Monday, August 11, 2008

Not The Holland Tunnel


September, 2007

I first looked at this scene and thought of it as an interesting streetlight/Hopperesque slice of still life. I also think it's a funny picture, since it's not really an entrance to the tunnel, but the huge ventilation tower on Washington Street. (Like all the pictures on this blog, you can click on it for a larger image.)

Fortunately for our sense of aesthetics in these paranoid and over-protective times, the design elements of the 1930's (ornate bronze, very heavy masonry over a steel skeleton, an utter lack of windows) are adequate enough for security purposes that they haven't been uglified with extra steel cladding (yet).

Addendum: August 13, 2008


I was looking through the blog tonight, just to see if I was making sense or even saying anything interesting in any of these stories, when I noticed the the two signs to the right of the door in the photo above. I clicked for the larger version of the picture, but still couldn't quite make out the sign with the circle. It was obviously the international NO symbol, but what could it be forbidding? The resolution of the web image is deliberately lousy, so I got the original out of my files, cropped and enlarged the section at the right.

Oh. Okay, let's keep this amongst ourselves, shall we?



2 comments:

Steve Rogg said...

ah Edward Hopper my favorite artist. How many rip offs of his Nighthawks have been done. That's the night scene at the dinner in the city. simple greatness.

Sharon Kugler said...

I'll tell you this: Hopper would not have lifted his brush in a "No Painting" zone, that's for sure.