"As one arrives, there is the old Acceleration of the pulse—the mountainous gray skyline glimpsed from the Triborough Bridge, the cheerful games of basketball and handball being played on the recreational asphalt beside the FDR Drive, the startling, steamy, rain-splotched intimacy of the side streets where one’s taxi slows to a crawl, the careless flung beauty of the pedestrians clumped at the street corners. So many faces, costumes, packages, errands! So many preoccupations, hopes, passions, lives in progress! So much human stuff, clustering and streaming with a languid colorful impatience like the mass maneuvers of bees!"
John Updike, Architectural Digest
