West 57th Street
As the building boom of the early 2000s skidded into the quagmire of the Great Recession, I took a walk down West 57th Street in Manhattan on a dreary January day to survey the changes. The street was a transitional zone from both directions. To the north sat the residential Upper West Side and to the south the office buildings midtown. On the west were remnants of the industrial dock feel of earlier eras (with pockets of gentrification) with a transition to the firmly white-collar Midtown.
