A couple of months ago I posted a digital image of Essex and Delancey Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Here is the 4×5 version, shrunk down and low-rez for the web, of course. This image and the following text is also on my homepage in the Outtakes section.

Essex and Delancey Streets (4×5 negative)

Rising out of the tumult of the Lower East Side amid the discount stores of Delancey Street is Blue, a condominum designed by architect Bernard Tschumi.

For the moment, sneaker shops and fast food hold sway–but for how long? The icy blue-on- blue, glass-against-sky, tower looms above the riff-raff and roaring traffic of the Williamsburg Bridge.

As I continue to photograph the Lower East Side, I return to such architectural icons, unthinkable just a few years ago, as touchstones of New York’s present gilded age.