Vessel Nearing Completion - a Hudson Yards Nightscape

Vessel Nearing Completion - a Hudson Yards Nightscape

By now a familiar and oft-photographed feature of the Manhattan cityscape, "Vessel" with its 154 flights
of stairs and 80 landings is a popular venue for viewing the skyline and the Hudson River below.

While preparing for my visit next month, I was reminded of my first visit, in October of last year, well before
Thomas Heatherwick's creation was completed and ready for curious climbers, and how its appearance by night,
surrounded by construction activities struck me as rather mysterious and otherworldly, almost as if an alien spacecraft had somehow set down in a clearing amidst the glass and steel towers rising above Hudson Yards - while John Williams' score to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" burst forth from unseen speakers powered by thousands of watts of amplification to provide an appropriate "soundtrack," (*)

This Vessel-in-Progress moment makes its first appearance this evening.

©2019 Steve Ember
(*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDDThITaAhw