District heating, steam radiators and getting the air out
In New York’s Central Park, a building across a walkway from the zoo has been there longer than the park. It is The Arsenal. When I was a boy, we lived not far from the zoo. My parents would take my big brother and me to watch the bronze animals in the Delacorte Music Clock twirl on the hour. That magical clock is very near The Arsenal.
This is one of the delicate pleasures of growing old. We can stand in a place and remember a sweet time that will never return. The day I visited The Arsenal as an old man, I listened to the clock and remembered. As a boy, The Arsenal was just a building to me, like all the other buildings in Manhattan. I didn’t even realize it was old. It was just there. But now I see it as a place where I left a bit of myself one frigid January day and that makes it precious to me.