Tag: US Trip

Located opposite Evil Twin Brewery, this is the former Tobacco Warehouse which is now used by the St. Ann’s Warehouse theatre group. To me, it’s one of those fake buildings where there’s now just the frontage and nothing else, although that’s not a recent design decision that’s the fault of the theatre, the interior went long ago. At least the building is in usage again today, it was constructed before the Civil War and was used as a tobacco inspection centre.

Next to it is Manhattan Bridge which crosses the East River (which isn’t technically a river, it’s a tidal estuary, and it’s also known as the Sound River) into Manhattan. Work on the bridge started in 1901 and it was completed in 1909, which seems fairly reasonable going for a structure of this complexity. I’m sure my friend Liam would have struggled to get this constructed any quicker today. There was though a structural mistake made with later additions to the bridge which meant that there was a dip in the road and rail lines, which wasn’t entirely ideal. They fixed this in 1980, although only at great cost. The bridge was going to known as Bridge Number 3, which is entirely practical, but the New York Times hated that, and newspapers are powerful so it was renamed.

The Manhattan Bridge is here on the right, with the Brooklyn Bridge, the first bridge to cross the river (or tidal estuary), on the left hand side of the photo, built between 1870 and 1883. It was a difficult sell for the developers and they had to bribe city officials to get the required permissions to construct it. It was once known as the ‘Great East River Bridge’ which I think has quite a ring to it, but it took its current name in 1915.

A nice little beach area, there’s a pleasant riverside park here.

The Freedom Tower and much else in downtown Manhattan is visible in the background.

Underneath the Manhattan Bridge, it seemed a popular place for locals to have a little picnic or even an afternoon nap.

This bronze bust is located in Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn and commemorates the life of William Jay Gaynor, the Mayor of New York between 1910 and 1913. Gaynor was seen as a good man who was a reformist visionary, particularly in the area of criminal justice.

The memorial, made from pink Milford granite, was designed by Adolph Alexander Weinman who was also responsible for some of the sculptures at Pennsylvania Station,a location which might have perhaps been seen as one of the architectural wonders of the modern world. Some of Weinman’s works were saved, but it was the photo of one his works, Day, in landfill that was an important trigger to salvage even more. As a random aside, it was the disastrous incompetence of Stuart T. Saunders, who ran Penn Central which demolished the station, and he died in Richmond which is where I’m writing this blog post. Saunders also sought to destroy Grand Central railway station, but good men and women were able to thwart his aims. Anyway, I’ve digressed again.

The rear of the memorial. Anyway, the reason I started on this post was not to complain again about the demolition of a beautiful railway station, but it was to comment that there’s a famous photo taken just after a politician was nearly assassinated. And that photo is of Gaynor, although he somehow survived and had bits of bullet in his neck until his death a few years after the assassination attempt in August 1910.

And there’s the photo, with Gaynor rather obviously the one in the middle.

No real text to this post, but I just liked this photo of a rainy morning in New York. I had been warned by someone just how rainy it was when walking down the steps of the hotel (well, pod place) but hadn’t quite expected it to be as bad as it was. That’s the disadvantage of being confined to a small pod away from any windows. Fortunately, I’m fully prepared for most weathers on this trip and my waterproof coat and bag cover came out, as I can’t have my McCain’s bag getting wet (primarily as the damn thing takes ages to dry). The location is Bryant Park which was first laid out in 1847 and is named after William Cullen Bryant, a long-serving editor of the New York Evening Post.

Excuse my random placing of this post when, as far as this blog is concerned, I’m still not at the end of my time in New York (although I left a few days ago). But, it’s a convenient time for me to write this and so this is where this is going. Oh the editorial power…..

But, back to New York, which I’ve visited on a number of occasions before. It’s fair to say that there is a frightening side to New York, just as there is to nearly every major capital city in the world (although I’ll leave Warsaw out of this, as the Poles have a capital city run with such incredible efficiency and competence that they have avoided anything frightening). But the element that is most exciting to me is the liberating side of no-one, really no-one, cares what you’re doing.

There were no shortage of what might be considered odd incidents that I saw in New York, whether that be people lying down on the floor asleep in the middle of the subway carriage, people with an absence of clothes, a homeless woman and a shop-owner having a fight, a man dancing slowly across the road and so many more. But what is more notable is that, far more even than in cities such as London, no-one really seems to pay much attention other than a slight glance to the side at what is happening. Partly that’s no doubt just not wanting to get involved, but also because these things happen with such regularity that they’re not notable any more. I find freedom very exciting and there’s little doubt that you can be just about anything that you want to be in New York.

The levels of poverty are though beyond that of most western cities, with homeless people forced to find nearly any quiet spot that they can hide away in. There were plenty sleeping on platforms of the subway network or even beyond the parts that passengers are allowed to go. The scale is immense, there are just under 55,000 people in New York who are homeless and part of the municipal shelter system, but there are tens of thousands more that are sleeping rough and no-one can accurately count that. The damage to their physical and mental health is immense, but a figure that surprised me is that only 7% of all the homeless people in shelters are white, compared to the population of New York which is over 40% white. The system can’t cope and is nowhere near coping.

There are some world class businesses operating in areas of the city which have great poverty, not least some of the craft breweries which I visited this week. They either have to work around the problem, or try to give as much back to their local community as they can. But, as it stands, homelessness in New York is higher than at anytime since the Great Depression in the 1930s. None of it bodes well for the future.

One of the other challenges for the city is that crime is now escalating out of control, up 31% in one year. There are plenty of newspaper and magazine articles at the moment about how dangerous New York is, and it’s reached the stage now that I’m not sure it’s really a place for families. At some stage, someone is going to have to turn that situation around to prevent investment in the city starting to fall. The strength of the dollar in the global markets will also reduce the number of tourists, so these could well be challenging times for the hospitality industry.

The city’s police is looking to respond to this situation by looking at privatising more of their non police work, particularly relating to traffic roles which currently take up on average 15 to 20% of a police officer’s time. They need to get more police officers on the streets, but they’re still a long way off being able to do that and their 36,000 officers are struggling to cope. That’s a similar number of police officers to those in the Met police in London, but the challenges in New York are perhaps on a higher level. Low level crime is evident all over the place, not just with the amount of fare evasion that goes on across the subway or shoplifting from stores. Often fare evasion goes on in the vicinity of station staff who likely just use their discretion and a willingness not to get involved in a dangerous conflict with anyone, it gives a feeling of lawlessness.

But, despite all those challenges, the city remained exciting to me, it’s still full of opportunities and hope for the future for many. It’s a loud and vibrant city, indeed the noise sometimes doesn’t feel far off how loud some cities in India are, which I can imagine loses its appeal after not that long. However, it’s much more of a 24-hour city than somewhere such as London, not least as its subway has always operated for 24 hours a day, which makes it feel alive all the time. As an aside, I remember when I lived in London the excitement of being able to get to a 24 hour supermarket at any time because of the bus service at night, although I actually never felt the need to go to Morrison’s or wherever at 02:00.

I’d merrily visit New York again, but it feels like its edges are getting ever harder and it’s becoming ever tougher. For the average visitor who is constantly cautious, I’d say that the city is safe as long as care is taken, although there are some neighbourhoods that are of course best avoided. There’s evidently a lot of money in the financial district, and some of the soaring apartment blocks mostly near Central Park have properties selling for tens of millions of dollars. In a comment perhaps appropriate for British politics today, I can’t though see much of that money trickling down to those sleeping homeless at the foot of the apartment blocks, nor not much hope for the underprivileged in the city.

Some web-sites say ‘of course New York is safe, it’s the same as any western city’, but I’m not sure that’s entirely true, particularly when comparing to many European and Asian cities. This article from Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-is-nyc-safe-crime-stat-reality/, gives an in-depth look at the challenges which New York currently has. The new Mayor of New York, elected in January 2022, doesn’t seem to attract much international press in the way that some of his predecessors have, but Eric Adams is a former police officer and hopes are there that he could change things. One of this first actions though was to try and hire his brother on a salary of $240,000 per year, which required a waiver from the Conflicts of Interest Board, so Adams proposed a cut in salary to $210,000. Although the board was having none of it, they reduced his salary from the suggested $210,000 per year to $1 per year, which is some pay cut. Time will tell whether Adams can turn the crime statistics around.

But, I’ve digressed somewhat, I very much enjoyed my time in New York and liked the improvements to the public transportation system which made it much easier to pay. The city seemed relatively clean, things mostly worked and the selection of craft beer was world class, so that did for me.

This former smallpox hospital is located on Roosevelt Island and it first opened in December 1856, with 100 beds for those needing to recover from the illness. The building was designed by the prolific local architect James Renwick jr and it was the first facility of its kind in the country. Although when it was constructed there was a smallpox vaccine, many immigrants from around the world came into New York ill and they needed this facility. In 1875, the institution became known as the Riverside Hospital and then in 1886 it became a home for nurses, formally known as the Home for the Nurses of the Maternity and Charity Hospital Training School.

There were northern and southern extensions added to the building in the early twentieth century, giving extra space for classrooms, laboratories and additional dormitories. However, the nursing school closed in the 1950s and most of the interior fittings were removed, although the roof was still in place in the 1960s.

It’s not in the best of condition it’s fair to say and in the 1970s there were plans to try and shore up the building to protect it. That aim was going quite well until one of the wings fell down in 2007 which wasn’t ideal and since when there has been greater impetus to fix things. Money is now being poured into the structure and it’s hoped that the ruins will be open to the public in the future, as they’re currently fenced off and inaccessible. It’s an imposing building and it certainly retains some beauty despite the fact that great chunks of it have fallen down. It feels more like a grand Victorian residence than a hospital and it has some rather lovely views over Manhattan.

Some of the structural supports that have been placed into the building to prevent any more collapsing incidents.

Some of the building is so overgrown that it’s hard to see what is still standing. The future though at least looks positive and there’s more information about the renovation work at https://www.theruin.org/. They’re treating the building as a Covid-19 memorial and it’ll be interesting to be able to walk around the ruins once they’ve stabilised them.

This situation intrigues me, look for the traffic enforcement officer in the middle of the intersection in New York. I’m honestly not sure how safe that is, but they are there to control the traffic even though there are traffic lights in operation. Apparently it’s to prevent any grid-locking issues at the intersection as the officers can refuse to let more vehicles enter the area even if their lights are green. It all looks very dangerous though, can’t they just have something like the hatched yellow lines that they have in the UK? Perhaps as I don’t own a car this actually makes a lot of sense, but it’s not a job that I fancy having.