Adventures of Urban Life

Public vs. Private By Katherine Pimentel
For the public vs. private activity, I chose to walk from Grand Central Station to Times Square. Although both of these places are on 42nd street, the East and the West side have a completely different scene. On both of the days that I went there were many tourists walking around and taking pictures. Inside the terminal, the tourists would take pictures of the architecture of the grand station which has beautiful designs unseen in a modern building in New York City. The fact that all of these foreigners came into NYC to appreciate the art that is grand Central Station made me think back on what was mentioned in Kunstler’s Geography of Nowhere “Adolf Loos, who declared that ornament on buildings was “a crime.” All those quoins and cartouches, pilasters and balustrades represented a waste of human effort, and of material as well, and the two other things together mean a waste of capital” (69). This idea that Loos had was apparently shared by other architects who did not feel that NYC buildings needed any type of physical appeal. The terminal was the first public space I found since it included the public transportation system and was readily open to the public. There were even individuals downstairs in the food court who sat there looking at those passing by and some just slept, it was a place to stray away from the cold.
Outside of the terminal one could see the Metlife building which is private in itself but one could sit on the seating they have outside without having anything to do with the company. As I continued walking toward the west side I passed by Bryant park on 5th avenue. Bryant Park is an interesting mix of the public and the private because anyone can go in and use the services they offer or just sit down and enjoy the weather, but it is privately managed. There are events held at Bryant Park such as the famous fashion week which is very exclusive and one must be invited to join. The days that I went it was pretty cold and no one was outside sitting in the park in the weekend it was actually covered in snow from the mini blizzard the city had received. The more I walked however, the more crowded the streets began to get. As I approached Times Square I encountered a few gathering spaces that I don’t exactly know what to call them. One was just open space that a group of young guys decided to break dance on and quickly gathered a large crowd to watch their performance. The other was a large staircase right in the heart of Times Square where people stood on to take pictures of all of the lights and the view of the city in general.
I think I can safely say that Times Square is the go-to destination for all tourist visiting the city because there is no other place that looks like it, like Kunstler mentions in his book the square is arranged in a way that a “marvelous public space is produced on the grand scale”(67). This is what attracts so many people, the fact that it breaks away from the monotonous building we encounter in our daily lives and it indulges in the aesthetics that are pleasing to the eye instead of just worrying about functionality.