New York 1880
Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age
by Robert A. M. Stern; David Fishman; Thomas Mellins
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Editions of New York 1880
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Hardcover |
Publisher Monacelli Pr |
Date 1999 |
Price $85.00 |
 As New in As New dust jacket; Excellent book |
Publisher Notes
This is the fourth volume in architect and historian Robert A.M. Stern's monumental series of documentary studies of New York City architecture and urbanism. The three previous books in the series, New York 1900, New York 1930, and New York 1960, have comprehensively covered the architects and urban planners who defined New York over the course of the 20th century. In this volume, Stern turns back to 1880 -- the end of the Civil War, the beginning of European modernism -- to trace the earlier history of the city. This dynamic era saw the technological advances and acts of civic and private will that formed the identity of New York City as we know it today. The installation of water, telephone, and electricity infrastructures as well as the advent of electric lighting, the elevator, and mass transit allowed the city to grow both out and up. The office-building and apartment-house types were envisioned and defined, changing the ways that New Yorkers worked and lived. Such massive public projects as the Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park became realities, along with such private efforts as Grand Central Station. Like the other three volumes, New York 1880 is an in-depth presentation of the buildings and plans that transformed New York from a harbor town into a world-class metropolis. A broad range of primary sources -- critics and writers, architects, planners, city officials -- brings the time period to life and allows the city to tell its own complex story. The book is generously illustrated with over 1,200 archival photographs, which show the city as it was, and as some parts of it still are.
Media Reviews
"Given the number of illustrations, one might think this a picture book, and it would not be a surprise if more people scanned its illustrations than read its text. There is a long introductory essay, densely packed sections on building types (or, in current architecture-speak, 'places') and a hundred pages crammed with footnotes. This is an amazingly thorough work of synthetic scholarship. All that is missing is systematic data about whether or not a building still stands, and if not, when it was demolished. Cryptic captions fail to give this important information, and the vintage photographs themselves offer no help."
Excerpt
New York is a study of contrasts. It has no virtue without its corresponding sin; no light without its shadow; no beauty without deformity; for it is a little world in itself.... New York is the City of the time to come.... It is now ... the Great Metropolis of the Continent, and in the next century will be the Great Metropolis of the World.... This City will be a country of itself, a nation for its strength, its resources, its incalculable riches. Broadway will be the great thoroughfare of the World; Fifth Avenue the street of luxury and splendor beyond what history has shown. Our rivers will be spanned with noble bridges, and Babylon, Palmyra, Rome, Athens, in their palmiest days will be re-created here.
--Junius Henri Browne, 1869
First Line
New York is a great secret, not only to those who have never seen it, but to the majority of its own citizens.
--James D. McCabe Jr., 1868
