Yesterday, in preparation for a new walking tour I'll be giving in the spring, I stopped by the Galleria, a residential tower from the 1970s on East 57th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues. Specifically I went to see the thru-block POPS (Privately Owned Public Space) that Jerold Kayden describes in his 2000 guide to POPS as "easy to miss" yet "subdued."

Here is a plan of the enclosed space, which spans from 57th Street to 58th Street, taken from the APOPS website:

I was coming from the 59th/Lexington subway stop, so I accessed the Galleria from 58th Street on the north. In either case, the POPS is reached by walking down some steps, a fact that creates some vistas across the zigzag space when seen from the entrance doors. The 57th Street side is more open (photo at left, below), while the 58th Street side is blocked by a couple bridges lined in wood (photo at right, below). The red-tile pattern in the floor is a consistent motif that draws one to the center.
Before moving to the center, a sidebar. One piece that makes this POPS an oddity is found to the side of the 57th Street entrance, with its own odd stripe of green and pink glass. Suspended behind angled panes of clear glass are cylindrical planters that are supported by angled arms; they step up and back to follow the angled glass. Filled with succulents rather than, say, hanging plants, these planters appear way too heavy for the green effect they produce:

Moving forward toward the c...