The Beauty of New York Architecture

On our recent trip to New York City, my kids learned just how deep my love for old architecture is. They couldn’t believe how often I wanted to stop and take a picture, or how often I pointed out a building and said Look at that! Are you looking?

One of my fascinations with the city has always been the tremendous attention to details in the architecture. With homes now being built from molds and buildings that look like boxes, walking through the streets of New York makes me feel human and cared for. Why?

Because it reminds me that there was a time when people cared about what I saw. They cared that our environments were beautiful. Stone masons were in high demand. Architects with vision were in high demand. It was insulting (and, I imagine, embarrassing) to stick a concrete box beside the road and call it okay.

Here is just a sampling of some of the buildings lining New York City’s Manhattan.

I’m accustomed to a fair bit of talking in my posts, but I just want to show more than tell. The images really speak better than I can. Also, I may have to break this up into two posts because I take a lot of photographs. A big part of my heart is in old architecture.

 

 

Many of these old buildings have window air conditioning units as structures weren’t built with cooling ducts and insulation in mind.

Something about this row of windows atop the building remind me of Mary Poppins England. And who can resist this beautiful color?

 

I love the surprise of seeing a beautiful building come into view on piece at a time, especially when it introduces itself in this way.

 

There’s something to love in every inch of this facade.

 

 

 

These rounded corners are some of my favorite features.

 

The unfortunate encroachment of modern ugliness into some of these gorgeous buildings.

I was so happy to be able to capture the birds in this photograph. I imagine they have all made their home up there.

This is one of my favorite buildings as I don’t see black very often. It’s so gothic and enchanting.

 

 

I was cursing inside that I didn’t have a stronger lens to really capture the entirety of  details on this building.

That’s all for now. Hopefully this inspires you to take a look around your own city and see what you can do to live more beautifully. I know that beautiful scenes always have that effect on me. Also, have fun exploring your own city or town. When I set out to photograph my own city, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I found tons of beauty that I didn’t know was here.

Many of you darlings have told me how you’d like to see posts about my visit to New York with the kids and as soon as I get my act together, I will start posting. It was such an interesting trip!

Side note: I finally started my Instagram page for this blog. Should’ve done it ages ago, but as many of you know, I was up to my eyeballs in social media and sites and projects, so I’m steadily trying to consolidate everything. I’ll be adding as I go. And just to save me a bit of time, if you may, add your IG page to the comments. That would be great of you!