NYC Day 5 Postcard - Art, Macy's and Pizza

Today was our last full day in New York. We had checked off everything on our list, so all that was left to do was just get out and enjoy the sights.

First thing this morning, while Claire slept in, I went to the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum at 91st and 5th Avenue. This museum is in the former Andrew Carnegie Mansion, so it was a treat just to see inside the building which has rich dark wood paneling and a wide staircase (10') to the second floor.

The exhibits I wanted to see were Fashioning Felt and Nature Conservancy's Design for a Living World.

Fashioning Felt was a display of felted wool in a variety of fashion and industrial applications, including this yurt:

A unique dress:


And a grey flannel women's suit:

The other exhibit, the Design for a Living World, sponsored artists such as Maya Lin (architect/designer of the Vietnam Wall in DC), Isaac Mizrahi (fashion designer) and Christien Meindertsma (textile artist from the Netherlands) were dispatched to work with people in various parts of the world and explore how to use their materials in new designs. Isaac Mizrahi made a dress with pastilles (sequins) made from salmon skin leathers from Surrey British Columbia:
Christien works with a sheep ranchers in Idaho where she created a project to make wool carpet knit from the sheep wool raised on this farm. The carpet tiles, interlocked, are each about 3' in diameter and were knit on needles three feet long and about six inches in diameter which is hard to see in this photo which looks just like a sweater until you realize this piece is 15 feet wide!

The museum is right along the east entrances to Central Park, at the Engineers Gate:

I saw this gate as I walked across the street to hail a cab. Did you know that there is no one single entrance to the park? During it's construction in 1862, designers decided to make many entrances to the park based on different professions: artisans, hunters, engineers. Monuments with these names were installed in 1999 (NYTimes).

In the afternoon, we went to Herald Square to Macy's - all 9 floors - and then sat in the outdoor mall area on Broadway and had NY hot dogs. While sitting there in the somewhat pleasant breeze, we noticed this billboard reading 89F. Tomorrow, we go back home, and it is supposed to be hotter and more humid.



We finished off the day with our last true NY pizza at Patsy's Pizzeria on 23rd Street (yum!), and realized heading back to our place that I had forgotten the keys. We buzzed a random apartment and luckily were let into the building, but met by a man on the second floor wondering who he'd let in. Yikes. Scary.

Now, off to pack and clean, then some shut eye before heading to the airport tomorrow.