Forty second Street looking west from Tudor City: the sun setting exactly down the axis of the grid, the canyon lit gold, the crowd on the overpass and in the crosswalks, the works catching the last light.
Manhattanhenge is the twice yearly evening when the setting sun lines up with Manhattan's east west streets. The street grid comes from the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 and is rotated about 29 degrees from true east west, which puts the alignments in late May and mid July rather than at the equinoxes. Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium named and popularized the event.
Source · American Museum of Natural History, Hayden Planetarium ↗
The Tudor City overpass packed with people, the Chrysler crown catching the sun to the north, the Grand Central viaduct, the canyon of 42nd running to the Hudson with the sun sitting in it, taxis stopped, every phone up. Mood: two minutes before it drops. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.