New York City is an enormous city with numerous smaller cities within it. Each and every one of these cities are different and sometimes these cities overlap letting us see the cities side by side. Sometimes they can be as far as a 15 minute walk from each other but the difference between them is huge. City Tech and Brooklyn Tech are examples of these overlapping in cities. Despite being 15 minutes away from each other, the New Yorks that they belong to are vastly different. City Tech is a little bit less than a mile away from Brooklyn Tech. To get to Brooklyn Tech, you first have to leave City Tech from the Namm exit and walk until you reach Polytechnic Institute of NYU. During the walk across the street, you can see that there are numerous commercial buildings in the area. There is the Supreme Court house and Marriott Hotel. The buildings surrounding this area are all no less than 12 stories high and are the work places of hundreds of employees. There are numerous train stations here which allows for a lot of transportation access to this area. When you reach NYU Poly’s campus, walk down the campus stretch. There is a lot of restaurants on the campus. Keep walking until you reach the Chase Bank. This bank is enormous but the two buildings across the street are even bigger. The Toren building and the apartment building left of the Toren are no less than 20 or 30 stories tall. Walk in front of the Toren Building and face North towards the Health Department of New York. Walk straight until you reach an Applebee’s. You will pass by the Institute of Design and Construction and the Long Island University campus. In front of the LIU campus, there isn’t a single house that the eye can see. A block east of Applebee’s, you will see another enormous building. It is another apartment building that has little restaurants on the ground floor. Another block east of that we begin to see the overlapping of New Yorks. There are houses made of brownstone and they aren’t giant commercial buildings anymore. When you walk two more blocks east, you will see Brooklyn Tech high school. This is where the two New Yorks overlap. Brooklyn Tech is a pretty big building. It has around 10 floors and houses over 5000 students and staff members. In a few of the photographs I took of the building, the building goes up for 10 floors and from the ground, the building is enormous. However, despite this building being so large, the buildings around it are completely different. They’re houses that look very old, almost antique like as depicted in the photos I took during my trip there. These houses are nothing like the previous buildings we have seen. This area looks very suburban where as a few streets back, there were buildings that made these houses look like ants. Previously the buildings were gigantic that housed thousands of people with space left to give but these houses are made for small families. The more you walk west of Brooklyn Tech, the more of these houses you will see. These houses represent a totally different New York than the New York shown a few blocks back. The juxtaposition of these two New Yorks show that despite these two places are so close to each other, the environment can be completely different. There are no more commercial buildings that go up for tens of stories. They are replaced with residential houses and small coffee shops. It quickly goes from a very urban commercial area to a suburban area with little old houses and a giant park. Brooklyn Tech and City Tech are both very significant buildings. They’re both schools but one is a high school and one is a college part of a university. Brooklyn Tech is a leading high school in New York City. Over 5000 students travel from all over New York City to attend this high school and hopefully get into a college of their choice. City Tech is a college that is part of the City University of New York otherwise known as CUNY. City Tech has over ten thousand students attending it and is a compilation of many buildings such as the Namm Building, Pearl Building and more. Being a college, City Tech prepares students for the future. Students that succeed in this college can go on to take a higher degree such as their bachelors or they can go out into the work force. Both of these places are significant because they prepare students for a future step in their life. I chose these two places because of many reasons. Brooklyn Tech is the high school I attended so it will always hold a special place in my heart. When I moved from Brooklyn Tech to City Tech, I was very surprised. The area of the high school I attended was very suburban. The houses around there made it feel like I was in a very residential area. It was very relaxing. When I got to City Tech, those small houses were replaced by enormous buildings such as the court houses and hotels. I felt very uncomfortable when I first left Jay Street train station to walk to City Tech on my first day. The walk to school was so much different than before because of the sheer amount of people that are hurried to either get to school or get to their workplace. Despite all of this, Brooklyn Tech may still be insignificant to many people because after all, it is simply a high school. Even if this high school holds no significant value to other people, it will to me because it was where when I first started building my own New York. According to Colson Whitehead “You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it.” When I first laid eyes on Brooklyn Tech, it became a brick within my own private New York and that will always be something significant to me. “Our streets are calendars containing who we were and who we will be next.” This quote is also from Colson Whitehead and it describes why Brooklyn Tech is significant to me. This building is standing proof of who I once was and it contains memories o who I was during the teenage years of my life. I will always be able to look back at Brooklyn tech and see myself. The “me” from years 13-18 of my life will always be there and this is why Brooklyn Tech is significant to me specifically even if it may not be to other people. Brooklyn Tech and City Tech is just nearly a mile away from each other but they are located in such different places. The juxtaposition of these two buildings shows how one is located in such an urban area filled with skyscrapers and commercial buildings whereas the other is located in an area with just residential houses that look old enough to be dated back to late 1800s.  These two buildings will always be in my private New York and will show a version of me that I once was when I attended these schools and that is why they’re both so significant to me.

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