: 1200074186

The Citicorp building is Queens’ Great Pyramid.
The build erupts from the low-lying rooftop planes in the borough to stand at more than 650 feet. The building casts its long shadow over the borough like a ticking clock as the sun heads west.

Long Island City artist Heidi Neilson noticed this and asked the obvious question: “is it a giant sundial?”
The query seemed simple enough. For centuries cultures have build mammoth structures that hold special relationships between the earth and the sun.
For about a year, Neilson has tracked the sun’s relationship to Queens’ tallest tower to find the tower is special.

“Living in Long Island City, I ride the elevated train all the time,” Neilson said. “I started thinking and wanted to know how it worked.”

Neilson ordered sundial software for her home computer, designed to help place one in a backyard or a garden, and instead, input the building’s dimensions. When the software printed out how the shadow would track across the borough, Neilson thought one thing.

“I thought what a great and weird introduction to the neighborhood a walking tour would be, based on the shadow,” the eight-year LIC resident said.
Neilson imagined following the shadow across the ground as a map pointed to interesting businesses and landmarks. But what started as a simple plan got much more involved once Neilson began to create the tour.

Traditionally, a sundial is used to measure time base on the position of the sun by casting a shadow on a flat surface.

Although many of the roofs are low, they still can block the tower. Sometimes the end of the shadow lies on top of a roof and sometimes the weather does not let a shadow be cast at all.

Then there is the whole idea that the shadow is constantly changing as the earth’s axis moves the neighborhood closer and farther away from the sun. Garden sundials can be recalibrated but the Citicorp building does not have that function.

“At first I thought I could just put some markers on the street,” she said. “But they would have to be moved at least once a week.”

Natalie Campbell, Neilson’s friend, helped with the development of the walking tour. She hopes to get funding to print brochures describing the project, how it works and introduce Long Island City through new eyes.
“I was her layperson she could bounce ideas off of,” Campbell said.

As a professional graphic artist, Neilson is able to read the involved map with ease but if she was ever to achieve her goal of introducing newcomers to the neighborhood, she had to dumb it down.

Neilson is currently working on a beta version of a walking tour, trying to figure out the best way to present her project.

“I think it’s a great project,” Campbell said. “It really gives you a geological and cosmological sense of where you are, instead of feeling like you’re just in some urban neighborhood.”

On her blog, Neilson documents how the shadow moves throughout Queens over an entire year. For example, during the winter solstice, the shadow at noon stops at the front door of Silvercup Studios. She also calculated where the shadow would be when the New York City Marathoners ran through the borough and took photos.

Feedback on the project, Neilson said, has been fantastic. One German man came across her Web site and commented that he watches the sun be eclipsed by a building he works near.
Ultimately, Neilson hopes she hopes educators notice her project.

“When I finish the walking tour I hope to give copies to all the schools,” she said.

A model of Neilson’s sundial project is currently on display at Flux Factory, 38-38 43rd St., and her Web site can be found at licsundial.net.