New York – Martinique 2016, part 2 (New York)
Walking around the centre of Manhattan on this cold, but sunny January day, I also came to a square called Union Square in the middle of which there is a small park of the same name.
In addition to people, on this day there were several pigeons strolling around the park which is an almost inevitable part of large cities, but what I found interesting was a couple of squirrels that also went about their business poking something on the lawn probably inspired by the Sun.
I made a small circle around Union Square and then following the Broadway I continued northwards and thus I came to the section between the 22nd and 23rd Streets where the famous Flatiron Building is located.
As I walked along the Broadway towards the 23rd Street and further up towards the crossroad of the Broadway and the 5th Avenue, I could slowly start to see better and better the specific form of this building by which it is so well known.
This building was constructed in 1902 and it has 22 floors, but it stands out in comparison to most of other buildings by its specific shape which rendered its name – the flatiron – meaning an old-style iron heated on a hotplate or fire, rather than using electricity. It has its triangular shape because it is situated within the block created by the 22nd and the 23rd Streets which cross the Broadway and the famous 5th Avenue. As opposed to the avenues that run parallel along Manhattan and that are mostly crossed at a right angle by the streets, in the middle part of Manhattan the Broadway goes at an angle and in a couple of places where it crosses the avenues sharply there are some well-known urban sites. One of them is precisely the Flatiron Building, while another one that occurs to me right now is the Times Square which is located at the crossing between the Broadway and the 7th Avenue and between the 43rd and 47th Streets.
The Flatiron Building may also be seen from the Madison Square Park which extends north from the 23rd Street. This park should not be mixed up with the Madison Square Garden – an indoor arena that is used for ice-hockey and basketball games, as well as for concerts, circus performances and different other entertainment and sport events, which is located between the 7th and 8th Avenues and the 31st and 33rd Streets.
From some parts of this park it is also possible to see the famous Empire State Building.
Empire State Building is one of the most famous buildings in the world. This is a skyscraper with 102 floors and its construction was completed in 1931. Until 1970 it was the tallest building in the world. It is situated on the west side of the 5th Avenue between the 33rd and 34th Streets. It got its name after the nickname for the federal state of New York – the Empire State. All US federal states have some nicknames – e.g., Arizona is the Grand Canyon State, California is the Golden State and Florida is the Sunshine State.
As for the Empire State Building, a large number of tourists visit this building with a particular intention to go up to the viewpoint platforms that are located on the 86th and 102nd floors. I also climbed there during one of my earlier visits to New York, so I did not repeat it this time around.
By the way, the 5th Avenue is a type of an axis which helps with the orientation – the streets leading towards the east, in the direction of the East River, are marked as “east” and they get a prefix “E” (as it can be seen in the photo above), while those west of the 5th Avenue in the direction of the Hudson river are marked as “west” and they get a prefix “W.”
And so, very close to the place from which I took the previous photo, in the West 25th Street, there is the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St Sava. I had been there once attending a wedding and also once I with Milana who comes here for the Sunday service.
This church was built in 1850 in the Gothic style and its original name was the Trinity Chapel, while it belonged to the Episcopalian Church. In 1944, the church was bought by the Serbian Orthodox Church and since then the services of the Orthodox Serbs from New York have been taking place here.
In the caption for the photo above I emphasised that I had taken the photo of the church in January 2016 since already at the beginning of May of that same year the church burned down. As far as I understand, the reconstruction of the church is still going on.
If one looks between the right-hand side of the church and the surrounding buildings, it is possible to see the imposing Empire State Building from here as well.
I spent the rest of the afternoon walking some more around this general area and then I went back home. I had a very particular plan for the following day and that was to go – to a museum. It sounds almost incredible that during all of my previous stays here, and I had spent around three months in total in New York, I had never visited a museum. Needless to say, every time I came here I had an intention to go to at least one museum and usually in the evening I would be firmly set on going the following day, but then in the morning I would start chatting with Milana, which I absolutely enjoyed, and so most of the day would be gone and there is no point in going to New York museums unless you have plenty of time. Admittedly, it’s not that I was not a proper tourist during my previous visits to this city. As I’ve said, I went to the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building and also to the 107th floor of the “old” World Trade Centre. Already during my first visit to New York I went to the Liberty Island with the Statue of Liberty. Still, the museums had managed to elude me up until this visit.
On this day I went to the American Museum of Natural History and this first started by me going by underground (subway in NYC) to the station at the 81st Street and Central Park. Near the side entrance I saw a lot of school buses, which clearly meant that a lot of children come to this museum.
When I entered, there was a very modern section, but then I went back into the past by starting my visit from the skeletons of dinosaurs which are plenty here. Of course, one of the most recognisable is the skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex.
There were also other reconstructed skeletons of different dinosaurs, including a skeleton of herbivore Stegosaurus which cannot boast a large head, but on the other hand its body was impressive.
With all of these skeletons there are also illustrations in the shape of 3D-models or images that showed what these animals looked like as a whole. Thus, for instance, there are two skeletons of duck-billed dinosaurs, while the picture showed what they would look like “live” in that same pose.
There was also a nice skeleton of a Triceratops which despite its fierce look was just a peaceful herbivore.
While walking around the museum, at some point I peeked out through a window and from there I could see the Central Park, as well as some of the famous New York buildings.
But, I was still within the museum, in the part with fossil skeletons and fossils, and so I came to the skeleton of an elephant’s ancestor. This is the mastodon that used to roam North and Central Americas and I found it interesting to read that this particular skeleton was discovered in the 19th century and that it was so well preserved that in its stomach they found the remains of its last meal. It has been presumed that the animal fell into mud, drowned and sank, while on account of the lack of oxygen in the mud these remains have been so well preserved.
There was also a skeleton of a mammoth, also an ancestor of elephant.
Then I moved to the section where there are “contemporary” animals. I’ve always found animals very interesting and so I enjoyed in this section that was dedicated to them, especially where the mammals are exhibited.
In the central hall of this section there are stuffed African elephants, while the “rooms” with one glass wall through which visitors can look in are arranged around this hall and these rooms show animal family groups. These exhibits include stuffed animals, as well as images in the background and different details in the foreground, thus creating an impression of the habitat in which these animals naturally live.
In the case of the (white) rhino it was written that its horn can grow up to almost one metre in length. On the other hand, it was quite disturbing to see a map of Africa which in one version showed the territory that used to be inhabited by the rhinos and another one that showed the extremely sad current size of these animals’ habitat.
There is also a part with the black rhino and thus it is possible to see the difference between these two species which certainly does not lie in any colour (it is easiest to spot in the shape of their lip). However, unfortunately, we will soon be able to see rhinos only like this – stuffed and in museums.
In addition to these herbivores, the museum certainly exhibits carnivores as well, with my favourite here being a group of African wild dogs.
Of course, in addition to the animals that live in the African savannah, the museum also exhibits animals that live in other parts of Africa, as well as on other continents and in different climates. Here is my selection:
After the part with animals, I also visited a part that shows details of the life of North American indigenous people.
There were different interesting things to see, but I would like to mention something that concerns the bison hunting. Namely, before the “discovery” of America by the Spanish, there were no horses on the American continent, i.e., they used to live there a very long time ago, but some 7500 years ago they went locally extinct. So, they were practically brought and reintroduced here by the Spanish. It was only after some time that the Native Americans tamed the horses that were the offspring of some runaway Spanish horses who in the meantime became wild again and they used them for the bison hunting. Before that, the Native Americans went on foot and within one exhibit at the Museum it is said that they used to work as a well organised team scaring the bison and steering them towards a precipice (the story obviously talks about the places where there were precipices) where these would fall and get killed, while the humans managed to get to the meat and hide in this way. The reason was that the humans could not catch up with the bison while going on foot and it was only later by taming horses that they succeeded in overcoming this natural “flaw.”
It was also interesting to see different clothes worn by members of different tribes.
In addition to the parts of the museum exhibiting different things related to North American indigenous people and their life, there is also a section that shows exhibits linked to the Central and South Americas’ original inhabitants, including numerous archaeological pieces. For instance, a huge Olmec head, which is in fact a gypsum replica of the original kept in Mexico. There are only 17 Olmec heads that have survived and that have been discovered to date and this is one of them.
Since I am an amateur potter, I’m always particularly interested in and attracted by objects made of clay, especially such as those in the photo below that belong to the Latin America’s cultural history.
There was another fantastic exhibit in the shape of a cross-cut of a giant sequoia which is the biggest tree species on Earth. On this exhibit, they used the growth rings to show the age of the concrete tree. When it was felled in 1891 it was over 1400 years old. Nowadays, the falling of the sequoia is prohibited.
Then I went to the section dedicated to the seas and oceans, but by then I was already a little tired with all the impressions, so I decided to make just one photo and that one was of a real-size model of a blue whale. The blue whale is by far the biggest animal that has ever lived on Earth and it can grow up to 30 m in length. It is bigger even than different types of large dinosaurs.
After some three hours at the museum I went out to the street again. It felt good to be in the daylight. Namely, it was rather dark in many sections of the museum. So much so that occasionally I could barely read the inscriptions that accompany the exhibits. Also, my impressions were quite mixed. A lot of sections were exceptionally impressive – both the exhibits and the accessories, but in several places I came across some parts that seemed oddly old-fashioned. Concretely, as if these parts were well arranged during the 1950’s and then they have never been renovated after that. That seemed very unusual at the beginning of the 21st century for an otherwise essentially fantastic museum. Maybe that was the reason why it was so dim in these sections – to show less that they still haven’t managed to modernise these parts.
On the other hand, while I was passing by the museum shops I could see that at least they were very modern and dazzling.
When I went out it was still day and I looked back once again at the main entrance into the museum.