Hundred’s of years of development reveal a constantly changing skyscraper-studded Lower Manhattan skyline. Modern flashy buildings rise while aged relics retreat into the Manhattan schist, the foundation allowing the manmade mountains to protrude. A slight glimpse of nature hangs off the Financial District at Battery Park. Created by landfill, the manicured space includes a fort, statues, memorials and an unfettered view of the world beyond. Lying against the East River sits a cluster of 1970’s office towers. Catering to the world’s financial leaders, the buildings’ and their tenants cling to the Financial District through triumph and terror, serenity and flooding. On either side of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel entrance lie the International Mercantile Marine Company Building and Whitehall Building.
Preserved artifacts each nearly a century old; they await time and surrounding structures to entirely overshadow them. Built through landfill and enormous wealth, Battery Park City lies on Manhattan’s southwest corner. Sitting neatly between the Hudson River and West Street, the neighborhood’s peaceful streets host an indoor shopping mall and thousands of residents and workers. West Street and FDR Drive enclose the remainder of Lower Manhattan. Inventions of Robert Moses, the frequently congested highways’ separate New Yorkers’ from the island’s most prosperous resource; water.
Lower Manhattan’s prominent location on the water sped the flow of development and travel. Millions of people entered America through New York Harbor; gazing at the eternally impressive skyline. Though once bringing hope to New Yorkers’, the sea creeps ever closer. Hurricane Sandy flooded the Lower Manhattan skyline. Sea level rise maps paint a startling picture of a waterfront ¼ mile inland from present. Communities in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island face more imminent danger. Coney Island, the Rockaways and Midland Beach, like much of New York developed because
Charlie Romanow
A Photo is Worth 729 Words 38