The Settings of MANHATTAN .45 #1: Empire State Building

The Empire State Building, despite recent vandalism inflicted on Manhattan’s skyline by poorly conceived new construction, remains the dominant Yang (assertive element) in the Yin and Yang of New York’s skyscrapers (the Yin, or cool element, being the Chrysler Building). See the accompanying photograph, contrasting the Empire State’s calm, confident dignity with its twenty-first century neighbors. The strange jumble of off-kilter prisms to the left, seeking attention like some vacant online influencer, is One Vanderbilt; the uninspired pile to the left of that, which would have been more at home in a provincial Chinese city, is the new Chase headquarters. The building in the foreground with the flag is the former Port Authority building, a facility occupying an entire block in Chelsea, and which is now owned by Google—thus the big a/c units visible on the roof, cooling the many servers inside.

The shot was taken from the Standard Highline’s aptly named Empire suite.

MANHATTAN .45’s cover photograph of the Empire State Building during a spectacularly threatening sunset was captured from a corner office on the top floor of the nearby Socony-Mobil Building at 150 East 42nd Street, itself an architectural landmark.