Things in New York change – in a New York minute sometimes…
But the edges of Central Park – 5th Avenue, Central Park West, 110th Street and Central Park South, they have not changed. Sure the buildings have grown, built and rebuilt ever higher, just like that crane is doing. But the lines that these streets create in the fabric of the city are there.
I recently visited the Museum of the City of New York for their exhibit on The Grid, the famous Manhattan grid plan, which is now 200 years old. I have been to the exhibit twice, but need to go back once more before it is closed in the summer. Central Park as a concept was about 40 years away when the surveying for 5th Avenue and all the other streets were being made. But as the grid is the definition of Manhattan and makes it unlike anywhere else, so follows the idea of Central Park, and the execution of its interior curves and vistas against these hard edges of the city.
It is nice to get a vantage point, this one is Rockefeller Center, to see the large scale magic of The Grid and The Park.
