While on my lunch break from work, I snapped pictures of large steam pipes rising out of Madison Avenue. Those of us in New York are quite familiar with steam spewing out from manhole covers. But it’s all the more interesting when the steam pipes are installed to release pressure. Fact: large portions of Manhattan are powered by steam, particularly high rise buildings. It was a service that first began in 1882 and today is the largest commercial steam system in the United States (info via wikipedia).