About Elevator View
I started Elevator View in January 2011, not long after I began working on the 22nd floor of an office building in Midtown Manhattan. The views from this vantage point include Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Burberry Building, Palace Hotel, St. Bartholomew’s Church, Park Avenue, and Madison Avenue (with glimpses of the rising 4 World Trade Center). After photographing these views, I started bringing my camera along anytime I knew I would be in a building with elevated views of the city – to business meetings and social events – and at the invitation of people who learn about the project and offer me the opportunity to photograph their vantage points.
The dense urban “block-scapes” that are constantly developed and refined by this growth promote greater health through increased walkability and access to public transit, preserve undeveloped environment by concentrating human activity in urban neighborhoods, and “provide the city with an energy generated from the exchange of ideas and knowledge through social interactions” (The Dynamic Population of Manhattan, page 17).
I hope to deepen people’s appreciation of the importance, vitality, and awe-inspiring beauty of these urban landscapes by showcasing the city from vantage points that provide a new and different perspective.
Designing the Elevator View Identity
The name “Elevator View” conveys the idea of views that can be accessed by an elevator – above street level, but not aerial. The elevator spurred the vertical growth of New York City, and the two share a storied history. In 1854, Elisha Otis demonstrated his design for a safety elevator at the New York Crystal Palace at Reservoir Square (now Bryant Park). The Equitable Life Building, completed in 1870, was the first office building to use passenger elevators. John Roebling, famously known for designing the Brooklyn Bridge, also supplied steel ropes to the elevator industry, and ropes from his company were used in the elevators at the Empire State Building. Enabled by the elevator, the race to build ever-taller buildings reached a fever-pitch by the early 20th century, exemplified by the fierce rivalry between the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street, and has continued unabated ever since.
I designed the Elevator View logo to visually convey the idea of photographing an urban environment from high up in the buildings that form the city’s architectural fabric. It features the silhouette of a camera near the top of a building meant to evoke iconic skyscrapers like the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, American International Building, and 1 Bryant Park. This helps make Elevator View easily identifiable and memorable.
Influences
Berenice Abbott, Iwan Baan, John Bartelstone, Andreas Feininger, Norman McGrath, New York’s Photo League, Sherill Schell, Irving Underhill, Camilo José Vergara
Press
- View the Skyline From the Skyline at ‘Elevator View’ Curbed NY, 5/2012
- An Elevated View of the City The Atlantic Cities, 12/2011
- Elevator View: A Photo Essay Untapped Cities, 7/2011
- Elevator View photographer Stewart Mader is a member of the Gawker Artists collective
- “These photographs are beautiful. Mr. Mader is an original, just the way New York City is an original.” -Peachlet_51
Stewart Mader
Stewart Mader has helped companies around the world create and market online products that increase information value, collaboration, and customer engagement. By day, he is Director of Social Media and Online Tools at CFA Institute, which means leading global social media strategy, content, advertising, and analytics, and embedding social media into product development, events, marketing, and PR. He is an experienced project manager, team leader and mentor, dynamic speaker, and author of two books. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry from University of Hartford and an M.S. in Curriculum Development and Instructional Technology from University at Albany.
How do you use Twitter in your professional life?
I’m responsible for @CFAinstitute, the main Twitter presence for the global association promoting ethics and responsible conduct among investment professionals.
Twitter or Facebook?
As a news feed you can constantly refine to deliver information that suits your interests, Twitter is indispensable.
How do you decide what to tweet?
When I publish a new photo on elevatorview.com, I also tweet the title and a link to it. I repeat each tweet multiple times over a multi-day period, and a different times (early morning, noon, afternoon, late night, etc.) so it has a greater probability of being seen by people in different times zones. Interspersed with tweets linking to my own photos, I share links to photos taken by other people that provide great elevated views of New York.
What inspires you to tweet?
Sharing my own photography, and discovering and sharing others’ photos to create a one-of-a-kind stream that gives people a new perspective on New York.
140 characters of advice for a new Twitter user?
Focus on a topic about which you’re passionate. That will help you build a community of followers and make connections.
Who is the funniest person on Twitter that you follow?
Andy Borowitz @BorowitzReport
What is one of the biggest misconceptions of Twitter?
Some people don’t understand that Twitter has become a vitally important source of timely information on just about any topic of interest. It’s not a place to #overshare mundane details of your life.
Can you name some one-of-a-kind Twitter accounts that you follow?
@heyprojectneon @boweryboys @greatdiscontent @transitmap @nycscout @urbanphoto_blog
Quotes
“When land is scarce and expensive you build close and high, and Manhattan is an island of solid street walls and shoulder-to-shoulder skyscrapers. The streets that border them are public social space; they are full of life and activity and the promise of whatever lies around the corner. Because the grid is a total democratization of space, with no area designated as more important than any other, every neighborhood creates its own distinct identity, with the capability of reinventing itself, like people, and moving on.”
Ada Louise Huxtable
“Cities can be neither simplified nor easily defined. They are hard to interpret. They are the ultimate and natural expression of human evolution, of human dreams and needs; they are as complex as the people who build them, as the planet itself; they have a sensitive ecology. In their architecture and their social organisation they are capable of reflecting the very best in us.”
— Michael Moorcock
“If you do something, and it turns out pretty good, then you should just do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”
— Steve Jobs
“A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us — a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better.”
— Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of industrial Design at Apple
“We believe strongly that the company is going to be reflected in the product and vice-versa. The internal matches the external and the external matches the internal, and if we can’t provide a clean, simple, well-designed experience in here, it’s not going to be reflected in our identity.”
— Jack Dorsey, co-founder & CEO of Square, and co-founder & executive chairman of Twitter
“A healthy product company is, confusingly, one at odds with itself. There is a healthy part which is attempting to normalize and to create predictability, and there needs to be another part that is tasked with building something new that is going to disrupt and eventually destroy that normality.”
— Michael Lopp
“Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy it will make you strong.”
— Bruce Springsteen
“Newness, novelty and the next thing are all encouraged by small-scale opportunities.”
— Ada Louise Huxtable
“Tech can make our lives simpler in magnificent ways but if it makes you look dorky, it’s out.”
— Lauren Leto
“Being there lets you hear what people are saying. It makes you discoverable and accessible to a host of different users. And once you’re there, listening to others helps you figure out what you have to add.”
— Rachel Blatt, Wolff Olins content manager, on why one might want to establish a social media presence
