By Christian Rowe
During my summer internship at LANDMARK WEST! I set out on many journeys to explore what has now become a familiar neighborhood to me – the Upper West Side. I have explored from 110th Street to Columbus Circle and from Central Park to Riverside Park. In between these boundaries I have seen many historic districts and landmarked buildings.
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Everyone at LW! made my internship very enjoyable. Over the past six weeks, I assisted in preparing a survey of 184 buildings between 96th Street, 110th Street, Central Park West, and Riverside Drive for review by the LPC for landmark consideration; I helped prepare for next school year’s Keeping the Past for the Future education program by cutting out paper stoops and bay windows for brownstone collages; and I cataloged books recently donated to the LW! library – among many other tasks. The staff helped me when I asked and taught me what I did not know. I will walk away from this internship with a whole arsenal of skills I didn’t have when I started in June. I am now able to type faster. I have become very computer literate. But the best thing I learned here is to slow down and observe. Sometimes you move too fast and you miss beautiful buildings and landscapes.
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My favorite experience was being given the task of exploring the Upper West Side for different architectural sites and then writing blog posts about what I found. The adventure I enjoyed the most was my first assignment when I was told to observe, study, and photograph the bridges in Central Park. I already had a personal connection to Central Park because my dad took me there as a child and I can remember running over the bridges there. Also, my first assignment in architecture class at the Williamsburg High School of Architecture and Design (where I go to school) was to design my own bridge. And so, on my journey I used my knowledge of bridges to identify key elements that help bridges stay together and also observed how historic features of the Central Park bridges have been preserved over time – as I saw on the Balcony Bridge.
This was my first job, and I’m very happy I had this experience at LANDMARK WEST!
