Modern, with skyscrapers and contemporary art and architecture, New York is also historic and monumental. More recent than our part of the Western world, it’s as if it wanted to speed up history to bestow the city with spectacular elements and citations of the past.
The churches, for example, whose spires and towers viewed from above the big apple can be seen jostling with the first skyscrapers, and which are almost as numerous as those of Rome. Just as many public buildings from the early 1930’s are inspired by the classical style and history of our latitudes.
The imposing presence of the Gothic cathedral of Saint Patrick’s opposite Rockefeller Center on legendary Fifth Avenue continues to dominate despite the glass and steel giants surrounding it. It’s easy to find oneself thinking how much its classical style has characterized the major, and sometimes total, change that has occurred around it since its construction at the end of the 1800s.
Same thing for Trinity Church in the middle of Wall Street, whose architectural severity – surviving expansion during three renovations over the last three centuries – creates an island of spirituality amidst the throng of skyscrapers, Broadway and the monumental and institutional part of downtown Manhattan.
And Wall Street itself, the most famous financial district in the world whose name derives from the seventeenth-century walls protecting New Amsterdam, the original nucleus of New York, is characterized by the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve with their imposing, classically-inspired colonnades and pediments.
Also in Manhattan is Grand Central Station (officially Grand Central Terminal), another spectacular monumental jewel, where you can lose yourself while looking around the many places familiar from the innumerable movie scenes shot there.
Lastly, among its neoclassical jewels is what can be considered a true symbol of the Big Apple’s devotion to culture and its roots, the New York Public Library. Two majestic lions protect its sacredness as the very embodiment of the idea that culture should be freely accessible and free of charge for everyone. New York is truly worth visiting from every point of view and inevitably makes its way into your heart.
by Ilenia Girolami
