New York City, New York; January 14, 2007.

Here are some photos from a trip I made to New York City, NY for residency interviews on January 14, 2007. I've been to New York several times, yet, it always seems different every time I go. It's just that kind of city......

Times Square....during the day.

Radio City Music Hall

The 12 acre (49,000 m²) complex in midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center was developed between 1929 and 1940 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on land leased from Columbia University. The Radio City Music Hall was designed by architect Edward Durell Stone and interior designer Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style. Rockefeller initially planned a new home for the Metropolitan Opera on the site, but after the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the plans changed and the opera company withdrew from the project.

The names "Radio City" and "Radio City Music Hall" derive from one of the complex's first tenants, the Radio Corporation of America. Radio City Music Hall was a project of Rockefeller; Samuel Roxy Rothafel, who previously opened the Roxy Theatre in 1927; and RCA chairman David Sarnoff. RCA had developed numerous studios for NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, just to the south of the Music Hall, and the radio-TV complex that lent the Music Hall its name is still known as the NBC Radio City Studios.

The Music Hall opened to the public on December 27, 1932 with a lavish stage show featuring Ray Bolger and Martha Graham. The opening was meant to be a return to high-class variety entertainment. The new format was not a success. The program was very long and individual acts were lost in the cavernous hall. On January 11, 1933, the Music Hall converted to the then familiar format of a feature film with a spectacular stage show which Rothafel had perfected at the Roxy Theatre. The first film was shown on the giant screen was Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen starring Barbara Stanwyck and the Music Hall became the premiere showcase for films from the RKO-Radio Studio. The film plus stage spectacle format continued at the Music Hall until 1979 with four complete performances presented every day.

Radio City has 5,933 seats for spectators; it became the largest movie theater in the world at the time of its opening. Designed by Edward Durell Stone, the interior of the theater, with decor by Donald Deskey, incorporates glass, aluminum, chrome, and geometric ornamentation. Deskey rejected the Rococo embellishment generally used for theaters at that time in favor of a contemporary Art Deco style, borrowed heavily from a European Modern aesthetic style, of which he was the foremost exponent at the time.

The Great Stage, measuring 66.5 feet (20 m) deep and 144 feet (44 m) wide, resembles a setting sun. Its system of elevators was so advanced that the U.S. Navy incorporated identical hydraulics in constructing World War II aircraft carriers; according to Radio City lore, during the war, government agents guarded the basement to assure the Navy's technological advantage.

The Music Hall's "Mighty Wurlitzer" pipe organ is the largest theater pipe organ built for a movie theater: Twin identical consoles flank both sides of the Great Stage, 144 feet (44 m) apart; its 4,410 pipes are installed in chambers on either side of the proscenium's arch. Installed in 1932, the instrument was the largest produced by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Manufacturing Company of North Tonawanda, New York; it was built as a serious concert instrument rather than to accompany silent movies, capable of playing many styles of music including classical organ literature. A rebuild of the historic organ was undertaken that was completed in time for the theater's restoration in 1999. A smaller Wurlitzer organ was installed in the theater's radio studios, but was put into storage when the studio was converted into office space.

By the 1970s, changes in film distribution made it difficult for Radio City to secure exclusive bookings of many films; furthermore, the theater preferred to show only G-rated movies, which became increasingly less common as the decade wore on. Regular film showings at Radio City ended in 1979. Plans were made to convert the theater into office space, but a combination of preservation and commercial interests resulted in the preservation of Radio City and in 1980, after a renovation, it reopened to the public.
Radio City Music Hall is currently leased to and managed by Cablevision. Movie premieres and feature runs have occasionally taken place there but the focus of the theater is now on concerts and live stage shows.

NBC Studios...where SNL, Conan O'Brien, and other shows are filmed.

Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center represents a turning point in the history of architectural sculpture: it is among the last major building projects in the United States to incorporate a program of integrated public art. Sculptor Lee Lawrie contributed the largest number of individual pieces — twelve — including the statue of Atlas facing Fifth Avenue and the conspicuous friezes above the main entrance to the RCA Building.
Paul Manship's highly recognizable bronze gilded statue of the Greek legend of the Titan Prometheus recumbent, bringing fire to mankind, features prominently in the sunken plaza at the front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The model for Prometheus was Leonardo (Leon) Nole, and the inscription from Aeschylus, on the granite wall behind, reads: "Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends." Although some sources cite it as the fourth-most familiar statue in the United States, behind the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty, Manship was not particularly fond or proud of it.

Sak's and Company on 5th Avenue

The Waldorf-Astoria

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is a famously luxurious hotel in New York. It has been housed in two historic landmark buildings in New York City. The first, designed by architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, was on the Fifth Avenue site of the Empire State Building. The present building at 301 Park Avenue in Manhattan is a 47 story, 625 ft. (191 m) Art Deco landmark, designed by architects Schultze and Weaver and dating from 1931. The hotel is the flagship of the The Waldorf=Astoria Collection, a chain of upscale hotels spun out of the Hilton Hotels and Conrad Hotels chains, as well as some new hotels.

Famous people who've lived in the Waldorf-Astoria

Hossein-Gholi Noori, an influential Qajar politician was sent by Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar to the United States of America during the time of President Grover Cleveland to serve as Iran's first ambassador to the U.S. He resided in the first Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. During his stay at the hotel, he ordered a slaughter of a sheep from the balcony of his penthouse suite for the Eid al-Adha, a religious festival celebrated by Muslims. For his undiplomatic behaviour, he was summoned to the United States Department of State and then was recalled to Iran for poor representation of the Iranian people.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, former U.S. president Herbert Hoover and retired U.S. General Douglas MacArthur lived in suites on different floors of the hotel. A plaque affixed to the wall on the 49th Street side commemorates this. There is also a recreation of one of the living room of Hoover's Waldorf-Astoria suite in the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.
Around the time of World War I, inventor Nikola Tesla lived in the earlier Waldorf-Astoria.
The Duke of Windsor and Duchess of Windsor were Waldorf Towers regulars.
Gangsters Frank Costello, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Charles "Lucky" Luciano (room 39c) once lived in the Waldorf-Astoria.
Cole Porter and Linda Lee Thomas had an apartment in the Waldorf Towers, where she died in 1954. Porter's 1934 song "You're the Top," contains the lyric, "You're the top, you're a Waldorf salad..."
In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe stayed at the hotel, but never stayed any longer than a few months.
The official home of United States Embassy to the United Nations.

The Apple Store

Trump Tower...home of "The Apprentice" and Donald Trump

The View from Central Park

The entrance to the Dakota Building, where John Lennon was shot. On the night of 8 December 1980, at around 10:49 p.m., Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times (the fifth shot missed) in the entrance of the Dakota. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman who had been stalking Lennon since October.

The Chrysler Building

The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at 319 metres (1,047 ft), it was the world's tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State Building in 1931. However, the Chrysler Building remains the world's tallest brick building (though St. Martin's Church in Landshut is considered the world's tallest structural load-bearing brickwork building). After the destruction of the World Trade Center, it was again the second-tallest building in New York City until December 2007, when the spire was raised on the 365.8-metre (1,200 ft) Bank of America Tower, pushing the Chrysler Building into third position. In addition, the New York Times Building, which opened in 2007, is exactly level with the Chrysler Building in height.

The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture and considered by many contemporary architects to be one of the finest buildings in New York City. In 2007, it was ranked ninth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects

Little Italy

A view of Manhattan from the Manhattan Bridge

Times Square

Times Square is a major intersection in Manhattan, a borough of New York City at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. The Times Square area consists of the blocks between Sixth and Eighth Avenues from east to west, and West 40th and West 53rd Streets from south to north, making up the western part of the commercial area of Midtown Manhattan.
Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed after the Times Building (now One Times Square), the former offices of the New York Times, in April 1904. Times Square, sometimes known as the "Crossroads of the World," has achieved the status of an iconic world landmark and has become a symbol of its city. Times Square is principally defined by its spectaculars, animated, digital advertisements.
The intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street, at the southeast corner of Times Square, is the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America.

Ground Zero

The World Trade Center site (ZIP code: 10048) sits on 16 acres (65,000 m²) in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The World Trade Center complex stood on the site until the September 11 attacks; Studio Daniel Libeskind, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Silverstein Properties, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation oversee the reconstruction of the site. The site is bounded by Vesey Street to the north, the West Side Highway to the west, Liberty Street to the south, and Church Street to the east. The Port Authority owns the site's land (except for 7 World Trade Center), and Larry Silverstein, the developer of "Ground Zero", holds the lease to retail and office space in four of the site's buildings.

Wall Street

The name of the street derives from the fact that during the 17th century, Wall Street formed the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement. In the 1640s basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and residences in the colony. Later, on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant, in part using African slaves, led the Dutch in the construction of a stronger stockade. A strengthened 12-foot (4 m) wall of timber and earth was created by 1653 fortified by palisades. The wall was created, and strengthened over time, as a defense against attack from various Native American tribes, New England colonists, and the British. In 1685 surveyors laid out Wall Street along the lines of the original stockade. The wall was dismantled by the British in 1699. While the original name referred to the Walloons, a general term by the Dutch for all French speaking people, including the large group of original French/Belgian/Swiss refugees known as Huguenots that came to the Netherlands as refugees, the name of Wall Street can refer to either the people or the wall. The traditional understanding in Holland is the reference to the Walloons.
In the late 18th century, there was a buttonwood tree at the foot of Wall Street under which traders and speculators would gather to trade informally. In 1792, the traders formalized their association with the Buttonwood Agreement. This was the origin of the New York Stock Exchange.
In 1789, Federal Hall and Wall Street was the scene of the United States' first presidential inauguration. George Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall overlooking Wall Street on April 30, 1789. This was also the location of the passing of the Bill Of Rights
In 1889, the original stock report, Customers' Afternoon Letter, became the The Wall Street Journal, named in reference to the actual street, it is now an influential international daily business newspaper published in New York City. For many years, it had the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, although it is currently second to USA Today. It has been owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. since 2007.

The New York Stock Exchange

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is a stock exchange based in New York City, New York. It is the largest stock exchange in the world by dollar value of its listed companies' securities. As of October 2008, the combined capitalization of all domestic New York Stock Exchange listed companies was US$10.1 trillion.
The NYSE is operated by NYSE Euronext, which was formed by the NYSE's 2007 merger with the fully-electronic stock exchange Euronext. The NYSE trading floor is located at 11 Wall Street and is composed of four rooms used for the facilitation of trading. A fifth trading room, located at 30 Broad Street, was closed in February 2007. The main building, located at 18 Broad Street, between the corners of Wall Street and Exchange Place, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, as was the 11 Wall Street building.