New York Window Shopping in Midtown

If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. Trust me.

New York Does Kitsch!

Midwesterners love to decorate their lawns during the holidays with giant inflatables. It surprised me to run across them in Manhattan. They looked so vulnerable against the abrasive, jagged edges of concrete and brick around them.

Rockefeller Christmas Tree

It's elbow to elbow at Rockefeller Center the week after Thanksgiving. Wish you were here?

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New York Subway Art: Abstract Squishy

New York Subway Art: Murals of Workers

New York City Subway Art: Marbles

New York Subway Art: Insects

New York Subway Art: Grand Central Terminal

New York Subway Art: Fish

Stella 34 in Macy's

The new high-end Italian restaurant, Stella 34 Trattoria, is a terrific place to eat and people-watch on Macy's 6th floor. The place is spacious and bright making it an oasis from the tourists and shoppers just steps away.

Lively artwork draws your eye to the busy chefs working in the open kitchen---or the other way around. Scoring a table near the enormous architecturally-beautiful windows lets you see the action on the streets below while you dine. To think the space was formerly used for warehousing! 

Macy's Christmas Window Display

This is one of the many beautiful Christmas window displays at the 34th Street Macy's Store. 

Macy's Thanksgiving Day 8:30 PM

People were still filing into Macy's flagship store on 34th Street a half hour after the doors opened on Thanksgiving Day. 

There were several local, national, and international news crews out and about both inside and outside the store.

Turn Yourself Into a Macy's Balloon

This was fun: The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade App for your smart phone. You can choose your outfit, take a picture of you or someone you want to make fun of, and create an elf balloon. You can then superimpose the elf balloon over any photo you take! So here is my balloon floating over the East River--that really IS the view outside my apartment. 

The Good Wife and Blue Bloods Filming Here This Week

This is happening three blocks down from my apartment building this week. 

Stumbling Upon Dinosaurs

Yep, just stumbled upon a display of these thousands-year-old fossils of ancient monsters while walking around Midtown Manhattan today--just a typical day in New York City. 

They were a display of the famous Bonham's Auction House, and they were actually for sale by a farmer in Montana who owned the land where they were discovered. However fascinating, they didn't sell for the reserve of $7-$9 million, so I guess they'll go back to Montana. Read more here: Fossils of Dueling Dinosaurs Fail to Sell at Auction.

Walking Tour: The Seagram Building

Located at 52nd and Park is the Seagram Building built in 1958. The Frommer's guide book I was using describes it as a building that "straddled the line between the too-American Frank L. Wright and the too-European Le Corbusier." 

It continues, "This building is such a success because of its meticulous attention to detail: dark bronze window mullions; a lobby that seamlessly blends interior space with the adjoining plaza; and a sheer facade of amber glass made possible by hiding all the building's 'guts' away from the street." 

The open plaza was controversial at first because of the possible loss of tax revenue, but it became so popular that new zoning regulations encouraged similar designs. This one was designed to discourage people sitting, whereas future plazas would welcome people with areas to rest.

New York Windows: Henri Bendel

The caricatures of famous illustrator Al Hirschfeld are made three dimensional in Henri Bendel's holiday windows.

Famous New York Structures: 570 Lexington Avenue

I decided to take a self-guided walking tour of Midtown's skyscrapers. Here is the G. E. Building, also known as 570 Lexington Avenue. The current G. E. Building is at Rockefeller Center, but this was the  original location of G. E. It's now occupied by multiple commercial offices and owned by Columbia University.

It is famous for its many Art Deco emblems -- at entrances, over windows, at its crown and in the lobby. It was commissioned by RCA, and the tilted zig-zag lightening bolts represented radio waves. But before the building was complete, RCA had chosen another site, and they sold it to G. E. The radio wave emblems easily translated to electrical emblems, so that worked out!

The architects were challenged to compliment but contrast its neighbor, St. Bartholomew's Cathedral. Thus the two structures share the same salmon-colored brick. It has 42 stories above ground, 11 elevators and was constructed in 1931.

This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States. Its reference number is 03001515.

This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States. Its reference number is 03001515.

Progress on the Building Outside My Window

I have become used to see construction workers climb ladders on open balconies 20 stories from the ground, but I wonder if the workers ever get used to it.