Brick Walls and Facades

One of the pleasures of my urban walks is finding old brick walls and facades, many of them with peeling paint or remnants of old signs.    They can be quite colorful at times, and the different colors and textures of the bricks are fun to photograph.  In some cases, there are walls that have momentarily been revealed because a building has been torn down.  They will soon disappear when a new building is erected.

Here is a selection:

Jersey City and Harrison

I'm still wandering around New York, and even now to New Jersey.   Jersey City, to be precise.  Jersey City is easy to get to in fact.  You just have to take the PATH train from the deluxe Calatrava-designed station at the World Train Center.   The Oculus, as it now seems to be called, gets a little less enticing now that it has been completely filled with shops, etc.   While the grand interior space is still special, it otherwise sometimes feels like yet another shopping mall.  Which is what it is.   But still, I am in favor of grand public spaces, though it all seems a bit wasted on the PATH trains.  Too bad they couldn't have spent that money on a new Penn Station, which remains the armpit of the universe.   And the exterior of the Oculus looks a little diminished now that it is dwarfed by the high-rise office buildings going up around it.


Jersey City is a strangely divided city.  When you arrive at the waterfront, you see nothing but high-rise buildings and parking lots/empty spaces.  There is nothing that looks older than 30 years.   In fact, it looks like Vancouver's waterfront, and many other formerly industrial waterfronts.   And the story is the same; the waterfront area used to be entirely industrial; all of that became obsolete, and was torn down and replaced.  There are new high-rise condos built, I think, for people who work in the offices of downtown Manhattan.   The waterfront is nicely accessible, but the rest of the space is as alienating as could be.  
There are many high-rise developments owned by the Kushner family, and this one with the Kushner in-laws name on it:




There is one big remnant of the previous era, the old powerhouse for the PATH trains, which is both landmarked and falling apart.

One of the few old industrial buildings left:

If you walk inland about ten blocks, it's a different story.   Then you are in the old downtown of Jersey City, with a wonderful collection of eccentric old buildings in a state of semi-gentrification.   Jersey City has an extremely diverse population, according to Wikipedia.   (It's also the second largest city in New Jersey.)   I enjoyed wandering around.

On the main street of Jersey City, there are wonderful old three to four story buildings, and a lively shopping scene:

I found this wonderful Art Deco building, which seems to be just an anonymous office building:

A peek through the window revealed a bit if the interior:

The PATH train also takes you to Harrison, just across the river from Newark.   Again it's a former industrial area, with large vacant spaces and the occasional old warehouse and the occasional new condo project.   It's much less developed than Jersey City; it's mostly empty space at this point.  I found this cavernous former warehouse, which is now functioning as a parking garage.   Most of the windows are gone.  Views of the interior:

Outside and around it are various other old buildings with intriguing facades: