Architecture Rally in the City

To me, there is nothing better than an exciting day in the city. I love taking the subway and running into people from different parts of the world. Downtown, New York is definitely the place where I would love to live. Even Though I live close by it, it is not the same. The Bronx which is where I live has diversity of people, but it does not have as much diversity as downtown, New York.  After doing some Blogs, Professor Michael gave us a list of buildings that we had to find in the city. The package that enlisted the buildings gave us the addresses and some history about the buildings. We were encouraged to ask for help if we get lost. I was assigned to work with Krista and Andrea who never took the subway before. Even though, I live in the city with my father, I did not know a lot about the subway because I recently moved with him. I certainly took the subway before. However, I did not know how to manage the system. Therefore, the three of us started pretty much as amateurs.At the beginning, we were a little bit confused about the map. Fortunately, we did not make any mistakes. Even though we struggled a little bit with the map, we did not get lost or take the wrong train. We lost a little bit of time by deciding to which building to go first. In addition, we took some time to learn how to use the map.

Citicorp Center

The picture above shows the Citicorp center building. This building was the first one we went to. It is located in Lexington Avenue and 54^th street. I was surprised to read that the building was constructed in 1978. The architecture looked to me very modern. When I first saw the building, I thought it would not be older than 20 years. However, this was not the case. The building is made up steel and glass and it contains business offices. I love the top structure of the building. This top definitely highlights the building from the others.

St. Patrick's Church

St. Patrick’s Church, shown in the picture above, was also one of the buildings in the package. I was very excited to see this church since churches usually have wonderful architectures. And indeed, St. Patrick’s church’s architecture was amazing. I might have walked by this and other buildings in the package before. However, I never took a day to observe the beautiful architecture that New York has. Due to the many people that were around me and to the height of the building, it was difficult for me to take a good picture. Even though the building was being restored, I was able to see some details in the tower. Krista, Andrea and I were trying to see the architecture inside the building. However, this was also a little bit difficult because there were a lots of people since it was church time. I would have feel very disrespectful if I walked in taking pictures and only looking at the architecture of the building. I told Krista and Andrea we were better off just looking from the outside.

The door in the picture is one of the front door of the church. We felt in love with this door because it was enormous and its design caught our eyes. 

St. Patrick’s church is the largest neo-gothic-style catholic cathedral in North America. It took 28 years to construct this church, from 1851 to 1888. The towers were added in 1888. This building was definitely present during many important dates in the American History such as the civil war, the great depression and others. The civil war was the reason why the construction of the building was halted in 1858. This cathedral is another part of American history.

Hearts Magazine Building

Two other building that fascinated me due to their designs were the Hearts Magazine Building and Time warner center. As the picture above shows, the magazine building is made up glass and steel. The base of the tower is made up stone and it was constructed in 1928. The tower was postponed due to the great depression. It was then completed in 2004. This building is the site of Hearts corporation which brings together publications and communications companies such as Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and the San Francisco Chronicle. This is one of the buildings that makes New York City a very busy city.
The three of us, Krista, Andrea and I, will always remember this building, not only because of its design but because of the hard time it gave us. For some reason, the address of this building in the package was Eight Ave and 47th street. Since we were at 43th street we decided to walk the extra 4 blocks to get to the building. From far we could see the building, so we kept walking toward it. We walked approximately half an hour to get to this building. The actual address was 8 avenue and 57^th street instead of 8 avenue and 47^th street. We walked neatly 14 blocks to get to this building. That amount might not sound very large. However, because it was a really hot day and there were a lots of people walking in the streets, this was torture to us. Due to this, we will always remember the magazine building.

Time Warner Center (Taken from Google)

The design of Time Warner Center also fascinated me. It seems that it is made up a really delicate glass. The building is a mixture of other skyscrapers. It was constructed in 2003. Therefore, it is one of the newest skyscrapers in the city. The building was so tall that I was not able to take a nice picture of it. Krista and Andrea did not like the building. This one was my favorite one. Unfortunately, we were running out of time so we were not able to go inside.

As we walked in the city, we noticed of couple of things that were bad for the environment. For instance, the picture above shows a vending cart which is creating a great amount of smoke. The smoke contributes to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which brings bad consequences to the earth such as global warning. The amount of cars also contributes to the increase of Carbon dioxide. Usually, there is only one person per each car.

The picture above shows a positive intervention that helps the environment. Whoever invented this kinds of chair is a genius. The plants in the chair help decrease the amount of carbon going to the atmosphere. In addition, many buildings around New York have roof gardens. These two are very positive to the environment since we need trees to get rid of the carbon dioxide in the air.