In which The Gay Recluse documents the ruins of Washington Heights and self-referentially quotes an earlier post.

Date of photo: April 6, 2008

Location: 161st Street between Broadway and Amsterdam

This lion is understandably upset by his bad hair and tacky gold paint! (Still, he’s over 100 years old so it could definitely be worse.)

In Washington Heights we live among extremes of material decadence and breathtaking neglect, apparent in the crumbling cornices of Ft. Washington Avenue and eroding limestone facades of St. Nicholas, not to mention the tiled mosaics in the entrance foyers of the apartment palaces of upper Broadway — grand, tessellated spaces reminiscent of The Alhumbra — through which uncountable millions of apathetic feet have passed in the decades since their painstaking construction. Only here among the ruins can we permit ourselves the indulgence of a certain wistful nostalgia for the past, knowing it is one that we can never hope to regain.

–The Gay Recluse, September 2007