East Coast Whirlwind, Pt. 2: Inside the Walker

My room at the Walker Hotel was perfection. The styling was right up my alley, clean, and well appointed.



The desk had the usual assortment of pay-per-snacks:



However, I lovely little bottle of wine and a bag of cookies (along with bottles of plain and sparkling water) were thrown in for good measure. The bag of cookies is missing from the photo; they were devoured before I got the camera out. And they were GOOOOOOOOOOOD…



The view from the room had the Empire State Building in the foreground.



With a 600mm lens, the view becomes more impressive:



The faux rotary dial phone would have gone home with me if I still had a landline.



The lobby had beautiful floral displays, appropriately themed to the fall season:





A new (to me) discovery this trip was the nearby Union Square:



The park area included monuments to George Washington:



Abraham Lincoln:



The Marquis de Lafayette:



…and a drinking fountain, known as The James Fountain, after philanthropist Daniel Willis James and Theodore Roosevelt Sr. who donated this piece sculpted by Karl Adolph Donndorf and designed by J. Leonard Corning. The fountain is now a decorative planter, surrounded by potheads. Don’t get too close if you don’t want to get high.



Live music abounded:







This gigantic art installation represents a metronome, which was a standard part of my childhood piano lessons. Created by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel in 1999, apparently it periodically releases a plume of steam. In case you miss that, you could always view the exhalings of the Union Square inhabitants. The large rock-like formation at lower left is a bronze hand cast from the George Washington monument in the square.



Stay tuned for part 3!

See more Walker Hotel photos at my main website.