Activity 7- Seagram Building Plaza

Lorraine O’Connell
Urban Studies
Assignment # 7- Plaza Observation


I went to the 77 Water Street Plaza on a Saturday and it was an amazing place. It was located at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd Street and 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. It was busy and hectic, all my observations were extremely similar to the video we watched in class and relates to studies I’ve been doing in Sociology. The trip was an interesting because I didn’t go people watching by myself but instead brought a friend, which made the experience even more elaborate and I saw things through him that I would not otherwise see. The plaza was being used for a variety of activities; people were sitting and talking, eating, playing, sleeping, and most interesting sun bathing.
People watching is extremely fun, and it is a popular activity at the plaza. There were a lot of people there because the weather was extremely gorgeous, and I was definitely not the only person people watching so it made for an interesting time, since I controlled what I was doing and wanted to know why they were people watching and what they got from the experience. There were a lot of people who seemed to be tourists, and then you had your business people on their lunch break, the ordinary people taking a rest, and what seemed to be homeless people there. In the movie William Whyte talked about this Plaza in great depth, but the in the movie it seemed to be more populated and busier then what I examined it to be. Yes, the study William Whyte did was very similar to what I saw in the Plaza myself, but I did not feel that he truly thought the Plaza would become what it has. It is center for eating, talking, and sitting, scenery looking and just hanging out. The people there were of all culture all religions and of all backgrounds, each person had their own purpose for being there and I could only guess why they were there.
William Whyte talked about the usefulness for corners which proved to be very true, people walked around the entire plaza in search of a corner seat, or a seat next to the water or in the shade. All these aspects and behavioral moves were covered in the movie. But what William Whyte didn’t cover was the little habits each gender had for finding a seat or sitting. I watched as both men and women seeked out a seat. When women looked for a seat they’d look for one in the sun and near empty areas (which Whyte covered) but they did before the sat was different from men, they would clean the step before sitting, wiping it off with there hand. Out of the large group I watched at least 80 % of them did that and men only about 30% or so wiped the seat. It was pretty funny because it was a little quirk I picked up on and found it very interesting because then I caught myself doing little things like that.
There were food carts surrounding the plaza making it easy for people to eat and enjoy themselves. There were trees in certain areas but the majority of the plaza was open to sun since the only seating spaces were stairs. Never did the stairs get crowed to the point people were unable to get past. No one was patrolling the area but I quickly picked up on the security guards within the building watching the people and keeping a close eye on those who seemed to be a threat. It was a very active area that had shifts in the groups of people. The art piece within the plaza caused a lot of attention and questioning. People stood around it and looked at it with amazement and intrigued face which I found to be very funny because it was a very tourist thing to do and yet everyone was doing it.
People are an interesting species to examine and its done everyday without notice so this project helped me elaborate on how I feel about little habits and quirks people have, whether it is consciously or sub consciously people are interesting. This project proved to be similar in what Whyte examined but it’s only elaborated since the years the study was done.