April 27, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

I am a rare visitor to Gotham, Manhattan, but when I go, the welcome gift on return is a sore neck. You cannot visit this borough of New York City without looking up at the skyscrapers. They are lined as urban canyons, some compelling for their architecture, others for their history, still others as stage setting for the imaginary films you can conjure as a tourist.

Having grown up in the country and still living in what was – my area north of NYC is now suburban-urban – any trip to Manhattan is exciting because the streets compel in excitement, movement – people on the go. They don’t look up at the skyscrapers like this tourist does, but isn’t that natural? Generally, the same-old is the same-old no matter where you live.

Down near the old meat-packing district in Manhattan, West 14th Street and below, new skyscrapers are rapidly rising with unique design, especially visible from the High Line, the former rail freight run wonderfully repurposed as an elevated urban trail.

A sore neck is a given once the train from up north arrives at Grand Central Terminal and you emerge from this historic building onto Park Avenue or 42nd Street. You step into quick pedestrian traffic, inhale the combined whiffs of food vendors/restaurants, subway ventilation and other fragrance, and look up, hopefully without bumping into someone as a country bumpkin does.

The neck stiffens, and it’s there on the trip home. But absent tall trees where I live, I don’t get to stretch those muscles at home.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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