BGuthrie Photos: NY -- NYC -- Hudson Yards -- Vessel (Structure) -- Views from...

NY -- NYC -- Hudson Yards -- Vessel (Structure) -- Views from...:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] VESSVW_190601_001_STITCH.JPG

[2] VESSVW_190601_002_STITCH.JPG

[3] VESSVW_190601_009.JPG	[4] VESSVW_190601_012.JPG	[5] VESSVW_190601_016.JPG
[6] VESSVW_190601_019.JPG	[7] VESSVW_190601_024.JPG	[8] VESSVW_190601_032.JPG
[9] VESSVW_190601_036.JPG	[10] VESSVW_190601_046.JPG	[11] VESSVW_190601_050.JPG
[12] VESSVW_190601_054.JPG	[13] VESSVW_190601_056.JPG	[14] VESSVW_190601_063.JPG
[15] VESSVW_190601_067.JPG	[16] VESSVW_190601_071.JPG	[17] VESSVW_190601_075.JPG
[18] VESSVW_190601_077.JPG	[19] VESSVW_190601_081.JPG	[20] VESSVW_190601_085.JPG
[21] VESSVW_190601_088.JPG	[22] VESSVW_190601_091.JPG	[23] VESSVW_190601_094.JPG
[24] VESSVW_190601_098.JPG	[25] VESSVW_190601_099.JPG	[26] VESSVW_190601_102.JPG
[27] VESSVW_190601_106.JPG	[28] VESSVW_190601_109.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. VESSVW_190601_036.JPG: That's the High Line down there.
2. VESSVW_190601_075.JPG: Swimming pool. That's for a sports club, Equinox Hudson Yards.
3. VESSVW_190601_081.JPG: 330 West 42nd Street From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The McGraw Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street is a building 35 stories, 485 feet (148 m) high and 550,000-square-foot located in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan, New York City. The exterior walls of the building are panels of blue-green terra-cotta ceramic tiles, alternating with green-metal-framed windows, with a strongly horizontal orientation. The building was the only one in the city displayed in the influential International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932, and as such, it has also been cited as a landmark of Art Deco design. Located on West 42nd Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, above the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the McGraw-Hill Building was the tallest building in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood for decades, but lost that status with the construction of One Worldwide Plaza eight blocks to the north. It is still visible from a distance, but is dwarfed by the newly constructed Orion, a 58-story residential complex with a green exterior to its west on the same block. Background McGraw-Hill Companies bought the land in early 1930 as they were out growing their previous McGraw-Hill Building (Hill Publishing Building) at 475 Tenth Avenue. The building was designed by Raymond Hood. Construction began on December 1930 with the first rivet driven and was completed in 1931. McGraw-Hill moved into the building in October 1931. Printing operations occupied the lower floors to the sixth with the bindery on the fifth, press room on the sixth and composing room on the seventh floor. The ninth through 15th floors were rented out. Pulp publisher Martin Goodman was based here by 1939. In that year, Goodman started up Timely Comics, Marvel Comics Golden Age common name. Timely later moved to the Empire State Building suite 1401. As the street declined, the building was more a liability. McGraw-Hill moved out in 1972 to a new McGraw-Hill Building, while selling this building. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989. An angular metal sculpture, Boomerang, by the artist Owen Morrel was suspended on the side of the building. After several owners, Deco Towers Associates, a foreign investment group, became the owner in 1994. In 1998, a restoration of the building began. Boomerang was dismantled for recycling or junking.
4. VESSVW_190601_098.JPG: The building structure appears to slide apart.
Wikipedia Description: Vessel (structure)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vessel (TKA) is a structure and landmark that was built as part of the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Construction began in April 2017; it opened on March 15, 2019.

Designed by the British designer Thomas Heatherwick, the elaborate honeycomb-like structure rises 16 stories and consists of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 steps, and 80 landings for visitors to climb. Vessel is the main feature of the 5-acre (2.0 ha) Hudson Yards Public Square. Its final cost is expected to be $200 million.

The structure's name is a working title, noted in the TKA abbreviation, which means "Temporarily Known As". The structure owners have asked the public to give it a formal name and have a website devoted to naming it. One of the most discussed names on social media was "The Shawarma", after the cone-shaped meat popular on street carts.

Description

Vessel is a 16-story, 150-foot-high (46 m) structure of connected staircases between the buildings of Hudson Yards, located in the 5-acre (2.0 ha) Hudson Yards Public Square. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, Vessel has 154 flights, 2,500 steps, and 80 landings that stretch from its 50-foot-wide (15 m) base to its 150-foot-wide (46 m) apex (making it as tall as it is wide at its apex), with the total length of the stairs exceeding 1 mile (1.6 km). The structure also has ramps and an elevator to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Stephen Ross, the CEO of Hudson Yards' developer Related Companies, said that its unusual shape was intended to make the structure stand out like a "12-month Christmas tree." The copper-clad steps, arranged like a jungle gym and modeled after Indian stepwells, can hold 1,000 people at a time. Heatherwick said that he intends visitors to climb and explore the structure as if it were a jungle gym. At the top of the structure, visitors can see the Hudson River.

Vessel was designed along with the Hudson Yards Public Square, designed by Thomas Woltz from Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. The attached 5-acre (2 ha) public square has 28,000 plants and 225 trees, located on the platform upon which Hudson Yards is built. The plaza's southern side is to have a canopy of trees. The southeast entrance is to contain a fountain as well. A "'seasonally expressive' entry garden" is meant for the 34th Street–Hudson Yards station's subway entrance at 33rd Street. The plaza is also designed to connect the High Line promenade.

Although Vessel had originally been slated to cost $75 million, the projections were later revised to between $150 and $200 million. Heatherwick attributed the greatly increased price tag to the complexity of building the steel pieces. The pieces of Vessel are being assembled in the commune of Monfalcone in Italy. Ships transport the sections of the sculpture to Hudson River docks.

It was planned that "Vessel" would be the structure's temporary name during construction, and that a permanent name would be determined later. After Vessel opened, Hudson Yards asked the public to give it a formal name, creating a website devoted to that effect.

History

In an interview with Fortune magazine, Ross said that he "wanted to commission something transformational, monumental," which led to the concept for Vessel. Ross was looking to five unnamed artists who were renowned for designing similar plazas, then asked them for in-depth proposals. He rejected all of the plans, at which point a colleague introduced Ross to Heatherwick. Six weeks after they talked, Ross accepted Heatherwick's proposal immediately because it "had everything I wanted." In an interview with designboom, Heatherwick said that his design for Vessel originated from a childhood experience when he "fell in love with an old discarded flight of wooden stairs outside a local building site." The media first reported Heatherwick's commissioning in October 2013.

The concept of Vessel was unveiled to the public on September 14, 2016, in an event attended by hundreds of people including New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Hosted by Anderson Cooper, the event featured a performance from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater that evoked the interlocking design of Vessel's staircases.

In April 2017, the first major piece of the sculpture was installed at Hudson Yards. Construction started on April 18 with the installation of the first 10 pieces of the 75-piece structure. It was projected for completion in the spring of 2019, with the other 65 pieces arriving in five batches. The structure topped out in December 2017. In October 2018, it was announced that the opening of Vessel had been scheduled for March 15, 2019, and that tickets to enter the structure would become available in February. By January 2019, Hudson Yards officials were soliciting public suggestions for a rename of Vessel. Though the structure had no official name, the Hudson Yards website called it the "Hudson Yards Staircase". Vessel opened as scheduled on March 15, 2019.

Critical reception

The sculpture received both acclaim and criticism upon its unveiling. Fortune called Vessel "Manhattan's answer to the Eiffel Tower", a sentiment echoed by CNN. Elle Decor compared Vessel to an M. C. Escher drawing. The New York Times stated that the sculpture, while a "stairway to nowhere" in the utilitarian sense, served as an "exclamation point" to the northern terminus of the High Line Park. Gothamist called Vessel "a bold addition to the city's landscape." Speaking about the structure's design process, Heatherwick stated, "We had to think of what could act as the role of a landmarker. Something that could help give character and particularity to the space." Several commentators have dubbed the structure the Giant Shawarma.

Public Art Fund president Susan Freedman liked the renderings for Vessel but called it "a leap of faith in terms of scale." She stated that there might be too much demand for Vessel, especially considering the structure's proximity to the High Line. Other critics reviewed Vessel more negatively. New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman called Vessel's exterior "gaudy" and criticized Hudson Yards more generally as a "gated community" that lacked real public space. City Lab's Feargus O'Sullivan called Vessel, along with Heatherwick's other numerous billionaire-funded developments and architectural projects, "a gaudy monument to being only ever-so-slightly free."

Much of the criticism of Vessel has been of its photo policies. Hudson Yards, the owner of Vessel, claims ownership of all pictures and videos taken of Vessel, and reserves the right to use any photos or videos taken for commercial purposes without paying royalty fees. This privileged use of photos and videos by Hudson Yards, a private company, has been criticized because Hudson Yards has benefited from $4.5 billion in tax revenue. After criticism emerged about Vessel's copyright policy, Hudson Yards modified the policy so visitors would have ownership of photos of Vessel.
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