New York City - May 3 - 8, 2015

When I was a freshman in college one of my best friends was from Brooklyn. When she talked about growing up in NYC it seemed light years away from Marshall, Minn. She lived in a rowhouse, with her parents and brother, and her grandmother lived on the other side.  Since then I have always wanted to visit NYC, finally I made it!  I participated in a Road Scholar tour called Five Days Five Boroughs.. The five boroughs (listed because I'll forget if  don't write them down):  Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Queens. Instead of bringing my camera I decided to use my phone as a camera, a decision I have regretted. The first day we visited Brooklyn and I forgot my phone so have no photos of Brooklyn.  A fellow Road Scholar is going to email me her pictures, so those will be added later.  Brooklyn was one of my favorite places!

Most every neighborhood we visited had rowhouses, the width of a front door and two windows. Here are pictures of several from different areas of the city.

Look closely...someone has a sense of humor!

According to our guide, these buildings have no elevators or central air, and in a historic district no window air conditioners are allowed. The woman who owned the rowhouse pictured below took us on a walk around her neighborhood. I couldn't get the right picture because of traffic, so had to take a couple. She and her husband use the bottom two floors and rent out each of the top two floors as one bedroom apartments. It was just appraised at $2.5 million!

I was surprised at the amount of green space NYC has.  We visited Central Park, where these photos were taken.

This is a large, maybe 10x15 in-ground memorial for John Lennon
in Central Park across from the Dakota Building, where Lennon lived.

An old abandoned railway that ran above street level was converted to green space and is now called the High Line. It contains perennials and grasses, annuals, and small shrubs and trees. The old railway line is still visible, as seen in this picture.

While we were walking the High Line we could see this artistic grafiti.  It's kind of hard to see, but it's the iconic post WW II picture of the
returning sailer kissing a girl.

Any building more than seven stories tall is required to have a water tower, with some of the water available for fighting fires. Once I knew of the rule, I seemed to see water towers everywhere! Count seven in this photo.



We stayed at a wonderful, old art deco hotel in midtown Manhattan called The New Yorker.
It was a couple blocks from Macy's, so shopper that I am I was obligated to check out Macy's (largest in the world). Sadly, I didn't find anything to buy,instead took a picture of their neat old wooden escalator..

I suppose no trip to NYC is complete without a photo of the Statue of Liberty. I took this from the Staten Island ferry. It was misty and the ferry was moving, so this isn't a very good shot.

 

On the other hand, this picture of southern Manhattan (financial district) is one of my favorite, with One World Trade Center clearly visible.

These pictures of the financial district were taken from.the corner of Wall St. and Broadway, a pretty impressive area. The old buildings mixed in with the new was a surprise.

Statue of Geo. Washington 

Trinity Church

 

Wall Street Stock Exchange

9/11 Memorial pool

A sad but beautiful sight is the 9/11 Memorial. There will not be twin towers in the future, instead there is One World Trade Center, currently the tallest building in NYC and visible from throughout the area. It was hard to get a good photo of the memorial pool and names. The names are not listed in alpha order, but rather in groups of people who knew one another, for example, people who worked together are listed together.

We traveled almost exclusively by subway. I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around riding the subway; it's like a huge maze. Give me a car with a GPS, please! (Okay, maybe a car in NYC isn't such a good idea.) Amazingly, there is subway station art! Here are a couple mosaics.

What I learned about New York City: * Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the country, with 46% of its residents being born outside the US.*Subway riders are extremely considerate, often offering their seats to us when the subway was crowded. *That said, during rush hour it was walker beware on the sidewalks! The most dangerous were the bike riders, who didn't seem to watch out for anyone but themselves. *I don't think I saw one obese person, probably due to all the walking people do. *Most New Yorkers do not own a car. One of our guides has lived in NYC his entire life and has never owned/driven a car. *I don't own enough black clothes to live in New York. *Some areas definitely have a bad odor and the constant noise would eventually drive me crazy. And yes, I saw a few homeless people and beggars. *On the other hand, there were many parks and quiet areas, lots of window boxes with blooming flowers and street lamps surrounded by mini-flower gardens. 

A photo journey through New York City wouldn't be complete without a picture of the Empire State Building, which, like One World Trade Center, is visible from most everywhere. Our last night we took an evening stroll through Greenwich Village, where we found this wonderful little park and I took my last picture.

The Empire State Bldg. as seen from a street in Greenwich Village.

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