New York
5,000 Miles, 8 Countries: The Path to the U.S. Through One Family’s Eyes
The three children had not bathed in four days.
They had been sleeping in a makeshift tent on a dirty street outside a bus terminal in Mexico City, and Hayli, only 6, was developing a rash between her legs. But the parents could not spare the 20 pesos, or roughly $1, for a bucket shower.
After a 55-day trek through Latin America, the five members of the Aguilar Ortega family were stranded more than 3,000 miles from their Venezuelan homeland, and almost as many miles from their intended destination: New York City.
It had been a week since they had arrived in Mexico City, and they had no money to proceed north. The children — Hayli, Samuel, 10, and Josué, 11 — were in good spirits, imagining aloud what it would be like to live in New York. But for the parents, Henry Aguilar, 34, and his partner, Leivy Ortega, 29, the lull demanded a reassessment of what still lay ahead.
While Mayor Eric Adams of New York spoke at a nearby conference in Mexico City, the Aguilar Ortega family slept in tents.
Millions of Venezuelans like the Aguilar Ortega family have fled economic misery and political repression in their homeland as it descended into turmoil. The exodus has led to a sharp increase in crossings at the U.S. border, reigniting immigration as one of the most polarizing issues ahead of the presidential election.
Indeed, the Biden administration recently took executive action to limit the number of migrants crossing the southern border. The decision angered critics who contend that it contradicts America’s image as a safe harbor for the vulnerable. But others welcomed the move amid concerns that migrants were being let in with few checks.
Mr. Aguilar embodied that paradox. He set off for the United States with a turbulent past as a soldier, police officer and bodyguard in Venezuela, and after a prison stint that could derail his chances of securing asylum.
But Mr. Aguilar was hoping to start anew.
Ms. Ortega dreamed of maybe one day opening a restaurant. Both were chasing a vague promise of a better future in the United States while casting aside the real possibility that his criminal history could render the family’s hardship for naught.
The New York Times documented the family’s one-year odyssey, first meeting them in Mexico City, and then rejoining them at the U.S.-Mexican border. The ordeal would test their mental and physical fortitude, strain the parents’ relationship, and challenge their commitment and ability to build a new life in the United States.
The family’s dog, Donna, was with the family every step of the journey.
The journey took them through a jungle of dead bodies and was filled with dangers that terrified the parents, including an obstacle course of dirty police officers, smugglers and immigration checkpoints they traversed on foot and by bus. They had to panhandle, sell lollipops and hustle up odd jobs along the way.
But for the children, the journey was framed as a daring family experience. They took pictures and recorded video that they shared with The Times. They even brought their coffee-colored Labrador mix, Donna. In their eyes, it was all part of a big adventure that would end in a place they had seen only in movies.
“The kids want to go to New York,” Mr. Aguilar said in Spanish as he stood by his tent in Mexico City. “They want to see Times Square.”
But his American dream was even simpler: “All I want is to take my kids to play ball in a park,” he said.
MAY – AUGUST 2023 COLOMBIA
Samuel, Hayli and Josué pose for a photo in Colombia, where along the way they slept in a town plaza for two weeks.
The Decision to Go to New York
Mr. Aguilar left Venezuela about six years ago, part of a flight of more than seven million people who have escaped a once-wealthy country where the economy collapsed and crime skyrocketed under President Nicolás Maduro.
Three years later, Mr. Aguilar found himself in Chile, where he sparked a romance with Ms. Ortega, who is also Venezuelan, and they blended their families. Ms. Ortega left behind a 13-year-old daughter in Ecuador because she was too sick to travel.
Besides Ecuador, the family also spent time in Peru before setting their sights on the United States at the children’s prodding. So they headed to Colombia but with no money, no plan and no place to sleep — a frequent plight during their voyage.
They slept in a town plaza there for two weeks before Mr. Aguilar and Ms. Ortega gathered enough money to rent a home. Colombia, Mr. Aguilar thought, was where he would prepare the children for the menacing rainforest between Colombia and Panama known as the Darién Gap.
“It’s going to be a grand adventure,” Mr. Aguilar recalled telling them. “But with real-life obstacles.”
So Mr. Aguilar put them through an at-home boot camp with a summer camp feel, letting them ride bicycles to boost their stamina.
He woke them up before 7 a.m., but their breakfast portions were small to brace for the coming hunger.
Crossing the Darién Gap
At first, the journey into “la selva,” or the jungle, had the trappings of an organized tour.
The family was given pink wristbands after paying $300 to the armed men who control access to the Darién Gap. And surrounded by hundreds of Venezuelans, they even had a sense of anticipation as they smiled for selfies, their clothes still clean.
That excitement would fade as they waded into the jungle’s depths.
Their feet were rubbed raw as they trudged through mud. Hayli lost two toenails and cried as dirt seeped into the exposed skin. Torrents of rain made rivers roar, forcing Mr. Aguilar to ferry each family member across, one by one — with Donna the Labrador’s stubbornness nearly drowning him.
“Muerto! Muerto!” those toward the front would call back as they passed the bodies of migrants. “Dead! Dead!”
Ms. Ortega generously, but perhaps naïvely, shared the family’s food with other migrants, leaving the family to subsist on nothing but river water on the last two days of the six-day hike through the jungle.
It was hard to hide the brutality of the journey from the children.
“No puedo,” Ms. Ortega would say. “I can’t.”
AUGUST – OCTOBER PANAMA TO MEXICO CITY
The parents presented the journey as a grand adventure to the children.
The family used currency to keep track of places they went through in Guatemala and Mexico.
Getting to Mexico City
Once out of the jungle, the children were committed to the adventure as they crisscrossed dirt roads and slipped from one country into the next.
Josué, ever talkative, told anyone within earshot that they were headed to New York to see Times Square, or las pantallas: the screens.
Samuel, the most reserved of the three, assumed the role of navigator. He quietly tracked their trek on a wrinkled map of Central America as Donna meandered without a leash.
Hayli was always the first to smile for pictures, flashing her tooth gap. Her small legs carried her for hours, as the family circumvented border checkpoints in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.
But for the parents, the burden of not having money was inescapable.
There was transportation to arrange and immigration officers to grease. Bus companies would charge them double or refuse to sell them tickets because they were migrants, a taste of the prejudice that awaited them further north.
They often slept in tents on the street, and going to sleep without eating became normal.
In Guatemala, police officers patted down migrants to steal their money. They groped Ms. Ortega’s breast, leaving her feeling violated, she said. Mr. Aguilar created hiding places for their cash, using toenail clippers to cut small openings into Hayli’s jacket and Josué’s pants. The ruse worked.
They mostly came to rely on the charity of strangers and sporadic money transfers from friends and relatives: more than $8,000 in total, the parents acknowledged with a trace of shame.
OCTOBER – NOVEMBER MEXICO CITY TO CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico
Hopping Freight Trains
The family rode a succession of freight trains to the U.S. border.
The wait for a train could last for hours, especially in the dead of night. When one stopped, they would all emerge from hiding near the tracks and clamber onto a car’s metal roof.
They fastened themselves as best they could, wrapped loosely in rope and blankets, the wind blowing against their faces as they left behind Mexico City.
They were riding “la bestia,” or the beast, the frightening nickname for the cargo trains that many migrants hop illegally, hoping to evade checkpoints and cartels. Countless people have died or lost limbs riding the trains.
Ms. Ortega wrapped her legs around Hayli and prayed that the boys would not fall off. Bundled in quilts, the boys squinted their eyes against the cold breeze, taking in the arid shrub land.
The nights were the hardest. They battled falling asleep, fearful with each jerk of the train that they would fall off.
NOV. 9-10 CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO
A family selfie along the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, before they crossed into Texas.
Ms. Ortega looks at a family ring, the only heirloom she brought from Venezuela.
On their last night in Juárez, the family left for the border patrol checkpoint at 3 a.m.
Approaching the Border
The Times reconnected with the family in Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city where migrants are regularly smuggled and kidnapped for ransom, and sometimes murdered. The Aguilar Ortegas were visibly disheveled, emerging from the last train with little but the clothes on their back, closer than ever to the United States.
“Time is going by slowly now,” Mr. Aguilar said after taking the children to glance at the Rio Grande. Texas was just a few yards away, behind a towering fence.
Using a mobile app that the Biden administration has relied on to curb illegal crossings, the family had secured a coveted appointment to enter the United States legally the next day — the first step for many migrants seeking asylum.
But with no money left for food that night, they decided to pawn Ms. Ortega’s white gold ring, her last family heirloom.
A pawnshop offered her 400 pesos, or $23 — a lowball price, she thought, perhaps because she was Venezuelan. She found a Mexican man to sell the ring for her.
The shop offered him more than double, about $70. She took the money, feeling sad but clever, and slightly empowered.
Entering the United States
As dawn crept across the Rio Grande, migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela with immigration appointments braced the frigid desert air on a bridge connecting Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, Texas.
After entering so many countries illegally, the family’s final border crossing was to be entirely lawful. But that did little to ease their nerves as federal officers began to check their passports, take fingerprints and photographs, and swab their cheeks for DNA.
It is not clear what immigration officials knew of Mr. Aguilar.
He had a tumultuous upbringing in Venezuela: He said he was kicked out of the house as a teenager, and was in a motorcycle accident that resulted in permanent memory loss that blurs his childhood.
Still, he recalled dreaming of becoming a detective, and after a stop in the military, he joined Venezuela’s largest national police agency, which is heavily politicized and has a history of corruption.
Mr. Aguilar was part of a SWAT-like unit that specialized in taking down organized crime when, as a 21-year-old police officer, he was arrested and charged in 2010 with abusing his authority.
Venezuelan prosecutors accused him of participating in an armed shakedown of someone who owed his friend money. The friend and Mr. Aguilar, said to be carrying another officer’s gun, were accused of holding several people at gunpoint and stealing money and bottles of whiskey. Mr. Aguilar was charged with aggravated robbery, extortion and embezzlement, according to the few court documents available online.
Mr. Aguilar says Venezuelan prosecutors distorted the charges and that he and his friend weren’t violent. In court documents, he portrayed himself as accompanying his friend for backup. He eventually served two years in prison, he said.
At the U.S. border, background checks did not appear to turn up Mr. Aguilar’s criminal past. The family was released on parole — a status that allows migrants without visas to live and work in the country as their asylum cases wind through the courts.
Mr. Aguilar’s first court appearance before an immigration judge is scheduled for April 2025. He doesn’t know how he intends to deal with his past: The government can bar asylum for people convicted of serious crimes, and Mr. Aguilar would have to disclose his record on his asylum application.
None of that was front of mind as the family walked into downtown El Paso, ushered in by an archway with a familiar greeting: Bienvenidos.
NOV. 10-24 EL PASO, TEXAS
The family shared tight quarters in a shelter with other migrants arriving daily to El Paso.
Mr. Aguilar slept outside the shelter in El Paso with Donna, because dogs weren’t allowed.
Tumult in Texas
By Day 3 in El Paso, the family was already in turmoil. Ms. Ortega had gotten in a fight at a shelter with three Venezuelan women after tempers flared in the dinner line. The family was forced to go to another shelter.
Ms. Ortega sat down on a stoop, her face scratched, and began to cry.
They were told they did not qualify for free migrant buses out of Texas. And while they had collected $120 — mostly thanks to Donna, who attracted generous passers-by — commercial bus transport to New York was up to $450 per person. They had survived a treacherous monthslong journey, only to be stranded again.
Ms. Ortega thought of the upcoming birthday of her daughter in Ecuador, and wondered if she would have money for a gift. She spoke wistfully about a friend who had made it to New York and already had an apartment and enough money to help his family in Venezuela.
“It’s not envy, but I want to be over there already,” she said through tears. “I feel stuck here. It hasn’t even been 72 hours and I’ve already been hit.”
Mr. Aguilar consoled her. “It’s always been like this,” he said. “But we always figure it out.”
The journey had taken its toll on the children. When Josué and Samuel played with toy cars on the sidewalk, they re-enacted scenes from their young lives: immigration police officers chasing migrants.
And tensions between the parents began to simmer as they deciphered what to do next. Was New York even the right place to go?
“Things are tough in New York with the 100,000 migrants who have arrived there,” Father Rafael García warned them gently at their first shelter, which is run by the Roman Catholic Church.
Taped to the shelter wall, a flier in Spanish paid for by New York City offered a more dire assessment: “It’s best if you go to a more affordable city.”
The flight the family took to New York was the first time Ms. Ortega had been on a plane.
After arriving, the family headed for a familiar migrant starting point, the Roosevelt Hotel.
Fasten Your Seatbelts
Hayli cried when her ears popped for the first time as the plane gained altitude, but once it glided into La Guardia Airport, her sense of wonder took over.
“Papi, the bathroom was magical!” she exclaimed, recounting how the hand dryers and toilets sprung to life via sensors.
Just a few weeks earlier, New York had seemed out of reach. But in El Paso, the family met a group of Christian missionaries from Michigan who, taken aback by their story, raised nearly $2,000 for Delta flights.
And so it was that the family landed in New York the day after Thanksgiving with 20 cents, their few belongings stuffed inside a donated suitcase and a pink sleeping bag that Mr. Aguilar hauled like Santa Claus.
The family had heard that if they went to a place called Manhattan, they could get free shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel, the welcoming center for the 200,000 migrants who have recently come to the city.
At a Queens subway station, they persuaded a Spanish-speaking police officer to let them in without paying the fare. They climbed a maze of stairs and almost boarded the wrong train until a passer-by offered them guidance.
The children stared out the 7 train in awe as the city skyline materialized against an orange sunset.
“Better than riding the top of a train,” Mr. Aguilar said.
NOV. 25 – DEC. 9 MANHATTAN AND BROOKLYN
For the children, Times Square was the goal. They stared in awe at the lit-up screens and the costumed superheroes.
The family celebrated Ms. Ortega’s 29th birthday at the Floyd Bennett Field shelter in Brooklyn.
Trying to Make It in New York
The children held hands in Times Square. They strolled around Central Park, posing for a picture by the statue of Simón Bolivar, the revered Venezuelan who fought Spain.
But the allure of sightseeing quickly gave way to challenges: finding jobs, permanent housing, a sense of stability.
They had been assigned to a far-flung Brooklyn shelter at Floyd Bennett Field, an old airfield on Jamaica Bay where the city is housing hundreds of families in a giant tent dormitory.
Upset by the tent environment and its distance from Manhattan, Mr. Aguilar, prone to making rash decisions, initially rejected the shelter’s free room and board before acknowledging it was the family’s only option.
“I was being rebellious,” Mr. Aguilar said. “I’ve been wrong so many times before. I’m not perfect.”
But the parents began getting antsy. The shelter was getting crowded. They didn’t speak English or know how to apply for a legal work permit.
So after just three weeks, Mr. Aguilar uprooted his family again.
DECEMBER – MARCH MIDDLETOWN, CONN.
The family was placed into a two-bedroom home in Middletown, Conn., after leaving the shelter system in New York.
Hayli and the boys were enrolled in schools, where they quickly picked up English.
A New Home in Connecticut
A few days before Christmas, the family was sleeping in a car outside a gas station in Brooklyn.
The children snuggled tightly in the back seat, braving the cold in a beat-up Honda sedan Mr. Aguilar had found on Facebook for $800. Then good fortune intervened.
During a brief stay in Connecticut a few weeks earlier, the family had met Maria Cardona, who works at a social services provider there. She called Ms. Ortega to check in, and learned of the family’s setup. She immediately made some calls.
“Their situation impacted me deeply,” Ms. Cardona said.
She helped them move into a two-bedroom house on a leafy street in Middletown, Conn., operated by a local nonprofit that provides free emergency housing for homeless families. The family was allowed to stay on a month-by-month basis if they showed a case manager they were actively looking for employment and a permanent home.
More help arrived.
Amy Swan, the psychologist at the children’s elementary school, gathered donations of food and clothes, as well as money to pay the $410 fee for Mr. Aguilar to apply for a permit to work legally.
Her husband, Ray Swan, owns a wood workshop and was looking for a worker. So he hired Mr. Aguilar, who worked in carpentry after leaving Venezuela, and began paying him $20 an hour to build furniture and kitchen cabinets.
“He works hard and doesn’t complain,” Mr. Swan said at his workshop in March. “I can’t stop singing his praises.”
MARCH – JULY MIDDLETOWN, CONN. TO HOUSTON
After abruptly leaving Connecticut for Houston, the family faced new challenges.
The parents share news of her pregnancy with their three children.
More Turmoil and an Uncertain Future
In early March, the family received more welcome news: Ms. Ortega was pregnant.
She’s expected to give birth later this year. Having a child who is a U.S. citizen would not give the parents any special protections against deportation, leaving the family’s immigration status in flux.
Immigration lawyers said that Mr. Aguilar’s past will seriously complicate his bid for asylum, an uphill process that usually ends with judges saying no.
“If it’s God’s will that I’m not here in two years, then so be it,” Mr. Aguilar said in Connecticut in March. “I’m happy being with my family and making them happy.”
But the parents were still stressing about their future, and their relationship continued to fray. One night in mid-April, Ms. Ortega grabbed a baseball bat and swung at Mr. Aguilar, hitting his hands. She said it happened in the heat of the moment. Mr. Aguilar was not injured and did not hit back.
She was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, and a protective order was issued to keep Ms. Ortega away from Mr. Aguilar. He lost his carpentry job, and the family was forced from the house. Mr. Aguilar was placed in a shelter for domestic violence victims with his children, Samuel and Hayli; Ms. Ortega was set up elsewhere with Josué, her son.
The family was languishing again — apart, with a baby on the way and their immigration status still in question.
Desperate, they fell back on the same spur-of-the-moment manner that guided their travels. Ignoring the protective order and strapped for money, the parents reconciled and abandoned Connecticut, leaving Ms. Ortega’s court case unresolved. They hauled the children and Donna south in the old Honda, hoping it wouldn’t break down.
About 1,700 miles and five days later, they arrived in Houston, where the mother of Mr. Aguilar’s two children took the family in, cramming into a small apartment with mattresses on the floor.
Mr. Aguilar is applying for landscaping jobs while doing delivery gigs. Ms. Ortega has been satisfying her pregnancy cravings with mangos.
But, ever restless, the parents were already hatching next moves.
Denver seemed promising. Salt Lake City, perhaps.
In Houston, at least, Mr. Aguilar had fulfilled his wish: He found a park to play catch with the children.
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Ryan Compton knows a thing or two about gigs. To make it in New York, he has worked as a retail associate inside the Museum of Modern Art’s gift store, a cashier for a downtown taqueria and a paint mixer for Takashi Murakami. He has experienced the paradox of a city both known for its artists and for pricing artists out.
Financial constraints forced Mr. Compton, who is from South Jersey, to move away from New York twice over the course of two decades. He has lived in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia, but remains convinced the resources and people inside New York are unparalleled.
“You never know who you’re going to run into,” he said. “Everyone’s curious about each other.”
Since moving back in 2022, he has whittled down his source of income to a single gig as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he made $51,000 before taxes last year. It’s his second time at the museum. He first worked there part-time in 2011 before leaving in 2015 to earn his master’s degree in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
“I know I couldn’t afford graduate school and the cost of living in New York at the same time,” he said.
A third try at New York life has forced Mr. Compton, now 46, to confront the sustainability behind a career as both an interdisciplinary artist and a security guard — even inside one of the most famous museums in the world.
Love at First Sight (With New York)
As an undergraduate student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Mr. Compton looked forward to spending weekends at his friend’s apartment gallery in the East Village in Manhattan.
A combination of showing face and knowing the right person led to his side project at the time — fashioning 3-d printed stuffed animals with skull faces — which were featured in an issue of Vogue Japan. He even sold a few inside a handmade craft store in Tokyo’s Ginza district for about $1,000.
“I was interested in the contrast between fuzzy-shaped animals and skulls,” he said, later adding, “You know, stuff when you’re a 20-something-year-old being kind of edgy.”
The early moment of success propelled Mr. Compton to chase after opportunities to showcase his work. While supporting himself financially through retail and service jobs, he helped write the artist Roman Ondak’s interactive performance piece at MoMA, “Measuring the Universe;” and worked as a collaborator for “No Souls for Sale,” an experimental project temporarily at Dia Chelsea and later, the Tate Modern in London. Both went unpaid.
“The chance to work in modern art before I was 30 is unheard of,” Mr. Compton said. “It only happens in New York.”
A Slower Pace
Tens of thousands of people flock to the Metropolitan on weekends, and it’s Mr. Compton’s job — one he has found increasingly difficult — to make sure the art is untouched. He believes social media has altered the way visitors engage with the museum. Think more selfies and poses leaned against Hellenistic marble.
The one hour work commute from Parkchester in the East Bronx gives him time to prepare for a long day ahead. He splits a two-bedroom with a co-worker for $1,000 a month and pays $50 in utilities. Heat and water are included in his rent, and his roommate covers the cost of Wi-Fi. He pays $90 each month for his phone bill.
The slower pace of the residential neighborhood matches the stage of life he’s in now. In the last few years, Mr. Compton has slowed down as he has come to terms with the expenses behind his art.
He no longer has free access to fabrication laboratories pegged to his university, and he has opted for the more cost-friendly hobbies of zine-making and book binding. He is, however, eyeing a $1,000 3-d printer. For now, he has settled on $20 a month Photoshop subscription.
The largest constraint tempering Mr. Compton’s spending is his $100,000 student loan debt from graduate school. The window for his deferment period closed, and even with some money he inherited after his mother passed, he says he needs a miracle to finish paying off his loans. “I’m not sure what to do anymore,” he said.
Splurging on Plants and Experimental Harsh Noise Records
Mr. Compton may not have any children, but he is a proud “plant dad.”
His apartment houses $1,000 worth of plants sourced through Facebook groups, pop-ups and by following Brooklyn Horticulture online. He typically pays $30-$50 for medium to large sized plants, but he is constantly on the lookout for deals.
When he isn’t at home with his plants, Mr. Compton treks into Manhattan to do his weekly grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. He prefers the prices there to local spots in the Bronx and estimates he spends $70 each week.
A cash guzzler of Mr. Compton’s food budget is the $20 a day — an additional $80 a week — he spends at the Metropolitan’s staff cafeteria for breakfast and lunch. When working 12 hour shifts, “I’m not gonna go home and make something to bring the next day,” he said.
On his days off, he seeks out affordable food deals. He frequents Vanessa’s Dumplings in Chinatown for their $8 dumpling special.
When in the mood to treat himself, Mr. Compton rides the train a few more stops out to Ridgewood, Queens and Bushwick, Brooklyn, to visit his favorite record stores like Fringe Records and Nexus Records. An experimental harsh noise aficionado, he spends no less than $100 each visit.
His biggest and most recent splurge was a 10-day trip to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka in Japan in February. He was able to cut his $900 round trip ticket to $700 with credit card points. Add in the cost of hotels, meals and souvenirs, he spent close to $5,000 total.
“I wanted to go because my artwork had been to Japan, but I haven’t been to Japan,” he said.
Looking Ahead
Mr. Compton wants to strike a balance between saving and enjoying the life he dreamed of in New York. To help pay off his loans, he considered applying to be an art handler for the Metropolitan, a job with a slight pay bump. But without his present benefit of overtime pay, he’s afraid he would be making less than he does currently.
Over the years, Mr. Compton has found community among other security guards at the Metropolitan, who, like him, are artists. He has also built inroads with notable names at the museum, one being Sheena Wagstaff, the former chairman of modern and contemporary art, who he said took the time to know Mr. Compton not only as a co-worker, but also as an individual, too.
Because of his connections, he feels like he has nowhere else to go. He considered a quieter lifestyle upstate in Westchester or the Catskills, but believes he will make less money outside of the city. And, of course, he would have to leave the place he’s called home for the majority of his adult years.
“I did four other cities, and they weren’t as good or great as I like New York,” he said. “I always end up here.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
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Look up.
Before you commute home to suburbs like Tarrytown and Larchmont, or race toward the next stop on your tourist map, take a minute.
Look up to see the stars.
One hundred and twenty-five feet above you are 2,500 stars and six signs of the zodiac along the ecliptic, a line that represents the path of the sun across the sky:
The signs are joined by a few others: Orion, Pegasus, Triangulum and, in the center of it all, Musca Borealis (the Northern fly, or sometimes called Apis, the bee). The Milky Way streaks across the ceiling in the opposite direction. The whole thing is ringed by intricate plaster moldings along the clerestory windows. Fifty-nine of the stars twinkle.
Who says there isn’t magic in Midtown?
The original early 1900s plan for the ceiling was to build a massive skylight so commuters could look up at the actual stars:
But time and money were short, so the architects asked the artist Paul Helleu to design a version of the sky on the ceiling instead. Helleu took inspiration from star atlases from the 1600s. His main resource was the Uranometria from 1603, a lushly illustrated volume that was the first detailed cataloging of individual stars, their positions and brightness. See how similar the figures are. This is Aries:
Here’s Taurus, the bull:
A heart balloon — one of several — had floated up the day we took this photograph, nestling between Orion’s club and Taurus’s horn (maybe an earthly sign that this heavenly hunt might finally resolve).
Converting the flat drawings of a spherical sky re-projected onto a semi-cylindrical vaulted ceiling would have been no easy task. The design work was done by a famous scenic designer and muralist, James Monroe Hewlett, and was overseen by the Columbia astronomy professor Harold Jacoby, who in 1910 assured a panicked public that Halley’s comet would not hit Earth.
Dozens of painters got to work. The terminal opened at midnight on Feb. 2, 1913. The New York Central Railroad boasted “that many school children will go to the Grand Central Terminal to study this representation of the heavens.”
Two weeks later, a commuter from New Rochelle (and a hobby astronomer) looked up at the ceiling and realized that west was east and east was west and the sky was not, actually, in a proper arrangement. Only Orion was shown in the “correct” orientation. He wrote a “wrathful” letter to the station. As The New York Times reported in 1913, officials at Grand Central “did not deny the charge that things were a bit mixed, but held that it was a pretty good ceiling for all that.”
How this happened is still a matter of debate, given Professor Jacoby’s astronomical blessing.
Michael Allison, a former NASA planetary scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (and a former adjunct in the Columbia astronomy and astrophysics department), met me last month at the great clock under the ceiling to explain his theory.
“I’ve stared at the ceiling I don’t know how many hours,” he said. “I keep hoping I can discover one more thing.”
The liberties taken, Mr. Allison said, like re-sizing the constellations to fit the space and flipping Orion (in relation to the rest), were carefully done. Ultimately, a good marriage of art and science. He thinks Jacoby was a victim of big project bureaucracy, that it was all a mixup.
Jacoby probably expected the design he approved to be projected overhead, where the result would match the plans if you held them above you. The painters put them on the floor instead. Hence, the flip.
But this “heavenly view” — the stars as if they could be seen from above, looking down — may not be a bad view at all.
“There are just so many bad things happening in the world now that I think the sky offers a perspective that can lift us above that,” Mr. Allison said.
For Deirdre Newman, the great-granddaughter of the muralist Hewlett, who painted the ceiling, the imperfection “is what art is.”
Ms. Newman, it turns out, is also a painter of murals and ceilings. But these days, if she has to flip an image, she just hits a button on the projector.
“Anytime I make a mistake painting, I’m like, this proves that it’s art,” she said. “It is not perfection, and it shouldn’t be — it would be a sad thing if it was.”
The stories that we’ve given to the stars over millenniums, some of the most retold tales in history, are hardly orderly — stories of fate, violence, betrayal, revenge, sex and punishment. Cancer helps Hera in pinching a rival’s foot. Orion, son of Poseidon, is placed in the stars by Zeus, locked in an eternal hunt. The two fish of Pisces (Aphrodite and Eros) are linked together to escape the monster-of-all-monsters, Typhon.
Or the stories are totally different if you were Babylonian or Egyptian, Greek or Roman. Today, the stars mean something else again to a devoted user of the horoscope app Co-Star, seeking reassurance after a breakup. And to a commuter standing in Grand Central, looking up while waiting for the train, the stars might just be a momentary diversion, a decorative way to pass the time. Or more.
Take what you want. Take what you need.
***
By the 1940s, the ceiling had fallen into disrepair, so they painted a whole new one on four-foot-by-eight-foot asbestos sheets over the old one. This is the version that exists today. Eventually that second ceiling, too, grew dark with grime and had to be cleaned from 1996 to 1998. The difference was stark. As you were zooming in, you may have noticed a little dark square by Cancer. They deliberately left one bit of the uncleaned ceiling here:
The best time to take all of it in — the ceiling, and the majesty of the station — might just be coming this weekend. The setting sun will line up with Manhattan’s street grid and should (pending clouds) bathe the terminal in a beautiful golden glow Saturday at 8:19 p.m. and Sunday at 8:20 p.m. I plan to be on the east balcony looking west on Sunday for that moment.
See you there.
How we took the photograph
To generate a high-resolution panorama of the ceiling, The Times captured 232 close-up images. We then used software to stitch these photos into an equirectangular projection, to approximate the curve of the ceiling. We also developed custom computer vision software to ensure consistent color blending across varying lighting conditions. To optimize for display efficiency and clarity during navigation, the image was then re-projected into the shape of a cube. We think it’s still a pretty good picture for all that.
This is an installment in our series of experiments on art and attention. If you liked this one, you may like these past exercises: a finished, unfinished portrait; a sudden rain over a bridge; a unicorn tapestry; some buckets from Home Depot; and a Whistler painting.
Sign up to be notified when new installments are published here. And let us know how this exercise made you feel in the comments.
Welcome to Day 2 of the Metropolitan Diary challenge, part of our celebration of the column’s 50th anniversary. On Day 1, we gave you tips for identifying your New York City story. Today, we’ll help you write it. (Missed Day 1? It’s not too late to start.)
What makes for a good Diary? It’s simply a good story that happens to be set in, and capture, the essential New York-ness of the city. While this isn’t a full writing course, we do have guidance on the kinds of elements that the submissions we publish include. They typically have: a beginning, middle and end; sharp details; catchy dialogue; a bit of surprise; some humor, warmth or emotion. But there is no formula, so flouting these loose rules can be worthwhile.
Don’t worry if you don’t think of yourself as a “writer.” Focus on being a “storyteller.” Pretend you are telling your story to the person who’d most appreciate it, using whatever conversational language or pacing that would hold their attention. Do it out loud if you want, maybe give that person a call and tell them your story (or tell it to them again). Then write it down.
That’s the big picture. For more tips, read on.
Here is an example of a published Diary that we (and readers) really liked, and a few thoughts on why that may help crystallize yours.
Unacceptable
Dear Diary:
I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights1 with my son.
When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.2
The man behind the counter looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”3
— Richie Powers
One of this item’s best qualities is that it is short and snappy. Only 53 words! Although we will use stories of up to 300 words, many don’t need to be that long and the column doesn’t work if we don’t have a mix of long, medium and short, so we are always looking for stuff like this. Here’s another one!
At Attention
Dear Diary:
It was December 1967. I had just finished basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey and was traveling to Boston in uniform. For reasons I no longer recall, I stopped in New York City on the way.1
Walking on the Upper East Side2 in a snowstorm, I spied another man in a uniform. He was older, and his cap bore the familiar gold band that identified him as an officer.
I rendered a snappy salute. It was not returned. 3The uniform was unfamiliar, so I guessed he was a foreign officer. Military courtesy still required me to salute.
A little farther down the street, I encountered another officer and offered another salute that went unacknowledged.4 His uniform was strange to me as well.
The third time it happened, the man I saluted ignored me while holding the door for a couple 5on their way into a large apartment building.
I realized I had been saluting doormen.6
— Stephen Salisbury
To get your storytelling muscles going, think through or jot down the answers to some of these questions.
Let’s start with setting the scene.
- When and where in the city did this happen? Is this place well-known?
- Was there anything particular about that point in your life that’s relevant?
- What did you see, hear, smell? Was there something notable about the weather?
Now, let’s move to the middle, the meat of the story.
- Did you have an exchange with someone?
- What details are important to how events unfolded, especially in setting up the ending?
And now, the end.
- What’s the resolution? Is there a punchline?
- Does the story end with a sense of shared humanity or some other warm feeling that lingers? You don’t need to name it. A good description will often allow readers to feel it too.
- Why has this experience stayed with you?
- Lines like “and that’s why I love New York” are almost always unnecessary.
That’s it. Keep your story simple and use the kind of plain language you use in conversation. You are sketching a moment in time. The details are important. Let them move the story along. Have fun and good luck.
Once you’re done, read through what you’ve got. What details are less important and can be left out? (Remember, there is a strict 300-word limit.)
Write your Metropolitan Diary however you like, on paper, on your phone or wherever! When you’re happy with what you’ve written, put your diary entry into the box below, fill out your information and submit it. You might just hear from me about including it in a future column.
This is the official submission form, so make sure to double-check your work before hitting submit.
That’s it! Submit your Metropolitan Diary.
By transmitting your submission, you grant The New York Times Company a perpetual, royalty-free license to use the submission in any medium. They may be edited, and may be republished and adapted in all media. You may reprint your story elsewhere after it appears in The Times.
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