Photo Essay: The Woolworth Building, the Cathedral of Commerce

Of course, on the coldest day of the year, I decided to take a tour of yet another New York City landmark I'd missed out on during my time there: The Woolworth Building.

Photo Essay: Climbing to the Top of The Cathedral of St. John the Divine

Even when I think I've been somewhere in New York City, sometimes it turns out I actually haven't.



Such was the case with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.



I recall trying to go one year on Halloween night for their annual screening of Nosferatu, but foolishly not having bought an advance ticket and facing a line around the block when I just showed up.



Of course, I should have found some other time to visit this church on Manhattan's Upper West Side, near Cathedral Parkway...



...not only because it's the largest cathedral in the world...



...but also because it's super weird, named after John the Apostle of the Book of Revelation, the St. John that spoke of the coming apocalypse.



So, in my attempts to make up for lost time and cross some places off my bucket list every time I return to New York, I arranged to take a "vertical tour" of the Cathedral with a group during my most recent visit.



That way, I wouldn't just see the public areas that everybody else gets to see, like the cruciform sanctuary...



...and the seven chapels that are arranged in a semi-circle behind the altar and choir areas—each with their own theme, as expressed in unique stained glass—



...but also some other areas, way up high, that you can't just wander into.



And it was the perfect time of year to do it, with the angle of the sun shooting reflections of colored light all over the vaulted arches of the nave.



Because the Cathedral is so big, it's actually hard to see a lot of the stained glass from the ground level—a somewhat intentional layout, forcing you to crane your neck and send your eyes gazing heavenward.



But when you climb up to the triforium (so called because it was the third level built in the Gothic structure), you can get a little closer to them, and see that they address various sacred and secular topics, including the great healers of our time (the greatest, of course, being Jesus Christ himself).



Up on the triforium—also known as "The Bishops' Walk," where all kinds of conspiracies would be hatched, if you believe those theories—you can find one of the great "Easter eggs" hidden in the architecture of the Cathedral: a carved stone bud that's a face instead of a flower.



And as close to the flying buttresses as you get at the triforium level, that's not even as high as you can go.



After all, it's a 12-story climb to the top.



The colors keep getting more and more vibrant, the higher you go.



And you can see that the architecture contains elements of Byzantine, Romanesque, and Moorish—in addition to Neo-Gothic / Gothic Revival, which was very popular at the time of the Cathedral's construction.



The stained glass is interesting not only because of its depictions of non-religious, historical figures...



...but also stylistically—hearkening back to a Medieval style, but often incorporating other design influences, like art deco.



And they weren't all designed and/or fabricated by the same studios...



...nor were they installed all at the same time.



Although many of the art glass windows date back to the 1920s...



...and the Rose Window was installed in 1932...



...some of the stained glass is as recent as from the 1950s.



It really isn't until you get to the roof of the Cathedral...



...that you realize what a skyscraper it is (despite being reportedly incomplete)...



...although 20th century development has certainly given it a run for its money.



But it's historically significant as well as architecturally—as the site of a Martin Luther King, Jr. sermon, a Desmond Tutu speech, Duke Ellington's funeral and Jim Henson's memorial service, and a high-wire act by its Artist-In-Residence Philippe Petit (see also the documentary film Man on Wire).



Adding to the oddities of the Cathedral is its 1985 "Peace Fountain," which depicts the triumph of Good over Evil, and the peacocks that frequent it (including a white one, which unfortunately hid from me the day of my visit).

In addition to occasional horror movie screenings, St. John the Divine also hosts rotating art exhibitions and the annual Feast of St. Francis and the Blessing of the Animals, where the Bronx Zoo brings one exotic animal every year (like a giraffe or a baby elephant).

Which is just another reason to go back.

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Capturing Particles of Light in Three Dimensions

Sometimes you have to leave a place—and then come back to it—to really see it.

I spent so much time trying to "act like a local" by not craning my neck to look up at buildings in NYC...I feel like I missed out on a lot of buildings.

I was so set on not looking like a tourist—on keeping my eyes down so as not to instigate anything with a strange, or keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead so I wouldn't get mugged—that I completely missed the fact that there was a studio and gallery devoted to holography two doors down from the Manhattan apartment I lived in for nearly seven years.

Oh, I remember that red backlit plastic sign with the white lettering. I just never read it.

And it was there way before I was.



Although it's an apartment building now, with a street level gallery...



...this building used to be a blacksmith's forge...



...and horses would come through here to be shod. It then was taken over by a guy who was making custom surgical equipment—and lastly, by a guy who was making holograms.



They call him "Dr. Laser."



He's considered a pioneer of holography, the art of turning laser light into three dimensional images.



That, of course, is an oversimplification of the holographic arts, a discipline that's part photography, microscopy, physics, and photonics—at the convergence of science, art, and technology.



It's a matter of storing light wave data—not just capturing pigments in a reproduced image, as you would in photography.



In fact, there is no image, just as there is no object. It really is just a light field.



Of course, lasers (which are considered the purest form of light) didn't actually exist until the late 1950s or the early 1960s, so although holographic theory existed before that, it wasn't until then that anyone produced an actual 3-D hologram.



The catch is that the original image must be three dimensional and not flat...



...and you must have two working eyes to see it properly.



Stereoscopic vision is required for the perception of depth, even though technically, visual triangulation is a learned behavior.



Underneath the gallery of Dr. Laser's own works of holographic art (some of which are available for sale, and others for rent), there's a mad scientist laser laboratory down in the basement...



...which kind of serves both as his camera and his darkroom.



It's the perfect place to bounce a laser light beam off a crumbled piece of foil—or to blow smoke into it and try to create a laser tunnel.

This is also where Dr. Laser has all his equipment rigged up in order to photograph light waves, which is different than just photographing light. In order to capture the wave on film, you've got to find a way to create interference—that is, to stop the photons from moving at...you guessed it...the speed of light.

So when you're creating a hologram, you're actually photographing the interference of two different light waves, which takes shape around an object.

I've never thought about the shape of light before.

And when Dr. Laser had me stare into one of his mesmerizing red lights without my glasses on, I could see a field of black dots that were impeccably clear (unlike the rest of the world, which looks fuzzy without corrective lenses).

Dr. Laser asked if the dots were in the light, or floating outside of the light. I said, "I think the dots are inside my eyeballs."

And he said, "You're right."



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Photo Essay: An Eccentric Collection Devoted to Elevators (Closed in 2016)

[Ed: Sadly, the museum closed in 2016 and its collection was relocated to Boston.]

There are many things I left behind when I left New York; but because it is a city that's ever-changing, I've also been missing out on plenty of stuff that arrived after I was gone.



Case in point: The Elevator Historical Society.



It's less of a society and more of a one-man museum dedicated to the history of something we use every day, but probably don't think much about.

Patrick Carr is a life-long elevator professional...



...and enthusiast...



...who has collected bits and bobs from his various jobs in the industry...



...starting with working for his father as a kid...



...and culminating as a top executive of a couple elevator manufacturers and the head honcho of his own elevator supply company.



Technically he's retired now, though he continues to serve as an expert witness in court cases involving elevator- and escalator-related accidents—over 4000 of those cases to date.



Despite people's phobias, elevators are actually much safer than escalators.



A visit to the second floor of the Queens Medallion yellow cab leasing building in Long Island City serves as a good primer not only for how the elevator business got started...



...but also how they are built and engineered—and what goes wrong when there's an incident.



It's usually a matter of poor maintenance on an old piece of equipment, when cables break or robes get overstretched, but passenger error likely contributes, too—especially when someone gets stuck in the closing doors.



Pat has collected a number of rare and fragile artifacts...



...most of which were part of his personal collection, until he decided to put them on display to share them with the curious public.



Unfortunately, his operation is still small and quirky, so he's had to turn down donations of some very large items, including a gondola from an incline railway.



He'd love the museum to house some working examples of vintage elevators...



...but that would take some pretty significant support from the big elevator companies...



...who have thus far declined to participate in the museum.



Why not? Because of lack of respect for the past, Pat says.



When you hit the call button and step into a modern elevator, you probably don't think much about the contraption that allows you to ascend toward the sky and descend toward the core of the Earth.



It's probably only when you're in one of those antique lifts in an old building—you know, the ones that are more like a cage, whose door or gate you must open and close manually—that you even think about the relatively modern marvel of engineering that allows you to travel up and down rather than side-to-side.



But despite their essential utility now, elevators were actually introduced as more of a novelty tourist attraction: the ascending room.



But then architects and industrialists realized the practical application of the gears and hydraulics allowed them to build structures that were higher than, say, four stories tall...



...and lift heavy equipment, vehicles, and even freight train cars when a man-powered pulley system couldn't get the job done.



While modern elevators are relatively antiseptic and favor function over form...



...some of the old designs are quite beautiful, with gorgeous metalwork and elaborate typefaces.



A walk through The Elevator Historical Society museum feels a bit like a treasure hunt, guessing what these artifacts may have been used for...



...and wondering whether they can be used anymore.



Way in the back, though, there are shelves with some spare parts that may come in handy sooner or later...



...because even modern elevators cease to work, sometimes. Or get overloaded.

If you're in NYC, there are lots of working vintage elevators to take for a ride to recapture those days of vertical tourism—rather than using them purely as a means to an end. Finding them is half the fun.

But if you see those antique wooden escalators that are in the "old" part of Macy's at Herald Square, it's probably best if you admire them from afar. They're responsible for so many accidents (involving adults, children, and service animals) that Pat thinks they should be decommissioned, put in a glass case, and admired from afar—never to be ridden again.

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