Lower Manhattan is filled with land marked buildings and areas because it was a place for early settlement and where a form of government was emerging. Buildings in lower Manhattan were placed in specific positions with a main purpose behind it. The positioning of these buildings created a unique urban composition of the key landmark buildings through its urban street and spaces.
Upon arriving to lower Manhattan, there was already a very prominent building that united the space around it. The National Museum of the American Indian was placed as a focal point with a green space in front of it creating a plaza. The museum served as a stage where it was elevated from the ground and had beautiful monuments and podiums that looked like an alteration of classical art. Walking up from the museum to the trinity church, the sizes of the streets began to curve and bend in a way where you weren’t able to see what was past a building without walking up to it. It was is if walking in the original pathway from early settlement, the street going up a hill was also kept as cobble stone giving the next important building a focal point where George Washington’s statue was placed purposefully to be viewed at a higher importance scale than other buildings.
Standing on wall street and looking down at the nearby trinity church, I noticed the church was placed at an odd angle where it was directly facing wall street. It seemed as if the church was placed in the middle of wall street looking towards another pathway. Being surrounded by these early settlement buildings along with modernized structures gave a sense of looking at history develop within one spot. Being able to notice the different forms of architecture built through out the years being intentionally placed at certain view points where streets guide you to these points is the main reason I believe this area was land marked.
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