63rd–77th STEPS is pleased to announce > MECHANICS ALLEY <, an electronic book by Ilya Smirnov incorporating a new sequence of texts, drawings, video recordings and photographs into one in-depth location study.
Mechanics Alley begins at Henry Street just east of Market Street and runs two blocks southeast to Monroe. It appears on maps of the district from the early 1800s on, but it runs closer to the riverfront, between Cherry and Monroe Streets, where another tiny lane, called Birmingham Alley runs from Madison to Henry Streets. Presumably, the two alleys were joined at some point. Mechanics Alley disappeared from city maps after the Manhattan Bridge was constructed, almost directly overhead, in 1905. For a long time it used to be a corridor that no maps acknowledged, but now you'll be able to google map the correct configuration of Mechanics Alley, Henry Street and Forsyth Street. As author Kevin Walsh noted, while passing by Mechanics Alley in the daytime it's "... a forbidding place which looks like mugger central. As you will see I did not bother walking on it", and I know it is even more impressive during the night. Noscitur a sociis when a Goddess has functions that are unclear to us, abilities that are inconceivable to us because of our circumscribed extent of awareness, she is called Νυκτ?ρια and it refers to our own inability to reckon her brilliance. She is also addressed as Τριοδ?τις i.e. the one "of the crossroads", the "three-ways". In the Taylor translation you will find the hymn to her at the end, while the Prometheus Trust reprint of the 1894 second edition of Taylor's translation corrects this, making it the first hymn.
>>> THE ACTUAL MECHANICS ALLEY <<<
SPECIAL THANKS TO ANNA TETERKINA FOR CONCEPTUAL INPUT, TO EMMA MCMILLAN FOR ASSISTANCE WITH SET DESIGN AND TO JON LUCAS FOR HIS GUIDANCE