The dictionary definition of touch is “to come so close to (an object) as to be or come into contact with it.” For the purposes of this project, the mere act of touching something simply wasn’t enough. First of all, it was hard to narrow down what we actually should touch. From our first trip, we touched the statues in Athens Square. They were made of bronze and felt cool because of the temperature that day. Other than that, we mainly walked around and observed. For our second trip, we contemplated how to effectively represent the sense of touch on our website. This is when we realized that touch should be more than simply feeling with our hands. We should do our best to imagine what it feels like to live in this neighborhood.
The first thing we focused on was residential housing. The members of this group all came from different parts of New York City (Marine Park, Bensonhurst, and Forest Hills). The houses in Astoria is similar to the houses in some of these neighborhoods, and distinctly different from the houses in some other neighborhood. Forest Hills mostly has single family houses with private road. In Astoria, we observed mostly two-family or three-family homes and saw a lot of townhouses. This shows that the space in Astoria is limited, and that they are mostly occupied by middle class working families. From this, we can infer that this area is inhabited by a lot of immigrants with medium sized to large families. This indirectly shows the socioeconomic status of this neighborhood just by observing the neighborhood.
The second thing we focused on was the architecture of important landmarks of Astoria, things that local residents would see on a daily basis. One thing Astoria is known for is the Hell Gate Bridge. Built in the early 1900s, it was originally planned to connect the railroad in the New England with New Haven. This was accomplished as the Hell Gate Bridge now carries the Amtrak trains and freight rail line. The design of the bridge itself is also quite elaborate. The engineering was so precise that when the last section of the main span was lifted into place, the final adjustment needed to join everything together was just 5⁄16 inch (7.9 mm). We didn’t think such an important construction should be left out from our website, so we included pictures of it as part of the sense of touch.
