A WEEK IN NEW YORK - PART ONE

MARCH 28, 2025

                                                                  HUSTLE AND BUSTLE IN THE NEW TRAIN HALL

This week I would like to present a brief overview of our whirlwind week in New York City at the end of February. Fran and I had a marvelous time, courtesy of our friends Vinny and Steve, who let us stay in their historic and way-too-small apartment in Park Slope. Our trip would have been impossible without their graciousness. I would also comment that the crazy people who run America’s air travel system provided us with a fare to NYC cheaper than anything we could get for anyplace farther than Seattle. While it doesn’t make any sense, you do get surprises in the death throes of American capitalism. We also did get to have some quality time with my family. All in all, it was a marvelous week.

                                                                  TRUSSES AND BALLOONING SKYLIGHTS

Which is not to say that it wasn’t hard work. I will always be a New Yorker, but it really hit me just how hard it was to deal with New York even while you are having a great time. Everything is just such a big deal, even when you are on vacation and not worrying about normal life. As a retired tourist, I still felt I hadn’t worked as hard in years. We severely restricted what we tried to do, and still felt that what we did really required twice the time as we had in one week. For each day in the city, it would have been delightful to spend another day in our neighborhood in Brooklyn to decompress.

                                                                 A SKYLIGHT ROOF

I’m going to turn 69 years old next week, and don’t think it didn’t occur to me that it was just a little bit (or a lot) harder to get around the city. The first time a middle-aged women offered me her seat on the subway it struck me like a lightning bolt. I turned to Fran and declared that I was now officially and undeniably “OLD.” I only regained some of my mojo a few days later when I realized that people were asking me for directions as if I had any idea on where they should go. I might be old, but I still looked as if I belonged in the city.

                                                                  TRAIN HALL DETAIL - SOMEHOW THIS CLOCK DOESN'T CUT IT. DARE I SAY IT SEEMS A BIT CHEAP?

We spent a large portion of five days in the city, going to different parts of Manhattan - Midtown, Downtown, the Upper West Side, the Village and SOHO. We went to three world-class museums, ate out three times, and saw one show on Broadway and one way off Broadway. It was a lot. Here are some initial impressions as a photographer, an architect, and a former New Yorker.

                                                                  YOU CAN GET "ON" LINE

The first architectural monument that I decided I must try to see was the new (for me) addition to Pennsylvania Station. We accompanied Vinny and Steve there while they caught Amtrak for a weekend visit to Philadelphia. The Moynihan Train Hall turned out to be really fine attempt to mitigate the world’s worst architectural train wreck when the city allowed the demolition of Pennsylvania Station back when I was a little boy. This was only comparable to allowing the Dodgers to leave Brooklyn.

                                                                  YOU CAN DO A SOPHISTICATED LEAN

The disaster that is Madison Square Garden, which was allowed to crush the station underground, ruined the entire train experience in the nation’s most important train station. Ever since then the Dolan family, which ruined both the Knicks and Rangers, has also ruled out any attempts to move the Garden even across the street in order to re-invent Penn Station. Even as I write this, there are several new plans for moving the Garden, which I can confidently say have very little chance of going anywhere. The Moynihan Train Hall tried to expand the station by taking over the next block to the West, which housed the main Post Office in an exceedingly grand building that totally dwarfed the needs of the Post Office, whose  sorting and collection facilities had moved away. The skylit Train Hall replaces the exterior inner courtyard of the Post Office and provides a reasonable facsimile of the old station, as long as you had never been there.

                                                                  OR YOU CAN GIVE IN AND HIT THE FLOOR. IF I DID THIS, I WOULD NEED HIS HELP GETTING UP.

I have only a few regrets about the project. The architects at SOM, led by David Chiles (who died recently) had too many masters, and they had to keep a remnant of the post office on the site. One of the grandest stair cases in New York, two stories high and an entire block wide, does not lead to the expanded train station but to the tiny post office which still gums up the works and denies the train hall a grand entrance to the street.

                                                                  DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A PLACE TO GET AN EXPENSIVE BITE?

Another regret is that the most important clock in New York, which reigned in the middle of the old station, has been replaced by an under-detailed clock which doesn’t deserve to be in my photograph. More importantly, there is no place to sit in the station. The only real waiting area is beyond glass and only for ticketed passengers who don’t seem to understand that if they are not in the train hall itself that they will have little chance to grab a good seat on their train once their track is announced and all hell breaks loose. So in what looks like an attempt to make sure no homeless person has a place to sit, no one has a place to sit. It’s been a long time since I could recline on the floor of a train station with my backpack, but that is what I’m supposed to do.

                                                                  THE GRAND STAIR TO NOWHERE

The Train Hall actually seemed to be an upscale food emporium, with more places to eat and snack than most cities in the United States. In fact the depressing Food Hall, which would not rate in most malls in the nation, seemed like an incredibly unnecessary afterthought once we attempted to find a restroom. Why do you need a Food Hall if the entire Station seems to be food hall?

                                                                  JUST OUTSIDE THE STATION, GLIMPSES OF NEW YORK

                                                                  ON THE STREET YOU CAN FINALLY SEE GOTHAM

Rant over. The Train Hall actually was a grand public space, with no real purpose except to simulate the old really grand space. I don’t even know if anyone actually arrives there, or if it is just for people leaving New York. And as a true New Yorker, any grand place that just leads to New Jersey is a real disappointment indeed. More next week.