Pictured here is one of my favorite places in New York City, the Rose Main Reading Room located within the New York Public Library. A 100-year-old room, rising 297 feet tall, with a stunning display of Beaux Arts style spanning across a 52-foot ceiling mural. But within this grandiose room is an equally astonishing beauty, that of the people that find themselves gathered in this space. A crowd can captivate one's attention just as much as a priceless work of art. While this building has an everlasting beauty, set in stone, the beauty of a crowd is constantly changing and provides a brief look into the life of a stranger. Baudelaire writes in his poem, “Crowds,” that “enjoying a crowd is an art.” So where does the true art lie? In the gold framed clouds 297 feet above our heads or in the 20 strangers that flank our left and right?

Baudelaire continues to write in his poem “To a Passer-By” about a “fleeting beauty, by whose glance [he] was suddenly reborn.” I think the crowds emanate this “fleeting beauty,” in a way the Rose Main Reading Room cannot. The girl on your right shines with joy as she opens the college acceptance email she just received while the boy on your right has a look of deep concentration as he tries to interpret Balzac’s work. This sweet, ephemeral moment vanishes as quickly as it arrives while the golden skies continue to open above you for 100 more years.