Other New York City scenes

Though I am now tied up at the conference at the Tutu Center at the General Theological Center (go see Susan Russell's Inch at a Time for other photos), I did do a little wandering around NYC beforehand on a glorious spring day when the temperatures were in the 70s.

This post toward the end leans heavily on scenes from GTS of what it looks like now which is basically a disaster zone.


I didn't have time to walk all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge, just up to the wooden sidewalk part on the New York City side. It was such a wonderful day out that there were tons of people out crossing it.


The front building, Sherril Hall, at GTS, literally started to fall down so the Board of Trustees decided to take it down and build something better. It was an ugly building that looked like a cross between a post office and a RC seminary (sorry, that is what someone said to me), a drab form of 1960s architecture. It housed the library, guest rooms, faculty apartments, dean's residence, offices and conference room. (It also once upon a time had a bowling alley in the basement.)


My first summer at GTS a bunch of us climbed up on the roof of the building (I can't remember exactly how except it involved climbing up the top of the elevator housing and being hoisted up by an EMT/seminarian) in order to watch the Macy's Fourth of July fireworks that are fired off over the East River.


The grounds of the seminary are called the Close but the Ninth Avenue side doesn't look terribly attractive right now. However, note the flowering trees.


I took this shot of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd from 20th Street. The Chapel is at the middle of the Close. I don't know what the scaffolding is about by it. I will take a better shot that doesn't chop off the top of the tower.


The most bizarre part of all this is staying at the Tutu Center, what used to be a student dorm and faculty apartments (Eigenbrodt and Chelsea 1). I know that the room in which I am staying used to be part of a professor's apartment. I look out on Tenth Avenue and over the drilling for the continued geothermal heating/cooling system the seminary is installing. The Tutu conference center is online with geothermal heating/cooling and eventually the entire seminary will be.

So I return to GTS fifteen years after I graduated. One can never really go back but it is good to visit.

As a postscript, Susan has already posted comments on tonight's presentation by Archbishop Drexel Gomez. For some reason, I can't make the specific link but maybe tomorrow I can.