Fun With Telephoto Lenses

A lot of times, when I’m discussing an old photo, I’ll talk about where the photographer was standing when he or she took the shot. It matters to understand exactly what you’re seeing, and figuring it out is usually not that difficult if you know some of the quirks of Manhattan geometry.

For example, this 1958 shot by Angelo Rizzuto is labelled “Park Ave. South look N. to 42nd St.” which is straightforward and descriptive, but knowing where he was explains it better. Assuming that Mr. Rizzuto was not floating in midair, he had to have been in a building at the south end of Park Avenue/Park Avenue South, which would put him on the south side of 14^th Street. He then obviously used a telephoto lens, which resulted in a lot of compression of depth. Here’s a labelled version of the picture:

“A” is the New York Central Building, the since-renamed headquarters of the railroad, at 230 Park Avenue, from 45^th to 46^th Streets. We can see it from this angle because the Pan Am/Met Life building at 200 Park hadn’t been built yet. “B” is Grand Central Terminal, with the facade we’re seeing facing 42^nd Street. “C” is the south entrance to the Park Avenue tunnel, an old railroad tunnel repurposed for cars, at 33^rd Street. And D is 200 Park Avenue South, at the northwest corner of the avenue and 17^th Street. A handy rule of thumb is that 21 street blocks is just about a mile (a standard block is 200 feet, an ordinary cross street is 50 feet wide, 21 times (200+50) is 5250 feet versus 5280 in a mile; if there’s a wide crosstown street in those 21 blocks, throw in another 50 feet) so from 17^th street to 33^rd is three-quarters of a mile, from 33^rd to 42^nd is another four-tenths of a mile. From A to D is over a mile and a third or just about two kilometers. Rizzuto’s way of taking this photo has greatly compressed a long stretch of an avenue, resukting in a dramatic but somewhat misleading view.