New York holiday, before the storm - the Empire State Building
The main report on my trip to New York last month is here. This is the second of three supplementary posts on particular places I saw.
As I said in my post on the Chrysler Building, when I first came to New York in the summer of 1981 I stayed in a flat (in Greenwich Village) from whose balcony we could see the World Trade Center to the south and the Empire State Building to the north. At the time I was fascinated by the World Trade Center, and I ascended both towers that July; I was rather less interested in the Empire State Building. One thing I liked about the World Trade Center was the way that, at night, it was illuminated from within, in an apparently random pattern, by its lighted windows; I liked imagining the people still working inside. Whereas the coloured floodlighting of the Empire State Building seemed rather obvious. And I liked the 1976 remake of King Kong, so my movie associations were with the modern building, and Jeff Bridges cheering Kong from one tower while Jessica Lange begged him not to put her down on the other.
But when I came back twenty years later, the World Trade Center had fallen. And I decided that I should spend my last day in New York, which was November 12, ascending the Empire State Building - only for a plane to crash on Queens and the city to go into lockdown before it was decided that it wasn't a terrorist attack after all, by which time I had to make my way to the airport to fly home.
So this time I was determined to go up the Empire State Building before my deadline, and when I got back from the theatre on Saturday night I booked a ticket at the official site, which was supposed to save some time queuing. Actually, you still spend quite a long time queuing beyond the ticket office, unless you spend an extra $22.50 to queue-jump, but I preferred to spend extra on the Top Deck ticket, which gets you into the 102nd floor observatory as well as the main outdoor one on the 86th floor. The rather charming thing about the tickets is that you have a whole year to use them; though they're only good for one trip, you don't have to decide in advance the hour, the date or even the month. And it's open from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m., last admission 1.15.
I did think about going on Sunday morning, but by the time I got into town decided there wouldn't be time before I had to meet redstarrobot (they advised allowing an hour at least, and in fact I was to spend a lot longer on it), so I went to the Chrysler Building instead. But I did then do some preliminary scouting around ground level. Here is the tower from Broadway.
And here are a couple of shots as I advanced eastwards along 34th Street.
I returned in the late afternoon, by which time it was much sunnier, and decided that this might be the ideal time, if I could catch the views in the evening sun and by twilight.
This is the entrance lobby...
...with a reminder of where you are on the wall opposite the door.
I then spent quite a long time queuing for lifts, being herded through exhibitions about the building of the Building, going up lifts, and finally climbing several flights of stairs (which saved queuing for another lift). It was all a bit like going through the Vatican but with more lifts and less Raphael. In fact no Raphael unless I missed something. On the plus side, I didn't have the same sensory overload by the time I got to the Sistine Chapel main viewing platform and was still ready to enjoy it.
This was my first view from the 86th-floor observatory, which is 320 metres up (one metre higher than the Chrysler Building). I was looking south towards Brooklyn.
But obviously I was very quickly looking north-east (probably east-north-east) to The Pretty One - the Chrysler Building.
Down is very nice. That's Fifth Avenue below.
And more of Fifth Avenue, looking north(ish). (Manhattan operates on the fiction that it runs north to south, when really it's more north-north-east to south-south-west.)
Whereas this really is north, or thereabouts, looking towards Times Square. (Can anyone identify the oddly-shaped golden building with antenna-spire just behind the green Met Life tower?)
And this is looking along 33rd Street and 34th Street towards Penn Station and the Hudson River.
Looking over the Hudson River to the sun setting over Jersey City.
And this is looking towards the southern end of Manhattan, with Liberty Island and Ellis Island in the middle distance. You can just make out the Statue (not moving) to the right of the centre of the picture. The tower with the black top is the One World Trade Center, still under construction, being built to replace the lost towers of Minoru Yamasaki.
The light was fading now, as I looked south down Fifth Avenue.
A similar view, showing the traffic on Fifth Avenue - slightly blurred, as I switched off the automatic flash on my camera to get more light.
Bear in mind that the real views are not as interrupted as these pictures suggest. There is a mesh fence around the parapet to stop people jumping off, so everyone is trying to work their way to the front of the scrum in order to stick their cameras through the holes in the fence. Or to hold their cameras out to take their own portraits in front of the fence. Though, for the acrophobic, it's also possible to admire the view from a couple of metres back.
I'd now completed the circuit of the viewing platform, so I worked my way back for another look at the Chrysler Building, at twilight...
...with the crown showing to great effect.
Looking north towards Times Square again.
And west(ish) to Penn Station.
Looking south down Fifth Avenue at night...
...and north along the same Avenue.
This was the last photo I took from above, and by now I had taken yet another lift to the 102nd-floor observatory, at 381 metres, just below the spire, which takes it to 443. This is indoors, so less windy, and the view is indeed very good; the only snag is that after a day full of visitors the windows aren't quite as clean as they might be because of the breath and fingerprints of the people who came before you. I remember rubbing this bit of glass with a paper handkerchief trying to get a slightly clearer shot.
I was in two minds about whether to do this post in chronological order, or whether to run the same views in different lights next to each other for comparison. In the end I went for chronology, but I've kept back these three shots looking up at the spire/antenna from daylight to twilight to night.
Back to chronology; I made my Exit Through The Gift Shop, as one does, though I think all I bought was a calendar. (There were many fluffy King Kongs, but no sign of any Bling Daleks.) And then I descended to the ground level again.
But wait! There's more! Like the Chrysler Building, there's a lot of gorgeous Art Deco on the ground floor, you can walk around a lot more of it than at the Chrysler and, as far as I could make out, you don't have to pay to see these parts, presumably because they seem to be full of shops.
Here is a corridor...
...with a close-up of a decidedly Gallifreyan looking ceiling. (Looking slightly crooked, because I didn't lie down this time.)
This is looking up at a corridor overhead - like an enclosed bridge on the second floor (ticket office level). Queuers were occasionally visible hurrying across.
Ooh, some lifts! Though not ones I used at any point, because I took an escalator to the second floor.
A few of you should have received postcards via this very box! I posted them just before leaving.
And one last glimpse of the tower as I walked away.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
As I said in my post on the Chrysler Building, when I first came to New York in the summer of 1981 I stayed in a flat (in Greenwich Village) from whose balcony we could see the World Trade Center to the south and the Empire State Building to the north. At the time I was fascinated by the World Trade Center, and I ascended both towers that July; I was rather less interested in the Empire State Building. One thing I liked about the World Trade Center was the way that, at night, it was illuminated from within, in an apparently random pattern, by its lighted windows; I liked imagining the people still working inside. Whereas the coloured floodlighting of the Empire State Building seemed rather obvious. And I liked the 1976 remake of King Kong, so my movie associations were with the modern building, and Jeff Bridges cheering Kong from one tower while Jessica Lange begged him not to put her down on the other.
But when I came back twenty years later, the World Trade Center had fallen. And I decided that I should spend my last day in New York, which was November 12, ascending the Empire State Building - only for a plane to crash on Queens and the city to go into lockdown before it was decided that it wasn't a terrorist attack after all, by which time I had to make my way to the airport to fly home.
So this time I was determined to go up the Empire State Building before my deadline, and when I got back from the theatre on Saturday night I booked a ticket at the official site, which was supposed to save some time queuing. Actually, you still spend quite a long time queuing beyond the ticket office, unless you spend an extra $22.50 to queue-jump, but I preferred to spend extra on the Top Deck ticket, which gets you into the 102nd floor observatory as well as the main outdoor one on the 86th floor. The rather charming thing about the tickets is that you have a whole year to use them; though they're only good for one trip, you don't have to decide in advance the hour, the date or even the month. And it's open from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m., last admission 1.15.
I did think about going on Sunday morning, but by the time I got into town decided there wouldn't be time before I had to meet redstarrobot (they advised allowing an hour at least, and in fact I was to spend a lot longer on it), so I went to the Chrysler Building instead. But I did then do some preliminary scouting around ground level. Here is the tower from Broadway.
And here are a couple of shots as I advanced eastwards along 34th Street.
I returned in the late afternoon, by which time it was much sunnier, and decided that this might be the ideal time, if I could catch the views in the evening sun and by twilight.
This is the entrance lobby...
...with a reminder of where you are on the wall opposite the door.
I then spent quite a long time queuing for lifts, being herded through exhibitions about the building of the Building, going up lifts, and finally climbing several flights of stairs (which saved queuing for another lift). It was all a bit like going through the Vatican but with more lifts and less Raphael. In fact no Raphael unless I missed something. On the plus side, I didn't have the same sensory overload by the time I got to the Sistine Chapel main viewing platform and was still ready to enjoy it.
This was my first view from the 86th-floor observatory, which is 320 metres up (one metre higher than the Chrysler Building). I was looking south towards Brooklyn.
But obviously I was very quickly looking north-east (probably east-north-east) to The Pretty One - the Chrysler Building.
Down is very nice. That's Fifth Avenue below.
And more of Fifth Avenue, looking north(ish). (Manhattan operates on the fiction that it runs north to south, when really it's more north-north-east to south-south-west.)
Whereas this really is north, or thereabouts, looking towards Times Square. (Can anyone identify the oddly-shaped golden building with antenna-spire just behind the green Met Life tower?)
And this is looking along 33rd Street and 34th Street towards Penn Station and the Hudson River.
Looking over the Hudson River to the sun setting over Jersey City.
And this is looking towards the southern end of Manhattan, with Liberty Island and Ellis Island in the middle distance. You can just make out the Statue (not moving) to the right of the centre of the picture. The tower with the black top is the One World Trade Center, still under construction, being built to replace the lost towers of Minoru Yamasaki.
The light was fading now, as I looked south down Fifth Avenue.
A similar view, showing the traffic on Fifth Avenue - slightly blurred, as I switched off the automatic flash on my camera to get more light.
Bear in mind that the real views are not as interrupted as these pictures suggest. There is a mesh fence around the parapet to stop people jumping off, so everyone is trying to work their way to the front of the scrum in order to stick their cameras through the holes in the fence. Or to hold their cameras out to take their own portraits in front of the fence. Though, for the acrophobic, it's also possible to admire the view from a couple of metres back.
I'd now completed the circuit of the viewing platform, so I worked my way back for another look at the Chrysler Building, at twilight...
...with the crown showing to great effect.
Looking north towards Times Square again.
And west(ish) to Penn Station.
Looking south down Fifth Avenue at night...
...and north along the same Avenue.
This was the last photo I took from above, and by now I had taken yet another lift to the 102nd-floor observatory, at 381 metres, just below the spire, which takes it to 443. This is indoors, so less windy, and the view is indeed very good; the only snag is that after a day full of visitors the windows aren't quite as clean as they might be because of the breath and fingerprints of the people who came before you. I remember rubbing this bit of glass with a paper handkerchief trying to get a slightly clearer shot.
I was in two minds about whether to do this post in chronological order, or whether to run the same views in different lights next to each other for comparison. In the end I went for chronology, but I've kept back these three shots looking up at the spire/antenna from daylight to twilight to night.
Back to chronology; I made my Exit Through The Gift Shop, as one does, though I think all I bought was a calendar. (There were many fluffy King Kongs, but no sign of any Bling Daleks.) And then I descended to the ground level again.
But wait! There's more! Like the Chrysler Building, there's a lot of gorgeous Art Deco on the ground floor, you can walk around a lot more of it than at the Chrysler and, as far as I could make out, you don't have to pay to see these parts, presumably because they seem to be full of shops.
Here is a corridor...
...with a close-up of a decidedly Gallifreyan looking ceiling. (Looking slightly crooked, because I didn't lie down this time.)
This is looking up at a corridor overhead - like an enclosed bridge on the second floor (ticket office level). Queuers were occasionally visible hurrying across.
Ooh, some lifts! Though not ones I used at any point, because I took an escalator to the second floor.
A few of you should have received postcards via this very box! I posted them just before leaving.
And one last glimpse of the tower as I walked away.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.