Friday Fotos: Triangulating the Met Life Tower

As you may know, I'm involved in a group reading New York 2140, which centers on the Met Life Tower in Lower Manhattan.So, I've been taking a particular photographic interesting in that building. What I want to show in thie series of photos is how the Met Life Tower's position with respect to other buildings appears to shift as I move from North to South in taking photos.

Here I'm standing at the border between Hoboken and Weehawken to the north. The sailboats are in the Weehawken Basin:

The Met Life Tower is the slender building to the fight of center. It's got a small gold dome at the top and a clock face in the center. Notice the prominent building near the shore to the tower's left, the building just right of center.

I'm now definitely in Hoboken. The trees are on an abandoned pier in Hoboken and the Met Life Tower is in the center of the picture. Notice the building at the far left edge:

It appears to have moved further north of the Tower. It hasn't moved at all, of course, but we (well, I) have, hence the apparent shift in position. Notice also that we're looking pretty directly at the Tower's West face. We can't see any of the North or South faces from this POV. As we move to the South, the South face will come into view.

I'm now standing on the 11th St. pier. You can see the Tower right of center where it's partially obscured by a Jean Nouvel apartment house (the building with the elaborate facade).

That other building, the one we'd been looking at, is nowhere to be seen; it's off there to the left somewhere.

I've now moved a bit south of the 11th St. pier. The Tower has almost disappeared from vies:

Almost, but not completely. You can see its top-most spire sticking up above the Nouvel.

Continuing on south, the Tower has almost disappeared. That's right, but not completely. You can see its topmost spire sticking up in the center:

But notice that it is now to the right of that building under construction at the left edge of the photo. It had been to the right of it in the previous photo. Also, notice the Marine Aviation building to the right of center along the shore.

We're not below the Marine Aviation building, which extends of the photo to the left. The Met Life Tower is clearly visible in the center of the photograph, as is its south facing side:

The building at the left that looks a bit like an open book standing up on edge, that's the Standard Hotel. The fabled High Line passes beneath it. You can see the Tower to it's right, the most of the Tower is hidden behind other buildings:

That slender structure along the right edge is a light. It's on a small park along the Hoboken shore; the park is build out into the river. Now, notice the white building to the left of that light, the white building along the shore. That's the Whitney Museum, designed by Arno Penzias.

Here's our last photo. I'm standing on a small park on a large pier at the south end of Hoboken. I'm roughly a mile south of where I was when I took the first photo.

The Met Life Tower is in the center of the image and we appear to be facing almost directly at the southwest edge of the building – I think we're just a smidge to the south of that diagonal.

Given that I've got New York 2140 in mind, and that that novel posits a 50 foot rise in sea level, I've been under water for every one of these shots. That nice little park in the last photo doesn't exist anymore, neither does the pier in the second photo (from the top), nor the park light in the next to last photo. For the matter, the Marine Aviation building would be gone as well, and so forth. A LOT gets swamped in the 50 foot rise in water level.