New York City actually has FOUR dimensions.
New York City’s total area is ~468.9 square miles–that covers the two physical dimensions of length and width. The city’s highest elevation point is Todt Hill on Staten Island at 409.8 feet–that covers the third physical dimension of height.
So we’re left with that mysterious fourth dimension. Many physicists call this, time. And in their various theories, the fourth dimension is an overlapping of past, present, and future events all at once. It would be like riding in a glass elevator for a few seconds and viewing the city like time-lapse photography over many years. But as abstract as this sounds, I think we all see this fourth-dimensional view of New York City, everyday.
When I walk north from Battery Park along State Street I see the colonial red brick buildings like the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton juxtaposed against a backdrop of a cylindrical smoke-tinted glass skyscraper like 17 State Street. I look to my right and see large portions of Battery Park being preserved alongside new construction work like the New Amsterdam Plein and Pavillion and major renovations to the South Ferry/Whitehall Terminal and hideously dilapidated Battery Maritime Building. From this one city block, I can see the past, present, and future of the city before my eyes and they are all integrated into my mind.
The city is always changing, rebuilding, reconstructing itself–by acts of nature and man. My perspective of New York City is a lot like the overhead projector my elementary school teachers used back in the 1980s. Present day experiences with colleagues are overlaid on top of childhood memories from the 1970s growing up in the Bronx . And opague sheets of my hopes and fears in the months to come are placed on the top, with faint backlighting filtering through and illuminating all three time phases.
This is life in the fourth dimension. This is life in the Sixth Borough.
NYC 6th Borough 