We took the subway down to Battery Park, where we boarded a ferry and went to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. 
Marthe did ok on the ferry, even though she didn't have a life jacket. She said it wasn't rocking enough to be uncomfortable. 
The podium on which the statue sits is a museum. There are a lot of cool things related to the statue in the museum. Below are toe molds which were used to make the toes on the Statue of Liberty.
They had a model, cut away to show the structure of the statue. There are a lot of awkward truss configurations and how the forces are really transferred to the podium appears somewhat questionable. But they probably made up for it with really thick steel and lots of bolts.
The Statue itself looked its age. I was telling Marthe that it is too bad that it isn't a privately owned site because it would be taken care of a lot better. Obviously the taxes from the people don't go very far in taking care of the statue and the podium and the site. 
Ellis Island was the next stop and we had fun walking around and learning about how people had to enter the country. We learned that around 2 percent of all the immigrants that came to the states got put on ships and sent back to where they came from, sometimes without their families. With the number of immigrants that came to the states during that time period, that ammounts to a lot of people. It definately was quite the system and required people to jump through all sorts of hoops to get into the states. . . . not quite as easy as jumping the border. :)
We walked from Battery Park back up to the financial district to see Ground Zero. By then it started raining and before long we were pretty soaked and bought some umbrellas. Not long after we bought the umbrellas, it stopped raining. Ground Zero is a big construction site right now as they are well underway with building the new Freedom Tower. . . or whatever it is called now. While we were there, we saw on the news that they found remains of an old ship while excavating. I bet the contractor loved that stop-work order so people could carefully decide what they want to do with the ship.
We then walked past City Hall and over to Center Street. We saw the Brooklyn Bridge from a distance.
Some of the city and courthouse buildings that were around that area were pretty cool.
It is kind of hard to see in the picture below, but in the distance is the Empire State Building.
There were some cool churches that we walked by.
Somehow we ended up back in Times Square after visiting the Paul Frank store and took the subway back up to our hotel's neighborhood.
After we ate dinner, we walked down and went to the Empire State Building. It was interesting to go here on the same day as we visited the Statue of Liberty. This was a high-class, organized and well-staffed site to visit (most likely because it is privately owned. . .I'll have to see if it really is or not). Anyway, the finishes in the building were well kept and the line to go up to the top was short and within a few minutes, we were up on the top of the building (86 floors up).
This is the view toward where the twin towers used to be in the financial district.
This is the cool wedge shape building. This building was used for the Daily Bugle in Spiderman.
The building below is the New York Times new building by architect Renzo Piano. He does some very cool work. It is one of the taller buildings.
On the left of the image below is the Bank of America tower and on the far right is the Chrysler Building.
This is us up on the top behind the sturdy web of fencing to keep you from getting too close to the edge.
This is us up on the top behind the sturdy web of fencing to keep you from getting too close to the edge.
That was pretty much it for Tuesday. . . stay tuned for the post for Wednesday, July 14th.
1 comment:
Wow! What a lot of really amazing buildings. You take great pictures. I have heard of some of these places and never really knew what they looked like.
Post a Comment