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New York, New York
Take another picture, show them what you’re doing and how we built a lighthouse out of all these godforsaken ruins
A’18 (the 2018 AIA Conference on Architecture) offered all sorts of distractions in addition to the educational tours that I am always so fond of. There were receptions and meetings and classes and keynotes all over the place. After my main educational tours were set, I looked to see if there were any other experiences I could add, and one experience kept showing up. It was an AIA boat tour around Manhattan, something I had been meaning to do for forever but something I had just never got around to actually doing. The problem however was that this A’18 version of the boat tour was somehow an awful lot more expensive than it needed to be. The AIA New York Around Manhattan Architecture Tour is $88 per person, or the exact same tour through A’18 was $130. There was nothing extra to justify the $42 per person extra cost, both boat tours circled the island and both boat tours came with HSW credits. So all things being equal (except for the price), I decided to wait until after A’18 was finished to finally get around to taking that boat ride.
Our boat left from the North Cove at Battery Park City, an easy place to get to, even on a weekend. It then worked its way around Manhattan counter clockwise, meaning that it didn’t matter which of the 18 bridges you were underneath, Manhattan was always on the left.
After a swing around Lower Manhattan, our boat headed north on the East River, and whether it was Waterside Plaza (left photo) or SHoP’s American Copper Buildings (right photo), it was always impossible to escape the presence of that damn Empire State Building.
The boat circles Manhattan and goes underneath 18 bridges and one aerial tram. This is the Roosevelt Island Tram, initially built as a temporary measure for Roosevelt Island residents still waiting for a subway stop, it became so beloved that when they finally got their damn stop they decided to keep it.
The ride over to Roosevelt Island is a great and surreal city experience. For one swipe of your MetroCard, you are lifted up next to the Queensboro Bridge and quickly find yourself on Roosevelt Island, adrift on the East River. The south side of the island has a shiny new Cornell campus, a few parks, ruins of a smallpox hospital and the FDR Memorial designed by Louis Kahn but built decades after his death. The north side of the island is mostly residential and a really weird place to be. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that it would be a great place to hide in the witness protection program, a place where you could happily live your life and never have to worry about running into someone you know by mistake.
The very last part of Roosevelt Island that you see on the AIANY Around Manhattan boat tour is Blackwell Island Light, a relatively tiny, five story high lighthouse at the far northern end of the island. Roosevelt Island was called Blackwell Island at the time, before it changed to Wellfare Island (when “wellfare” was a positive term) and before it changed again to Roosevelt. The lighthouse was designed by James Renwick, who designed the ruined smallpox hospital on the southern end of Blackwell/Welfare/Roosevelt Island and also the far more famous St Patrick’s Cathedral smack dab in the middle of Manhattan.
The lighthouse is near where the East River (not really a river) meets the Harlem River (not really a river) and Hell Gate (possibly really hell), which connects right into Long Island Sound and back (eventually) into the open ocean.
The boat followed the East River (not really a river) into the Harlem River (not really a river) and into the North River (also not really a river). Technically the Hudson River doesn’t really start until you get to the Bronx, but everyone always ignores that and calls it the Hudson River anyway. Here, under the never finished George Washington Bridge (they were supposed to clad the towers in stone), a little red lighthouse (often referred to as the Little Red Lighthouse) towers ten feet shorter than Blackwell Island Light and is still probably happily reliving the 50 years it had here before they built that big, giant, unfinished bridge right on top of it.
Even after successfully navigating the East River (not really a river) and the Harlem River (not really a river) and the North River (also not really a river), and even when there’s a distraction in the foreground like these Bjarke Ingels residential towers under construction, there’s still just no escaping that damn Empire State Building.
Every summer I’ll find myself out on the waters of New York. Whether its a ferry to Governors Island or from Paulus Hook or Port Imperial or Wall Street or Astoria, or an AIANY Around Manhattan Tour that took me under 18 bridges and one aerial tram. And don’t forget Open House New York. These two sunset pictures (of Jersey City and the Statue of Liberty) are from an Open House New York tour of Sunset Park in Brooklyn (not pictured) that focused on the manufacturing side of the still working waterfront. Past Open House New York tours have taken me as far as Rikers Island, across the Kill van Kull, into Newark Bay, through the Gowanus Canal and even once up Newtown Creek. They’re great ways to see parts of the city you always knew were there but probably had no reason to actually see.
If this part of the Hudson River looks a little less urban than the rest of the pictures, you may know what I’m about to say next. After all that time in and around the city, we’ve headed north- this picture was taken on the river near Newburgh, on a boat trip to West Point (not pictured). Consider this a preview of what you’re going to see on the next page, if you dare…
