The view from my hotel room window. If only zeppelins were still the fashionable way to transport through the air – then I might see the observatory in its originally designed use: a docking site for zeppelins bringing travelers in and out of Manhattan. Such a courageous space-age dream was built to come true, but never put to good use.

Instead, the Empire State Building is bombarded by dozens of lightning strikes each year.  It gets lonely and dangerous on the top of the city. But from down here, from my cozy hotel room in Midtown, I can look at the bright lights and think about those people who dreamed buildings such as this one into being, ninety years ago, when elevators changed the way buildings were planned, and decades before going to the moon was even a realistic aim.

(New York City, USA; April 2019)