Regular readers have by now observed my escapist preoccupations. Someone who new me well once remarked, regarding my urban searches for the bucolic, that what I needed was a place in the country. This may or may not be true - the conversation reminds me of a dialogue between Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and a friend Robin (Janet Margolin) in a scene from Annie Hall:ROBIN: I'm too tense. I need a Valium. My
analyst says I should live in the country
and not in New York.
ALVY: The country makes me nervous. You got
crickets and it-it's quiet ... there's
no place to walk after dinner, and...
there's the screens with the dead moths
behind them, and... uh, yuh got the-the
Manson family possibly ...
So, indulge me as I ferret out the natural in the NYC without the dead moths. I'm not sure how these urban oases are perceived by a visitor with ready access to nature - a quaint novelty or perhaps an display of horticultural ingenuity. For city dwellers, these spots are well liked and heavily used. The photo, taken in the Autumn of 2007, shows the rear of the Winter Garden Atrium as seen from the Hudson River with the North Cove Yacht harbor. The atrium, wedged between 2 and 3 World Financial Center buildings, is a 10 story glass vaulted structure designed by Cesar Pelli, completed in 1988 and rebuilt in 2002 after 9/11 - read my previous posting about the Winter Garden here. I love palm trees and the atrium has many - so it's one of my (semi) tropical oases in the city. But the real deal and my favorite is in Brooklyn - click here ...
6 comments:
Brian, For me this photo is "typical" New York with tall buildings next to one another. The atrium gets lost between them so I'll have to go to your previous posts to understand what you are revealing. I think I'm going to learn something important!!
Just being on the water is connecting to nature -- it can be easy to forget you are on an island...
I found your site by accident, but I love it--as a New Yorker and as a photographer. Keep up the good work.
I'm curious, though, how do you get such big images to fit into your template? Blogger always resizes mine and makes them way too small.
Its really good to have these oasis' in the city, it makes them all the more special.
Kate:
In this case and the one I have linked to in Brooklyn, the oasis is strictly indoors.
Anon: It's a little bit of working with the code - using the edit html function. If you email me, I can explain.
Nice photograph. It reminds me of Baltimore but that was a long time ago.
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