Wow: A Tribute to NYC Architecture

The first time I took my younger brother, Joel, into the city he was in his early teens and at the wonderfully awkward stage where he wanted to do everything with me as a way of chaperoning my boyfriend and me.* We were youngsters ourselves and at the time came in and out of the city by way of Penn Station. Joel’s expression as his feet hit concrete and body bent backwards to take in his first view of the skyscrapers was one of such pure fascination and awe, it is something I will always remember.

*And because I ended up marrying said boyfriend it makes the retelling of this past even better.

I’ve said it before, but it’s so easy to take for granted something we see everyday, whether it be a work of art, a natural landscape, or even a human being.

Already embracing New Yorker on-the-go mannerisms, I almost barreled through Joel whose arms hung at his sides as his jaw dropped and a whispery, “Wow”, issued from his lips.

It’s been many years since I had my ‘Wow’ moment in NYC, but on this recent trip I took more than mental pictures of buildings which tend to draw from me sighs of appreciation for their magnificence and architectural genius.

What I found to be most inspiring was that this was only one day’s worth of buildings which crossed our path, many with little fame to their postage stamp space in the Big Apple, but each bore a personality and beauty which separated them from the next building and made them shine.