Tourist Spots Worth the Effort

If you're a faithful reader of this blog you probably know I'm a sucker for internet lists, you might call it a guilty pleasure of mine. It's always fun to note how a particular list, say someone's opinion of the greatest movies of all time (which I recently covered), compares to a similar list I might come up with. 

This time is wasn't a list that inspired me, I came up with the idea for this one on my own. But I'm not claiming it for myself. Google the theme, and you'll find ten thousand similar lists. 

When it comes to travel, people "in the know", want cool, hip, out of the way destinations, far from the maddening crowd so to speak, places you won't discover from mainstream sources. This makes sense because let's face it, crowds of tourists other than yourself that is, can get annoying. 

On the other hand, popular tourist destinations attract a lot of people usually for a good reason, they're interesting places to visit. Dullsville, USA usually doesn't make a lot of top ten lists of best travel destinations in the world, even though it may have a great hardware store or watering hole.

What inspired this post was a comment from a former colleague who came back for a visit. Her current job is in New Orleans and it so happened that my son was headed there at the same time as her visit. Although I've been to New Orleans and love it, I felt obliged to ask her for some tips that I could send along to him. 

"Well first of all..." she said, "don't go to the French Quarter."  That was expected because the French Quarter of New Orleans is usually the first place people generally think of when they think of the Crescent City. So naturally, it's loaded with tourists, day and night. And when people think of the French Quarter, what then immediately comes to mind is Bourbon Street, named after the French Royal family, not the distilled spirit which may seem more appropriate if you've ever visited that world renowned street. 

But not visit the French Quarter? 

Come on, that's a little like going to New York City and not visiting Times Square, going to L.A. and not visiting Hollywood, or going to London and not visiting Buckingham Palace. Come to think of it, I've been to London twice and still haven't been to Buckingham Palace. But you get the idea. 

It turns out that one of my favorite restaurants in the world, Galatoire's, sits directly on Bourbon Street, and hands down my favorite place in New Orleans is just off it. That place, (read on to find out what it is), exists almost entirely for tourists, yet missing it in my humble opinion, is missing out on not only a big chunk of the heart and soul of the city, but on the heart and soul of the United States. 

I'd like to say that all the entries on my list carry that much weight, but the truth is this list covers everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. What these entries have in common, beyond their attraction to tourists, is that they are unique experiences that well represent the cities in which they are found. And they are all places I dearly love.

I have intentionally not included sites that are destinations in themselves, so you won't for example find the Taj Mahal, or Machu Picchu here. You also won't find them on my list because I have yet to visit them, another requirement. I've also excluded cultural institutions such as museums, because I don't think I need to convince anyone that say, the Louvre (found on several of these lists) is a worthwhile place to visit, that should be self-evident. And while my list is arranged by city, I haven't included cities themselves on the list as some lists do. Why? Because it's my list dammit.

The point of all this is to mention places that bring me joy, either in the sense of being moved, exhilarated, wowed by them, or simply because they put a smile on my face. What's more, your snooty friends who wouldn't set foot anywhere near these places will roll their eyes, basking in self-gratification over their vastly superior hipness when you let them know how much they meant to you.

In other words, it's a win-win, how cool is that?

OK, here's my list in no particular order of touristy places that in my opinion, are well worth the effort, arranged by the cities in which they reside.

NEW YORK CITY- When I wrote about going to New York and not visiting Times Square, it occurred to me that there is more than one reason to visit a place you know will be overrun with tourists. When I spoke above about the feelings the sites on this list evoke for me, I can assure you that almost sixty years ago when as a small child I first visited The Great White Way, it really did evoke those feelings, every single one of them. 

Today, Times Square unfortunately falls short on all of them, which is the reason it's not on my list. Yet I stand by my statement that you have to experience Times Square at least once in your life because it is such an iconic symbol of its city and there is nothing like it, at least outside of Asia. That, I believe puts Times Square in the bucket list category, perhaps a list for another day.

On the other hand, going to the observation deck of the Empire State Building certainly ranks as one of the many New York attractions rating a check on the list of things to do before you kick the proverbial bucket. But it is so much more. First of all, there is no more iconic symbol of New York City than this glorious building.

Although today there are taller buildings in the vicinity, The Empire State continues to dominate the Manhattan skyline, not a small accomplishment.

It was the world's tallest building for forty years, a record held far longer than any building built in at least the last 150 years since the advent of the skyscraper. When the Empire State Building was built, it shattered the previous tallest building record, the Chrysler Building, by 19%. That is obvious from the observation deck of the ESB where the Chrysler Building about a mile away, lovely as it is, looks downright puny by comparison. 

That's also obvious from the observation deck of the GE (Formerly RCA) Building, as seen in this, the opening scene of the 1949 film On the Town. 

My guess is the filmmakers chose to place the sailor-tourists on the top of the RCA Building instead of the Empire State Building in order to highlight the magnificence of the latter, which appears in many of the shots in this clip.

But take your pick, both buildings are equally magnificent and visiting either, (it's probably not necessary to go to the top of both), is well worth fighting the crowds and the over-the-top admission fees. 

My only beef with this scene is that they softened up the lyrics to the song. In the original play, the lyrics (written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green) to the refrain go: " New York New York, a hell of a town."

Which it certainly is. 

If fifty bucks a ticket is a little steep for you, for me no trip to the Big Apple is complete without doing the first thing the three sailors did after disembarking form their ship, enter Manhattan by foot, over the Brooklyn Bridge. In fact, when I took my son to New York a few years ago, I planned, unbeknownst to him, that his first entrance into Manhattan would be the same as the sailors', one of the greatest urban experiences possible with the possible exception of, well you'll just have to read on to find out. 

Just like the best walk anyone can have anywhere in the world, the next few sites won't set you back a penny or a pence, other than airfare, lodging, meals and incidentals:

WASHINGTON DC- Here's another famous film tourist scene from ten years earlier:

Hokey as this might seem to us in our cynical world, if you truly believe in the ideals if not necessarily the actions of this nation, I defy you to roll your eyes when Mr. Smith (played by Jimmy Stewart) walks into the Lincoln Memorial and reads the words inscribed on the wall of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, observes a young man and his immigrant grandpa reading together the Gettysburg Address, and witnesses an elderly black gentleman who conceivably could have been born into slavery, remove his hat and reverently approach the great Daniel Chester French statue of the 16th president. 

If the parts of the Memorial dedicated to Lincoln aren't enough to move you, on one of the steps leading up to the monument are carved four words: "I have a dream" marking the spot where Martin Luther King delivered one of the most important speeches in American History. For my money, standing over those four words written in stone while looking across the Washington Mall toward the U.S. Capitol, have the power to move me far more than the somewhat bombastic memorial to Dr. King, about a half mile away, which is still worth the visit in my opinion.

But wait there's more. Flanking the Lincoln Memorial to the north and south are the two magnificent war memorials, dedicated to the fallen of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. 

Behind the Lincoln Memorial is Memorial Bridge, crossing the Potomac River into Virginia, connecting the literal and symbolic divide between the North and the South. You can cross the bridge by foot into Arlington, Virginia where you will end up at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. There lie the remains of nearly 400,000 American servicemen and women. At the highest point of the cemetery sits the one-time home of General Robert E. Lee, who after deserting his country to join the forces of the Confederacy, had his property confiscated by the Federal government and his land turned into a Union military cemetery just to spite him. Beneath the Lee mansion sits the grave of President John F. Kennedy, and the light from its eternal flame can be seen from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at night. Not far from there sits the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, guarded round-the-clock by members of the U.S. Army.

If there is a more sacred spot in the United States than the Lincoln Memorial and its immediate surroundings, I certainly cannot think of it. 

LONDON-

...when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Samuel Johnson

No truer words could be written which makes selecting a spot in London for a list like this rather difficult. But never fear, I came up with one and as I'm about to write down what it is, I can hear the collective groan from you, dear readers, followed by the comment, "you couldn't have possibly come up with a bigger cliché could you?" 

Well in a way, clichés are what this post is all about. So here goes:

Big Ben.

For a little clarification, Big Ben refers to the enormous bell that tolls the hours inside the clock tower of Westminster Palace, perhaps the most well-known government building in the world. (Or is it the U.S. Capitol Building? I'm not quite sure). I was prepared to write something about the bell but wouldn't you know it, I already did back in 2010 when I first visited London. Sorry folks, can't come up with anything better than this so you'll have to be satisfied with a rerun:

I was put up in the heart of the city, just off Trafalgar Square. The first thing I did on my own was visit the public square that the author of my guidebook criticized severely for its lack of architectural cohesiveness. Perhaps, but what a collection of treasures, The Church of St. Martin in the Fields (home to its eponymous orchestra), the Admiralty Arch, Nelson's Column, the National Portrait Gallery (who paid for my trip thank you very much), and the indescribable National Gallery. It was from that great museum's porch that I was struck with my first view of the bell tower of Westminster Palace, home of the Houses of Parliament.

Someone told me that in London, it's difficult to get one's bearings as the streets are so narrow and winding. But there it was, the city's most iconic landmark clear as day, big and beautiful, beckoning me, off in the distance, my first assumption to be shattered.

Within a few blocks of the tower, I heard the familiar chime of the three quarter hour, the Westminster Chimes. It was 12:45 and I knew that in 15 minutes I might have my one and only chance to hear Ben himself chiming the hour. One clang would be all that I would take home from that magnificent chunk of metal. The wait certainly was not time wasted. Big Ben has tolled on the hour virtually non-stop for nearly 150 years. It has been heard in person by millions, billions perhaps courtesy of the BBC. All the Queens and Kings of England since Victoria have heard it. It was heard daily by Disraeli, by Lloyd George, and by Churchill. More than likely it was heard by Sir John Herschel and Charles Darwin, by Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf . It was heard by Charlie Chaplin and the Beatles. During the Blitz of 1940, German bombs landed within feet of it destroying the House of Commons, but were unable to silence it. It rang throughout the war. All the words I read, all the images I ever saw, all the dreams of London I ever had were summed up in that one brief moment. I had finally arrived.

PRAGUE- The epitome of a city that suffers a bit from its sheer beauty, it's almost impossible to hear anyone speaking about visiting the magnificent Czech capital, without hearing complaints that it is overrun with tourists. 

Once again I beat myself to it and wrote about an essential walking tour of Prague that starts at the Medieval entrance to the city, the Powder Tower, takes you through the Old City past the famous Astronomical Clock, in Old Town Square, over the River Vltava across the Charles Bridge, into in my opinion, the most beautiful section of the city, Mala Strana, then ends up at  St. Vitus Cathedral in the heart of Prague Castle. This route is called the Royal Way as it was the official route the Bohemian kings made before their coronation in the Cathedral:

Along the route, one walks through not only a glorious city, but eleven centuries worth of history and architecture. Like Melbourne, Prague's architecture is an unapologetic clash of styles. Certainly, Prague is one of the most enchanting places imaginable with its fairy tale vistas featuring Medieval towers and bridges spanning the Vltava, the river that plays such an important role in Czech culture. Yet its physical beauty barely scratches the surface of the experience. Prague is the perfect walking city, as each few steps lead to a new discovery. You walk not only in the footsteps of kings, but also the likes of Kepler, Mozart, and Kafka. That's not to say its history is set in stone; like any vibrant place, its story is written daily by the people who walk its streets, from saints to sinners, and everyone in between. 

Then lo and behold, I finished up that piece with a fine way to describe the theme of this piece: 

Great cities are about life, past, present and future. Any city that invites people to explore by walking around its streets and alleys, discovering secrets hidden in its underbelly, is a treasure to behold. After all, the art of the city resides not only in its buildings, monuments or civic plans, but in the ways people interact with them. Take people away from the equation, and all that's left is a beautiful architectural rendering, or a dead city.

So, as your typical American visitor might say: "Maybe all them tourists ain't so bad." 

Just a bit of a hint though, perhaps its best to visit Prague during off season or at off hours. Trust me, the tourists will still be there, just not so many of them, especially at the Clock and on the Charles Bridge.

SAN FRANCISCO- If there is an American city that comes close to the beauty of Prague, this is it. But in contrast, San Francisco owes at least as much of its beauty to its natural setting as its built environment. In addition to the glorious Bay and the Pacific Ocean inlet that lent its name to arguably the most beautiful bridge in the world, The Golden Gate, San Francisco has all those crazy hills that make walking around town a good workout for even someone who's in the best of shape. 

And it's those hills that necessitated the invention of what is certainly the city's most iconic feature.

The story, perhaps apocryphal, goes something like this: Andrew Smith Hallidie, an entrepreneur who was involved in the manufacture of wire rope, witnessed a horrific accident involving a horse drawn streetcar trying to make its way up one of those hills. The weather was inclement, and the horses lost their traction on the road causing the whole contraption, horses and all, to slide down the hill, killing all the animals and an untold number of passengers and passersby. Hallidie resolved to alleviate the hazardous situation by creating a mechanical system to safely propel streetcars up and down those treacherous hills, based upon the system of hauling carts up and down mine shafts using you guessed it, wire rope. 

Working with the German born engineer William Epplesheimer and several wise investors including Abner Doubleday, the man erroneously credited with inventing baseball, the fruit of their labor was the Clay Street Hill Railroad, the world's first cable hauled railway, better known as the Cable Car System.

The basic concept is simple enough, propel the streetcars by wire running continuously underneath the streets. But the execution is anything but, especially if you want the cars to be able to start and to stop. Much of the brilliance of Epplesheimer's work involves the grip system operated by the driver who through the grip is able with the help of a lever to grab onto the cable when he wants the car to move, and release it when he needs it to come to a stop. Further complicating matters are when two cable car lines intersect, which necessitates tremendous effort on part of the driver (also known as the Grip) to briefly release grip on the cable, retract the mechanism to avoid it coming into contact with the intersecting cable, allow the momentum of the car to carry it beyond the intersecting cable, then reverse the process after safely clearing the interfering cable, to carry on.  

Then there is the tremendous infrastructure required to run and maintain hundreds of miles of cable under the city's streets. Cable cars are the paradigm of audacious 19th Century industry and technology. For a while, they were incorporated into the transportation systems of several American cities including Chicago. They didn't last long however because of the tremendous effort and expense it took to keep them running. 

Except in San Francisco. 

Today you might still find locals riding the cable cars but the vast majority of passengers are tourists. Consequently, you might find yourself waiting in a queue for an hour or two to hop aboard one of these lovely 19th Century contraptions.

It's worth it. 

Cable cars are a feast for at least four of the five senses:

• While walking on the streets you can feel the vibration of the cable running beneath your feet.
• From blocks away, you can hear each Grip driver's distinctive bell ringing style as they alert pedestrians and motorists of their presence.
• The burning odor of the Douglass Fir brakes (which have to be replaced every three days), is one of the most distinctive and evocative smells of the City by the Bay.
• I don't recommend trying to employ your sense of taste on the Cable Cars, save that for the Chioppino, which was also invented in San Francisco.
• The view from aboard the cable cars can't be beat, especially climbing Nob Hill with San Francisco Bay at your back, while hanging on for dear life, standing on a coveted spot on the outside running board. Frankly, this is one of the greatest urban experiences anyone can have, anywhere, especially at night, which also happens to be the time of day with the fewest tourists.

Another win-win.

PARIS- Speaking of audacious 19th Century technology... Naturally, Gustave Eiffel's Tower is a no-brainer on my list. Need I say more? Here is my ode to Paris from twelve years ago. 

And here is another, this piece was devoted to the second most special of all the places on this list to me, written right after the fire that nearly destroyed it, Notre Dame de Paris.  Given that, appropriately enough, the post begins with a personal account of the most special place on this list to me.

BERLIN - And this is my ode to Berlin. Here's an excerpt:

Cities contain both the best and the worst of humanity, the great cities only more so. This goes all the way back to Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world, part of the cradle of civilization, center of art, law and science. But Babylon still has bad connotations to this day implying the degenerate behavior found in big cities.

The great cities of the world all have had their share of decadence, heartbreak and misery.

Of all the cities that I have visited, none has had to overcome more of all three in the course of one human lifetime than Berlin.

My wife and I are currently in the middle of watching the compelling German TV drama series Babylon Berlin. For the record I'd like to point out that the series started production in 2017 while my Berlin post was written in 2009, so my association of Babylon with Berlin in the post, and the movie's, are not related. Just thought you might like to know.

When I visited Berlin in 1994, the Berlin Wall had been down for only a few years, and there was still a stark contrast between what were once West and East Berlin. I'd be very interested to return today and see how the two cities have melded together into one. 

One thing I'm certain that has not changed is you still cannot walk a few blocks in the city and not be reminded in one way or other of World War II and the Holocaust. That is by design, and I give the German people a great deal of credit for honestly confronting their past. We Americans can learn a great deal from that. 

Despite being a great city filled with vibrant culture, a hopping nightlife, a diverse population, and virtually all the things that make a city alive and vital, there still is a cloud of melancholia that hangs over Berlin, which will probably be around for a good long time. 

So after confronting places like the old headquarters of the Gestapo and its accompanying museum aptly called the Topography of Terror, remnants of the Berlin Wall, Hitler's Bunker, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, the old Reichstag Building whose 1933 torching, set in motion the sweeping suspension of civil liberties in Germany by the Hitler government, and the haunting Jewish Cemetery in Prenzlaurerburg which testified to the time when Berlin was the center of Jewish culture in Germany, what I really needed after a good cry, was a glass of beer.

Which I treated myself to every day I was in Berlin. 

But not just anywhere. 

If you've been watching Babylon Berlin, you may have noticed this recurring logo: 

Ka De We, short for Kaufthaus des Westins, was, and continues to be, one of the grandest department stores in the world, right up there with Harrods in London and Printemps in Paris. 

In addition to constant reminders of the War, practically everywhere you go in Berlin, are photographs on display of prewar Berlin, and what a place it must have been. The producers of Babylon Berlin have done a good job using CG to recreate the look and feel of the city of the twenties, which was bombed to kingdom come during the forties. 

The Berlin of today gives one ample opportunity to put beside the past (without ever forgetting it), and look forward to the future. Yet a part of me still longed to visit the Berlin that existed before the horrors of the Nazis and World War II. Visiting Ka De We in the flesh, which was rebuilt to faithfully resemble its prewar self, fit the bill. 

Shopping there might have been a little beyond my means, even with a per diem at my disposal, but having a beer while sitting in the sixth floor food hall with its splendid view of central Berlin including the Tiergarten, the Winged Victory Monument, the Brandenburg Gate and the city's main drag, Unter den Linden leading into what once was East Berlin, put me into a place where I could briefly forget the horror of what went on right outside that window, not so long ago.

But not completely. In that great German beer hall, I didn't drink just any beer, I drank exclusively Budweiser Budvar and Pilsner Urquell, Czech beers in honor of my father who spent much of the war as a conscripted laborer from Czechoslovakia in Berlin. 

We do our part any way we can.

MEMPHIS-  In terms of American popular music, most roads lead through Memphis. 

Chicago may be known for its Blues scene, but most of the great Chicago Blues men and women came up from the Mississippi Delta through Memphis before moving north. Detroit is justifiably known as a capital of Soul Music, thanks in large part to Barry Gordy and his baby, Motown. But Memphis produced its own version of Soul through the Stax label (and others), less polished, more gritty, more down to earth, more raw and in the end I believe, more influential. My favorite line from the movie The Blues Brothers which despite being set in Chicago, featured mainly artists who were based in Memphis, came out the mouth of Donald "Duck" Dunn, the bassist for Booker T and the MGs who said this: "we had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline." 

Indeed.

Here are just some of the names of the first group of great Memphis blues and soul musicians enshrined in the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012:

• Bobby Blue Bland
• Booker T. and the MGs
• Al Greene
• Isaac Hayes
• Howlin' Wolf
• W.C. Handy
• B.B. King
• Otis Redding
• The Staple Singers
• Rufus Thomas

And that's just for starters, the Queen of them all, Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis, and recorded her greatest music down the road in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Then there's that other baby of the blues, rock and roll, which for all intents and purposes was born at Sun Records in Memphis. 

Here's the story as told in Jim Jarmusch's 1988 film Mystery Train:

Then there's Graceland. Now I love Elvis as much as the next guy, but I'd have to put Graceland, home of Elvis Presley and without a doubt the biggest tourist attraction in town, on my bucket list list, having checked it off my own bucket list (before I knew there was such a thing) about 35 years ago. But it's not on this list. Maybe it's just me, but Graceland is just too damned depressing. 

Maybe it's because the lights went out for good on the King in the seventies, the decade marked by the worst taste in design in the entire century. Graceland, preserved as it was the day Elvis died, reflects that. Maybe it's because he died in the bathroom upstairs and on our tour, as I'm sure most others, some smart aleck asked the tour guide if we could see the bathroom. Maybe it's because the tour ended in the garden which contains the graves of Elvis and his parents. Compounding that today is that the new residents of that private cemetery are to be Elvis's daughter Lisa Marie, who recently died at the age of 54, and her son Ben, who took his life at 27.

Graceland isn't the only downer in Memphis. The Lorraine Motel was the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Anyone who was alive in 1968 and can remember that horrific event will no doubt feel a jolt coming upon the parking lot and facade of the motel which have been preserved to look as they did in that famous photograph taken on the afternoon of April 4,1968, of Dr. King laying mortally wounded on the balcony of his motel room while Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy and other associates of Dr. King, point in the direction of where the fatal shot came from. Even the cars parked in the lot are still there. 

The National Civil Rights Museum now occupies the site behind the preserved facade of the motel. It was just about to open when I visited Memphis, so I haven't had the opportunity to visit. A friend confirmed that it was well worth visiting although Dr. King's room, complete with a reproduction of the plate of dinner he never got the chance to eat, was a bit macabre.

Like Berlin, Memphis is a great city with a lot going for it, including a vibrant contemporary music scene. 

Also like Berlin, you may need a little relief, especially after visiting the Civil Rights Museum and/or Graceland. 

Well friends, I have the answer for you, located right in the heart of downtown Memphis.

The Peabody is a classic early 20th Century hotel, built along the lines of the Palmer House in Chicago, and the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. While it lacks the Fairmont's Tonga Room (another spot worthy of this list), in addition to its glorious roof-top sign, the Peabody has a feature I believe is completely its own: 

The Peabody Ducks.

Two times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, a red carpet is rolled out for four female mallards and one very lucky male duck who are escorted with great fanfare by their Duck Master via elevator to and from their state-of-the-art rooftop penthouse, to hold court in the fountain of the hotel's elaborate lobby.

The ducks have been around since 1930 when the general manager of the hotel who got a little peppered on a hunting trip, decided as a lark that it would be a trip to bring some live decoy ducks to swim in the fountain of his hotel. Thinking the better of it after sleeping off his stupor, the next morning he went downstairs to find that the ducks were a big hit, and a tradition was born.

You can read all about the Peabody Ducks here in a magazine I never miss an issue of, Garden and Gun.

OK I promised you the ridiculous, now here's the sublime:

NEW ORLEANS - A little over a year ago I wrote a piece about American food culture, yes indeed there is such a thing. In the post tasked myself with coming up with what I would consider the quintessential American dish. I didn't even consider the obvious choices, the hamburger or the hot dog, or even that most unique of American meals, Thanksgiving Dinner. 

Instead, I chose Gumbo. Let me explain: 

A microcosm of the United States, but unique in so many ways, New Orleans like most major American cities, is a mix of people from all over the world. Specifically. the Crescent City is a mix of European, African, Latin, Carribean and Indigenous American cultures, with a little Asian thrown in for good measure.

And Gumbo is the dish that represents all the cultures found in Louisiana. As anyone who has made it knows, the heart and soul of Gumbo is the roux, a mixture of flour and fat that originated as its name implies, from France. From there the dish is thickened either with okra, a vegetable first cultivated in Africa, or file (pronounced "FEE lay"), ground sassafrass leaves, introduced by Native Americans. The hot seasoning comes from the settlers from the Spanish Canary Islands, and the andouille sausage from the Cajuns, via the French-speaking part of Canada.

Like Paella, Gumbo originated as a peasant stew, infinitely adaptable to whatever ingredients its maker has lying around the kitchen.

Also like Paella, everyone has his or her own recipe. As such, Gumbo has made its way onto the tables of homes and restaurants of Louisiana from the humblest to the swankiest.

Like America, coming from humble beginnings, Gumbo is infinitely diverse, and like Americans, it can be whatever it wants to be, good, bad, and everything in between.

It's a little easier to come up with the most American of art forms. That would have to be jazz, and as far as jazz music goes, all roads lead to New Orleans. Unlike Memphis, or just about anywhere you have to seek out the music, in New Orleans, music comes out of its pores. You can't help but hear it all over the French Quarter and other popular neighborhoods, either from street musicians or coming out of bars and other tourist venues.

But music is a part of everyday life as well in New Orleans. Of course, you hear it all over the city during the mother of all public festivals, Mardi Gras. I haven't been to Mardi Gras, nor do I intend to go because even I can't deal with THAT many folks all together in one place, at least not since I spent New Years Eve in Times Square. But while much of the city's economy depends on the tourists who show up for the festival, it would be a mistake to assume that Mardi Gras is an event put on for tourists. Rather, Mardi Gras the day, and Carnival which proceeds it, are deeply rooted in the culture of the city and almost every resident of the city takes part in the festival in one way or other. 

However in a city that doesn't need much of an excuse to celebrate, you needn't show up during the period between Epiphany and Fat Tuesday to find a good party. While you're there, you might even be lucky enough to stumble across a Jazz funeral. 

Unfortunately, we didn't get that chance but did manage to take part in the next best thing. It was the day after a wedding we attended and my friend who was the groom's best man, his wife, his parents and my wife at the time were looking for something to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. He found a notice in the paper for a jazz parade in Algiers, the neighborhood across the Mississippi River from downtown. Those were the days before GPS so all we had to go on was an address and the kindness of strangers offering us directions. We stopped at the first place we could find off the ferry which was a bar. My friend went in and asked around where we could find the parade. The folks turned around, looked at our lily-white faces, just like theirs, and told us in no uncertain terms that we didn't want to go there. They didn't need to say why. But we assured them we did and by the way we were from Chicago and could handle ourselves. So they pointed us in the right direction and sent us on our way.

We brushed aside their trepidation, attributing it to good ol' boy racism, until black people began stopping us in the street asking us if we were lost. Unlike the guys in the bar, and very much unlike experiences I've had at home being in neighborhoods in which I did not feel welcome, to a person everyone who stopped us was very much concerned about our well being. One woman driving her car even turned around and drove to our destination just to see if what we were looking for was legit. She came back and assured us it was. I'm sure she would have driven us there herself had there not been six of us. 

Anyway, when we got to the location, about half an hour after the scheduled start of the parade, there was no indication that anything was about to happen. Assuming we already missed it, we asked someone who didn't know about the event but told us: "Hey this is New Orleans, nothing ever starts on time here. 

When the parade finally began about an hour later, it turned out to be the most wonderful, joyous, life-affirming event I ever attended. It seemed like half of the neighborhood came out of nowhere turning out for the parade which featured two local "crews" with their member musicians, dancers, friends and relatives. As I pointed out in a previous post, "It was the real deal, not the manufactured mayhem of Bourbon Street." Ours were the only white faces to be found, and I think it's safe to say we were probably the only tourists present. No one batted an eye.

As we walked back from the parade, we ran into many of the folks who expressed their concern for us on the way there. One woman was standing in front of her church and when we passed by, after exchanging pleasantries, she invited us in for the service. One of the biggest regrets of my life is that we politely declined. 

But we were exhausted and actually had plans for later that evening, we were headed for Preservation Hall. You may wonder, why go to a venue that caters exclusively to tourists when we had just experienced the real thing? 

The answer is simple, music is music and New Orleans music, wherever or whenever you hear it, is sublime, we just couldn't get enough of it. Like Memphis, I could write a list of all the great musicians that came out of New Orleans but I need only mention one to put the whole thing into perspective: 

Louis Armstrong.

Not every visitor to New Orleans has the gumption to do what we did in seeking out that parade. I can honestly say that if it were not for my friend and his family, my ex-wife and I on our own probably would have heeded the advice of the locals and not continued walking in the direction of an event that at the time, seemed hit or miss at best. 

But in the end, it was the kind of adventure that every seasoned traveler longs for, the off the beaten path encounter that takes effort, perseverance, and a little nerve to pull off, the kind of experience that might impress even the snootiest of your friends.

By contrast, the only perseverance required to attend a performance at Preservation Hall is to be willing to stand in line to get in. And if you're at all claustrophobic, sitting cheek by jowl with a crowd of sweaty tourists in a room that looks like it should have been shut down by the fire marshal years ago, may take a little nerve. 

But let me assure you, the payoff was the same. It's all about the music.

Would I recommend going the extra mile to seek out a "real" New Orleans experience as we did that Sunday afternoon, or take the easy route and head to a venue that everyone in the world knows about?

That's easy, I'd recommend doing both as we did, and then do it again and if possible, again once more. As I write this it just dawned on me, that's what really separates this list from the bucket, been there done that list.

So, there you have it, a dozen or so places in the U.S. and Europe that you will definitely find in your guidebook, and one that you won't, that will hopefully move, thrill, excite and maybe even put a smile on your face, if you're anything like me. That last part is the key because you're probably not like me, and your list of worthwhile places to visit might be completely different from mine, which is exactly as it should be. 

The point is that traveling, one of the great joys of life, is a highly personal thing, and you shouldn't ever feel compelled to visit, and more important, not visit a place in order to impress anyone other than yourself.

With that in mind, happy travels, bon voyage, gute Reise, šťastnou cestu and above all, laissez le bon temps rouler!

Back in the Day

The other day while looking at a Facebook site devoted to Chicago, I came across a post accompanied by this picture. The post's author asked if anyone recognized the building on the left of the frame. "Ooh, ooh..." I said to myself "...I do I do". I scrolled down the responses to see if anyone else recognized the building with the distinctive tower. One person suggested it was the iconic Wrigley Building on the north bank of the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue. Another suggested the London Guarantee Building directly across the river. Still another thought it was the Jewelers Building one block to the west. The wisenheimer in me was ecstatic as I would get to tell everyone they were wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I don't always take delight in correcting people, but truth be told, sometimes I do. However many years ago I learned from a close associate that that behavior is unbecoming, especially when it is accompanied by smug overconfidence, which apparently I exhibited when I corrected him one too many times. These days whenever I'm with friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues or perfect strangers, I usually keep my cards close to the vest, not interrupting all but the most egregious factual errors, and sometimes I even let those go. But online is different. While I appreciate my friend's advice, there is still satisfaction every once in a while to come out and say that someone is, pardon the expression, full of shit. That's probably why social media has become so damn popular, the anonymity it provides gives us the opportunity to act like a jackass without being publicly outed as such. If you don't believe me, just check out the comment section of any YouTube post.

Anyway, the confusion about the building is understandable, given that it, like the three Facebook suggestions was built in the Beaux Arts style which was popular in the first decades of the 20th Century when these buildings were created. What threw everybody off no doubt was the assumption that the building is in Chicago. It is not. It is the Municipal Building in Lower Manhattan. I know that to be true because I know the building well, as it was from the cupola at the pimmacle of the Municipal Building where I made the original cover photogaph for the book, The Architectural Guidebook to New York City, written by Francis Morrone.

Here is the picture I made from the top of the Municipal Building, you can see the shadow of the cupola where I was standing at the lower right of the frame:

You don't have to know anything about New York City architecture to realize this picture was made before September 11, 2001. It was in fact made in September, 1992, one year before the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center via a bomb placed in a rented truck parked underneath the North Tower (in this picture, the tower on the right) in 1993. That attack took the lives of six people. Engineers at the time speculated that had the truck been parked in a more strategic spot when the bomb was detonated, there was a chance the blast might have weakened the structure to the point where it could have brought the building down. My photograph took on a new meaning after that. The truth is, before that first bombing, I never much cared for the World Trade Center; in fact for the sake of the picture at the time I shot it, I would have preferred if the two towers had not been there at all, leaving the frame dominated by that great work of early 20th Century architecture, the Woothworth Building, and New York's glorious City Hall, built in the first half of the 19th Century, seen at the bottom of the frame.

But the thought that one of the towers could have collapsed, taking with it the lives of tens of thousands of people, rocked me to the core and I never looked at that complex the same way again. I'll never forget the last time I laid eyes on the WTC. I was in a taxi en route to Newark Airport. We had just emerged from the New Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel, the sun was setting and its bright rays reflected off the towers making them glow like two enormous golden beacons. For the first time I saw those buildings as beautiful and I resolved to photograph them from across the Hudson in exactly the same light when I returned to New York. Needless to say, that never happened.

Life for everyone, everywhere changed in both enormous, and infinitisimally small ways after that dreadful late summer day in 2001. I was reminded of one of the small ways when I decided to respond to that Facebook thread.

I didn't have a readily available picture of my own of the Municipal Building to provethat I had the right building, so I asked Google to come up with one for me. It brought up a site that not only showed the building, but described the remarkable privilege of being able to set foot in the "off limits" Municipal Building cupola and view what is certainly one of the most spectacular vistas in the city.

Here is a link to that site.

I did feel incredibly privileged to experience that amazing view, but it certainly was not off limits 28 years ago. In fact I was flabbergasted at how easy it was to get up there. Here's how I did it: I walked into the building, hopped aboard an elevator and took it as far as it would go. I got off and found another elevator that said, "tower elevator" and rode to its  top floor. Then I walked up a few flights of stairs, saw a door, opened it and there I was. There were plenty of people around, but no one said boo to me. Once outside, making sure I had something in place to prop the door open, (as didn't want to be trapped out there),  I had Manhattan, Jersey City, and part of Brooklyn all to myself, or so it seemed. It was one of the most exhilerating experiences of my life.

I knew immediately that I wanted a photograph of the view toward the the WTC and Woolworth Building, just one of many amazing views from that spot, to be the cover of our book. So I returned on a subsequent trip with a large format camera and holders filled with color film. The rig necessary for the cover photograph included a tripod, a camera bag, and a large box containing the camera. This I was sure would draw stares but once again I walked into the building and boarded the elevator with no one paying the least attention to me. Like most photographers in the days before 9/11, I felt that in order to get the picture, it was usually better to ask forgiveness rather than permission. Today that cavalier attitude can get you into serious trouble. But even then, the ease with which I was able to access this amazing place, left me feeling a little uneasy. So I told a building engineer what I planned to do and asked if was OK. He couldn't have been nicer and told me that workers in the building go out there for lunch all the time, just make sure the door didn't lock behind me. I didn't let on that I already knew that, and went about my business.

I don't know exactly when the cupola of the Municiapl Building became "off limits" to regular folks. I'm guessing that after the first WTC attack just a half mile away, at the very least my closed bag and big box would have drawn the attention of security.

After the 9/11 attacks all bets were off, everywhere. Here in Chicago, buildings that had always opened their doors to the public, ceased to do so. Even the magnificent lobbies of architectural gems such as the Rookery Building, hands down the highlight of any tour of Chicago's Loop, were inaccessible to all but officially sanctioned tour groups.

Things have loosened up a bit 18 years since the attacks, but I'm guessing we'll never have the same access to buildings, even ones considered public, that we once did.

I'm not going to trivialize the memory of the lives of people lost to terrorist attacks by complaining about not being able to wander around buildings the way we used to back in the day. It is a small price to pay to help keep people and our cities safe. But along with the hightened security, something significant has been lost. I'll give one specific example.

The US Capitol Building in Washington DC is probably the most important physical symbol of American Democracy. It's no coincidence that Pierre L'Infant placed this house of the people, not the house of the Chief Executive, precisely at the center of his design for the nation's capital city. Thomas Walter's magnificent dome was constructed during the Civil War as a symbol of the continuity of the republic, despite the great cost and grave situation that was taking place at the time. And despite a number of violent incidents that took place in and about the building over the years, from its original construction in the late eighteenth century until quite recently, this people's house used to be open to the general public to wander about for the most part, as they pleased.

I have fond memories of visiting the Capitol, walking up the same steps where presidents traditionally were sworn into office*. Once at the top of those stairs the public could walk through the doors of the East Front (in later years through metal detectors) directly into the Great Rotunda where the bodies of presidents from Abraham Lincoln to George H.W. Bush have lain in state, as well as a very small handful of significant Americans such as Rosa Parks who have lain there in honor. From the Rotunda you could wander into National Statuary Hall where each state contributed two likenesses of its favorite sons or daughters. There you could stand upon a marker on the floor and if you listened closely, hear conversations taking place on the opposite side of the great hall. That unintentional echo chamber was an architectural feature that early 19th Century congressmen took advantage of, listening in to the private conversations of their unsuspecting rivals on the other side of the hall, back when the room severed as the chamber for the House of Representatives.  

If you kept moving south, you could enter the current House Chamber even when that legislative body was in session. That chamber is one of the most recognizable interiors in the United States as it is the setting for all joint sessions of Congress including the president's annual State of the Union address. 

When I first visited the Capitol over thirty years ago, it was a little more complicated to get into the Senate Chamber on the other side of the building as you needed to obtain a pass from one of your senators. But that was hardly a problem as you could descend into the basement and hop aboard the Capitol subway which would shuttle you to and from the Senate office Building a few blocks away.

Granted it is still possible for the general public to visit the US Capitol Building, but access is greatly limited. Not only can you no longer enter the building from the East Front, but if you so much as attempt to climb the stairs leading up to it, you will be stopped by security personnel. To gain access to the building, ordinary folks have to enter the US Capitol Visitors Center a half block away. 

Here is a link to a video produced by the CVC as an orientation to what you can expect, and what you cannot expect when you visit the Capitol Building. 

As you can see, the CVC is a user friendly place that educates as well as serves as an entrance portal to the House of the People. Today, it is much like a museum with a plethora of exhibits, a cafeteria, and of course a gift shop. Naturally you can also visit the Capitol Building, but only under the watchful eye of a tour guide, no more wandering about on your own.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that access to the Capitol has been restricted, albeit in a palatable, even enjoyable fashion. After all, the building was likely the target of hijackers who commandeered the fourth airliner during the September 11th attacks, and was spared only by the quick thinking, selfless and heroic actions of the passengers of United Flight 93 who took out the hijackers, crashing the plane in the process just outside of Shanksburg, PA.  One shudders to think of the profound psychological damage the loss of that building would have been to the American psyche, especially on top of the carnage that already took place in New York, and just across the Potomac in Arlington, VA. No greater monument to the victim/heroes of Flight 93 could possibly exist than the Capitol Building itself. 

But constructon of the CVC (which had been on the drawing board for years) was put into action in response to another attack, one that took place at the Capitol in 1998, when a gunman stormed through the metal detectors and shot and killed two Capitol police officers. The bodies of the two men, Officer Jacob Chestnut and Detective John Gibson were themselves laid in honor inside the Capitol Rotunda.

Clearly the creation of the CVC was a prudent move to control crowds and provide security to the Capitol Building and the people inside it. From all appearances (I have never set foot inside), the Visitor Center seems to be a tremendous success from a design standpoint, as well as a crowd pleasing tourist attraction.

However I wonder how well it truly serves the Capitol and its role as the symbolic house of the people. My most memorable visit was in the mid-nineties when I had the opportunity to show a friend from Germany around. As I had already taken the official tour, I played guide and showed him the Rotunda, the hall of statues with its echo chamber, and the House Chamber which he recognized from internationally televised speeches. What truly impressed him was that despite this building being the center of government of a great nation, anyone, young or old, rich or poor, black or white, powerful or meek, could walk right in and make themselves at home, and if they so chose, rub elbows with a law maker and offer him or her a piece of their mind. 

Which come to think about it, is what participatory government is all about and what made our Capitol unique.

That part has been lost.

It's true that the CVC provides convenience, creature comforts and a meaningful visitor experience. As the orientation video points out, visitors to the Capitol no longer have to wait in long lines braving the elements just to get in, and have plenty of ammeneties to entertain themselves while they wait to get inside the Capitol. When they finallly make to the great building, they don't have to worry about figuring where to go, their guide will take care of all that for them.

As as attraction, the US Capitol has become another item on the bucket list of Washington attractions to check off.

What we no longer experience there, is the feeling of ownership. While the building belongs to the people of the United States, limiting its access to officially sanctioned tours means the public has been relegated to the role of casual observer, rather than active participant. In that sense, the US Capitol might just as well be another museum, the Kremlin, or a brewery,

More concerning is that limited access means legislators get to do their work in more seclusion than than ever before. It's no secret that our particpatory government has always been subverted by money, special interests, and less than scrupulous politicians. But by constantly bumping into everyday Americans at their place of business, be it in the hallways, eating places or the Capitol subway, lawmakers at least would be reminded to whom they ultimately have to answer. Well, not so much today.

They say that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. There are always tradeoffs, and in our world we are faced with the constant choice between freedom and safety, two ideals which are mutually exclusive. We can have a perfectly safe world but not without giving up our liberty. Likewise a perfectly free world would be impossible without unacceptable risks. Therefore a balance must be struck.

As I said, the growth of terrorism, both foreign and home grown, has affected us in big and small ways. Limiting access to our government by restricting public access to the Capitol may seem like a small price to pay for helping keep us safe. On the other hand, if we keep whittling away our liberties in small inperceptable pieces, bit by bit, everntually there will be none left.

Just something to think about.

*Presidential inaugurations (not including intra-term ceremonies following the death or resignation of a president)  took place on the East Steps of the Capitol Building from the swearing-in of Andrew Jackson in 1829 until the 1980 inauguration of Ronald Reagan when they were moved to the West Front which faces the National Mall. 

A Marvelous Order

I've written in this space before about Jane Jacobs, the writer, activist and visionary whose work, including her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, helped set in motion the revival of urban America that continues to this day. Less often have I menntinoned her chief nemesis, Robert Moses, perhaps as close to an oligarch as this country has ever produced. He was a man who wielded the kind of unchecked power that folks like the current president could only acheive in their most perverse dreams.

As the chief builder of the greater New York metropolitan area between the 1920s and the 70's, Moses held a number of positions as president or comissioner of several New York State authorities and commissions, holding many of those posts concurrently. Much of his rise to power came during the early years of the Great Depression where he was in the position, where others weren't, to set into motion great public works projects with the funding of federal relief projects such as the Works Progress Administration (the WPA). During that time, Moses was responsible for the creation of several of the recreational amenities that New Yorkers continue to enjoy including millions of acres of public parks and beaches, and hundreds of playgrounds in the city of New York. But what Moses is probably most remembered for today are the thousands of miles of bridges and highways that were built under his watch.

For a time, Moses could simply will his projects to completion as in addition to his vast political acumen, he was in lock step with the sentiment of the day that progress was the key to building a better world, and that new ways of doing things, were inevitably better than the old ways.

The conflict between Jacobs and Moses arose over Moses' proposal to decimate her neighborhood of Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan, first with the southward extension of Fifth Avenue which would have bisected Washington Square Park, and then the building of the Lower Manhattan Expressway. The LOMEX would have connected the Williamsburgh and Manhattan Bridges which span the East River, with the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson, which connects New York City to New Jersey and all points west. The expressway would have levelled much of the Village, SoHo, Little Italy and the area now known as TriBecca not only with the roadway, but also the massive high rise apartment buildings that would have flanked it.

Now if you've ever braved New York's infamous crosstown traffic, (heck Jimmy Hendrix even wrote a song about it), trying to get from Brooklyn to New Jersey or vice versa thgough Lower Manhattan, you can appreciate the demand for such an expressway. On the other hand, if you've ever walked through the Village, one of the most urbane neighborhoods in the country, AND have experienced first hand the utter destruction an expressway brings to a neighborhood, you can understand the opposition to it.

Jacobs whose house was directly in the path of the proposed expressway, had already written Death and Life  which itself followed  Jacobs' long and distinguished career as a writer covering a number of subjects including architecture and urban planning. Her thoughts on the subject ran directly counter to the prevailing wind of the new urbanism promosted by a disparate lot from Frank Lloyd Wright, to LeCorbousier, to Robert Moses. Crossing such titans of the industry was no easy challenge, especially given the fact that Jacobs had no formal training in urban planning. Moses famously referred to Jacobs, who became the major thorn in his side, as "that housewife."

By taking on the elite city planners and politicians and eventaully winning the battle, Jacobs has been called David, to Moses' Goliath. On the surface, such a battle is almost operatic in scope. Enter composer Judd Greenstein who is currently hard at work completing an opera on that very subject called A Marvelous Order.

Here is the transcript of an NPR On The Media piece on Greenstein, the opera's librettist, Tracy K. Smith, Jacobs and Moses. In the interview of Greenstein, the composer admits that all opera composers, himself included, are in the myth making business.

But the real stoy is no myth. Jacobs, hardly in the role of the biblical David, was every bit Moses' equal and then some. Perhaps a more likely comparison for her is the character of the girl in Hans Christian Andersen's story, The Emperor's New Clothes. Jacobs understood that progress simply for the sake of progress led nowhere, or worse. She must have thought of urban planners of her day the way Nelson Algren felt about Chicagoans who

live their lives like a drunken 'L' rider; he may not know where he is going, but the sound of the wheels under his feet lets him know that he is going somewhere. 

By the time Moses and Jacobs were battling over the fate of Lower Manhattan, there had already been twenty years or so of lab tests of the new urbanism, and the results were less than promising. Cities all over the country were decimated by well intentioned projects in the name of progress. In central Paris, one of the few neighborhoods to not have been raped by Baron Haussmann's urban renewal project of the mid-nineteenth century, the lovely Marais, was alsmost destroyed with the intention of being replaced by dozens of Corbousian high rises  In New York City, the seed change away from progress at all costs came with the destruction of one of that city's most beloved landmarks, Pennsylvania Station. The McKim Mead and White masterpiece was replaced by the ultimate temple to banality, the current iteration of Madison Square Garden. That event more than any other served as the inspiration for that city's preservation movement. After that, bold new public works projects that sacrificed the city's soul were met with resistance.

By that time, Jane Jacobs' was more than a voice in the wilderness. Hers was the voice of a prophet. And Moses and the rest of the urban planners of his era who shared his vision of a bold and beautiful future of highrises wrapped by superhighways, were in reality, just like Anderson's emperor, altogether naked.

Ugly and Uglier...

Once again in the category of things stumbled upon while looking up other things, I came across this list found on the site of Architectural Digest, of what in its writer's opinon are the 31 ugliest skyscrapers in the world. As with any such list, one can debate until all hours the merits (dubious as they may be) of most of the entries. They say "one man's trash is another's treasure", and many of the buildings listed have won presitgious, non-dubious awards for their splendid design.

At the risk of exposing myself to humiliation, I have to admit that I actually like some of the buildings on the list. Munich's BMW Headquarters with its four bundled, cylindrical towers for example, appears to pay homage to Chicago's iconoclastic architect, Bertrand Goldberg. The author's comment on the building is this:

(It) was designed to look like a four-cylinder automobile engine. And while that was a novel idea, the end product appears more childish than anything.

Maybe it's just me but I think we can all use a little more childish design and a lot less dour, authoritarian architecture, which this list is full of. Take the 1955 Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science ,listed just above the Munich building. Designed by Lev Rudnev, the foremost pracitioner of Soviet, Stalanist architecture, the Warsaw building evokes American skyscrapers of a generation earlier such as Cleveland's iconic Terminial Tower, which itself was inspired by the Renaissance top of the campanille of the Cathedral of Saville. But Rudnev's building looks as if he took the enormuos boot that puncuates the intro of Monty Python's Flying Circus (complete with sound effects)  and squished Terminal Tower down to half its original height and twice its girth, taking away all that is thrilling and lovely about that building and leaving us with a ponderous structure with all the charm of an old Soviet Politburo meeting. That said it is still one of the better buildings on the list in my opinion.

A much more charming govrnment building (which isn't hard), is the National Fisheries Development Board Building, in Hyderibad, India, which is built appropriately enough, in the shape of a fish. It's interesting how two buildings devoted to governmental bureaucracy could not be any more different.

Carrying on the long and glorious tradition of "buildings that resemble the things they sell" is the former Longaberger Company Headquarters, in Newark Ohio, built in the shape of a giant picnic basket, handles included. The key word here is "former", as the picnic basketmaker fell on hard times at the turn of this century and vacated its made-to-order headquarters for much more banal digs in the company's manufacturing plant down the road. Which begs the question, who, other than a picnic basket company, would want to occupy a building in the shape of a picnic basket, a company that manufactures ant repellant perhaps?

Some of the buildings on the list are ugly by virture of their being built in the wrong place. A good example is the Montparnasse Tower in Paris, which is a perfectly fine if forgettable Modern pile that would be right at home say on, Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, but not so much in the French capital. The same can be said for New York's Met Life Tower (formerly the Pan Am Building), also on the list, whose construction blocked one of the best vistas in the city,, up and down Park Avenue. Had it been built practically anywhere else it would have been met with a "whatever" rather than universal scorn and derision. Contrast these two buildings with Trump Tower Las Vegas, a truly hideous gold clad building matching its namesake owner the Presi... (OK I won't go there), which fits in perfectly with its tacky surroundings. One I suppose could pick a list of the 31 ugliest skyscrapers in the world and never leave Vegas. The hard part I imagine would be to single one out, sort of like sorting out the smelliest dead fish among many washed up on a beach a week after a storm.

Buildings with giant gaps in their midsections (sorry I don't know the technical term for them) have been all the rage in the last twenty years, I suppose giving architects and structural engineers a platform to display their daring high-wire acts. Two on them appear on this list, the Elephant Building, yes because it looks like an elephant, in Bankok, and the chock-a-block Mirador Building in Madrid, which could be described as Le Corbusier meets Moishe Safdie.

Having a wacky color scheme seems to be a criterion for entry on the list and several buildings that would not even have been runners up were it not for their coat of many colors paint job.

Frankly I don't find any of these buildings (with the exception of Trump Vegas) particularly odious, the worst I could say about them is to sum it up as a friend would: " I wouldn't say no but I wouldn't say please."

However for me there is a special place in hell reserved for Brutalism, that very seventies style of architecture which encouraged its followers to use any material they chose, as long as it was concrete. This movement for better living through solidified aggregate compound meant that architects could use that very plastic material to create any shape they desired, each one it turned out being uglier than the one before it. It seems nobody in that decade could get brutal enough, college campuses who were unfortuante to have boasted building campaigns in that era are chock full of them. In the hands of  designers who had a highly refined understanding of balance and form like Harry Weese, and the afore mentioned Bertrand Goldberg, these buildings could be nothing short of inspiring. But in less capable hands, the vast majority of them. Brutalist architecture was just well, brutal.

One skyscraper on the list, a structure that combines all the criteria that make for a truly hideous building, is 375 Pearl Street in lower Manhattan. It's also known as Intergate Manhattan, and also as it is listed in the article, the Verizon Building, but it should not be confused with a great Art Deco building sometimes referred to by the same name, located about a half-mile west on the Hudson River side of the island. The ugly Verizon Building was built as a telephone switching tower in the seventies, combining all the worst qualities of Modernism in its severely pared down understatement which includes the bare minimum of fenestration , and Brutalism in its chosen material. Given the purely functional nature of the building, its design probabaly makes sense. The problem is, this building sits on an even more promenent site than the former Pan Am Building, right at the foot of the Manhattan side of the of the Brooklyn Bridge. Which means 375 Pearl Street in all its banal glory, sits prominently right in the heart of one of the most magnificent vistas anywhere in the world, the lower Manhattan Skyline as seen from the great bridge.

Yep, bulidings just don't get any worse than that in my book, in every sense of the word, hands own the ugliest building in the world.

A Tale of Two Cities

New York City and Chicago are like two siblings born several years apart. The younger sibling, Chicago, is always in its big sibling's shadow, every day trying to prove itself. Meanwhile, the bigger, more successful sibling lives its life as if its pesky younger sibling didn't matter, or even exist. But the two are still family and the fact is, neither would be what they are today without the other.

Civic boosters love to brag about their city's beauty, its architectural gems, great institutions of higher learning, vast cultural amenities, engaging entertainment venues and splendid restaurants. But those things are the fringe benefits of what creates a successful city. Like the snooty character Maris Crane from the sitcom Frazier, who learns that the source of her family fortune is actually the manufacture of urinal cakes, it comes as a bit of a let down for some to learn that what really put their town on the map, are the more mundane items of life, things like fur pelts, metal ingots, bushels of wheat and corn, lumber and pig meat. It's not necessarily the production of these things that makes for a great city, as they are often harvested or manufactured elsewhere; more important are the resources to market and ship those commodities far and wide. The facility to create and nurture industry and commerce, and the transportation conduits to serve them, are the engines that throughout history, have created and sustained great cities.

They say the three most important factors regarding real estate are location, location and location. Perhaps never in the history of human beings creating cities, has there been a natural spot more ideally located to build a great metropolis than the thirteen mile long, hilly, wooded island at the mouth of the Hudson River called Manhattan. The body of water the Hudson empties into, New York Harbor, is one of the great natural harbors of the world, which itself empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Upstream, the Hudson River was a major gateway to the American interior. But that was not all. The port cities of Boston and Baltimore also had great natural harbors that emptied into the Atlantic. Philadelphia, another major port of the Eastern Seaboard, was built upon the banks of the Delaware River, about 50 miles upstream from its mouth, and the great ocean.

The real gold mine that wasn't immediately apparent to the early settlers of New York City, was a gap in the Appalachian Mountains called the Mohawk Pass. That geographic feature, formed by glaciers during the last ice age near the confluence of today's Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, meant there was no mountain barrier between New York City (via Albany, 150 miles upstream on the Hudson), and the midwest. No other major East Coast port could make such a claim. The only break in the great chain of mountains between Canada and the South, provided the opportunity for a canal to be dug in upstate New York between the Hudson River at Albany, and Buffalo, on the eastern shore of Lake Erie. If such a canal could be built, it would connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, and open up a continent.

Erie Canal locks at Lockport, NY.
The difference in elevation between the Hudson River at Albany and Lake Erie
at Buffalo is 565 ft, requiring 35 sets of locks along the course of the canal. 

Two hundred years ago this week, politicians and other muckety mucks stuck their gold plated shovels into the dirt of Rome, New York, marking the beginning of construction of the Erie Canal, the 350 mile long ditch that at the time of its completion in 1825, would forever change the landscape of this country, and the destinies of two of its largest cities, New York and Chicago.

According to the 1830 Census, the six largest American cities all were major salt water ports, five of them on the Eastern Seaboard. In descending order they were New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, and Charleston, SC. That same year, with a population of about 100, Chicago, not yet a city, was a trading post, populated by a mix of French trappers and Potawatomie Indians. The natural geography of Chicago was not as advantageous as New York's as far as building a city. It too was at the mouth of a river that emptied into a major waterway. But unlike the Hudson, the Chicago River was a sluggish stream that was incapable of properly draining the flat topography on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan. Unlike Manhattan which rises several feet above the water level and seldom floods, the natural Chicago was a swamp much of the year. Even its name, taken from the Potawatomie word for the wild onions that grew there, (which you can still smell along the banks of the river on the outskirts of town), evokes the soggy character of the place. By 1830, New York already had an influence on Chicago as its richest man, John Jacob Astor laid claim to part of the fur trade in the distant outpost of the midwest. After the opening of the Erie Canal, New York money would float into Chicago by the boatload, both figuratively and literally.

While Chicago's pool table flat topography didn't make for a pleasant experience underfoot, it did provide the future city with a tremendous advantage over its competing Great Lakes settlements. It turns out there is an ever so slight continental divide, all of about 15 feet, that runs through Chicago, a few miles west of the lake. All the water east of the divide, drains into Lake Michigan, via the Chicago River, while the water west of the divide, slowly finds its way to the Des Plaines River west of the city. That river in turn, flows into the Illinois River, then the Mississippi, and ultimately into the gulf of Mexico. This very small divide meant that in 1830, if you wanted to travel from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi by canoe, from Lake Michigan you could enter the Chicago River and paddle upstream to its source, then portage, depending on the season, for about seven miles to the Des Plaines. During rainy season in spring, the portage distance was minimal or even non-existent. For centuries, Native Americans knew of the Chicago Portage as the most direct connection between the Great Lakes and the Great River. The first Europeans to cross the portage were French explorers Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette in 1673. The Chicago Portage would prove to be a geological godsend for Chicago, just as the Mohawk Gap was for New York City.

As the first half of the nineteenth century was the era of the great canals, New York investors became interested in building a canal that would connect the Chicago River with the navigable Illinois River which, together with the Erie Canal. would complete a transportation network bisecting the northeastern portion of the United States, spanning from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River.

Wild speculation due to the rumors of the imminent building of the western canal attracted investors from the east who hired surveyors to parcel up Chicago's land, then paid exorbitant prices for it. One of the first tangible results of the opening up of the Erie Canal as far as Chicago was concerned, was the ending of the peaceable existence between settlers of European origin, and the Native American residents of the region. For a century and a half, the Potawatomie could understand the ways of the white man as far as trading for goods and services were concerned. They could even accept European capitalism at its most basic level. The Native American people and the French trappers lived peacefully together in Chicago, intermarried, and respected each other's property, so long as the owner occupied his land. But cultural differences prevented the Potawatomie, as most Native American people, from accepting the European practice of buying and selling land as a commodity. To the Potawatomie, it made no sense that you could claim land you did not occupy, anymore than you could lay claim to the air or to water.

As the land of Chicago was subdivided and the easterners bought it sight unseen, the Potawatomie kept living upon land that was bought out from under them. Something had to give and as was the case one hundred percent of the time in conflicts between the Native American people and the settlers of European descent, the white man won. Land swaps (swindles if you prefer) were arranged, treaties were forged, and the Potawatomie, along with those of mixed Native American and European heritage who once called Chicago home, were displaced to reservations in the hinterland. Almost overnight, Chicago went from being a French (Catholic)/Indian outpost, to an Anglo (Protestant) city.

The first mover and shaker from New York to move here and call Chicago home, was real estate man, William Butler Ogden. Ogden was hardly impressed with the muddy, free-for-all backwater trading post when he first set foot in Chicago in 1835 . But along with the wild onions, Ogden could smell money. He made a tidy sum selling off some of the by then, over-inflated property his family had purchased before his arrival. Ogden stayed on in Chicago buying and selling real estate and making a fortune. The City of Chicago was formally incorporated on March 4, 1837 and William Butler Ogden was elected its first mayor. When the city became broke during a national panic, Ogden paid off the city's bills by issuing an IOU backed up by his own funds.

Both as mayor, which only lasted eight months, and thereafter, Ogden was instrumental in turning Chicago into a dynamic city. Ogden connected Chicago to its outlying farms by means of plank roads. He built bridges, including the first swing bridge spanning the Chicago River, and encouraged the growth of commerce and industry. With help from his New York investment friends, Ogden turned a backwater settlement into a major city that would be connected to the east, and the rest of the world, by means of the Erie Canal.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal flowing through Utica, Illinois

Ogden was a principal supporter and investor in the Illinois and Michigan Canal which upon its completion in 1848, would span 96 miles between the Chicago neighborhood of Bridgeport, to the towns of La Salle and Peru, Illinois, thereby completing the last link of the waterway system that would connect the Atlantic and the Mississippi, and all points in between.

By the 1850 Census, Chicago's population rose in twenty years from 100 to nearly 30,000. That was only the beginning. By greatly reducing the time it took to ship goods and transport people to and from the East Coast, the new system of waterways began the process of Chicago supplanting the great port city on the Mississippi, St. Louis, as the transportation hub of the midwest. But almost as soon as the I&M Canal was built, a new and far quicker (if not necessarily more efficient) means of transportation came along. St. Louis probably could have stemmed the tide of losing its role as a transportation hub, had it only accepted change and moved along with the times. But that city was in the grips of the steamboat industry who exerted its control over blocking the construction of a railway bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Louis.  Instead, a bridge was built about 200 miles upstream at Rock Island, Illinois meaning all trains coming from the west headed directly to Chicago. In contrast to the single-minded investors and city fathers of St. Louis, William Ogden, who was already heavily invested in the I&M Canal, made an about face and turned his interests, and those of his city, to the railroad, thereby leaving St. Louis and its moribund economic engine, in the dust.

This image illustrates the motive power of the Erie Canal in the 19th century,
horses, or in this case mules pulling a boat along their towpath.

By the 1850s, railroads had also taken away much of the business from the Erie Canal, yet the impact of that magnificent public works project, had already changed the nation in countless ways. The canal opened up the Midwest to the rest of the country, making places like Chicago possible. It provided a vast network of westward immigration, changing the primary axis of movement of the country from North-South, up the Mississippi River, to East-West, via the canal. Historians believe this had many profound implications for the development of the country, not the least of which being the exacerbation of the division between North and South which led to the American Civil War. The theory goes something like this: Southerners, who were for the most part sympathetic to slavery, moved up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers into southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. That move was countered by the western movement of New Englanders, most of whom were abolitionists, to the upper Midwest via the Erie Canal. Had it not been for the canal, the Union might very well have had to fight the war without the help of the key states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Nowhere was the objection to build the Erie Canal greater than in New York City. Believing the project to be a boondoggle, pork barrel that would only benefit Upstate New York, the city's politicians dubbed the project, "Clinton's Ditch" and "Clinton's folly", after its chief sponsor, New York governor DeWitt Clinton. The canal opponents were wrong. While the completed waterway did greatly benefit both the agricultural and urban areas of Upstate New York,  the canal also made New York City successful beyond its wildest dreams. Because of the Canal, of all the nation's great Atlantic sea ports, only New York had direct access to the Midwest. Lumber harvested in the great forests of Wisconsin and Michigan could be floated down rivers to be rough milled, then sailed down Lake Michigan to Chicago, where it would be cut to size and finished, then sent on to New York, from where it could be sent anywhere in the world. Crops shipped to Chicago via the I&M Canal would be stored in that city's enormous grain elevators, then sent east when it was needed. Pigs rendered into salt-pork in Chicago's packing plants, steel and all other manner of manufactured goods, made in Chicago, found their way east to New York and beyond. This movement of products, commodities, and people only intensified after the railroads were built between the two cities which followed the same route as the Erie Canal, taking advantage of the Mohawk Pass. Consequently New York became unquestionably the most important ocean port in the United States, and Chicago, the most important inland port. New York also became this nation's banking capital, thanks in part to the financing of the massively complicated and expensive construction of the Canal.

The tremendous opposition to the building of the Erie Canal begs the question, what if the Erie Canal had not been built? It's inconceivable that the westward expansion of the United States would not have taken place without the canal, it just would have been delayed a decade or two as railroads would have taken on the role that the canal served. But those decades were pivotal. Had the western migration of New Englanders been delayed for a couple of decades, they would not have tempered the migration of Southerners into the Midwest. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois may have remained slave states with their sympathies pointing in the direction of the Confederacy. It's hard to imagine such an Illinois electing Abraham Lincoln to Congress, let alone to the presidency of the United States. How Lincoln not being on the scene would have played out insofar as the Civil War and the issue of slavery in the United States is anybody's guess.

It's highly likely that had the Erie Canal not been built, Chicago would not exist, at least not as a major city. Without the influx of major investment from the east, a direct result of the Erie Canal, there would have been no capital to convert it from a swampy backwater marsh into a reasonable facsimile of a city. Much less would there have been the funds to build the Illinois and Michigan Canal which put the city on the map as far as being a transportation hub. With no canals and no Chicago money to build railroads that would go through here, it's very unlikely that the outpost swamp that Chicago would have certainly remained had it not been for the canals, would have been more than a whistlestop on the trunk line between Galena and Toledo, two towns that could very easily have been in contention for being the transportation hub of the Midwest.

When the Erie Canal was completed, New York was already a thriving city, the most populous in the United States . While the populations of most of the major U.S. cities increased incrementally during the 19th Century, New York's exploded after the construction of the Canal. The 1860 census showed that in the thirty years since the Canal's opening, the population of New York City (not including Brooklyn which at the time was a separate city) more than quadrupled. By 1880, New York became the first American city whose population topped one million. No other big American city grew as quickly, except that is, Chicago. In those same thirty years since the opening of the canal, Chicago's population went from 100, to 112,000, breaking into the top ten list of American cities. Ten years after New York broke the million mark, Chicago did the same, finishing for the first time as the second largest city in the United States, in the 1890 census.

The Erie Canal carried over the Genesee River in Rochester, NY by means of an aqueduct.
Unlike Chicago, Upstate New York municipalities such as Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse, to name a few,
already existed as cities before the canal, but their fortunes greatly improved when the canal opened.

It is absolutely certain that Chicago's astounding growth was a direct result of the Erie Canal, and almost certain that New York's was as well. It's all conjecture but without the canal, the first railroads headed east may have decided not to turn right at Albany, but head straight for Boston, where the entry of trains was not quite as prohibitive as on the isle of Manhattan. Had it not been for the canal system that went all the way to the Mississippi, the steamboat companies might not have felt as threatened by the competition and consented to the railroads crossing through their town. If that were the case, the trains originating in St. Louis (which certainly would have been the transportation hub of the midwest), might have made the more direct trip to Baltimore or Philadelphia, greatly increasing the profitability of those citys' ports.

No matter how you slice it, The United States would be a vastly different place had the state of New York chosen not to think big and build that 350 mile ditch. To those of us in Chicago who love this city, the next time we have dinner after we take in a game at Wrigley Field, visit the Art Institute, go to the theater, spend an evening at the Symphony, or just walk along the lakefront, let's all make sure to raise a glass to DeWitt Clinton and to all the workers who gave their blood sweat, tears, and some of them their lives, digging the Erie Canal.

Because without them, we'd be nothing.