Thursday, October 2, 2014

Onward and Upward in the Neighborhood!

After many years of a view over low rooftops, the blow has finally fallen; the die is cast, etc. The local developer finally got enough money together to start construction on what is going to be a 33-story apartment house on the site of the former and much beloved Metropolitan Café and Columbus Bakery! Plus ça change,,,,

But—The upside is that I have a bird's-eye view of the details of building construction to which, like most city dwellers who aren't actually in the business, I never paid much attention in the past. I can see how much really skilled labor is involved, and even, as a dance, theater, and art enthusiast, a certain amount of choreography and design. I especially like the arrangement of the black netting recently installed to catch flying débris. A few years ago there was a construction disaster in this part of town, only a couple of blocks away, wherein a crane toppled into a building under construction, destroyed a brownstone, killed one person, and heavily damaged some other surrounding buildings. I'm hoping that enough precautions have now been taken so that nothing like that can happen here. Fortunately, my building is far enough from any cranes anyway.

This is what it may eventually look like:


At least I'm still going to have almost all of my light. 

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