Downtown NYC Sculpture - American Dream Come True

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New York City is amazing. Cool sculpture everywhere, making artists' dreams come true. Here's what I saw recently in the Financial District:

Translucent yellow disks. How cool is that?

What is it? Who cares?

This is art deco trim on a skyscraper's entrance.

Glad I'm not sitting or kneeling on concrete for my job...

Notice the sculpture of lights in the lobby of Brown Brothers Harriman.

A flower sculpture...

Do tombstones count as sculpture? Would you sign up to follow my blog?

St. Bart's--A Place to Regroup for the American Dream

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American Dreams on Park Avenue

In the course of my job search, I visit New York City every week. These shots are from St. Bartholomew Church, the church that Jackie Onassis saved. Built in the Byzantine style, the church was at risk of being torn down to make room for yet another skyscraper. Jackie stepped in and saved it from destruction. It's been providing spiritual sanctuary since 1903 -- 100 years! Congratulations, St. Bart's.  

It's on Park Avenue, between 50th and 51st, next to the Waldorf Astoria and nestled among towers housing UBS and other banks, some of them midtown offshoots from Wall Street. These are places where American Dreams are still being won and lost. People can go to St. Bart's to reflect, regroup, find resiliency.

Detail of a green marble column inside the sanctuary.

A banner just inside the sanctuary.

Stained glass window shadowed by a skyscraper.

The grill on the front door, looking out onto Park Avenue.

A detail of an exterior marble panel.

The filigree on the front doors.

The famous facade.

Unusual American Dreams

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Show-Stopping American Dreams

In New York City, people had unusual ideas about how to earn some money to make their American Dreams come true.

You could spray-paint yourself gold, act like a robot, and put a can out for donations.

The man with a python wrapped twice around his neck was earning money within footsteps of the statue of a bull, the quintessential symbol of the New York financial markets, near Bowling Green Park.

Handle a python, anyone?

I guess he lives with them in his apartment at night.  Could you sleep?

American Dream: A Statue of Oneself, and Not in Wax

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People Commemorated for their Big American Dreams

George Washington, José Martí, and Christopher Columbus all have statues in New York City commemorating their leadership, which they exercised for good or ill. You'll see what I mean in the captions.

A bass relief of Washington kneeling in the snow. The sculpture is outside the Federal Building on Wall Street where he was sworn in as the first president of the United States.  His American Dream came true--he won the war so he kept his life and his beloved farm, Mount Vernon.  He put them both at risk to fight England. 

All the rest of these shots were taken within footsteps of Columbus Circle.  Here is a cool statue on the southern edge of Central Park.

Sculptor Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (-1876–1973) created this larger-than-life bronze equestrian statue depicting Cuban patriot and author José Martí (1853–1895)

Another view of José.

The Maine Monument commemorates the 260 American sailors who perished when the battleship Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba.

Statue of Christopher Columbus, whom Native Americans remember not as a hero but as a torturer, enslaver, and tormentor of indigenous peoples.

Last spring, Woytuk's sculptures graced Columbus Circle.

Nothing like African wildlife in New York City on a brisk spring day.

To be honest, I've wondered what it was like to be so famous that somebody made a statue of you. Maybe I could sell my soul to the Devil and gain the fame, or at least notoriety, that spurred Madame Tussaud to make a wax image of me. What about you? Have you ever thought you might like to see yourself in Madame Tussaud's? : )

American Dreams in New York City

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Whitman and O'Hara Celebrate the City

American Dreams: Financiers, Poets, Immigrants, the Huddled Masses

I love New York City!  American Dreams have been going boom and bust in the Financial District since the Dutch arrived and called Manhattan "New Amsterdam."

What do you think? True or false: Is the American Dream all selfishness? Please comment below.

The Winter Garden in the World Financial Center.  In neighboring skyscrapers, American Dreams are being dreamed, fulfilled, or mercilessly shut down.

Walt Whitman's poem about the city is worked into the wrought iron railing outside the Winter Garden.  It reads, "City of the world.  (For all races are here, all the lands of the earth make contributions here:)  City of the sea! City of wharves and stores - city of tall facades of marble and iron!  Proud and passionate city - mettlesome, mad, extravagant, city!"  

Another poet's words are worked into the railing in another spot -- Frank O'Hara:

"One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes -- I can't even enjoy a glade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life."

The Winter Garden from outside, with the Freedom Tower half clad in glass to the right behind it.

My Dad Lived the American Dream

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My father passed away on April 5, one week after I got home from Savannah.  Hospice nurses told me before I left to go ahead and take my trip to Savannah, and they were right.  I had a chance to be with my Dad one more time before he died.  As I kissed him goodbye for what turned out to be the last time, he sat in his wheelchair and said, “Take care of yourself.”  It’s become a holy mission that I don’t always fulfill perfectly.

I gasped when I got the news of his death.  I listened to the message from my brother on my cell phone as I walked on East 66^th Street, just west of York Avenue, after I left a job search interview.  My life is interwoven with New York City.

Everything happened in the next four days:  viewing, funeral, burial at Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn.  I was amazed at how strong I was – no tears.

But looking back, I see that I have felt a constant tug at my heart, an undertow of grief that destabilizes me.  The death of a parent is very big.

My Dad lived the American dream, as it was defined in the 30s and 40s, when he grew up.  He started his first job just one week after high school graduation – people were in a hurry back then to get started on the American dream.  His first position was lower than the secretaries – he added columns of numbers, turning a crank on a mechanical computer.  After many struggles, difficulties, and bitter disappointments when he was passed over for promotion, he retired at age 62 from a corner office in a skyscraper in New York City’s financial district, near Wall Street. 

He said the secret of his success was hard work and perseverance.  He told me to keep my shoulder to the wheel, my eye to the future, my nose to the grindstone and my ear to the ground.

I’ve maxed out on his principles of hard work and perseverance and have been laid off three times in the past eight years, twice due to a merger and once due to a corporate bully having her way.

Will my generation (boomers) and our successors do better than our parents?  Probably not, for the first time in American history.