Here is a vista looking southeast across midtown Manhattan, taken from the Rockefeller Center Observatory (as well as my views in other directions: North, South, East, and Midtown). The most prominent bridge in the center is the Manhattan Bridge, which connects Manhattan (via Canal Street) to Brooklyn (click the photo to get an enlarged view to see all these details). If you look very carefully behind it to the right, you can see part of the Brooklyn Bridge. Behind these bridges is Brooklyn, looking all the way out to Coney Island and Brighton Beach.

The large patch of green at center left is Prospect Park, a large magnificent park designed by Olmsted & Vaux, who also did Central Park. The bridge at the upper right is the Verrazano-Narrows, which connects Brooklyn (in Bay Ridge) to the eastern end of Staten Island. The large body of water is the Lower New York Bay (with New Jersey behind it), leading out to the Atlantic Ocean…

This photo was taken looking south from the Top of the Rock observatory at Rockefeller Center. This view is of particular interest for a number of reasons. Dominant in the photo is, of course, the Empire State Building, currently NYC’s tallest building, built in 1931 and billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World when it opened. If you look carefully, at center left, you can see the Brooklyn Bridge, and behind it is the Verrazano Bridge; at center right, you can see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The land masses from left to right are Brooklyn, Staten Island, and New Jersey. The slab skyscraper on lower right is the WR Grace building.

If you are interested in seeing vistas of the city in other directions, check out East and North. Perhaps when we see the concrete jungle of midtown Manhattan and find it to be a pleasant sight, we are subconsciously agreeing with British zoologist Desmond Morris, who wrote, “The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.” After all, most of us love the zoo – at least for a visit 🙂

This is Manhattan facing east towards Queens, shot from the Rockefeller Center observatory just before sunset. The Citicorp building is at the far left; the lone tall building in the distance just left of center is the Citicorp Building in Queens (the tallest building in that borough). The green topped building in the center is the Waldorf Astoria hotel, and to its immediate left is the GE Building at 570 Lexington Ave. The green strip of land in the middle of the East River is Roosevelt Island. I always find aerial views of NYC so inspiring. The density just makes me feel like everything is there and anything is possible – the New York of dreams, song, and film…

Columbus Circle is a major nexus in NYC at the southwest corner of Central Park. It is the intersection of Central Park South (59th Street), Eighth Avenue, Central Park West, and Broadway. It is also a major transportation hub for numerous subway and bus lines. A marble monument of Christopher Columbus sits atop a 70-foot granite column – the pedestal has an angel with a globe. The monument was built in 1892 (completed in 1905) as part of NYC’s commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas.

It is difficult to capture the area in a single photo – there are points of interest around the entire circle: the Time Warner Center and shopping complex, Trump International Hotel, Merchant’s Gate to Central Park with the Maine monument, and, of course, the fountain and statue area itself, which underwent a renovation in 2005, winning a landscape architecture award. This traffic circle has always been hectic and difficult to navigate; now with the new wooden benches, fountains, and plantings, it has become an island of calm in the storm of NYC…