My son and I went down to Manhattan this week. We took the train to Grand Central Station and wandered around midtown a bit. We strolled through Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library, then walked up 6th Ave to 53rd Street and spent some time at the Museum of Modern Art—looking at the Van Goghs, the Monets, and a few pieces of modern art that we just didn’t understand, but still appreciated for the effort and imagination behind them.

Next, we walked a few blocks down to Rockefeller Center and went up to the Top of the Rock. We arrived just before sunset and stayed on the observation decks until after the sun had slipped below the horizon, watching as the city lights blinked on bit by bit, like stars in the night sky. It was beautiful to watch the sky darken and the colors soften as “the city that never sleeps” lit up from within – gradually, and by degrees.

As I stood up there looking downtown at the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Freedom Tower, and my beloved Hudson River as it merged with the Atlantic Ocean, I was struck by how strange it felt to imagine this place – this island – at one time being a wild and untamed land the Lenape people called Mannahatta, meaning “hilly island.”

I was looking out at the urban landscape – every inch now covered in concrete, asphalt, steel, and glass – marveling that it was once covered in forest then farmland and pasture. The city began as a small Dutch settlement where the Hudson meets the Atlantic, and over time it grew – block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, pushing north up the island. Old buildings were taken down, and newer, taller ones rose in their place.

The landscape of Manhattan has always been changing – and still is.

45th Street and 5th Ave. in 1849. The French Building at 45th Street and 5th Ave – today.

I love how the city is an eclectic mix of old and new. A little row of 19th or early 20th century architecture of an apartment house or an old Gothic style church sitting right next to a towering modern 21st-century building with shining glass walls reflecting the sky it nearly touches.

Eclectic Manhattan architecture as seen through a window of the MoMA on 53rd Street.

This got me thinking – all landscapes are ever changing, even the landscapes of each of our lives. The people who pass through our lives, making big impacts or small. The decisions we make, the plans we set in motion, the struggles we live through and grow from. The loss of hope. The evaporation of dreams. The slow, quiet resignation to realities we never wanted to face. And the unexpected events—whether good or bad. All of it reshapes us, changing the architecture of our lives. It never quite looks the same again. We can’t remain the same – our lives can’t exist in a static state.

But that’s part of both the beauty and the pain, isn’t it? The possibility of growth, new experiences and opportunities, the construction of something better as well as the acceptance of things we can’t change or control – all the while continuing to value and appreciate what came before.  

Looking uptown at the Steinway Tower and across the Hudson River towards New Jersey at sunset – from the observation decks at Rockefeller Center.

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