In honor of the ship that never came.

Pier 54 in its heyday, with the RMS Lusitania in port.

All that remains of Pier 54, the iron arch, where New Yorkers once waited to greet the RMS Titanic.

There have been a number of days of great sadness for the people of New York City. But giving a tour yesterday on the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic moved me in unexpected ways.

Standing in front of the White Star Offices with my new friends from Washington and California and Kentucky, I could almost taste the desperation of the families storming the building as word trickled in and painfully slowly of those we lost that terrifying night, in the cold, off an iceberg miles from the coast of Newfoundland.

Isidor Strauss, the owner of Macy's Department Store, was found floating lifeless in the frigid waters. His wife, Ida, who had made it on to a lifeboat only to get back on the Titanic when she saw they weren't allowing her husband to go with her, was never seen again. John Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest man on board, the scion of the oldest monied family in NYC, was also found dead in the water, his face blackened by the coal of one of the famous funnels that had snapped from its tethers and crashed onto those desperately trying to stay afloat. But the great majority of the victims were those third class passengers, the immigrants like our own ancestors, whose hearts were filled with hope of life in a new land where hard work might one day pay off, where their children might one day own a home and have an education. Simple dreams, dashed at sea.

I thought of the people that lined the Hudson River up to the White Star Pier at 14th Street, only to see the SS Carpathia arrive with the small fraction of survivors and a larger hold filled with bodies that did not survive, to be laid out on the floor of the ballroom of the Jane Street Hotel for identification. I thought of the days and weeks of confusion as misinformation gave many false hope, that perhaps the Titanic survived and was being towed to Virginia, a story that gained much traction in the minds of those family members who would do anything to keep their hope afloat.

I thought of the sad fact that there are no more survivors of that terrible, terrifying night alive anymore, those people who lived out their lives with the knowledge that they were somehow lucky beyond lucky, that fate had passed over them for the time being, that their stories would be mangled by newspaper men and The White Star Lines' official version of the events, tainted by a company hoping to avoid prosecution. But this was the end of the fabled White Star story. And the stories of the victims would eventually be heard.

It was also the end of a world as we knew it. The inequities of the class system that caused the disproportionate death of the poor that night would not go unnoticed. It was, perhaps, not a coincidence that this event led to the downfall of the greatest dynasties Europe had ever known, and that we would soon plunge headlong into a War of the World. Systems broke down everywhere, and in many cases, for the better. Most certainly not always, but often. The sinking of the Titanic heralded in a Century of Death and rivers of blood would spill in the hopes of creating a fairer world. Much of that carnage was by design. But it all began with a rather coincidental run-in with a piece of ice that had broken off an ice field eighty miles away on a crystal clear night at the height of man's sense of invulnerability.

We are vulnerable now. We always have been. But it took this titanic event to remind us. And remind us again 100 years later.

Folks from France to Fresno skate in Rockefeller Center.

And even start their lives together there:

The original plans for Rockefeller Center included as its centerpiece a new Metropolitan Opera House. But after the stock market crash of 1929, those plans were abandoned and The Met would not find a new home until 1966 at its resplendent palace in Lincoln Center.

Left with an open axis that separated the British Empire Building from La Maison Francaise, seasonal gardens were designed, installed, and named for the body of water that separates England from France: The Channel Gardens. At the foot of the gardens was to be a sunken piazza dominated by a major work of art. The Rockefellers commissioned the finest artists throughout the world to adorn what is today, a living, walking, public miracle of a museum of the finest examples of Art Deco Art and Architecture to be found anywhere.

Paul Manship, famous in his own lifetime, would design the Titan and titanic "Prometheus," a gilded bronze masterpiece that would overlook this public plaza. Prometheus seems to float god-like above his ring of zodiac signs and rather closely to the rock that would be sadly be his tethered punishment for giving fire to mortals. The rock echoes with resonance in Rockefeller Center in front of "30 Rock" beneath the Top of the Rock.

Mr. Manship was never that fond of his sculpture, and odd that, as it went on to become the fourth most recognizable sculpture in America after The Statue of Liberty, The Lincoln Memorial, and Mount Rushmore. Prometheus is streamlined and stylized in the hallmark characteristics of Art Deco, and holds aloft in his hand the very flame that would set humankind free to create all that we are capable. Behind him are inscribed the words of the Greek poet and dramatist Aeschylus: Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends.

But it would not be until 1936 that all other plans for the plaza in front of Prometheus were scrapped in favor of a bit of inspired loopiness. How about an ice skating rink? It immediately became titanically popular and has gone on to become one of the most beloved attractions in NYC and millions have flocked to the ice to fly through the air like Prometheus who looks down on them, inspiring them to soar in the shadow of his fire on the ice.