Home UpManhattan: Rivers, Rocks, Brownstones, Highrises

Here's the full spectrum: bedrock to high rises.

The view across the Hudson from the northern tip of Manhattan.

A forested hill at the same tip of the island, a bit preserved in Inwood Park.

Rock outcrops in Central Park and close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Brownstones on West 90th Street reveal the common density of residential neighborhoods in the 19th century.

Take away the trees, and the compression is stark enough to give Daniel Boone the heebie-jeebies.

Dolled up: Central Park West.

Diamonds are forever. So are pyramids.

With steel-frames and elevators, densities took a leap, here in the case of Manhattan House, at 200 E. 60th. The design was by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and the AIA guide to the city considers the result "the closest Manhattan offers, conceptually, to the 'blocks' of Le Corbusier, his 'machines for living.'" Do you hear the kibitzer? He's saying, "Some life." (Norval White and Elliot Willensky, AIA Guide to New York City, 2000)

Pushing higher: Extell Development in 2005 opened The Orion, 550 apartments spread over 60 floors. This was small potatoes compared to other projects Extell had in the works.

Completed in 2009, the Silver Towers were designed by Costas Kondylis and contain over 1,300 apartments. Larry Silverstein was the developer, though how he found the time alongside his other obligations remains a mystery.

Compression reaches out to the outer boroughs. Here: Starrett City, built in 1976 and the biggest public-housing project in the country. Notice the new name, evoking a countryside that nobody remembers.

Where's that creek?

OK, we need a nicer picture. Here it is, though don't look too closely at the trees, trimmed to look like Halloween.

A glen in Ohio? Nope: it's the Great Lawn at Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Thank God for Frederick Law Olmsted.