Travels to the American East Coast

At the beginning of November, Emma (my girlfriend) and I went on a grand tour of New England and New York so I could visit campuses and talk to folks about grad school, and so Emma could speak to people about working in the publishing industry. But of course we did a ton of sightseeing too! Here’s a day by day breakdown and some thoughts about the various cities we saw:

The Big Apple, Cobourg, ON

Day 1 (the Big Apple; Kingston, ON; Saratoga Springs, NY):

So to get there we decided to rent a car – a little sedan with a GPS system. We ordered the thing a month in advance, but of course when we got to the rental place, they mysteriously didn’t have the model that we reserved. (This has happened to me, my friends and family numerous times. The only thing these companies do is reserve cars to be driven on a certain date; how the hell do they get away with not doing that one thing well?) Instead, they “upgraded” us to a Chevy Traverse – an enormous SUV that seats 8 people – which of course was ideal for driving and parking in cities like Boston (ugh). Well, whatever. First world problems, I guess.

On the way out of Ontario, we made a couple stops. First we made an obligatory visit Cobourg’s famous Big Apple to get some apple pie. We gawked at just how big the Big Apple was, but also at the eerily vacant bumper car ride and mini-putt course. Later, we attempted to stop in Kingston to visit Queens University and a local brew pub, but quickly realized we were so far behind schedule that we basically did a U-turn in middle of campus and got back on the 401.

After a pleasantly simple border-crossing and a long drive through the rocky, autumn forests of upstate New York, we arrived in Saratoga Springs. It’s a picturesque little town, fuelled primarily by the tourist industry surrounding the nearby hot springs and horse-racing tracks. The downtown has been beautifully developed, creating a “Main Street USA” vibe with lots of 4-storey storefronts and a fairly wide boulevard. There, we stayed with some family friends and stayed up most of the night chatting, eating and drinking.

MIT, Cambridge, MA

Day 2 (Cambridge, MA):

The next day we woke up pretty early, but surprisingly well-rested. Our gracious hosts kept warning us that the pull-out couch we were to sleep on was lumpy, but I honestly couldn’t tell, and the Kitchener-made quilt that adorned it was soft and warm on the underside and cool on top, just the way I like it. We enjoyed some more conversation over breakfast, and got back on the road for another long day.

We spent most of the day in Cambridge, MA visiting the MIT campus. The entire campus was hacked for Guy Fawkes Day, with V for Vendetta paraphernalia everywhere. This was a pretty exciting leg of the trip for me because the campus had taken on a bit of a mythical air in my mind. For reading material on the trip I brought one of my favourites, How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand. At various points he talks about the MIT campus, mostly in regards to the now demolished Building 20 (sometimes called the Magic Incubator for the many risky scientific undertakings that it facilitated) and the main building, which balances the aesthetic/symbolic aspects of architecture and more pragmatic considerations so well. Two neoclassical lobbies give the main building a sense of grandeur as you walk in, but inside, the design quickly gives way to uncompromising utility. All of the plumbing, wiring and other services of the building lay completely bare on the ceilings of the “infinite corridor” (actually 251 metres long), and the humble classes, labs and offices that fill the main building seem nearly interchangeable. In fact, they are interchangeable. According to Brand, within a period of 20 years, every room in the building will have changed its role (from office to lab, from lab to classroom, etc.), allowing for equipment to be periodically updated while keeping interruptions to daily activities to a minimum. This is possible because of the adaptability that was built into it from the outset.

The Arcade, Providence, RI

Day 3 (Providence, RI; Washington Depot, CT; White Plains, NY):

We stayed the night in a hotel just outside of Providence, RI. That morning we went into town and explored East Providence a bit before I had a meeting with a student from the Public Humanities program at Brown. The program looks fantastic – the perfect balance of practicality (you undertake two placements instead of the usual thesis of most programs), and flexibility (most of your classes are electives that can be taken through any program offered at Brown, as well as at Harvard and MIT).

I also loved Providence. It’s a great size, only about the size of Kitchener, but with a metro area of over a million! It feels surprisingly urban in some areas, yet very manageable. Some of the local organizations that my contact at Brown mentioned sounded great too – AS220, The Steel Yard, Museum of Work and Culture, not to mention the well-known institutions in nearby Boston and Cambridge. Providence also has America’s first enclosed shopping mall, called the Winstminster Arcade, which I dragged Emma to see. It’s a beautiful little place, with roman pillars and a Parisian, pitched glass roof, but as far as I can tell it’s closed up and no work is being done on the building.

Afterwards, we left providence and headed toward Montclair, NJ, where we would stay the night. On the way, however, we made a point of stopping in Washington Depot, CT, a tiny town that formed the basis for the town of Stars Hollow in Gilmore Girls. Emma is a huge fan, so we had to make the stop since it was on the way. As Emma now tells various people when we recount the trip, “it was very Stars-Hollowey!” It looked like it was ripped right out of the TV series (or like the TV series was ripped right out of it?). The only difference from Stars Hollow was that lack of a main drag, but it’s possible that we just missed it.

After a couple of hours of driving, we decided it was time to stop for dinner. We didn’t really know where we were at this point, but the GPS (with its polite, garbled English) directed us into White Plains, NY. I found this city fascinating, even though some people would probably find it unremarkable. The downtown of White Plains looks like all of the schemes that urban planners of the fifties designed for lots of places but were never able to implement. Every block seems to be a variation on a mall or an office tower, and parking was plentiful. Pedestrians were neatly ordered into designated areas and overhead passageways. In writing, it sounds like a Modernist dreamworld, and yet it exists as a real place you can visit, a real place where people live.

That night we pulled into the driveway of Emma’s family friends in Montclair, NJ, where we had more great conversation and sleep, glorious sleep.

Ellis Island, New York, NY

Day 4 (Ellis Island, New York, NY):

The next morning our hosts graciously bought our train tickets into New York and explained the train system to us. I found it a bit confusing at first, but got the hang of it without too much trouble. Everything is actually very connected, but there are several different systems, each with a different name, which made me feel a bit overwhelmed at first.

We did so much this first day. Emma and I started by getting on a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We took some obligatory photos of us in front of Lady Liberty, but decided it wasn’t worth getting off the boat to walk in a circle around Liberty Island. Instead, we just went on to the Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island. I could go on and on talking about this museum, but I’ll try and keep it brief. Although the information was interesting, when you get right down to it, the museum didn’t measure up to Alcatraz (coincidentally, there was a travelling exhibition about Alcatraz at Ellis Island that also didn’t measure up to the real Alcatraz). Yes, yes, the “ruined” atmosphere really suits a prison better than a grand public building, but ruins do more than just creep people out. They also offer a sense of the passage of time, an affective connection to people that are no longer there. Instead of embracing this, Ellis Island – gateway for millions of immigrants to the US – has been converted into a bit of a non-place; instead of affective artifacts or evidence of human life, most of what you can see there is text panels.

For me, the most interesting components of the museum were an exhibit discussing the building’s renovation, a few preserved patches of writing on the walls, and a photography exhibit with quotes describing the profound connection that the photographers felt with the building. I just wish I was the one feeling the profound connection. On Alcatraz, all of the information is conveyed through audio. Text panels and other physical/visual curatorial interventions are kept to a minimum. The untouched building itself offers a kind of information that can never be reconstituted in another form, information that is inaccessible on the internet or in a travelling exhibition. Ellis Island has given up that information forever.

The High Line, New York, NY

Day 4 Cont’d (The Highline & Greenwich Village, New York, NY):

Later, Emma went off to meet someone about a 6-week publishing program at Columbia, and I wandered the city. As a Jane Jacobs fan, I felt I had to visit Greenwich Village, but I decided to take a detour first. I got off the subway near Penn Station and walked over to the north end of The Highline, an elevated railway that has been recently converted into a park-like path through the city. It was absolutely packed with pedestrians, most toting cameras, but I honestly wasn’t that impressed by the north end of it. The landscaping itself seemed a bit nondescript and there wasn’t a lot of activity there other than walking. Perhaps the locals use it regularly as a pleasant way to get from point A to point B, but I just hope that it continues to get used if this initial tourist boom dies down.

As for the south end of the Highline, I found it lovely. Physically, the path becomes more interesting, widening in places, splitting in two, passing through buildings, and so on. There were food and art vendors. People were sitting and eating, working, talking, taking wedding photos. They even had public washrooms complete with voices that calmly intersperse new-agey slogans into their regular regimen of “please wash your hands before exiting.”

At the south end of the Highline I descended into Greenwich Village and walked down Hudson Street, past Jacobs’ one-time home. Suddenly, I was astonished at the density of New York. I mean, Toronto is a big city, but the density of New York is unbelievable. Such narrow streets, such active parks, such tall buildings – even Greenwich village, where according to one of our hosts the height of buildings is limited due to the lack of bedrock underneath (which allows the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan). Outside of the financial district in Toronto, essentially no neighbourhood reaches that same density, probably because there’s no limits to horizontal expansion as there is in Manhattan.

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading in Washington Square park, listening to a jazz trumpet blare from behind the triumphal arch. When Emma arrived from her meeting we had a lovely dinner at an Italian restaurant called Otto, and then met up with her friend from back home for a drink at Wine Spot/Tea Spot.

Backstreet, Hoboken, NY

Day 5 (Hoboken, Tenement Museum, 9/11 Memorial & Jane Jacobs Forum, New York, NY):

On our last day in New York, we spent most of the morning in Hoboken, where Emma was doing an informational interview with a publisher. I basically just bummed around Hoboken trying to find a place to get coffee. It’s amazing how few places there are to get a good cup of joe other than Starbucks and Panera there. The narrow, cobblestone backstreets of Hoboken were probably my favourite part.

Then we went back into Manhattan where we visited the Tenement Museum. This was much more to my taste than Ellis Island. You learn about the tenements and the history of immigration by following the story of one specific family during your visit. Most of the information really comes from conversations with your tour guide and the building itself. It’s too bad this experience can’t be extended to a scale as large as Ellis Island, though Alcatraz comes close.

We also visited the 9/11 Memorial that day. I admit, it was pretty moving, not in a sentimental way though. Sublime might be the right word, if you want to get technical about it, but chilling might be another way of describing it. The memorial consists of two immense square holes where the twin towers used to be. Water streams down the walls of the hole into a basin, but in the centre of the basin there is another bottomless abyss that the basin drains into. The scale of the memorial and the perpetual sense of falling really struck me.

Of course, the other aspect of the memorial site is the building formally known as the “Freedom Tower.” At the moment, the upper 3/4 of the building is made of glass, but the lower quarter is solid, blast-proof cement. They intend to cover the bottom with some kind of structure, but they apparently haven’t figured out the details yet. Right now, the bottom looks like the entrance to a dystopic sci-fi headquarters ripped out of Gattaca or Equilibrium. A little ironic to say the least.

Finally, that evening I attended the Jane Jacobs Forum at CUNY. The topic this year was Women as Public Intellectuals, and the panelists were Roberta Gratz, Melissa Harris-Perry, Sally Helgeson and Urvashi Vaid. They absolutely dismantled the topic of discussion, interrogating every word in the title – including the word “as.” It was a great debate, but I think Vaid’s observations stole the show.

Pictures below!

2 Comments

  1. Wonderful blog post, Nate. Pics are fascinating. Haven’t been to White Plains, but now am curious to go. I’ve always associated it with a sort of creepy, surreal suburban ideal (The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit sensibility).

    • That sounds about right. I haven’t seen or read The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, but from what I know of it that sounds dead on. The downtown is quite dense and urban-feeling, though, even if it is all malls. Urban aesthetic with a suburban sensibility might be a good way of describing it. It’s exactly what the car-centric ideals of many urban planners of the ’50s had in mind: a new kind of downtown to match a new suburban landscape.

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