The skyscraper has lost much of its allure, so much so that’s it’s easy to forget how odd super-tall buildings are, and how remarkable the landscape of midtown Manhattan really is.

An exhibit of vintage aerial photographs of New York City at the Keith de Lellis Gallery recaptures that glamor.  Some of the older shots feel blurry and cramped, as if the conventions of photography couldn’t yet keep up with the technology of construction.  All the shots have a gee-whiz quality.  There’s an eagle-eye view looking from midtown straight down to Central Park.  The way the dense, mountain-like fabric of high-rise buildings halts at the north edge of the park is truly stunning.

(Berenice Abbott, Nightview, New York, circa 1932.  Photogravure.)

I watched Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” last night for the first time since I moved to New York over ten years ago.  The opening, a montage of shadowy, black-and-white views of the city, is lovely, but this shot of the Guggenheim made me gasp.

It’s shockingly simple and conveys so much: the slight slope of the ramp as you’re walking it, the relaxed voyeurism of the open balconies, and the jewel-box feeling of the museum at night.  It’s the gentlest, least heroic image I’ve seen of the museum, and the one that I want to keep with me.