New York · Travel · Dimos Mertzanidis

The first real look at New York comes from the water. Not from the streets, where the city stands too close to see, but from across the Hudson, where the whole of it lines up at once. Most cities rise gradually, low to high, and let you get used to them. New York gives you no such warning. It stands up out of the river in a single move, a wall of glass and intention with One World Trade tapering to a point, and it looks exactly like the idea of itself.

I kept coming back to that view, and it was never the same twice. Grey and low one afternoon, scrubbed blue the next, and best of all after dark, when the towers stop being architecture and become pure light on black water.

Lower Manhattan skyline under heavy overcast, the towers muted grey — The same skyline, hour after hour. Overcast, scrubbed blue, and twice after dark. Swipe through.

Lower Manhattan skyline under a bright blue sky with scattered clouds, One World Trade at the centre — The same skyline, hour after hour. Overcast, scrubbed blue, and twice after dark. Swipe through.

Downtown

At the tip of the island the streets narrow into canyons of stone and glass, and everything moves at the pace of people who believe the next hour matters. At Bowling Green the crowd closes around the bull, everyone reaching for the same bronze for the same photograph, a small daily ritual of optimism cast in metal.

The bronze Charging Bull sculpture on the cobblestones near Wall Street, head lowered, surrounded by tourists — The Charging Bull at Bowling Green. Worn shiny in all the hopeful places.

A few blocks north the noise falls away. This is where the towers stood. The One World Trade you keep seeing from the river turns out to have a quieter presence at street level: two square voids where the buildings were, water pouring down all four walls and vanishing into a centre you cannot see the bottom of, the names cut into bronze around the edge. Beside it the Oculus opens overhead like the ribcage of something enormous and white, and the old spire of Saint Paul's still holds its ground against the new tower, two centuries refusing to cancel each other out.

One World Trade Center rising behind the stone steeple of Saint Paul's Chapel, seen from Broadway under a blue sky — The World Trade Center: Saint Paul's under the new tower, both faces of the memorial, and the Oculus.

The September 11 Memorial reflecting pool by day, water running down black granite, names engraved on the bronze parapet — The World Trade Center: Saint Paul's under the new tower, both faces of the memorial, and the Oculus.

You feel the scale of all of it best from above. One World Observatory lifts you a hundred storeys in under a minute, and the harbour opens out, the rivers wrapping the island, a single boat drawing a white line across water the colour of steel.

Aerial view from One World Observatory looking south over New York harbour, the rivers and far shore stretching to the horizon — South from the top of One World Trade. The harbour that made the city.

The Lower East Side

Walk northeast and the city gets older, lower, more human. The Lower East Side still wears its nineteenth century on the outside: red brick, carved stone lintels, and the black iron calligraphy of fire escapes zigzagging down every facade. This is deli country, and the oldest of them, Katz's, has been slicing pastrami since 1888. You take a ticket at the door, you order at the counter from a man who has done this ten thousand times today, and you eat the best sandwich of your life off a paper plate.

A red-brick Lower East Side tenement facade covered in ornate black iron fire escapes — The Lower East Side: tenement fire escapes, the counter at Katz's, and the reason you came.

The counter at Katz's Delicatessen, cutters in white shirts and caps slicing meat under numbered station signs, a customer ordering — The Lower East Side: tenement fire escapes, the counter at Katz's, and the reason you came.

Midtown

Midtown is the New York of the postcards, the one that never quite lets you rest. Times Square throws its whole electric argument at you at once, screens stacked on screens, a yellow cab, a crowd, a Broadway that has never once gone dark. A few blocks north the city remembers its manners: the Plaza keeps its red carpet out beneath a limestone facade, and behind the library the bare plane trees of Bryant Park draw their winter lines across the towers.

Times Square at dusk, glowing billboards stacked on every building, a yellow cab and crowds beneath a wide grey sky — Midtown: Times Square at dusk, the Plaza, and Bryant Park in its winter bones.

The limestone facade and awning of the Plaza Hotel, its name lettered above a red-carpeted entrance — Midtown: Times Square at dusk, the Plaza, and Bryant Park in its winter bones.

The water's edge

For all its verticality, New York is an island, and its best hours happen at the edges. Along the Battery Park City esplanade the Hudson slides past bare trees and cast-iron lamps, joggers and dog walkers passing the benches. The only local who paid me any attention was a squirrel who had clearly negotiated harder deals than I have.

The Battery Park City Esplanade along the Hudson, a tree-lined brick promenade with benches and old-fashioned lamp posts under a soft grey sky — The Battery Park City esplanade on the Hudson, and its most attentive local.

A grey squirrel perched in the fork of a tree, holding and eating a nut — The Battery Park City esplanade on the Hudson, and its most attentive local.

On the far side of the island the East River pulls back at low tide to reveal what the water usually hides. Old mooring piles stand in the shallows like the ruins of a pier that gave up a century ago, and under the Brooklyn Bridge there is even a small, improbable beach, the Manhattan Bridge framed beyond it.

The Brooklyn Bridge seen at an angle from the rocky shore, old wooden mooring piles in the East River, the Manhattan Bridge in the distance — The East River under the bridges: old mooring piles, a hidden beach, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

A small sandy beach on the East River beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge and a glass tower across the water — The East River under the bridges: old mooring piles, a hidden beach, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

As the light goes, Tribeca turns theatrical. Above the cast-iron cornices and the fire escapes, 56 Leonard stacks its floors like a game left mid-move, glass boxes jutting into the dusk, warm windows switching on one by one. Old New York and new New York in a single frame, arguing pleasantly about the sky.

56 Leonard Street, the stacked cantilevered glass tower in Tribeca, rising at dusk above a red-brick nineteenth-century building — 56 Leonard over Tribeca. The city never stops redrawing its own edge.

Across the river

The best views of New York, it turns out, belong to New Jersey. I spent a good part of this trip on the far bank, in the glass towers of the Jersey City waterfront, where the whole of Manhattan sits framed in an office window like a painting someone forgot to take down. There is a particular strangeness to working a normal day with that skyline over your shoulder, the city you came to see reduced to scenery behind the desk.

A marble reception desk lit deep pink in the lobby of 10 Exchange Place in Jersey City, people with backpacks walking toward it — The other bank: a lobby in Jersey City, and Manhattan framed in the office glass.

The Midtown Manhattan skyline in the distance across the Hudson, seen through an office window with aircraft contrails overhead — The other bank: a lobby in Jersey City, and Manhattan framed in the office glass.

There is a reward for standing on the wrong side of the river. In the evening the sky over the far shore catches fire, the clouds going coral and then deep rose above the towers while a ferry cuts quietly home.

A dramatic pink and coral sunset over the Hudson River, the skyline in silhouette across the water, a ferry passing — Sunset over the Hudson. The reward for standing on the opposite bank.

The Jersey side holds its own surprises. Among the glass towers of Exchange Place stands a bronze figure mid-leap, a rifle above its head, the plinth marked simply 1939 Siberia: a memorial to the Poles deported east in the war, carrying its grief through a plaza of bankers who mostly hurry past. New York is full of these collisions. The whole region is really one long argument between memory and ambition, it never resolves, and that is exactly why you keep coming back.

A dramatic bronze memorial in Exchange Place, Jersey City: a leaping figure holding a rifle overhead atop a granite plinth carved with the words 1939 Siberia and a relief of a mother and children — The 1939 Siberia memorial, Exchange Place. Grief keeping its footing among the glass.

Five boroughs, two rivers, and more city than a person can hold. You do not see New York so much as agree to be overwhelmed by it, politely, on repeat. I already want to go back.