Good morning. It's Thursday. We'll look at a new way to view a model of New York City that's so big it takes up the floor of a former roller-staking rink. We'll also look at Mayor Eric Adams's latest comments on the death of Jordan Neely in the subway. |
 | | via Queens Museum |
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There is a new answer to a frequently asked question at the Queens Museum: Can you walk on the model? |
The model is the Panorama of the City of New York, the diorama-like installation spread across the floor of a huge former roller-skating rink. |
The answer used to be no. Now the answer is closer to no, but. |
As in no, but a new interactive tool can zoom in and out on a digital twin of the original panorama, which was built for the 1964 World's Fair. |
The twin has images from a three-dimensional scan of the 835,000 miniature buildings that came with the Panorama, along with the 35,000 that were added in the 1990s. That was the last time the Panorama underwent a major renovation, although flags highlighting the city's historic districts were added a decade ago to celebrate the 1965 municipal law that made them possible. |
To the museum, the entire Panorama is an artifact, the largest item in its collection. From the city line in the Bronx, the southern tip of Staten Island is 154 feet 6 inches away. The viewing platform is about 20 feet above it all. |
If the city seems distant and remote from there, the digital tool makes the Panorama ready for close-ups that visitors can access from a kiosk on the platform. They can also type in their own stories about places around the city. |
Lynn Maliszewski, the museum's assistant director for archives and collections, said the Panorama was devised as a city planning tool, with 273 removable panels. The idea, she said, was to create a portable visual aid. If the City Council was considering a highway proposal or a park plan, the panels for the neighborhoods in question could be lifted out and taken to City Hall to show where the new road or the new park was going. |
"That never ended up happening," she said. |
So instead of serving as a visual aid for policymakers, it became a destination for museumgoers — and a time capsule. Maliszewski said that it was regularly updated during the 1960s, when Robert Moses, who had been president of the World's Fair, was still the chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and had an office in the building now occupied by the museum. |
The bridges on the Panorama, made of brass, "are particularly fun to see closer because those are unique elements that Moses was very proud of when he made this model to pat himself on the back" for the projects he had overseen that changed the cityscape, Maliszewski said. She added: "He wanted people to understand the scale of what he had done." |
But Moses was ousted as chairman of the bridge and tunnel authority in 1968, when it was taken over the by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. |
The Panorama was updated the following year and again in 1974. Since the update in 1992, there have been only a handful of changes: The new Yankee Stadium replaced the old one, and Citi Field, not far from the museum, took the place of the old Shea Stadium. Battery Park City, built on soil excavated for the World Trade Center in the 1960s, was added. "That's it, really," Maliszeweski said. "It's those three elements that are the new-new elements." |
Originally the Panorama featured a "helicopter ride." Visitors climbed into small, enclosed pods like the cars on the Roosevelt Island Tramway that rose on a wall of the room for an almost-aerial view, better with binoculars. "As you got to different points in the ride, different sets of five-colored lights would illuminate — these are middle schools, these are high schools, these are universities," Maliszewski said. "Or these are hospitals, and these are courthouses." |
But the ride was discontinued after the World's Fair closed. |
The museum will introduce the new digital tool at a gala tonight. One of the honorees will be Angelo Baque, a museum board member who started the clothing line Awake NY after 10 years as brand director at the streetwear label Supreme. At a preview of the digital tool last week, he entered a location on the touch pad: 123rd Street between Liberty Avenue and 107th Avenue, a long block midway between South Ozone Park and South Richmond Hill. He grew up on the first floor of a two-family house there. |
"Growing up in Queens, it was like 90 percent of my experience was my block," he said. |
The Panorama, he said, showed "the scale of the city" and conveyed the idea that "the world is bigger than my block" — and reminded him of something else: "The inspiration to get out of my neighborhood, because without the A train, I wouldn't be here." |
Enjoy another sunny day near the low 80s. The evening is mostly clear, with temps around 60. |
In effect until May 18 (Solemnity of the Ascension). |
 | | Hilary Swift for The New York Times |
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Mayor says Jordan Neely 'did not deserve to die' |
 | | Hilary Swift for The New York Times |
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Mayor Eric Adams called the death of a mentally ill man on the subway a "tragedy that never should have happened." |
"One thing we can say for sure, Jordan Neely did not deserve to die," Adams said, referring to the man, a 30-year-old former Michael Jackson impersonator. Neely, who was Black, was choked to death by another passenger, Daniel Penny, who is white. |
Adams's remarks, in a speech that was livestreamed from City Hall, were his most forceful comments so far about Neely's death, which set off protests. Adams again urged the public to wait to draw conclusions until an investigation of the killing, though he said that "we have no control over that process." |
The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, but there have been no arrests in the case. Two men who have not been identified helped hold Neely down as he struggled to escape the chokehold. James Essig, the police department's chief of detectives, said that their actions are "part of a very ongoing investigation." |
He said "numerous" tips have come in about the incident and that investigators were working with prosecutors. "We have to methodically go through all evidence with them, interview all witnesses," he said. |
Many left-leaning activists have called Neely's death a murder. They have also said the mayor should have moved faster to voice sympathy for Neely, who was homeless when he died. Last week Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the mayor's mention of mental health services when discussing Neely was "especially rich" coming from an administration that is "trying to cut the very services that could have helped him." |
My colleagues Maria Cramer and Jeffery C. Mays write that Adams has pushed for broad cuts in city agencies, but has also made a number of moves to increase services and responses for people with severe mental illness. On Wednesday, he again called for renewed investment in mental health services. |
He also pressed for the passage of state legislation that would permit authorities to intervene with mentally ill people who cannot meet basic needs. He said the bill would "make it crystal clear to our hospitals that a person should not be released from psychiatric care simply because they have calmed down and appear stable in the moment." |
I was at a performance of "The Hours" at the Metropolitan Opera. Moments before the chandeliers went up, it seemed, a good number of older people all arrived at once and all bearing canes. |
"What's with all these canes?" a man sitting near me muttered. |
A woman who was among the late arrivals apparently heard him. |
"Just wait until intermission when we get out our top hats," she said. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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