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New York, New York
Every time I try to walk away I stay, you knew I would
I have been looking forward to seeing Jeanne Gang’s Gilder Center addition to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and it did not disappoint. From Penn Station, I made sure to take a 1 train up to 79th Street so we could arrive at the exterior west entrance, and right from that first view, I knew it was worth the wait.
Upon entering, the Gilder Center has a spectacular atrium with seating stairs, lots of natural light and fun overlooks and bridges everywhere. The addition houses some fantastic exhibitions, including an ant obstacle course with a million leaf carrying ants, an interactive and immersive video room, a terrific rock display and even a pretty decent table service (and bee themed) restaurant.
The museum has so many well presented, first class attractions, and even on an exhaustive all day visit it’s hard to see them all. And the Gilder Center alone is worth the price of admission, if you ask me.
I am a member of Open House New York, and try to do some of their non October Open House New York Weekend events when I can. These pictures are from an OHNY summer boat tour called Building Capital: To the Bronx and Back, and it was ostensibly a counter clockwise charter Circle Line tour, with a special emphasis on some of the new construction in and near Mott Haven. As always, a full circle tour of the island takes some time, but, especially on a beautiful late June afternoon (and then early evening), is always worth it.
When it first opened in 2019, I joined The Shed at Hudson Yards as a member, but I let that membership lapse because most of the time I was not all that impressed by what they were offering, and I figured that it would be a lot cheaper in the long run to just go and see things that looked interesting when they actually had one. This is Sonic Sphere, and after four years, there was finally something I wanted to see at The Shed.
Sonic Sphere is a Burning Man refugee, a floating sphere that you climb up in and then listen to music in. The whole entrance experience was a bit ritualistic, with a big purposeful reveal and not enough time before (or after) to enjoy it. Once inside, we listened to a program by Yaeji (quite nice) and watched a coordinated color light show inside. Overall an interesting experience, hopefully a sign from The Shed of better programming to come.
I once saw architects present new Penn Station ideas at a program at the New York Times Building ten years ago. During the presentation, Charles Renfro (the Renfro part of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro) had some comments about how other projects utilized the High Line as a circulation element. Diller, Scofidio + Renfro designed High Line Park, and Charles Renfro said the High Line was a place for repose, not a place to walk through to get somewhere else. Maybe that’s why they weren’t hired to design the new Moynihan Connector, a new direct connection between the (formerly) dead end High Line Park Spur and the plaza at Manhattan West, which leads to the Ninth Avenue back entrance at Moynihan Station. It is nice and it is convenient, but it also turned the spur area from a sleepy dead end to a high traffic corridor since it’s now easily the best way to walk from Penn Station to Hudson Yards.
Grand Central Madison finally opened up deep, deep underneath the existing Grand Central Terminal project. It feels about a decade late (public works construction can be so slow), but all that money did but an impressive station with a lot of nice finishes and a lot of nice art. But all those nice finishes and nice art aren’t going to fix it’s biggest problem. The project was designed to bring LIRR commuters to the East Side, but the station is so deep that it jus about takes the same amount of time to get to street level as it would to get there if left from Penn Station in the first place. For a time, I commuted between Penn Station and Grand Central Station, and the fastest I ever did it was six minutes, although most of the time it was ten or less. It takes so long now to go from the train platforms to the lower concourse, then to ride up the longest escalators in Manhattan up to the upper concourse, then to walk all the way to the terminal or subway. No amount of nice finishes or nice art is ever going to fix that.
I was in the city the weekend before my flight to Mexico City, specifically to stop by a money exchange place to get some Mexican Pesos so I didn’t have to exchange money at the airport. As luck would have it, that day wasn’t just any day, it was the day of the Mexico Day Parade down Madison Avenue. So, with some fresh Pesos in my pocket, I got a preview of Mexico City, a place I would end up liking way more than I even thought.
