2003
Open House New York Weekend
Didn't have nothing to do that day, didn't want to do nothing anyway
This is as far back as the Open House New York Slideshow goes, which coincidentally is exactly how far Open House New York Weekend goes as well. And way back in 2003, I was still transitioning between print film and digital. I would use printed film (and a better camera) for “important” things and digital for family events or quick pictures. I must have thought that the first Open House New York Weekend was important, because I chose to take my print film camera. This was a rare APS SLR with a great lens but, unfortunately in retrospect, not great resolution. And, since film was a commodity and prints cost money, I was less likely to take all that many pictures. So this whole explanation is meant to convey a reason (not necessarily an excuse) as to the limited number of pictures and the noticeable drop in resolution. That said, here are some of the pictures I do have from that very first Open House New York Weekend.
First up is a stop at One Liberty Plaza, the boring black modernist skyscraper across the street from the World Trade Center site, the one that was built to replace the gloriously wacky looking (at least from the old pictures) Ernest Flagg Singer Tower. The site was open to see the bid for the New York 2012 Olympic Games, but the interesting thing was really the view. As for the Olympics, they eventually went to London, although it’s an interesting alternate timeline exercise to imagine what would have happened if they ended up in New York.
Our next stop is a visit to the Solaire, a residential building on the water in Battery Park City with all sorts of progressive, environmentally positive features including built in solar panels (that don’t look like solar panels) on the facade.
The tour of the Solaire was great, but the rooftop garden was really the highlight. I’m not sure why every building doesn’t do this, although I would hope that in the future they figure out how to hide some of that hard to miss once you notice it rooftop mechanical equipment everywhere.
Our last site for the very first Open House New York Weekend is a rooftop past 10th Avenue in the absolute middle of nowhere. There are most certainly some people here, although (like you) they might be wondering why exactly they walked all this way.
And here it is. A great view of the High Line, before it was fixed up and before it became a park. This is when it was an urban ruin in a general urban wasteland. This was what Guiliani saw and fought to have it torn down, and what Bloomberg saw and fought to have it transformed into a park, forever changing the whole west side of the city. What a great way to look back at 2003 and realize exactly how much the city has changed and how much of that change could be seen through al these years of Open House New York Weekends.
I hope you enjoyed these looks back at this great event, and if you were brave enough to start with this year’s Open House New York Weekend and have gone all the way back well over twenty years now to see them all, I congratulate you for your stamina. If you haven’t yet, there’s still time to see them all if you’re up for it.
