“The Ansonia, the neighborhood’s great landmark, was built by Stanford White. It looks like a baroque palace from Prague or Munich enlarged a hundred times, with towers, domes, huge swells and bubbles of metal gone green from exposure, iron fretwork and festoons. Black television antennae are densely planted on its round summits. Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tufa in sunlight.This morning it looked like the image of itself reflected in deep water, white and cumulous above, with cavernous distortions underneath.Together, the two men gazed at it.”  

-Saul Bellow p5