Another view of lower Manhattan, this time from April 1938. The usual suspects among skyscrapers are visible (with a nice view of 70 Pine Street at the far right), along with Battery Park, the Hudson River and New Jersey. But what caught my eye is the view of the southern tip of the Financial District, which is the same piece of land as the original New Amsterdam settlement:
The buildings are oriented every which way because the streets run in curves, diagonally, with bends, and so on. The short version: putting modern high-rises on a seventeenth-century village street grid isn’t the best idea.
Also, you can’t see our office: it’s hidden behind the light-colored building dead-center in the close-up.
You must be logged in to post a comment.