Centre St Between Reade St and Worth St

Just south of City Hall, this area is really just a huge open-air court surrounded by massive public court houses on the east side, and tall office buildings on the west.  It's a lot like being in a skateboarding video game where the designers had technical restrictions with how far into the distance you could see, so they simply blocked off every long avenue with a large building.  The only part where you can see for a considerable distance is at the north side of the block, looking up Centre St, into Chinatown (that must be level 2!)

While there is certainly an enjoyable atmosphere to the area, the lack of anything to do combined with the irritating security presence (almost everything down here is a State or City building), make for a cold and uninviting visit.  It's nice to be in a different area, though, where there's no rhyme or reason to the layout of the streets.  It allows for a different perspective of scale.  The municipal building on the north side of the street dominates with it's towering mass – overwhelming any sunlight that was around when I visited.

The park space around here is nice, and it certainly softens up the coldness exuded by the buildings, but it's really phoned-in as far as public space design goes.

And regarding the headline photo above: No, there isn't a ramp just out of view.  

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Comments

[alicia]

Good one..
I completely agreed that it looks like skateboarding video game where the designers had technical restrictions with how far into the distance you could see. I am a big gamer and love to play racing games a lot.