Downtown Doodler: Don’t Forget to Look Up

“…the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that. Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly. Soon everyone was doing it. They all rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and beauties of their city as they went.

No one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen. Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear. Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible. There was nothing to see at all.”  
-The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Most people become jaded to their surroundings, just looking ahead or at the ground when they walk from place to place. All the while forgetting to look up and appreciate the unique architecture that makes New York City so great. Architecture is very unique to each neighborhood, from Midtown to Downtown to Chinatown to the Upper West Side, they all have a different feel. But with this being said, no matter what neighborhood, some the buildings with the most interesting upper floors have boring and plain street levels.

Whenever I am in NYC I find myself looking up quite frequently. Call me a tourist, call me an architecture nerd, either way, I’m always amazed with what I see.

South East corner of 48th & 5th Avenue

For more of the Downtown Doodler, check out her famous Grande cup Starbucks doodles, sketches of the Stone Pony bar and her website.