photo: Keith de Lellis Gallery
Streetscapes visits the never-successfully used airship mooring platform atop the Empire State Building:
The terrace is perhaps two and a half feet wide, and the parapet could not be any higher than that; it’s like standing on the raised lip of a Campbell’s soup can, a quarter-mile up. And because the terrace is circular, each side disappearing left and right, there is an uncomfortable sensation of being pushed outward.
I love the empty Midtown skyline behind it, with only 500 Fifth Avenue (home of Nat Sherman) busting out up on the corner of 42nd Street. 500 Fifth Avenue’s north side has essentially undecorated stonework all the way up; in the 1920s it was assumed buildings of equal height would someday line the block, until this little financial crisis came along…
