Tuesday, April 1st
The United Nations
New York Public Library
Battery Park, Washington Square, The Cage and Macy's
(The view from the) Top of the Rock
Rockefeller Center
The United Nations
There are 193 members of the United Nations. I know this, because my tour guide mentioned it every five minutes for the whole tour. The compound is on the east side of Manhattan, overlooking the East River - such prime land generously donated by Rockefeller Jr (who we'll meet later tonight)- and I commenced my April Fools Day by trying to go in the staff entrance. Awkward. So I walked down past the road of flags to reach the visitors entrance, but alas the direction I was walking was Z-A so I never got to Australia's flag. I saw New Zealand's. Pretty close :D |
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| (One of the) UN Building(s) | There are some really curious gifts from members around. | Nice view |
Inside is nice, but it is a functioning, work environment after all. There are gifts of paintings and other artwork all around donated by various members, displays about work done by various UN bodies, a wall with framed and decorated articles of the Declaration on Human Rights (translated into more than 400 languages and dialects). They still have elevator-people to guide you to your floor/say good morning to/improve security. The Trade Council was just starting a meeting so we quietly walked through the back of the room, and the General Assembly is under reconstruction so we couldn't go there. But the Security Council chamber was empty and we were allowed to stop for photos-- the benefits of having only three people in your group!
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| The UN Security Council Chamber | ||
New York Public Library
There are a few branches of the New York Library, I went to what I'm fairly sure is the flagship one. Fun fact - there are two stone lions guarding the library steps (and on the day I visited, there were also Greenpeace volunteers. We talked about whales for a while.) named Patience and Fortitude, after what the Mayor of New York at the time declared the people would need to get through the Depression. And the name stuck. Inside the building is gorgeous-- marble in the lobby and wood panelling everywhere. Maybe not as big as I would have expected, but with plenty of fun encyclopaedic titles around the walls and people 'busy' at 'work'. They also had an exhibition on the HIV awareness and de-stigmatisation movement which was really interesting. |
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| New York Library | ||
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| Good motto. | The main study room | Possibly the actual key to the city |
Battery Park, Washington Square, the Cage and Macy's
So my plan after this had been to go and visit Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, so I took the subway downtown to Battery Park. But when I got there a combination of not wanting David's UN Letter Opener confiscated off me by security and the giant line meant that I decided not to visit. So I caught a different train uptown, and spontaneously got off at the station for New York University. I bought a shirt at their campus store and saw a few buildings -- it's more like UTS than Sydney, a collection of buildings sprinkled around the city as best they can. I saw I was near a park thing and wandered over there and found Washington Square, a delightful small area where locals (mostly college students) were enjoying their lunch break, playing chess, running, just hanging out. They also had a nice arch. In getting back to the subway I went past the West 4th Street Courts, a moderately famous streetball (basketball) location. Nicknamed the Cage and renowned for fostering hard, aggressive play, there were kids playing when I was there, but it was nice to watch for a little while.I found my way to the giant Macy's. It takes up an entire block. And is eight floors high. Crazy. I wandered around inside for a while, rode the wooden escalators (not as big as the Wynyard ones) and ended up buying myself some black jeans on sale and a lovely (overpriced but gorgeous) swimsuit.
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| Washington Square Entry | Washington Arch | Washington Square |
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| Battery Park | Macy's... one of the entrances | West Fourth St Courts |
The Top of the Rock
After dropping my shopping home, I ventured back to the skyline of New York, to the Top of the Rock, the observation deck at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. They have a timed system-- you buy a ticket and it tells you when you can go up (since I was New York Pass-ing it, I got to go up straight away). I timed it perfectly as the sun was starting to set (though I will admit to cheating a little with the sunset setting on my camera)... and well, enjoy! Tip for when you go: when you exit the elevator, you can go two more floors up via escalator and then stairs. Don't waste your time on the first floor with its limited glass decks, go straight up (it's included in the normal price) to the full observation deck on the 70th floor. By day (and well, by night as well I guess), the building is the GE Money building, and also houses several other businesses. The show '30 Rock' is set there (kind of. It's a parody of the people who work there.)
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| Looking north/uptown: Central Park | ||
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| Views of the city. It almost looks like Lego, hey. | ||
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| I spent a lot of time in this windowsill. Just sitting, watching. | Concrete jungle where dreams are made... | Looking down on my (future) dominion. |
The Rockefeller Center
John D. Rockefeller made a fortune in oil. Under monopoly/anti-trust laws they had to break his Standard Oil company up into separate entities (but since he retained ownership of a lot of shares meant he became even richer), and in today's terms it is estimated that at the peak, his empire was worth $318.8 billion. (For comparison, Bill Gates had about $101 billion). Rockefeller seems like a cool guy, gave a lot of his wealth to charity as well. His son, John D. Rockefeller Jr went into business and construction and among other things built the Rockefeller Center, which started off as 14 art deco commercial buildings, and then five modern towers were later built. It was actually meant to be an opera house, but then the Depression happened and people lost their disposable income. The buildings became part of the Allied operations centre during WWII, and is now predominantly a commercial sector. There is a huge underground shopping concourse connecting everything too.
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| Inside the building | Magnolia Bakery | NBC Studios |
I went on an art and architecture tour around the complex and it was really fun! Junior's wife was put in charge of decoration and decided to commission heaps of art that could be enjoyed by the whole public. It's pretty cool. I'm informed the bakery has Sex and the City fame? I didn't go on the tour through the whole NBC studios, but we did go past the fishbowl studio where they film the equivalent of Sunrise.
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| Site of the Christmas Tree | The real statue... | The Lego version |
Do you remember how I mentioned that Junior donated the land for the UN? Philanthropic and all but it also stopped his competitors building a similar complex out that way. Either way, there are national flags all around the Rockefeller Plaza, which featured an ice rink while I was there.
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| Buildings of the Rockefeller Center | Rockefeller Plaza | An escalator to nowhere inside a lobby... |
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| 30 Rock | Atlas | This view is heritage protected-- one of the few unobstructed views of a full skyscraper in New York. |
The roof inside the lobby of 30 Rock is cool-- it represents a transition from past to present and depending on where you stand, it looks as if the guy (literally) shouldering the burden is unequally reliant on one or the other.
I returned back to my hostel to find an amateur comedy night in progress-- it wasn't terribly great but I think they have a good gig-- an audience who doesn't really care and you're never going to see again to try out new jokes on. Nice to wind down to.
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