Art on Top of Architecture
New York is a beautiful city. Sure it's full of beautiful people, beautiful restaurants, and beautiful clothes; but what I love the most about New York is the beautiful architecture. For some reason, when you walk down Broadway, or almost any street for that matter, most of the people rush around from store to store, pushing each other aside on their way to the latest sale. (BTW, I'm still bitter about Target shutting down today because I need my man cardigan by Missoni for Target. EDIT: Target.com IS OUT OF STOCK, WTF?). But what they don't do is look up.
I once did a paper on the building located at 488 Broadway. On the street level, if you happened to have been in the area at the time, it looked something like this:
Yeah, the Staples is cute, I guess. (UPDATE: it's no longer there, apparently). But if you take just a moment to look at what's above, you get an eyeful of this:
Small Corinthian columns decorate each beautifully sculpted window. The highly detailed and ornamental cornice of this building is artfully and methodically crafted. It is reminiscent of the Venetian palazzos, a symbol of North Italian baroque right in our very own backyard.
So while I continue my journey through graduate school--and my hiatus from this blog--go to a city near you (or even your very own town), and look up every once in a while. It's one of my favorite things to do. I'm sure it's also one of Martha Stewart's good things too. You know, we BFF and all.
