Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | Last Tuesday afternoon I took a helicopter flight over New York to take a look at a city in the depth of lockdown, a day when another 300 people died from COVID-19. Usually the skies of Manhattan are crowded with plane and helicopter traffic, but that day I had it all to myself. It was strange to see the glass canyons empty at rush hour, and most office buildings dark. Take a look up fifty blocks of First Ave. on far right. It felt like a scene from a futuristic apocalypse movie, waiting for a super hero. #pandemic

Last Tuesday I had two extraordinary flights over New York, a city in paralysis as it copes with the COVID-19 pandemic. To share that flight with me, check out this morning’s broadcast from CBS News, via the link in my IG bio.

Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | Preparing for burials of what appear to be more COVID-19 victims earlier this week on Hart Island, New York City. For over 150 years this island with no public access has been used to bury over a million souls who’s bodies were not claimed for private burial. With the morgues of NYC strained, the pace of burials on Hart Island has increased dramatically. I was cited by NYPD while taking this photo, and my drone was confiscated as evidence, for a court date tentatively scheduled for mid-August. #keepthememorycard

Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | The JFK International Airport Air Traffic Control Tower, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, was, at 320 feet, the tallest in the world when it opened in 1994. As JFK is the busiest international air passenger gateway into North America, its air traffic controllers now manage the flights of over ninety airlines from more than fifty countries carrying more than sixty million passengers. The most popular international route is New York–London, and the most popular domestic route is New York–Los Angeles.

Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | The Ramble in Central Park on a cold winter morning. The Ramble in Central Park is as wild as its landscape gets, but it is completely manmade. It was the Romantic creation of park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, who installed not only the trees—some still remain from the original 1859 planting—but also the stream that traverses it and the lake beside it. It attracts not only people, but also birds: 230 species by one count. To view more of our world from above, follow @geosteinmetz.

Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | Sunset Park area of Brooklyn on an early winter morning after a few inches of snow. The growth of Sunset Park in Brooklyn was propelled by New York’s shipping industry through World War II, as two of the largest terminals in the harbor are just outside of the frame of this photograph. Through the years of New York’s maritime might, the neighborhood was known for its large Scandinavian community, which scattered during the 1970s and ‘80s and was replaced by Hispanic and Chinese immigrants. Today, it is an extraordinarily diverse area, boasting one of the city’s three Chinatowns and an art community that is being driven elsewhere by rising commercial rents in industrial buildings near the river. To explore the world beyond New York City, follow @geosteinmetz.

Evening view of the Chrysler Building in New York City. William Van Alen’s seventy-seven story Chrysler Building was the world’s tallest for only eleven months, until the Empire State Building surpassed it in 1931, but no skyscraper has ever surpassed its harmonious design, the grace with which its crown emerges from its shaft, the seamless transition from brick to steel. The Chrysler Building owes its existence to Walter P. Chrysler, who backed Van Alen’s dazzling plan with his own cash after the original developer got cold feet. An industry study in 1929, just before the Crash, argued that construction costs rendered Midtown buildings above sixty-three stories unprofitable ventures, and the top seven floors of the Chrysler Building are barely rentable thanks to that gorgeous crown. Chrysler was paying for immortality, but he made Van Alen sue for his fee.

Calvary Cemetery in 2014, after the first Nor’easter of the season laid down a fresh blanket of white. With over 3 million interments, it has the most graves of any cemetery in the USA, and is also one of the oldest.

Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | The parks in New York morph with the seasons, but few change as dramatically as Bryant Park. From November through February the lawn is converted into an ice rink, the only admission-free rink in the city. The rink is surrounded by glass-enclosed shopping kiosks that glow like a circuit board swarming with ants. To view more of our world from above, follow @geosteinmetz.

Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | Lower Manhattan on a late autumn afternoon. To explore more of our world from above, follow @geosteinmetz.

Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | Looking north from Washington Square Park on an autumn afternoon. In Washington Square, the rays in the plaza’s paving stones seem like lines of force that attract people to perch on the fountain’s retaining wall and sit on the benches around the perimeter. The square, at the foot of Fifth Avenue, is one of the city’s great public spaces, perhaps best known as a congregating place for musicians during the folk music revival of the 1950s and ‘60s—and for their battles with the city over their right to the turf. Stanford White’s arch of 1892 was inspired by Paris’s Arc de Triomphe.

Photo by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz | View over the Queensbridge housing development and Roosevelt Island towards Manhattan. The New York City Housing Authority was established in 1934 to provide housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. The largest public housing authority in North America, it manages over 175,000 apartments throughout the city. The Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, opened in 1939, is the largest public housing development in North America. Musicians from Queensbridge played a seminal role in the evolution of hip hop, provoking a rivalry with the South Bronx in the mid-1980s over which area could claim to be its birthplace. Speaking of his landmark first album of 1994, Nas told an interviewer, “When I made Illmatic I was a little kid in Queensbridge trapped in the ghetto. My soul was trapped in Queensbridge projects.”