Excursion I: Financial District
On Thursday, November 10, members of the Urban Research Group took an excursion to three sites/conditions in lower Manhattan.
Begining at the intersection of Broadway and Duane St, we passed the first of a series of actuated roadblocks installed in the street. This one, together with its pair at the other end of the street, restrict vehicular access to Duane St between Broadway and Lafayette St, bordering the US Court of International Trade and the Ted Weiss Federal Building housing the General Services Administration. Mark took many photos here, and was a little surprised no one seemed too bothered by him doing so.
Also located on this street is the African Burial Ground National Monument, for which Alan gave a short introduction to the group. [stratification, layers of the city, palimpsest, ...]
Continuing down Duane St, we passed another roadblock and found our way into Foley Square, surrounded by court houses. Taeyoon remarks on how the acoustics of the space work well for rallies, such as the one that took place here a few weeks back as part of OWS. He then performs a sketch with his dogs, and we take photos. A strange man stands alone poking his Blackberry with index finger. Someone remarks that he looks like an undercover cop?
From here we head further downtown and reach the Privately Owned Public Space known as <strike>Liberty Square</strike> Zuccotti Park. Taeyoon gives a short talk about the Mark di Suvero sculpture positioned at one end of the park, and then we descend into the sea of tents and swim about for a bit. [...]
Heading east down Liberty street we pass a small park that Taeyoon mentions used to be a police encampment, but now contains a fine white gravel ground cover and a series of tall steel sculptures. A dark shiny box lurks on the north side of the park. On closer inspection we find it to be a police checkpoint, and a fairly sexy one at that.
A little further down the street we reach 180 Maiden Lane, the ground floor of which houses another POPS. Stradling atop this corporate atrium in which Juliard students give lunchtime performances sits the NYC headquarters of AIG and Lloyds. No photos please, say the guards after we've taken many. No sitting. Mark asks the guard where the regulations governing the space are posted, and he's told they "aren't written down." Hmmm...
Back out into the street. Someone passes offering what sounds like Vomiting Tickets. Alan and Mark wonder if they are tickets issued to people who vomit, tickets to a vomiting show, or tickets that vomit? Comedy tickets, apparently. We reach another POPS at 60 Wall Street and enter the space just as one of the OWS sub-committees finishes a meeting. We mill about a bit amongst the backgammon players and OWS protesters and debate whether the interior is cheezy Vegas redux or a nice space.
Continuing on Wall Street we pass by Federal Hall and the NYSE, and enter the pedestrian zone delimited by fancy bollards shaped like angular rocks (designed by Rogers Marvel Architects). Taeyoon's dogs fight again here, watched distantly by two cops on horseback. Nightlit bollards protrude from a circular plate that rotates to allow cars to pass (or not). A contemporary militarized zone protecting the flow of global capital? Or merely symbolic security protecting stockbrokers rendered vestigal by financial algorithms and an already evacuated American idyl?