"In the Shadow of Giants"

I always have the feeling that the above building the "American Insurance Building" on B'way, and Wall is going to fall on me. It has that effect on everybody. Still I love the downtown skyline. It was all thrown up before the regulations about crowding out the sun light.

That reg is where all them layer cake designs for skyscrapers came from. Anyway in the old blocks one feels cozy, and hidden by what seems like mile high towers. The streets still narrow from the horse, and buggy times, and huge building on either side...I loves it.

Granted it drive loads of folks nuts, but still.

I also really dig them "Bishop's Crook" lamp posts. They were first installed around town about 1910 or so. Imagine...giving light to clerks millionaires con-men hipsters cops, and cool babes for over 100 bleeping years!! 

Lower Manhattan is the last place where they're still common. 

I remember them in the Bronx, and Brooklyn when I was a little kid. However they were cleared out during the modernization madness in the 1960's.

Them, and the cobble stone streets bit the dust in that mayhem. Mind you if you 'look' you can still find a few side streets with cobbles from the mid-1800's here, and there in Queens, and the old wharf areas of lower Manhattan. When the weather gets a little warmer I'll take some snaps of these for ya's.