#323: Patience and Fortitude

New York Public Library, Midtown, NYC

No matter how many years it's been since I first came to New York City and saw the December snow falling faintly upon the lions, Patience and Fortitude, that guard the New York Public Library's main branch, there is still something magical about that library. And there is something so old-school about these beautifully carved numbers that mark the long tables in the reading rooms. The tables at the main branch library are at just the right height, and the hush of the space and high ceilings all conspire to make me feel like I could cook up the most extraordinary ideas there in that room, surrounded by so many books and so much Beaux-Arts awesomeness.

I've been spending a lot of time in libraries lately, mainly Butler Library up at Columbia University, and I have to say, there is a magic to a good library. And though a lot of it's the quiet, it's the remarkable details like these -- almost hidden in the architecture -- that make me appreciate the spaces even more.

#22: Playing the Building

Battery Marine Terminal, NYC

A few years ago, I got to participate in the half-art installation, half-mad scientist's experiment that was David Byrne's Playing the Building. For this piece of public art, Byrne (musician, urbanist, bike fanatic, and everyone's favorite Talking Head) infiltrated an abandoned maritime warehouse in lower Manhattan, then turned the building into a huge, clanging musical instrument -- all controlled by a single organ hooked up to various bits and pieces of the building itself. The space itself was haunting and beautiful: crumbling industrial pillars, concrete floors, high ceilings, and shafts of sunlight illuminating the room in great swathes of light and shadow.

Then I sat down at the control panel: a wooden organ rigged with cables and gauges that stretched out to all corners of the vast room. Press a middle C and a hammer clanged a distant radiator. Play an A chord and listen as a deep rumble filled the space. An experiment in sound-as-architecture, Playing the Building also had a deviously simple concept: invite anyone to walk in off the street and participate in the play. Today's 22 was snapped just outside the Battery Marine Terminal on the day I went to the exhibit. When I look at it, I can still hear clanging water pipes and humming ceiling beams.

An abandoned maritime warehouse as musical instrument? Yeah. I could get into that.

Why thank you! Don't mind if I do.

#61: Njardargata

Reykjavik, Iceland

#90: 90 Paces, Collins Barracks

Collins Barracks, Arbour Hill, Dublin

All throughout the courtyard of the Collins Barracks, you'll see these hand-painted numbers on the walls. Near the entrance, the signs on either side read 100 PACES, and the numbers count backwards from there: 90, 80, 70, and so on. Back when the barracks was occupied by the British army, the numbers were used to train soldiers in rote military drills, but after the fight for Irish independence, some prescient soul must've tipped them off that Ampersand Seven was coming 'cause they vacated the barracks but left me the numbers. Thanks, Irish army!

The Collins Barracks now holds the decorative arts wing of the National Museum, but it's also a pretty good place to sit in a courtyard, take a couple pictures, and eat a croissant smuggled from your hotel, just in case you were wondering.

The barracks, built starting in 1701 with bits and bobs getting added on throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, is just about the oldest building in Dublin, second only to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. If you've ever seen the film Michael Collins, or anything else about the history of Dublin and the fight for Irish independence, then -- well, let's be real here. You can probably barely see any of these old buildings through all the continuous gun smoke and heavy whiff of history.

In 2006-2007, the courtyard of the barracks was also home to a site-specific art piece by Sean Taylor called 100 Paces, which invoked the long-past military drills and filled the square with sound and choreography. I wasn't there to see it, but through the magic of the internet, a little morsel of this public art remains.

It's definitely worth a look around. I'm usually too busy haunting the courtyard to remember to ever go inside. But next time I'll have to take those extra 90 paces.

#94: Orange You Going

Grace Church, NYC

The two photos aren't related by geography, but they are united by one unusual aspect: orange doors on churches.

I'll confess, I'm sort of a sucker for the combination: that unmistakable hue favored by architect/design folks (yes, I do own about 21 magazine holders in this exact orange color from Bigso Box of Sweden) offset by the weathered stone of an old church. As for the Bruges picture, it makes me very happy as it reminds me of cycling down the narrow streets of the medieval city while Angelus bells rang out and the summer sun slowly set. Consider it my very modest contribution to the as-yet unrealized Bruges Cycle Chic website.

What's that you say? Bruges Cycle Chic has already been done? Ah well, I suppose I'll find my niche in Bruges Orange Door Churches Cycle Chic. So when it finally hits the big time, I can say that I got there first.

Bruges, Belgium

#115: The Prettiest Water Retention System Cap in Town

Galway, Ireland

One of the first things I like to do in a foreign country -- after that initial rush of exchange rate hubris has passed and the cash machine has spit out my fresh stack of Monopoly money -- is take in the small details.

I get a lot of pleasure just noting he differences in everyday things: the shape of a faucet or the different melody when the subway doors close. I also like to learn how to ask for basic needs -- food, water, coffee, bookstore, and so on -- and can generally pick up the word for "water" quite easily, which I often learn from looking -- where else? Down. So I have pondered UISCE in Ireland and VODA in the Czech Republic and good old WATER in the U S of A.

Is it time for my annual fawning links to Manhole Covers, Etc. and Sewers of the World, Unite! yet? 'Cause I smell a golden opportunity.

Seriously, y'all. If you're not looking down at the manhole covers, sewer caps, and other distracting sidewalk shiny things of your city or the places you travel, you're missing out on something special. Consider this #115. The ornate and suggestively Celtic design on something as quotidian as a water retention system cap tells us something about how those Galwegians take pride in their city. It's sure as heck the prettiest retention system cap I've ever had the privilege to trip over while wondering if I'm supposed to LOOK RIGHT or LOOK LEFT when I'm crossing the street. And the fact that it goes unnoticed by most? That just adds to the charm. (Present company excluded, naturally.)

It's a common misconception that tourists only look up when walking through the cavernous streets of an unknown city. Oh no. When it comes to scouring a new metropolis, we sewer lovers of the world (who have never, as far as I know, willingly united in any place other than the internet) know the treasures are often hidden closer to street level. We will look down, around, under lampposts, and behind fences for treasure, crouching in alleys and kneeling in supplication before the asphalt gods for a closer look. We will annoy you as we block the crosswalks to take photographs of, what, our feet? A crushed Coke can in the gutter? We also will come for your children, but that's not till the zombie sequel film.

And whether you like to look up, down, sideways, or backwards, one thing remains clear: sometimes it's not such a bad thing to be a tourist in your own town.

#187: Dublin Historic Stone Paving Disbelief

Pearse Street, Dublin

Can a number make you homesick? And if it can, does it matter that the place you're homesick for isn't really your home? I've posted this 187 before, but this image -- the regal, faintly decaying number on Pearse Street -- is fixed with some crazy mnemonic epoxy to my brain. It makes me nostalgic. Nostalgic for Dublin, nostalgic for my just-finished novel, nostalgic for the hours I used to eagerly waste online on Irish architecture websites trawling for up-to-the-minute updates on planning permission quibbles, ignorant fenestration, and, perhaps my favorite: "Dublin historic stone paving disbelief."

Yes, not only did I read about such things in my "research" days, I was an active irritant in these contentious discussions, commenting from my balcony like some Statler-less Waldorf on the warp and weft of a city's urban fabric -- a city, by the way, that was not even my own. I fancied myself some sort of stone paving paparazzo, snapping up pix of Chinese granite on Henrietta Street on my research trips to Dublin, then dashing back to the nearest computer to upload the pictures before anyone else could. All of this stuff felt so important to me.

And still does. But my research is done. Pearse Street is an ocean away. It's funny to look at the finished product, this coming-of-age novel about a teenage girl in Dublin in the mid-nineties, and wonder how leafing through complicated An Taisce conservation documents and poring over meticulous descriptions of external weathering made my book any better or worse. The hamfisted masonry work on Dublin's pavements did not make it into my final manuscript. Cracked syringes did.

In any case, I'm still interested in the life of this #187. Despite all the changes going on in the area -- Trinity College has designs on it -- this building on Pearse Street is a protected structure, which means that despite its weathered appearance, it will be around for at least a little longer. The nostalgic side of me is happy to hear it, though I'm reminded of what my friend Stephen used to say to conservationist building-huggers such as myself: "That's a protected structure! Don't knock it down, just let it turn to shit."

He should've added: "And then write a blog post about it." Nostalgia this bad dies a slow death.

#230: Grangegorman Masterplan

North Circular Road, Dublin

A planning permission sign, for archi-nerds such as myself, is like a road accident. I know I should keep going, but I can't help but look to see what destruction is in store. Behind this stone wall lurks #230, a former doctor's residence on the site of the old Richmond District Lunatic Asylum in Grangegorman, Dublin. #230, along with its adjacent neighbors, have been slotted for destruction to make way for something the Grangegorman Development Agency refers to repeatedly (and ominously) on their site as their "Masterplan." (Somehow the lack of a space between the two words, not to mention the capitalization, adds to the sinister quality of it.)

However true the phrase may to be the higher-ups, I find it unnerving when development agencies apply the mean-spirited tag "of little architectural value." But at least I appreciate that documenting, photographing, and capturing the buildings -- prior to knocking them down like bowling pins, that is -- is often part of the, ahem, Masterplan. Consider this my small contribution to the documentation. After all, it says nothing of preserving the numbers.

#310: Curvilinear

Upper West Side, NYC

#312: Down and Out in Vinegar Hill

Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn

It's nestled in between the East River and Front Street, sandwiched in between DUMBO and the Navy Yard, one of the quietest patches left in Brooklyn. Last week I was having another one of my Joseph Mitchell mornings where I wanted to clear my head of death and doom by wandering somewhere off the beaten path. I chose Vinegar Hill.

With its cobblestone streets and hidden laneways, Vinegar Hill is one of the less traveled parts of Brooklyn. It gets its name from an enterprising fellow named John Jackson, who snatched up the land in 1800. He called it Vinegar Hill after a decisive battle in the 1798 Irish rebellion with hopes of attracting Irish immigrants to the area, which is a little like calling an up-and-coming neighborhood "Dunkirk" in hopes of attracting the British and French, but whatever. Dude was successful, and for a time this part of Brooklyn was known as Irish Town.

Today, it's changed in some ways and unchanged in others. Walking away from DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass = clunky acronym deciphered) toward the Navy Yard, the construction sounds start to wane. There are no fancy chocolate shops or boutique galleries. The roar of engines and throttle of jackhammers give way to distant industrial echoes. At first there's nothing but the crackling low hum of the ConEd plant and a long straight road to nowhere. But walk a few more paces and turn a corner and you'd swear you were dropped in some city that time forgot. There's a patch of actual silence. You're suddenly aware of the sound of your own breathing. The only tweets here are those from real birds.

There's been much brouhaha recently about the (admittedly excellent) Vinegar Hill House restaurant on nearby Hudson Street, a magnet for foodies with its eclectic menu and cozy interior. I get the sense that most diners come to this tiny neighborhood with a strict destination mentality -- I myself didn't write down the address when I went to meet up with some friends the first time, I just turned left on Hudson and looked for the place with all the middle-aged white people eating -- which is great if you're hungry, but a missed opportunity if you're at all interested in exploring the forgotten bits of the city.

Fortunately, there's the always astute Forgotten NY to the rescue with some delicious pictures and reportage on the area. If you can't hoof it here yourself, do yourself a favor and take a screen tour. You'll be glad you did.

#318: Robofont

Upper East Side, NYC

Completely unique and utterly charming, these techno-esque forms gazed down on the street below like gargoyles, glimmering faint gold from a tall pane of glass. I stood in a giant pile of snow to try to capture this one, all the while avoiding the blaring horns of oncoming traffic. The cast scale of the Upper East Side's architecture can be hard to overcome when you're 5'2", but that's no reason not to try. Could this be the best #3 so far of the 2011 collection? You make the call.

Dublin Dereliction Duty: Newmarket Potatoes

Newmarket, Dublin

No dereliction duty would be complete without a drive-by of a run-down, crumbling, desolate old warehouse whose only sign of industry appears to have been painted in or around the time of the invention of sliced bread (1928, for those keeping track. Thanks, Otto Frederick Rohwedder!).

The fading Newmarket Potatoes sign in Dublin is one of my favorites, and in fact I feel such affection for the rotting old thing that I hesitated to even post it. Could I manage to do verbal justice to a relic whose only easily catalogued positive trait is that it's "old" and "kinda creepy"? Could I put into words the haunted yet familiar feeling I had when first happening upon deserted Newmarket on a bicycle late one evening, able to make out only the faintest shadow of an already faint sign? Is it in any way healthy that I've spent the last hour pondering this? No. It's rather unhealthy, actually. Now then, I'm going to pour myself a glass of red wine and kick my feet up and we'll call it a draw. This dereliction duty is harder than it looks. At least with numbers I knew what I had lined up next.

Ghost signs. Fading advertisements. They're well-documented enough to have their own fan.clubs. There's a whole manifesto wrapped up in my fascination with the derelict and downtrodden (see Hugh Pearman), but there's also something intensely personal about it. When I see an old sign, my mind slows down. I like to take the time to notice things that are so easily glossed over in this über-glossy age. It's a waste of brain cells, yes, but a pleasant one. Who painted the sign? How long has it been there? And how long will it be before the sign disappears completely -- either by a long, slow weathering or by a sudden, violent demolition?

The state of a sign often can tell us a lot about the state of the space around it. In this case, a forgotten, desolate sign in fact exists in a forgotten, desolate square. I was interested (and in that selfish "but I discovered it!" way, almost horrified) to find this re-imagining of the Newmarket area of Dublin: "Animating Newmarket Square in Dublin," from the spatial planning Inspiring Cities project. It reminded me of how New York City's High Line linear park -- once an abandoned railway line -- came to be. First, the vision. Then, the plan. Then, the money. And oh yes, if we're lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) -- the manifestation.

Of course it makes sense to do something with an abandoned urban space. Not all can be left to decay. But sometimes I like the thought of simply imagining it, then going back to the bustle of our usual city centers, leaving the outskirts untouched. There's something rich in that sense of possibility. A charm to the unbuilt.

That said, some of the ideas in the Inspiring Cities report were pretty, well, inspiring. Personally, I'm partial to the report's Idea #3: Temporarily Breeding Artists. But then again, I've got ulterior motives.

Me at Work

Dublin, 1996

A few years ago, I talking with a friend of mine in Dublin about all the changes that had gone on in his city over the past ten or fifteen years. As an unabashed architecture rubbernecker and perpetual cranespotter, I was curious to see what he thought of all the new buildings and developments that had sprung up. Some of the new neighbors have been more obvious than others: a massive shiny syringe millennium spire (arrived on the scene three years late), a handful of new modern bridges named after old modernist writers, and not least of the bunch, the slinky silvery transport of the Luas.

The Luas (the name translates as "speed") is a tram system put in back in 2004 that seemed, when I first saw its network of complicated tracks and overhead wires, both remarkably new and like some kind of throwback to the Dublin James Joyce wrote about, the kind of old-fashioned tram that a spinster could've left a cake on while a randy old colonel winked at her, albeit with a sleeker new design and a few more Ben & Jerry's ads ("Flavor on the Luas") pasted to the windows. It also was built without an interconnector linking the two routes, an oversight which would infuriate if it didn't now seem like a remarkable symbol of Celtic Tiger Ireland: the end result of half-arsed planning, visionary enthusiasm, and an influx of magical cash that, it turns out, wasn't even real.

Route-wise, I could've really benefitted from the Luas when I lived in Ranelagh in 1999, though how else would I have traipsed through the south side, scorning the bad bus service, listening to Tori Amos on my Walkman, developing my as-yet-unrealized role as a flâneur and unsung urbanist? The sight of this new tram snaking around O'Connell Street, silent as an assassin, first surprised me when I returned to Dublin after a few years away. But a little light rail, especially in a traffic-strangled city like Dublin, is good for all. When it's not busy smashing itself into number 16 double decker buses, it's even a pleasant way to get around the city.

The Luas, like the spire, ended up taking much longer than planned. It was but a twinkle in a transport planner's eye in the nineties when I lived there, but by the time I was getting kicked out of the country by the authorities, work was already underway to start the two lines.

My friend, who we'll keep nameless, told me how he'd been hired to do some surveying work on the project early on. The job required him to show up at Heuston Station each morning to collect a hi-vis jacket and theodolite from an architect, then go about the rest of the day from house to house measuring the distance from sea level. It wasn't back-breaking work, he reported, and was made easier by frequent breaks for frisbee in St Stephen's Green and a few rounds of snooker at Big Al's Pool Hall. The task was so easy, in fact, that he managed to tally an entire month's worth of measurements in one day, just in time for the deadline. "And people wonder why the Luas took so long," he conceded, before asking if I fancied another Guinness.

So much for speed.

It goes without saying that things have been quiet over here in Ampersand Land, and while I'll steer clear of the actual hand-wringing (a bad habit that makes me look even more like a character out of Dostoevsky than I already do), I do feel obliged to send up a flare every now and then to let y'all know that I'm still here and still working. Collecting numbers and pictures is a bit like collecting data, though more colorful and less requiring of accuracy than figures on a clipboard. The site is quiet, but the library is growing. I'm in a gathering phase now, enjoying the leisurely pace while most of my creative output is pouring into playing snooker drinking Guinness working on my novel and preparing for tour. But I know there are a handful of you out there who check in from time to time, and I haven't forgotten.

Posting may be light for awhile, but we'll see if some time spent in cooler climates over the next few weeks doesn't do some work toward jump-starting my brain. And those who read about my experience with the Envy-on-Wye literary festival may be happy to hear that I exorcised some of that envy by taking part in this year's Bloomsday festivities in New York a few weeks ago. Sheila, who was there in full force and wrote up a wonderful account of the day's geeky adventures, even joined me in volunteering to read a passage from Ulysses. One thing I can say, it's that when Colum McCann asks you to do something, you can only say Yes.

The Cheese

Sean O'Casey Community Centre, East Wall, Dublin

Gasworks

Ringsend, Dublin

Smile, You're on CCTV

Iveagh Markets, Francis Street, Dublin

If I'm ever to find my fifteen minutes of fame, it will be on CCTV. Those cameras strategically planted in places most likely to attract criminal activity are there for a practical purpose. But they also happen to hone in on the grim alleys and lonesome laneways, the boarded-up houses and abandoned factories that attract a lover of urban dereliction such as myself. If a coil of barbed wire catches my eye, I will stop, take out my camera, and snap a picture. A security camera, detecting the flash, snaps right back at me. From time to time I do wonder about the sad warehouse where all this dull footage is stored, the security equivalent of those pictures you might have of an uncle or a relative that's him taking a picture of you taking a picture of him. Nevertheless, when they do unearth these wasted rolls of film, I'm sure to be a speck in more than one.

Dublin is a city of beautiful ruins. Now that the docklands, once my favorite place for that ends-of-the-earth post-industrial lonesomeness, have gotten the full Celtic Tiger makeover -- that is to say they have been overdeveloped, overdesigned, and made so very, very shiny -- I have had to go in search of other places to walk, wander, and wonder.

Empty lots, sparsely populated lanes, coil after coil of please-feck-off barbed wire -- don't even get me started on the charms of Dublin 8. I can wander for hours on foot through its maze of decidedly un-scenic streets, or swirl figure-8s on a borrowed bicycle. The only thing I can't stomach about the place is the smell of the nearby brewery. Taking in the rank stink of roasting hops from the Guinness Storehouse has as much in common with the smooth satisfaction of drinking a pint of the same stuff as Gary, Indiana has in common with, say, Gary Cooper. There's no comparison, really. But fortunately, there is no nostalgic Smell-O-Vision iPhone app, at least not yet, and daylight in a forgotten corner of town like this provides all sorts of delicious photo ops.

The Iveagh Markets were once fully operational and have since have been left to languish in a corner of The Liberties. It's a beautiful early Edwardian structure, all brick and stone on the outside and a cathedral of cast-iron inside, that once was a bustling center of industry and now is a haven for crushed Bulmer's cans and wayward Tayto crisps bags. While I won't hail this as progress, there is a certain pleasure to be had in pondering the what-was and the what-may-be of a place like this. Possibility is all the more exciting because you seem to be the only one on earth who notices this thing behind a heap of rubble on the outskirts of town. To use one of my favorite bits of non-native phraseology, people simply can't be arsed.

Plans to convert the Iveagh Markets into a hotel were bandied about in the early nineties. The plan was approved by the City Council, then abandoned, for reasons that remain unclear. But I wouldn't mind seeing the markets brought back to their original function, especially when I think of the success of the St. George's Market in Belfast, which is my go-to place for sinfully good crepes and the best place to see a band of merry white-haired Ulstermen playing rambunctious Dixieland jazz on a Saturday afternoon. Very well, I might add.

But until the Iveagh Markets get their much-deserved makeover, I'm happy to go on admiring its grim coils of barbed wire, grinning as I snap away, securing my place in the annals of CCTV history.

On the Beckett Bridge

Samuel Beckett Bridge, Dublin

#3: Flatiron Orange

#3, Flatiron District, NYC

#342

#342, San Francisco, CA

In my alternate life, where all notebooks are Moleskine and all shoes Made in Italy, where entrance hallways are not lined with peach bathroom tile and front doorways are unencumbered by seven layers of sticky black paint, this is what the entrance to my home looks like: angular, architectural, clean, and well-designed. Up those steps, a bright studio awaits me with slanted windows, a wall of exposed brick, and all the fixtures stone or brushed steel. I sit at my ergonomic desk sipping espresso, contemplating my orange Bigso Box of Sweden files that are, of course, impeccably organized. I open my Mac and sentences of elegance flow from my well-manicured fingers.

What really happens when I get home is I shove my weight against a heavy black door (after wrestling the obligatory ten seconds with the lock that always sticks), trudge up the crooked steps with three visible layers of manky linoleum in various states of decay. I pass the inexplicable mish-mash of nightmare knick-knacks my neighbor on the second floor has installed on a wicker shelving unit in the hallway: ceramic bullfrogs holding stone tablets that say I Love You, Easter bunnies grossly out of season bearing white taper candles, and I wonder as I shove open my front door what I'd ever do if I tried to find a right angle in my apartment. Die of shock, probably.

Still and all, in a chaotic apartment in Brooklyn, things fall into place. The rough draft in its many pieces hardens into something sharp and complete, the windows let in fresh air, and unfettered by perfection, I work. I plan. I craft. And it's good. Damn, it's good.

#335

#335, San Francisco


File this one in the "numbers that look like their cities seem to suggest" folder. It'll go well along with the fabulously glitter-spackled Chelsea hair salon at #328, the timber lodge Branson, Missouri fish at #218, and the rugged, distressed #85 at the chic hotel adjacent to Brooklyn's notorious House of D, the now-defunct juvie detention center. (Not to be confused with the David Duchovny film by the same name from earlier this year -- for the 0.002% of you who saw that blow past like so much tumbleweed.)

This unabashedly cheery mosaic decorates the Katherine Michiels School on Guerrero and 25th Street in San Francisco's hilly and highly respiratory Mission District. The school, a stately, symmetrical architectural charmer, is one of many San Fran style Victorian dollhouses that look almost too cute to inhabit. In fact, I don't think anyone actually lives in half of these houses, and if they do, I don't know what they do when they want to slam a door once in a while. While I don't routinely go in for decorative rainbows (those who've been following along know I belong more to the skull-and-crossbones set), there's no harm in trying to make going to school more inviting. &7 Seal of Approval is hereby duly given.

Now that I think about it, a school adorned with a cheery skull and crossbones mosaic might not be such a bad idea. I'll have to have my people draw up some sketches and get back to your people. Zaha Hadid it ain't, but in this recession, it'll have to do.