“The Sun: it shines for all”: the inscription on the protuberant (and prominent) clock on Broadway and Chambers, though poetic, is not referring to literature or philosophy; it is actually the motto of the bygone New York newspaper “The Sun.” The newspaper building, with its two decorative details that turn it unique – the elegant, four-faced 1917 clock, hanging like a street-lamp at its south corner, and the respective thermometer at its north –, marks for me the beginning of truly Lower Manhattan, and the starting point of wandering in the Financial District.
I get excited and nervous at the same time: although I've been living in the city for eighteen years now, I don't often come this far downtown, so there's always a combination of the enthusiasm and the nervousness of discovery. Here more than anywhere else one comes across the more “ancient” face of the metropolis and is immersed in its past: there's no other place where you're so aroused by the thirst to step on the stones where Dutch and British fought against each other, or to contemplate the Atlantic and to wonder how, for centuries, explorers, immigrants, or visitors must have felt when they finally arrived in the "new world" after spending weeks (or even months) in the middle of the ocean.
I start heading south on Broadway. Skyscraper and lace sound like incompatible terms, and yet, the Woolworth makes them match. The stunning sixty-storey Gothic Revival jewel may look cream-colored, but it wisely incorporates polychromy. The decoration in arcs and canopies over the thousands of windows is so intricate that it gives the impression that it is made of fabric rather than terracotta and limestone. Built in 1913, it held until 1930 the title of the tallest building in the world.
While gazing at the masterful facade, I notice something I had never noticed before: on the top-left part above the entrance, a Native American is “looking” at us. We learn that the four bas-relief portraits that harmonically grace the skyscraper's base represent the four continents (Africa, America, Europe, Asia). The Native American reminds us that, no matter how many towers the western conquerors may erect, the soil we're stepping on belonged, once upon a time, to the Lenape tribe, and this is their island, “Manahatta”.
If the lace-like exterior makes you stop in your tracks, the inconceivably luxurious and abundantly decorated cross-shaped lobby makes your jaw drop. Marble (from the Greek island of Skyros) all over, golden surfaces, mosaic domes with Byzantine aroma, arcades with murals, elevators with Tiffany doors. But the building is not open to visitors -“No photo, no tourist” yells the doorman. I want to reply that I'm not a tourist, that I passed my citizenship exam at the nearby Federal Office Building, but I restrain myself and obey after having taken some precious pictures.
I salute the City Hall (I got married in here), and I move on. At its end Manhattan forms a little tip -the farther south you go, the more you feel sea and history surround you, the more you remember that you are on an island. Speaking of surrounding, here is the... wall:
Across from Trinity Church, I turn left on a narrow, downhill little street: Wall Street took its name from the wall the Dutch built in 1653 on the then-northern limit of their colony, New Amsterdam, in order to protect themselves from British invasion (sidenote: the British actually showed up from the sea). A few blocks up, the inscription on the neoclassical Municipal Building reads “New Amsterdam”, founded in 1626, and “New York”, founded in 1664.
Movies flood your head: if you happen to have seen Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen on the big screen in the '80s, images from the dark, silver, high-end atmosphere of the film that bears the name of the legendary stock-market street, flash like waves.
And yet, at the intersection of Wall and Broad Streets, in front of the “temple” of capitalism (New York Stock Exchange), I come across the most fairytale-like Christmas tree that can ever be! Furthermore, combined with the statue of the little girl posing nearby, fearless yet cute, the scene is far from being taken from the jungle of the stylishly dressed enraged brokers.
The bronze “Fearless Girl” (2017), which had originally been placed across from the famous bull a little further down, but which was subsequently moved here, is standing as a reminder of the place of women in the wild financial world, and beyond.
Tourists and families are having their picture taken under branches adorned with colorful ornaments, as if we were in any other NYC Christmas setting, and not at the place where designer-dressed "wolves" devour each other's flesh as a sacrifice for profit.
The sun is about to set, the cold begins to bite. I briskly head west. As soon as you find yourself in today's World Trade Center -where, by now, five or six humongous impressive skyscrapers invite you to look up-, your attention is drawn to a source of light on the lower level: at the foot of the cluster of the newly-erected, “space” glass mega-structures, the new Saint Nicholas temple glows in such a particular way that you think it is a living organism. The whole building emits a white warm light.
The impression of luminescence does not simply persist, it actually climaxes when you enter the temple: inside the hospitable, thoroughly warm “cocoon”, you feel as if you're floating in the light. You are in an Orthodox church and you recognize the iconography, yet everything is structured in a different light, literally and metaphorically. The newly-built temple, designed by Santiago Calatrava, does not simply replace the Greek Orthodox church that was destroyed on September 11th, but it's also invited to play the role of a national shrine open to all. (Funny, “The Sun”'s motto is finally confirmed here, in the humble Saint Nicholas.)
I exit the bright cocoon and I find myself again outside, in the space-like freezing landscape. And, although while I was inside the temple, I was sure I could hear a Byzantine ison in the background, now that I'm thinking about it, there was no choir or chanter or other sound source. The ison was coming from the power of the space.
This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (online) on December 28, 2023.
It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.
Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 28 Δεκεμβρίου 2023.
Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.
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