Wow City: Seeing New York City with Fresh Eyes

WHEN MY OLDEST WAS LITTLE SHE WAS OBSESSED WITH BOOKS ABOUT NEW YORK CITY. There was Mo Willems’ Knuffle Bunny, The House on East 88th Street by Bernard Waber and Miroslav Šašek’s This Is New York. But most of all she loved Wow! City! by Robert Neubecker, which tells the story of Izzy, a toddler who visits New York for the first time with her father.

Life being what it is, Agnes was twenty by the time we were able to copy Izzy’s trip, her first time in the city but definitely not mine. As with my trip to L.A. a month previous with her younger sibling, I was along as tour guide/security/muscle, in charge of itinerary and hotel while Agnes took care of our flight to Newark International. Wow! City! is only forty pages long and mostly pictures, but I still felt I had a lot to deliver.

Rockefeller Center

As a rule I think the best place to start when you visit a city for the first time is the highest place you can go. I went to the top of the Empire State Building the first time I was in NYC (and the last time as well), but for the sake of variety I suggested we do the Top of the Rock instead, if only so Agnes could explore the Art Deco wonder that is Rockefeller Center.

Of course the great advantage of the Top of the Rock over the observation deck at the Empire State Building is that you can see the Empire State Building from the top of Rockefeller Center, still dominating its particular stretch of midtown. Hopefully whoever runs the city will never be so unwise as to spoil this view.

I never get tired of this view. Even though I’ve never lived there, the view up and down Manhattan from midtown is what my mind’s eye sees when I think of a city. It’s the archetypical urban landscape for millions, perhaps billions of people, some of whom might never have been to New York City. And if it’s your first time in the city, I can’t imagine a better place to start.

The tone for the rest of our first day was set by Rockefeller Center’s overture. It’s as central as you can be in the city, and a short walk to other must-see destinations, like Bryant Park and the New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue’s mink mile of shops and the hotels and condos facing Central Park at sunset.

Central Park

And it was to Central Park that we returned the next day. We got off on Central Park West and walked across the park by the reservoir to the east side – a cross section of this world-famous urban greenspace that would look different should you choose any other straight line across the park starting and ending anywhere else. Even on a winter day with the trees bare it delivers views.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Our destination was my own personal must-see Manhattan destination – the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the worlds half dozen greatest art museums. We were met by friends from the city, one of whom grew up on the Upper East Side. Anyone who’s been to the Met knows that a full day, never mind just a couple of hours on a crowded Sunday afternoon, are insufficient to see even a fraction of the place, but my friend who’s been going to the Met since she was a girl was shocked to discover a little treasure she’d never seen before – a pair of eyes that once adorned the face of a classical sculpture, looking back at us from across the millennia.

On the Upper East Side

Our friends took us on a tour of their neighbourhood, with its co-op towers and townhouses – one of the city’s premium addresses for at least a century now. The biggest of the old mansions are now home to consulates, private clubs and institutions, but it’s still a mostly residential area, and as the sun was setting they took us on a detour to see the home of one of the neighbourhood’s most famous fictional residents – the brownstone where Holly Golightly lives in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

The World Trade Center towers were still standing when I first came to New York City, and I took them for granted like everyone else – using them to navigate when I was in Lower Manhattan. I came after the 2001 attacks when they were a huge ragged hole in the ground, but had never been back to see what replaced them until now.

The Oculus and the WTC 9/11 Memorial

My kids were born after 9/11, so I’m not sure they understand how much this part of the city has been changed. The Freedom Tower is more than a bit underwhelming, but two landmarks have become iconic at the old WTC site – Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus, built over the transit hub destroyed in the attacks, is an architectural marvel worth every frame you can shoot, while the 9/11 memorial, with its two black stone wells where the twin towers used to stand, is suitably epic and somber, inviting the necessary moment of contemplation.

Lower Manhattan and Wall Street

From this solemn open space you can enter Manhattan’s financial district by the graveyard next to Trinity Church. The rational grid of the rest of the city disappears here into narrow streets that seem like alleyways thanks to the bank buildings and office skyscrapers built along old Manhattan’s original streets. This maze of curving pathways and solid stone walls, the light making its way in shafts between towers from every architectural era provides constantly changing opportunities for photos, in no small part because it’s impossible not to get lost down here.

Across the Brooklyn Bridge to DUMBO

It’s a short trip on the subway from Wall Street to the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge – a walk I managed to avoid for decades but now consider a must for anyone visiting the city, especially now that DUMBO, as they now call the neighbourhood between the Brooklyn sides of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, has turned into a destination. The Washington Street view of the Manhattan Bridge is still one of the city’s most popular selfie and Instagram spots, but a fortunate moment when the setting sun illuminated the carousel in its glass box by the Brooklyn Bridge provided a lovely view across to Manhattan.

The High Line

The High Line is another new addition to Manhattan’s many unique experiences. The former industrial rail line, built to service the warehouses and factories by the Hudson River docks, was revived as an urban walking trail and has spurred the revival of the adjacent meatpacking district into an area where architects compete to produce ever more futuristic-looking buildings.

Seen from the High Line

The views from the High Line as you look east across the island are another highlight. Sometimes they look down streets that look largely unchanged for a century or more: squint and you get a sense of the old Manhattan that always seems to lurk behind the constant change. At other spots you look across new towers built more for video games or sci-fi pictures than a district of slaughterhouses and meat-packing warehouses.

Little Island on the Hudson River

Little Island is one of the newest additions to the west side of Manhattan by the High Line. It was built on the remains of Pier 54, the old Cunard White Star terminal, and what was supposed to be the final destination of the Titanic on its tragic first voyage. A park built over the river on a little forest of concrete pylons was opened in 2021, and has become a magnet for the growing population of this once-industrial area. Like so much of what’s been built here it has an improbable, sci-fi aspect that makes for decent pictures from countless angles.

Our trip ends in in SoHo – the once-derelict warehouse district south of Greenwich Village that I still remember being the home of artists and galleries before it became the shopping destination that drew in my daughter. The cobblestone streets and most of the old iron-frame warehouse buildings remain, though, and it’s a great place to end a long day of walking in the city with a drink and a meal while you settle in among your shopping bags.

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Photos and story © 2024 Rick McGinnis All Rights Reserved