If you've recently headed towards the Holland Tunnel and found yourself stuck in that gnarl of traffic on Seventh Avenue South, you might have had time to notice something sharp and pointy rising nearby. At one of those crazy Greenwich Village intersections where the steets go every-which-way, Rogers Marvel Architects have managed to squeeze a new five-story, four-unit condo building onto a little lot at 1 Seventh Avenue where it meets Downing and Carmine Streets. Those streets come together to form a sharp 45 degree wedge—and the building matches that angle like an arrow aiming somewhere, well, over that-a-ways. We can't find a website for the building yet, but the Rogers Marvel website tells it like this:
The large expanse of glass at the 45 degree angle of the site creates a unique living space with ample views south. The rhythm and materiality of the facade respond to the scale of the neighboring buildings, creating a transition from the industrial loft buildings across the street to the smaller buildings adjacent to the site.That 45 degree angle pointing towards the south got us wondering. Where would one end up if we followed that trajectory? We bisected the angle of the building, plotted some numbers into Google Earth and drew a line. Where it leads might not get you through the Holland Tunnel any faster, but if you follow that line you'd sure have one heckuva round-the-world trip.
[Recent photos of 1 Seventh Avenue during construction]
The pointy end of 1 Seventh Avenue leads us right out over New York Harbor and directly to Ellis Island. Nice place, but why stop there? Keep going and we'll travel the length of New Jersey, right over little Skeeter Island on the shores of the Delaware Bay. Continuing south we'll see all those Mid-Atlantic states down below before heading out over the Atlantic near Bluff Island, North Carolina. Hitting land once again at Cape Canaveral we pass across Florida over Lake Okeechobee. From there it's down to Key West and across to Havana where we can grab a Cuba Libre before sailing across the Caribbean and zipping through Managua, Nicaragua where we meet the wide Pacific. Next stop is the Galapagos Islands, where we just might want to loll around for a while like those big iguanas they've got down there because the next leg is a long one, ending up in the bone chilling Sputnik Islands of Antartica. Too cold for you? Let's head north.
Before you know it we're on the coast of India at Mandasa. Beach too hot? Then on we go, first to Jajarkot, Nepal and then Astana, the flashy new capital of Kazakhstan plopped down smack dab in the middle of the Asian steppes. Keep going and we pass over the whole of Mother Russia, hitting the Arctic Circle near Komi before zipping across the Arctic Sea to Norway's Jan Mayen Island. From there it's just a few short hops at Nuuk, Greenland and Sept-Iles, Quebec before we're home again and passing over sweet little Peachum, Vermont. Then we're right back at 1 Seventh Avenue where we started. Nice trip. And thanks to the gang at Rogers Marvel for the pointers.
· One Seventh Avenue South [Rogers Marvel Architects]