New York City Architecture

In terms of architectural

New York City ranks among the most advanced cities in the world in addition to being one of the biggest. The city is known for its intricate designs, like the Flatiron and the World Trade Center, and it takes pleasure in having the world's longest subway line. Additionally, there are many subway stations that were built with a lot of innovation. The streets, water systems, electric grid, and sewer system are other components of the city's architecture. Author and executive president of the NYC Economic Development Corporation Kate Ascher describes the city's architecture in great detail. Consequently, this reaction paper reviews her writings ranging from streets, subways, water systems, power grid frameworks, sewerage, among others. The paper responds to the implied ideas and analysis of her work; Anatomy of a City.

The Streets and the Subway

One of my reactions to the article was the impressive infrastructural design and organization in the city. The Beauty of New York is enhanced by its subway stations. Travelling by subway ensures that I never get late to my classes. It is fast, automated and traffic free. With the highest number of stations in the world, New York’s subway system can also be referred to as the mother of subway stations. It’s terrifying at times to see how far underground some stations go. For instance, the subway in 191st, Manhattan is 180 Ft below street level.

Figure 1: New York Subway Network

The one place that you are going to find more than a million street signs is New York. Every day I see a street sign that I never saw before. They range from pedestrian street symbols to motor vehicle street signs. My favorite street sign is the one starting with a W and ending with a t; Wall St. It is the only sign I want to see every morning on my way to work. Furthermore, walking in the streets of New York City has always been a pleasant experience. I always like the view, the noise of cars hooting, the street markings and more. Talking of the street markings, I get to see markings in letters G, E, or even T. Other times I see random white markings. Before, I thought they were fun markings made by street construction workers. After reading Ascher’s document, I realized that they are a systematic method used by the city’s construction department to mark the areas that are up for repair. Organized, right?

My friends and I live in the nearby New York Greenwich village, an area that is clearly a landmark when it comes to architecture. For instance, my neighborhood lies in the intersection between the West 4th street and West 10th street. The planning of these streets are fascinating because instead of them being parallel to each other, they are intersecting. Getting lost in the streets may be fun, but visitors have to carry a map. The transportation network is as developed as it is in the rest of Manhattan area. The 8th and 6th avenue are served by A C E and B D F trains respectively. In my experience, the most enthralling piece of infrastructure is the Washington Square Park. It sits in the West Fourth Street and it serves as a tourist destination as well as an iconic piece of architecture.

Electricity

New York is always lighted from dusk till dawn. The city has a very complex power grid that ensures black-outs are minimal. The grid is congested and has over 330 power generating plants. With such a huge number of plants, I am always certain my WiFi will be powered on around the clock, my way home will be light at night and I will always spot a burglar a mile away. The other day I was shopping online for the latest edition of Jordan’s. I was amazed to see Con Ed selling power at $2.50 for 100-kilowatt hours. It is evident that New York cannot run out of the amount of power that it is supplied with. If you visit the suburbs of New York you will see houses whose roofs are installed with solar panels. More alternative energy is supplied from wind energy and fuel cells. I have heard of fuel cells and they are quite expensive. They are three times more expensive than the normal source of power. But at least they are environment-friendly and free of interruptions to the city’s power grid.

Figure 2: New York Electric grid

Once on my way to the grocery store, I saw three men in an apron standing next to a truck. They had a pipe deep down a manhole. I never knew what they were doing until my lecturer gave a lecture on the New York City architecture. I later discovered that the men were city technicians who were flashing the manhole with water to get rid of mud and dirt. They were preparing to repair the electrical cables. New York’s power grid is unlike any other. The electrical cables do not pass high above the ground but underground; and the transformers are located in underground rooms and vaults.

Water

Eighteen is the number of collecting reservoirs that the New York City relies on for water. The metropolitan also has four distributing reservoirs and two storage reservoirs to help supply its residents with water. Pepacton Reservoir is the city’s largest reservoir, and it accommodates 140 billion gallons of water. This surprisingly large reservoir quenches the thirst of millions of New Yorkers. I am not surprised by the great efforts that the city planners have gone through to supply the city with water. The resource is being used in large quantities and therefore it is logical to create these amount of reservoirs to keep the supply of water consistent.

I always thought that water left the reservoirs in pipes. This is somehow true since wooden pipes supplied the city with water in the 17th century. However after studying Kate Ascher’s writings, I realized that a new invention, Aqueduct, is being used to supply water from the reservoirs to the city. It is an enormous underground tunnel that is strong enough to handle the pressure of the water it transmits. The Delaware Aqueduct is one such tunnel. More so, I have always seen firefighters fix pipes to hydrants and splash the fires with water. There are 118,000 of these hydrants in the city. We could not be any safer from fires. The hydrants provide convenience and speed when fighting fires.

Figure 3: Fire Hydrant

Sewage

My kid brother always thought that toilet water went into a hole, deep down underground. This was until I taught him about the New York sewage system. Every day, the sewage system processes 1.3 billion gallons of sewage. To avoid leaking of the sewage upon bursting of pipes, the pipes are placed 10 feet under the ground.

When it rains, many cities suffer from sewage mixing with rainwater. New York has combated this with the Combined Sewer system where the sewage is disposed off outside the city when sewer tanks get filled up. This, however, leads to untreated sewage being released into the environment which risks contamination of rivers.

Figure 4: Sewage System

When a storm hits, I see a lot of litter like papers, bottles, and timber being carried by water into the sewer system. To prevent this litter from collecting into shorelines and reservoirs, the city has catch basins that are large enough for a kid to fit in.

The architects of New York City have put a lot of needs of the people into mind as they constructed the city. The metropolis was highly populated and they knew it required a lot of water. A lot of energy was needed to light the city and so they put together mechanisms to achieve this. They also pre-determined that the city would produce a lot of sewage waste and so they created a magnificent sewer system. Like Kate Ascher states; simply, New York architecture is one of a kind.

Work Cited

Ascher, Kate. Anatomy of a City. Department of Fine Arts, New York University, 2005.