Photo of the Day: Bella Abzug Park, NYC

I took the photo accompanying this post a few weeks ago, when I had a few minutes to spare before boarding a Megabus for a short Thanksgiving vacation in Pittsburgh.

Oddly enough, though I had been in Hudson Yards a few times since it opened several years ago, I had never noticed Bella Abzug Park. 

New York residents who are Gen Xers or younger are likely to have little memory of the local politician this urban park honors, and the knowledge of tourists coming upon it by happenstance at Hudson Boulevard between West 37th and 33rd Streets is likely to be thinner still.

But, for almost a decade and a half from the mid-Sixties to late Seventies, Bella Abzug (1920-1998) attracted a great deal of attention, even beyond the borders of New York State.

This colorful and controversial feminist would have garnered at least some national attention anyway, because of the way she demanded respect from her male colleagues on Capitol Hill. But she became an especially outsized figure in New York, the media capital of the world, at a time when the anti-war, feminist, and gay rights movements were coming into their own.

News image creators from that time—newspaper and magazine editors, TV crews, and cartoonists—latched onto Abzug’s penchant for enormous hats (which she began to wear as a young lawyer, she later recalled, because “working women wore hats; it was the only way they would take you seriously”).

Then there was that voice—regarded as assertive by supporters and abrasive by critics.

Abzug would claim that her critics were, all too often, guilty of male chauvinism. There was more than a little truth to her view (she was frequently shunned by all-male committees and mocked for her weight—criticisms that most male colleagues never had to endure). 

But it is also true that her anger management issues could lead her to lash out even at supporters and her own staffers. The nickname "Battling Bella" might have been a badge of honor she wore proudly, but also pointed to the stereotype that would ultimately limit how far she would go in politics.

Nobody, however, could deny that Abzug was a conviction (as opposed to convicted) politician—a figure who displayed incisive intelligence and a steely will in labor, civil rights, and civil liberties cases undertaken as a young lawyer associated with the National Lawyers Guild, an organization of progressive attorneys denounced during the Fifties by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Abzug was part of the Manhattan-based Democratic reform movement of the late Fifties and early Sixties that helped overthrow the Tammany Hall machine. In 1970, she was elected to the House of Representatives, and five years later became the first woman to hold a job as party whip. 

Unfortunately, her time in the corridors of power was short, as she lost her seat when she tried unsuccessfully to move up the Senate, only to be beaten by Pat Moynihan in the 1976 Democratic primary.

But Abzug left her mark in advocating for unions, the peace movement, and civil rights, civil liberties and LBGQ rights. And now, this park, part of a six-block-long greenway in Hell’s Kitchen, will remind future generations of her contributions.

Ironically, a park that offers weary urban walkers a chance to rest has taken its name from an activist politician who rarely if ever rested throughout her career.

Photo of the Day: 2nd Look at ‘Vessel,’ Hudson Yards, NYC

A year and a half ago, when I put up my first post on “Vessel”—a piece of public art at Hudson Yards in the shape of a honeycomb—it was a little too early in the structure’s life for many visitors to start climbing it.

Such is not the case now. A week ago, when I happened to be in the neighborhood (the Javits Center, for an industry function), I noticed, from a distance, a good number of people on several levels in Vessel.

You will not catch me any time soon in the upper reaches of this, however. Acrophobia keeps me ground, as it did Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. I am well aware of my limits…

Photo of the Day: ‘Vessel,’ Hudson Yards, NYC

Several weeks ago, on a tour of the Hudson Yards project now taking shape in Manhattan, I viewed from the south, through an atrium, this massive sculpture. I was so taken by it that last weekend, on a quick walk back to the area, I took this shot, from street level from the north, of “The Vessel.”

As you see, British designer Thomas Heatherwick created this piece of public art (at the center of the skyscrapers) in the shape of a honeycomb. 

But, while Heatherwick has compared it with the Eiffel Tower, this, unlike that French iconic structure, is meant to be climbed—154 interconnecting flights of stairs and 80 landings, or, in effect, a mile-long open, walkable latticework.

Photo of the Day: Hudson Boulevard Park, NYC

The physical landscape of New York City feels like it has been changing more in the past four years than it had in the prior forty. Much of this was a result of initiatives or projects started in the administration of the prior mayor, Mike Bloomberg. 

Perhaps the most visible manifestation of this—at least, for visitors to the city who may concentrate on Manhattan—is the massive Hudson Yards project.

Much of this latter development will, when completed, consist of office, residential and retail space. But there is park space as well—in this case, Hudson Boulevard Park, located between West 33rd and West 36th Streets, mid-block between 10th and 11th Avenues.  It is being maintained by the Hudson Yards/Hell's Kitchen Alliance.

There were few people in the park on the Saturday afternoon a week ago when I passed through and took this picture. However, the massive construction going on in the area does not currently lend itself to such a group. When the construction cranes depart and residents begin living in the area, people should be out here in droves.

Photo of the Day: Hudson Yards Viewed From the High Line, NYC

I took this picture last week, with my back to the Hudson River, standing at the northern end of the High Line. The building rising on the left, along with the High Line itself, is part of the massive Hudson Yards project, an example of the major rearrangement of New York’s landscape through the initiatives of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

For 30 years, a relative of mine, away from New York City since 1979, could truly say that he could still find every significant point in the Big Apple all these years later. In a couple of years, though, that will no longer be the case.

In a prior post, I talked about Brookfield Place. And that’s just a small part of the new city-within-a-city rising from the ashes of the bombing of the old World Trade Center. But development has hardly stopped there.

The High Line itself is reclaimed space, the remnant of a freight line elevated above the streets of a portion of Manhattan’s West Side. After nearly two decades of disuse, it opened in 2009, preserved as an unusual, elevated public park.

When I visited the High Line first a year and a half ago, it was open from Gansevoort Street to West 30^th Street.  This past September, the last portion of it, up to 34^th Street, opened. It offers two views that are each, in their way, something to behold: New Jersey, to the west, and Hudson Yards, to the east. I took this photo in the new section.

Hudson Yards, involving a rezoning of the Far West Side, will be the largest private real estate development in the history of the United States. When completed, this newly created neighborhood will comprise more than 17 million square feet of commercial and residential space, more than 100 shops, a collection of restaurants, approximately 5,000 residences, a unique cultural space, 14 acres of public open space, a 750-seat public school and a 175-room luxury hotel.

Five years hence, we will see how much all of this development worked out to the advantage of New Yorkers hoping for a sustainable future. In many ways, however, much of the landscape will look different from what we see now.