Underground City Hall Subway and beyond

Before I forget to post something about it and get into my parents visit and all the places we covered i must make a few comments on this amazing tour i went on of the old City Hall subway station in lower Manhattan that is now closed and only open for special tours. it closed for many reasons one interesting one is that with the arrival of larger longer subway cars the platform at the old city hall stop was not long enough.

In addition to the old stop with all it's architectural historical interest a small group of us from grimshaw were taken on the most amazing guided tour of all the underground tunnels and spaces that exist in and around this closed subway stop. there were even old bunkers for storing ammunition that dated back to the 1800's. the stop is also very near the water and one edge/end of the Brooklyn bridge, so we saw some of the very massive footings that anchor the bridge deep into the ground.

Unfortunately my lame battery failing camera could not photograph all this so i only have a few good pictures from the excursion.

this rare opportunity to see these underground spaces was made possible by the fact that i am working on the transit center downtown and the MTA being our client has special privileges such as all access to all parts of the subway system, well i know i am a nerd but it was pretty cool stuff so i just thought i would share....there are some perks to working for the MTA : ) among the headaches.

FINALLY!!! i am back : ) sort of

well i am on vacation in the city and it's wonderful after the long weeks of being in the office and not being able to do any wandering! my parents are in town so i am also enjoying being able to see and appreciate the city all over again with them. here is a frosty nose pic of me in the subway with my dad and his Indiana Jones hat : P

Ernesto Neto @ th Pantheon

I wish I was in Paris to see this, the Pantheon freqently has installations like this that really utilize the huge spaces in the antheon in the most amazing way.

you can find more on Neto and the exhibit at the Kultureflash website.

Oh yeah, not sure if I mentioned my other favorite city besides NY of course :) is Paris (at least so far).

FSTC compared to the rest

This is a cool little image a co-worker sent me that compares the Fulton Street Transit Center project i am working on to some of the tallest building in the world.

As you can see ours is considerably smaller :) in comparison but it's always cool to understand the scale of things when you see them compared to other familiar towering pieces of architecture. Double click on image to see it larger.

You will never guess what I've been up to!

W O R K I N G ! ! ! !

i am very happy for my wonderful job here at grimshaw but these long weeks and weekends in the office are definitely cutting into my blog post worthy activities :)

work is good but i don't think images of my stair and escalator drawings that i am slaving away on at the moment are very exciting to anyone but me...and not even that exciting to me for that matter. ahhhhh

today was particularly trying as the weather was beautiful! a bit chilly but nice enough for a stroll in central park. well my parents are coming at x-mas so i hope to get in some good wondering about the city then.

ok have to get back to my drawings here.....i mean the night is young, it's only 11:30pm :P (just hit 74 hours for this week on my timesheet! yikes...)

maybe i should change my blog name to "working" in nyc instead of "wondering" in nyc ; P