After reading and thinking so much about skyscrapers, I knew that I had to actually interact with one. I chose 111 Westminster Street, Providence - also known as the Bank of America Building, or the Superman Building (due to its cameo as the prototype for the Daily Planet building in the Superman comics). Because of its unique shape and night illumination, it is the skyscraper which helps me identify the Providence skyline as uniquely Providence's. The skyscraper is 130 meters tall, has 26 floors of primarily offices, and was completed in 1927; it is the tallest building in Rhode Island (1).
I walked from Brown's campus downtown to get a better look; I started by Keeney Quad, from which you can clearly see 111 Westminster. My path, as shown above, was along Benefit Street (view below left), down the hill on College Street (view below right), and then along the waterfront to the central circle of the river, where the center of the Waterfire festival is held. While I was walking, the red and green lights came on at about 3:50 pm; I missed the actually illumination, as I looked away for a minute, and, when I looked back, the beacon had been lit. During my urban hike, I could almost always keep at least the top of 111 Westminster in sight; there were only a couple blocks where it was obscured by other buildings. Despite usually staying in my sight, the building looked very different from different vantage points. Sometimes, it looked slender and unimpressive, sometimes grand, like a huge stepped mountain, sometimes like a hidden lighthouse when only the beacon was visible. Upon reaching the waterfront plaza, I sat on the tiered grass on the East side of the plaza and watched the skyscraper for 45 minutes.
That's right. I watched a skyscraper. For 45 minutes.
In an attempt to satisfy Latour and Yaneva's call for a "photographic gun for a skyscraper", my original intent was to photograph the building every 3-5 minutes for an hour. However, with the rain, wind, and low-tech digital camera, this was difficult. More importantly, I scanned back through my pictures after taking the first 10, and realized that simply taking a visual freeze frame of the skyscraper every 5 minutes was not going to do the building any measure of dynamic justice. Instead, I began to furiously scribble notes, drawing some interesting looks from the few people walking around the plaza on this gray Providence day.
I observed several things about the skyscraper that I had never noticed before. First, the building has numerous crenellated outdoor balconies on the stepbacks, but only on the lowest one - about halfway up the facade - were lights and signs of human activity. I could see scaffolding going up one corner of the building. The depth of the building suddenly came into view, as I could see long rows of lights extending back into the building. Several people walking through a floor of the building were visible and all the windows were dark on a couple of floors; these two details emphasized horizontal motion. Meanwhile, the skyscraper has long, uninterrupted ridges running up the facade, suggesting elevator shafts, and emphasizing the vertical height of the building. After about 20 minutes of close visual concentration, the depth, height and width of the building finally came into focus together.
Then, as I was writing about 3-dimensional space, the fourth dimension suddenly appeared: the lights began to come on! First, an eerie green and red glow began to emanate from the balcony about half way up the facade. Then, a warmer, gold light started to fill the space. Then, the balcony just below the green and red beacon lights at the top of the skyscraper flicked on, and a warm light began to come up there as well. Finally, the balcony about 2/3 up to the facade joined in the illumination. I did photograph this progression; the first three pictures below were taken in about a 2 minute span; the fourth is from later in the hour, when it was finally darker and the illumination was more impressive.
I recommend skyscraper watching - perhaps not as a long-term hobby, but something everyone should do at least once.
After observing the skyscraper from a distance, I really wanted to get inside it. I walked from the waterfront circle over to Kennedy Plaza, where I realized that the same side of the building I'd been watching is also the one that faces the plaza. Kennedy Plaza is perhaps the most important gathering place in the city. The plaza is the center of Providence's public transportation, the home of the city government, and an important venue for urban entertainment, in the form of the park, concert space, and seasonal ice skating rink. 111 Westminster Street has an place of importance, dominating the Southern side of the plaza, with the large downtown bus exchange in front of it.
I approached the building by walking across the plaza. The only exterior signs of the building's identity were metal numbers and letters spelling out 111 Westminster Street, and a poorly lit Bank of America Logo. The heavy metal doors did not have handles on them, and the revolving door looked laughably small for such an enormous building. Standing this close, the skyscraper's setbacks hid the top of the building from the observer directly below it. The walls were cold, wet granite - very solid. I circled the building looking for another entrance. The West side of the building is an alleyway, with a sign noting "Not A Public Way". I walked through it anyway, only to find identical handle-less doors on the other side of the building. People were taking shelter from the rain in the alcoves of these doors; the skyscraper had come to function as a shelter for passersby. I went in the back revolving door, expecting to find a grand lobby.
I was disappointed. The only public space in the skyscraper is an alleyway through the ground floor of the building. The alley sloped up to the middle, where two security guards were heavily questioning a young man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase; I listened and discovered that he did not have the proper ID to enter the elevator area. I chose not to argue with these security guards, and continued down the opposite ramp to the revolving door on the plaza-side of the building. The only other people in the cave-like alley were a few people waiting in line for an ATM.
I was disappointed by this inaccessibility. As much as skyscrapers facilitate and reflect dynamic motion, they also control and reject it by creating private spaces that are literally guarded against the public. I continued along the yellow path shown above back up the hill to Brown.
Footnotes:
1. "Bank of America Building." skyscraperpage.com. 2008. 12 Dec 2008 <http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=272>.
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