk through and take pictures. Here's one last shot, from a balcony overlooking the Main Concourse.

Big Dam Fog

Last Saturday, I was driving over the I-430 bridge and saw that the river below was coated with a delicate layer of fog. Low clouds clung to the tops of the hills that line the river, drifting through the naked branches of the pine and oak trees. It was good conditions for photography, and luckily I had my camera with me so I quickly headed over to Two Rivers Park to have a look around.

From the Two Rivers Park Bridge, the fog did a pretty good job at obscuring the nearby freeway bridge.





From there I headed downriver and went to the Big Dam Bridge, where there were quite a few people out jogging despite the dreary weather. This was taken looking upstream, with a barge slowly making its way upstream towards the I-430 bridge.



And the view looking west, or well whatever view you could see through the fog.



And before heading back to the car, I got one last shot of the bridge. I carefully placed the camera on the rail, holding on tight so the camera wouldn't drop into the river.