Springtime in New York's Central Park

Spring comes to New York's Central Park

For those of us who live in New York, there are plenty of times for quiet thought and life without the daily stresses that seem to characterize urban living in the minds of so many people.

Indeed, the idea of our city as a loud, disruptive place probably comes from somewhere else; it's been my experience for the entire time I've lived in New York (won't tell you how long) that when a New Yorker wants to find a quiet space, he'll know where to go.

And sometimes it's a place where there are lots of other people, but the space is so grand that we don't interact with each other unless we decide to.

Central Park is one of those places. I recently decided to take an afternoon off and head for the park. Often called "the nation's backyard" (a nickname I've never really figured out, because it's really New Yorkers who take advantage of this "backyard" - oh, well), Central Park's 843 acres are the product of the great minds of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. These great masters spent over ten years building the park, and while many people seem to think the park is the last remaining vestige of the city's "natural" land forms, they're wrong. The park is completely man-made, and (as Sara Cedar Miller points out in the best of the many books on the park, Central Park: An American Landscape), in the 1850s it was "America's greatest example of the marriage of aesthetics and engineering."

"Cleopatra's Needle"

I love the park, and I never tire of sneaking a peek at some of the less obvious things to look at. I love the way the statues often seem to suddenly appear amidst some foliage (especially when blooming, like right now). On Friday I had fun with the Carl Conrad statue of Alexander Hamilton, which could easily - in all the blossoms - have been missed. And demonstrating that New York was not to be outdone by European cities with their placement of ancient monuments within the city's borders, our popular "Cleopatra's Needle" truly is an ancient obelisk, dating from c. 1450 B.C. Its placement in the park, though, separates New York a little from its European urban precursors, since they put their ancient obelisks in prominent locations, usually a public square (and that was what Vaux wanted to do, but he didn't win that battle).

Friday's springtime-in-the-park photographs can be see here.

New York, New York - More of Mr. Guy's Neighborhood

The last post described the neighborhood more in terms of ordinary folks, how those of us who aren't so grand live in a nice, relaxed part of Manhattan.

Not far away, though, is a slightly different look at this part of Manhattan, where the skyscrapers - the office buildings - make their mark. We started with the Empire State Building, just a few blocks away. As we head on over toward Park Avenue, still considered - as in times gone by - one of America's elegant avenues, there's lots more to see. And all along, definitely touches of elegant old New York when this part of the city housed some of the grandest families in America.

So the photos this time are not so much of a neighborhood as of the variety of buildings that are all just within a few minutes walk from the front door. Take a look at Mr. Guy's Murray Hill Neighborhood in New York (2) and observe all that we have around us in this part of this great city.

Appreciating America: Notes from New York

The title is a bit off, for these thoughts are not an extensive commentary on life in New York. Nor is this to be the first of one of those "notes-on-living-in-the-big-city" series of essays. This is simply a brief excursion into an appreciative few words about where I live and why I - like so many New Yorkers - take such special pride in living in one of the world's great cities.

The motivation is not hard to understand. After a ten-week hiatus from the international travel - complete with a couple of family vacations, an international professional conference (in America, not somewhere else!), and some extensive professional work from the New York - it appropriate to respond to the requests of several international colleagues, who keep asking what life is like in New York and, especially, what my neighborhood looks like.

So as I head off for yet another assignment away from home, it seems appropriate to think a little about where I live and what the physical neighborhood is like. So for those who have not visited Mr. Guy in New York, there will be (probably sometime in the autumn) another of Mr. Guy's photo albums, this one focusing on New York. Needless to say, my amateur shots are not at all expected to be in competition with the beautiful professional New York photographs of my friend Antonio Martin, featured here a few weeks ago. On the other hand, since I live here, I hope to give non-New Yorker friends a sense of life in New York as I live it.

In the meantime, though, here are a couple of tempting photographs just to show where we live. The photograph above is the view from our house. The building where we live is an apartment house now - with seven flats - but when it was built in the 1870s the house was designed for a single family. New York in the 19th century was in its full progress of moving uptown from lower Manhattan, and Murray Hill became a much-beloved middle class neighborhood. Houses like the one in which our flat is contained would probably have been the home of a merchant or professional person, with his place of business over on Fifth Avenue, two blocks away.

And yes, as you look at the photo and glance over the adjoining buildings, that is the Empire State Building towering above. Located at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street, the Empire State Building is a true landmark, a New York icon. Even after living in this neighborhood as long as we have, it's still a bit of a thrill to walk outdoors and see that marvelous structure up over us.

The second picture is another little temptation. It's a pretty place, but not particularly typical (not many of us live in little houses like these). Now a lovely group of well done-up homes, Sniffen Court was originally the stables for the people who lived on Thirty-Sixth Street. This is the view we see when we leave our house, when we turn in the opposite direction from the Empire State Building.