Views from The Eyrie
Cityscapes by Everett H. Scott
Cityscapes by Everett H. Scott
Thirty years ago, in November of 1984, I shared a modest one-bedroom
apartment on West 91st Street, in New York City. It was in a
building typical of the Upper West Side, pre-war but recently renovated. It
remains on the Northwest corner of 91st Street and Broadway. At the
time, there was a Twin Donut shop on the corner and a Chinese hand-laundry in
the basement. It was a sunny, South-facing apartment with windows over-looking
a row of brownstone houses across the street. In one of the brownstones,
directly opposite us, lived two of our neighbors, Michael Case, a young
mid-westerner, whose miniscule studio apartment was so small that one could
literally touch the opposite walls by simply stretching out ones arms. The
dimensions of his apartment rendered all of his activities observable. On a
lower floor lived a Latino man, employed as a doorman somewhere, but whose
passion was making and dressing dolls. From our apartment, we could observe him
hunched over his sewing machine, stitching together the voluminous satin and
lace ball gowns he devised for the pink plastic dolls on his windowsill. To insure our own privacy, we ordered
wooden Venetian blinds, and John, my roommate, became adept at making
draperies. I became practiced at temporarily “blacking out” the windows, with
fabric and plastic bags, to avoid exposing my light-sensitive photography
materials to sunlight.
One morning, November 19th, I awoke and announced, to myself
as much as anyone else, “I need
another apartment!” Mind you, I was one half of a duo, each of whom had
burgeoning collections of furnishings, clothing and books. Then, as now, John,
my partners, favorite activity was trolling the local auction houses – Tepper
and Lubin galleries, downtown – where he found an endless variety of “objets”
from other New Yorker’s estates. I had all of the paraphernalia required to
operate a darkroom, which I attempted to maintain in our five by five foot
bathroom. It was no small wonder that I was interested in finding more space.
As anyone who has undertaken the task to find an apartment in New York – or any
place else – can attest, this is a formidable task, generally thought to
require “deep pockets,” lots of patience and “a willingness to compromise.” I
may have had two of those three.
Well, after my revelation about needing more space, I went about my days’
routines, which at the time included stopping by the Artweave textile gallery on
the ground floor of 310 Riverside Drive, where my friend Ocsi Ullman was a
dealer in antique textiles, or “schmattes” as he affectionately called them.
Ocsi was something of a mentor to me, and he was plugged into a wide variety of
social circles. He always seemed to know what was going on, and where. That
afternoon was no different, and when, over a cup of tea, I casually mentioned
my interest in finding another apartment, he immediately responded, “Well, you
know, there is an apartment available in this building, on the twenty-third
floor.” And that, as they say, was that. By four PM of the same day that I lifted
my “prayer to the universe,” for an apartment, I found the apartment where the
photographs in this portfolio were taken!
Erected in 1929, The Master’s Apartments remain the tallest
apartment building on Riverside Drive. It was the brainchild of the visionary
and multi-talented Russian émigré, Nicholas Roerich, (1874 – 1947) whose
preferred activity was painting landscapes of The Himalayas. A museum devoted
to his work is located on 106th St. He designed the building with
the idea of housing artists, musicians and all manner of creative people. From
the moment I first entered my apartment, I have regarded the views it affords
me with a mixture of awe and fascination. Now, thirty years on, that sense of
awe remains undiminished. I continue to marvel at the range of weather
phenomena I can observe, often with several different kinds of weather – rain,
snow, sunshine - occurring simultaneously. If the windows of my apartment on 91st
Street offered a “micro” view of the city, the views from The Masters’ offer a
“macro” perspective, encompassing all of midtown, East to Queens, North to
Westchester and even deep into New Jersey. Inspired by these views, I have nurtured
an appreciation of urban bird-life, which I find to be somewhat analogous to
ocean-life on a reef: many smaller species represented in the shallows, i.e. at
street level, with fewer, larger species patrolling the depths, i.e. higher
airspace. Thus, the apartments name: The Eyrie - The nest of an Eagle or other
bird of prey, built in a high inaccessible place.
On 91st street, beyond the limited view from our location,
was the invisible yet perceptible “aural” landscape of city noises that floated
up to our apartment. The honking of buses, and taxis, and the voices of individual
humans, going about their business, at all hours of the day and night that
created their own imagery. Contrast this with the trills of an occasional
Nightingale, perched, singing on a parapet to proclaim his territory that float
into my un-shaded windows at The Masters. It is another world, from that which
most New Yorkers are aware of, which I am happy to share with you, as best I
can, in these pictures. They make me mindful of that old photographic enigma:
that while a photograph may last forever, it represents the most fleeting of
moments, changing even as one presses the shutter.
(Copyright Everett H. Scott 2014. All rights reserved.)
