This class is gonna rock.
So today I had my first real Visual Arts Seminar: New York City class with Jason Rosenfeld. "Real" because the class never meets at school, we always meet off campus at a museum or somewhere in the city. Last week being the first week of school we met at school but really just sat around and listened to Jason mouth off about how he hates the Mets. He's a really cool guy and he's Jewish so I he instantly gets an extra 20 points. He's crazy knowledgable and he spouts off random facts in the middle of every sentence (or so it seems- Kathleen says he just memorizes books and recites it all, either way it's amazing). As for my new vow to get out and explore the city I've now lived in for a year and a half and know next to nothing about, this class is really exciting. Today we met way downtown at the Winter Garden in the atrium of the American Express building in the Financial Center. If you think it's confusing to read try finding it. I took the train that I always take everywhere cause it's closest to my apartment but it put me on literally the exact opposite corner of Ground Zero from where I needed to be. Now I was only at the WTC site once with choir senior year and I didn't go actually look at it. At that point it was also not nearly as "set up" as it is now. It's still definitely a big hole but it's also definitely a construction site. And if you've been there you know how big the plaza was is. So having arrived late already, it took me ten minutes to actually get around it. I finally met up with my class though and it was a really great class. I took a whole bunch of pictures because Jason suggested it so we can look at what we saw later when we have to write papers about it.
The big glass dome is the atrium in AmEx building. It's a huge glass observatory (kinda) in the middle of a big mall. Manhattan has very, very few malls but this is one of them. It's right in the middle of the financial district and all around the area are bank headquarters, big business centers, etc. The Financial Center is a series of buildings which are all connected and in the middle is the AmEx building and the atrium. Inside (I didn't get any pictures unfortunately) is the Winter Garden. It's an enormous marble staircase with lots of just open areas and tables and benches and places to sit. On the floor are probably 16 palm trees that grow at least two or three stories up. Out the east side is a great view of what used to be the WTC and you can now see the entire construction site from up above it. You can also see lots of the surrounding buildings in clear view and we got a chance to study the architecture since they're no longer obstructed by the WTC. Out the west side is a great view of the Hudson. The first two picture are of the Atrium with the Hudson behind me. The third is on the other side from across the WTC site.
The next thing we looked at is the Irish Hunger Memorial. It's a stone memorial built into a hill to commemorate the Irish Potato Famine and as well as more recent events and to honor Irish Immigrants who have come over to this country. This is the front view and it's hard to tell what it really is from this angle.
The whole structure is built with stones like these. It's really amazing to be in because of the sheer size and number of stones that were used.
This is along the side. The structure juts out above the hill and becomes an overhang on the side where you enter. All along the side and inside are quotes etched into the stones.
This is from inside the tunnel where you enter looking out at the Hudson. Along the stripes on the wall are where the quotes are. As you walk in there's an audio recording playing of different immigrants speaking about their journeys.
This is from inside the courtyard look up and out and also back at the tunnel where came in from. It's about ten feet high and it's an actual stone cottage from Ireland that was brought over and put back together.
The first shot is all of us going into the second "room" from the first through the doorways. The second is inside the second room looking back into the first.
Once you leave the second room out onto the path onto the hill, the path winds up the hill above the rooms and then over the tunnel. This is looking down into the second room.
There's a boulder from every county in Ireland carved with its name on it along the pathway.
The pathway up the hill and the class walking up.
From the top of the hill you can see out across the Hudson River to Jersey City and other parts of Manhattan. In the last picture if you look closely right under the light bulb hanging from that building you can the Statue of Liberty. And if you look right next to it you can see the two buildings of Ellis Island.
More shots from the top.
For those of you Choir people I think is pretty near where we always boarded for the boat dances. And for those of you Australia people this is the closest thing that Manhattan has to water taxis!
From the top looking back at Manhattan towards the Financial District.
From the Irish Hunger Memorial we walked over to another memorial and we walked along the pier to get there. This was on the gates on the edge of the water and it had poetry on it that I really liked. This is just one phrase of the whole poem.
This is the New York City Police Memorial commemorating all the police officers who have been killed in the line of duty. It has names all the way back to the 1800s.
There are a few pieces to the memorial. This is the start of it. It's about two feet square and when the pipes aren't frozen in the Winter there's water that comes out from that pipe.
The water fills that square area where it originates and then flows down this chute and into the main area of the memorial.
The water comes out here and pours down into the pool and it's all lit up at night. I'd really like to go back sometime when the water's running.
The memorial itself is a huge wall with all the names engraved into it (think the Vietnam Memorial) and it reflects everything. In this shot you can see the three flags that fly across from it- US, State of New York and I can't remember the third.
Said flags.
It's kind of hard to see in this shot because of the reflection but the names, as I said, have been added all the way back to before the turn of the century. There's about a third of the wall that they never used- they just added the names in rows on the first two-thirds. After 9/11 they started a new column even though there was extra room at the bottom of the first because they wanted to highlight those officers specially. I thought that was really cool.
These are just shots of the WTC site from as close as I could get. It's hard to grasp from any picture how big it really is and how much it really is an enormous gaping hole. Like I said I'd never really been there and seen it for real so it was quite an experience to see it today.
So that's it for this week and there's more to come as the semester goes on. Later, kids.
The big glass dome is the atrium in AmEx building. It's a huge glass observatory (kinda) in the middle of a big mall. Manhattan has very, very few malls but this is one of them. It's right in the middle of the financial district and all around the area are bank headquarters, big business centers, etc. The Financial Center is a series of buildings which are all connected and in the middle is the AmEx building and the atrium. Inside (I didn't get any pictures unfortunately) is the Winter Garden. It's an enormous marble staircase with lots of just open areas and tables and benches and places to sit. On the floor are probably 16 palm trees that grow at least two or three stories up. Out the east side is a great view of what used to be the WTC and you can now see the entire construction site from up above it. You can also see lots of the surrounding buildings in clear view and we got a chance to study the architecture since they're no longer obstructed by the WTC. Out the west side is a great view of the Hudson. The first two picture are of the Atrium with the Hudson behind me. The third is on the other side from across the WTC site.
The next thing we looked at is the Irish Hunger Memorial. It's a stone memorial built into a hill to commemorate the Irish Potato Famine and as well as more recent events and to honor Irish Immigrants who have come over to this country. This is the front view and it's hard to tell what it really is from this angle.
The whole structure is built with stones like these. It's really amazing to be in because of the sheer size and number of stones that were used.
This is along the side. The structure juts out above the hill and becomes an overhang on the side where you enter. All along the side and inside are quotes etched into the stones.
This is from inside the tunnel where you enter looking out at the Hudson. Along the stripes on the wall are where the quotes are. As you walk in there's an audio recording playing of different immigrants speaking about their journeys.
This is from inside the courtyard look up and out and also back at the tunnel where came in from. It's about ten feet high and it's an actual stone cottage from Ireland that was brought over and put back together.
The first shot is all of us going into the second "room" from the first through the doorways. The second is inside the second room looking back into the first.
Once you leave the second room out onto the path onto the hill, the path winds up the hill above the rooms and then over the tunnel. This is looking down into the second room.
There's a boulder from every county in Ireland carved with its name on it along the pathway.
The pathway up the hill and the class walking up.
From the top of the hill you can see out across the Hudson River to Jersey City and other parts of Manhattan. In the last picture if you look closely right under the light bulb hanging from that building you can the Statue of Liberty. And if you look right next to it you can see the two buildings of Ellis Island.
More shots from the top.
For those of you Choir people I think is pretty near where we always boarded for the boat dances. And for those of you Australia people this is the closest thing that Manhattan has to water taxis!
From the top looking back at Manhattan towards the Financial District.
From the Irish Hunger Memorial we walked over to another memorial and we walked along the pier to get there. This was on the gates on the edge of the water and it had poetry on it that I really liked. This is just one phrase of the whole poem.
This is the New York City Police Memorial commemorating all the police officers who have been killed in the line of duty. It has names all the way back to the 1800s.
There are a few pieces to the memorial. This is the start of it. It's about two feet square and when the pipes aren't frozen in the Winter there's water that comes out from that pipe.
The water fills that square area where it originates and then flows down this chute and into the main area of the memorial.
The water comes out here and pours down into the pool and it's all lit up at night. I'd really like to go back sometime when the water's running.
The memorial itself is a huge wall with all the names engraved into it (think the Vietnam Memorial) and it reflects everything. In this shot you can see the three flags that fly across from it- US, State of New York and I can't remember the third.
Said flags.
It's kind of hard to see in this shot because of the reflection but the names, as I said, have been added all the way back to before the turn of the century. There's about a third of the wall that they never used- they just added the names in rows on the first two-thirds. After 9/11 they started a new column even though there was extra room at the bottom of the first because they wanted to highlight those officers specially. I thought that was really cool.
These are just shots of the WTC site from as close as I could get. It's hard to grasp from any picture how big it really is and how much it really is an enormous gaping hole. Like I said I'd never really been there and seen it for real so it was quite an experience to see it today.
So that's it for this week and there's more to come as the semester goes on. Later, kids.