Unintentional NYC Icons

New York City has many icons, buildings and structures and places that define the city's image to the world. Think the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Flatiron Building, Times Square, Central Park, Radio City Music Hall -- the list is endless. Elsewhere there's the Colloseum in Rome, the Houses of Parliament in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, you get the idea -- iconography is just one of the things that makes great cities great.

But why? Why are they so important?

Because, in their way, they tell the story of the city, they define them -- and they link the past to the present, the present to the future. They endure -- for the most part. The destruction of the World Trade Centers and the burning down of Notre Dame in Paris were so tragic because these strong images of their respective cities were violently wiped away. It wasn't just the physical destruction and the awful deaths, it was that the sense of the cities and their identities had become unmoored, the cities' physic roots had been pulled out. 

Icons are not only part of their cities's identities but of their residents and visitors as well. 

And yet ... some icons are unintentional. Sometimes a store or something else becomes so beloved, so integral to the commmunity it exists in, that it takes on icon status. 

A few examples that have been in the news recently:

The Paris Movie theater, that elegant, wonderful little place right across from the Plaza Hotel and Central Park, recently closed -- an NYC icon that had vanished. But it's been saved -- thanks to Netflix! It's become so integral to the neighborhood, a small bastion of culture and respite in the middle of a busy commercial area, that its closure made many so sad that Netflix decided to ride to the rescue. So another NYC icon endures ... for now ...

Then there's the Astor Place K-Mart. Now Astor Place is about as funky downtown Manhattan as NYC gets and the K-Mart, which opened in 1996, was considered a square intruder into this land of the tragically hip. But overtime, as it usefulness to the neighborhood become apparent, it became a much-loved, much-frequented icon. The fact that K-Mart is so uncool is what made it cool. But sadly it's going away, soon to be replaced by a Wegmans. An icon, a very unintentional of sorts, fading away.

Fortunately there's something else nearby that's remaining -- the Ralph Lauren billboard on Houston Street. It's so huge, so in-your-face, and the designer's ads on it are so gorgeous and sexy, that it's become an icon all its own. Celebrities and models feel that they have "made it", not when their ads appear on TV or in magazines or online, but when their ads appear on this billboard. Its power is in its size and shamelessness, "the medium is the message." Its iconic status comes from its sheer boldness, about as NYC as trait as there is. 

So NYC icons aren't always pre-planned, carefully built structures -- sometimes they arise out of utility and the profit-motive, and yet, when they do, the joy they create makes them icons of the city, icons of our hearts.