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Washington, DC
Tear it down 'til it's gone, all you ever, all you ever wanted
By Fall 2021 I had already taken two train trips to New York, driven out of state to exotic places like Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and was finally ready to take another step to normalcy by taking an Amtrak train down to Washington DC. This is something I used to do twice every year at a minimum- in the summers I would go check out the installation at the National Building Museum, and every December I would go down to look for Christmas gifts (which, as I recall, was somehow personally valuable despite never actually buying anything there). So when I read about an art installation on the National Mall that sounded interesting, I checked my schedule, booked an Acela and once again found myself back in DC.
The art installation was “In America: Remember” by Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, and it was pretty heavy. It consisted of over 600,000 small white flags, each representing a single life lost to COVID. Many of the flags had hand written messages on them (they allowed you to do this), written tributes to people other visitors personally knew who died. It was (and still is) difficult to grasp such loss, something no one really seems to want to think about anymore as things get increasingly more normal.
Up in the quiet hills of Goshen, New York, the good Danish people of Legoland opened a brand new park, which was expectedly named Legoland New York. It contains all of the things you might expect in a Legoland park (not pictured below) as well as a terrific miniland (pictured below). This miniland featured local Goshen landmarks (which most people walk by) and then a wonderful, five borough tour of New York City. It is always wonderful to see the detail and creativity in an imaginary Lego city, and the interesting design decisions and juxtapositions of buildings next to each other that are not really next to each other in real life, something which I’m sure only bothers me. As an example, while looking at the wonderful Lego version of the conservatory building at the New York Botanical Gardens, I heard a fellow park visitor behind me identify it to her kids as the Taj Mahal. So if other guests are ok with the Taj Mahal being in the Bronx, then I guess my issues with the Stock Exchange being across the street from the WTC Oculus are probably no concerns to the good Danish people of Legoland.
Legoland New York does not stop at New York, it continues across the country to Lego Washington DC, Lego Mount Rushmore, Lego San Francisco and Lego Los Angeles, complete with it’s own Lego John Lautner Chemosphere. It was great to see, as I always felt that Lego John Lautner was unappreciated in his time.
Archtober is an annual event held by AIA New York that is pronounced Arc-tober and not Arch-tober, like I initially thought and usually still say. It is a monthlong event with individual Buildings of the Day, and after skipping 2020, it was back for 2021. By this point not only had I rode NJ Transit, Metro North and Amtrak, but I was already ok riding PATH and the New York City Subway, although I still preferred ferries if they were a viable option. This is the first of two buildings that I signed up to visit, both were residential towers and both had the same rules- masks must be worn and proof of vaccination was required, but social distancing (like in the elevator) was not. This seemed ok (after all, everyone was vaccinated), and I still kept my distance everywhere I could, even if I was outside. This first building, 11 Hoyt by Jeanne Gang, actually even looked better on the outside than the inside anyway.
11 Hoyt is at 11 Hoyt Street in Brooklyn, at the intersection of Hoyt and Livingston Streets, a great place to be in Brooklyn if you’re interested in getting out of Brooklyn- there are multiple subway lines nearby. It’s also a great place to stare out your window and enjoy the view, whether its the one of Lower Manhattan through Downtown Brooklyn, or the other side where even on a gloomy day you can lord over Red Hook, Gowanus, Sunset Park and Bay Ridge all the way down to the bridge.
The other residential tower that Archtober let me visit was nearby, albeit in a different borough. This is 130 William Street, towering over Lower Manhattan at William and Fulton Streets. Unlike almost every new residential tower, it does not feature an all glass or glass and metal facade, but instead use hand troweled concrete panels that kind of look like a dark volcanic rock. It’s an impressive material that gets better the closer you get to it, and it allows for some really interesting and clever arcade type balcony spaces on higher floors.
As for the views from those higher floors at 130 William Street, you’re located right in the middle of Lower Manhattan, so it doesn’t matter what window or really interesting and clever arcade type balcony space you’re at, the view is always going to be world class,
The 2021 Weekend Trips slideshow ends in Brooklyn, after a whirlwind of (mostly) day trips to not so faraway places like the Bronx, Carlisle, Hershey, Shenandoah, Manhattan, Washington DC and Goshen. This is “Lightscape” at the fantastic Brooklyn Botanic Garden, an outdoor, holiday, walk through exhibit that sometimes seemed more like it was made to be photographed than experienced, although I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Masks weren’t required here (it was outside in December), but they were still fairly popular, and proof of vaccination was required if you wanted to go inside the shop. If this was December 2020, I’d be looking at the holiday lights through the window of my car instead of being this close to total strangers, so just being there (and taking the 2 train, felt like things were starting to be normal again, which is all I ever, all I ever wanted in the first place.
