6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Landmarked but Flawed, December 17, 2006
This review is from: The Landmarks of New York: An Illustrated Record of the City's Historic Buildings (Hardcover)
Pound for pound this was the most disappointing of a series of books on New York City architecture that I have read over the past several years. This does not make it a bad book; its 600+ pages are filled with more information on New York City's 1100 designated landmarks than any other single volume, and each is accompanied by a fine black and white photo. Its format, with the buildings ordered by the year they were build allows the reader to thumb through the 1860's for example and see a succession of French Second Empire buildings with their iconic mansard roofs.
Still there are several flaws I have found with this book that weighs nearly seven pounds and has a sticker price of $65.00.
First and most egregious is the apparently careless editing.
One entry, that of the Van Cortlandt Mansion in the Bronx, seems to be lifted word-for-word, without attribution from Goldstone and Dalrymple's wonderfully literate book, "History Preserved". It is possible that Ms. Diamondstein-Spielvogel had permission to do this, perhaps the authors were friends from their days together on the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Maybe "The Landmarks of New York," is a successor to the older book. As there is no bibliography or explanation we will never know.
A second entry, that of Staten Island's Gardiner-Tyler House, the author writes in part, "Mrs. Tyler rarely visited the house before 1868, when as a widow she returned to Staten Island with Tyler's seven children from a previous marriage."
The author is of course referring to President Tyler's second wife Julia, whom he married in 1844, when she was 24 and he 54. By 1868, Tyler's youngest child from his first wife Letitia, Tazewell Tyler was 38, a physician, and living in California; his oldest surviving child Robert Tyler was 52; and only four of his children from Letitia were still alive. It is hardly likely that any of them followed Julia to Staten Island. What the author meant to say was that Julia moved there with her seven children from Tyler.
Another example, more one of carelessness than error is found in her entry on 359 Broadway, a fine Italianette style building found on the corner of Broadway and Leonard Street and best known for housing the studios of the great Civil War photographer, Mathew Brady, for a few years in the 1850's.
The last paragraph stated, "At the end of the century, the Ladies Mile neighborhood changed from a fashionable shopping district to a textile and wholesaling zone."
My first, surprised reaction upon reading this, was how the author could place this building, situated at the edge of today's Tribeca, in the Ladies Mile, which as anyone interested in New York history knows was located further uptown, along Broadway and 6th Avenue from about West 8th Street to West 23rd Street. As it turns out, this area was once called a ladies-mile, about a half-century before its better-known successor. But the entry doesn't explain this subtlety and there lies the confusion.
What this book is really lacking are neighborhood or area maps that locate each of the Landmarks. While a map isn't necessary to conceptualize the location of a building with a typical Manhattan grid address, the Alwyn Court Apartments at 182 West 58th St. for example, it would be nice to be able to quickly see the location of a farmhouse in Brooklyn or an old church in Staten Island, especially when that farmhouse or church is positioned on a page with a townhouse on the Upper East Side, a building it has nothing in common with aside from the year in which it was built. Perhaps in a future edition a map section could be added to the end of the book and an easy key can be developed to clearly cross-reference an entry to its map number or page.
In a book devoted specifically to "designated" New York City landmarks, how does one handle those buildings that are good enough to be landmarks on their own, but have never been designated individually because their inclusion in one of the several dozen Historic Districts before being considered for individual designation obviated the need for such designation? New York's two greatest Historic Districts, Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Height contain many of these worthy buildings. In its" Guide to New York City Landmarks", the Landmarks Committee deftly handled this issue by separately listing and discussing the dozen or so most important buildings in each of those two districts. Ms. Diamondstein-Spielvogel, however, chose to ignore them completely. So there is no mention of the famous Washington Memorial Arch, no mention of the unique teak wood detailing of the façade of the Lockwood deForest House, no mention of the great Jefferson Market Library, that whimsical Victorian Gothic building that has become a symbol of the village and was one of the first and finest examples of use conversion envisioned by the Landmarks Preservation Committee as a way to save old buildings. There is also no discussion of Brooklyn Heights' best buildings including Plymouth Congregational Church, where the fiery abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher preached, or Minard Lafever's Gothic Revival masterpiece First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn.
The book does however have a section that describes each of the Historic Districts so that a reader can get an overall feel for these districts, and ironically, given their nonexistence elsewhere in the book, has fine maps attached to each entry, showing the boundaries of each of these districts.
Any single book with this much information about its subject certainly deserves a recommendation, but for this book to reach its pretensions of being the standard reference of New York City Landmarks there is much that can be improved.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Over 1,100 buildings which have earned landmark status over the past forty years, October 6, 2005
This review is from: The Landmarks of New York: An Illustrated Record of the City's Historic Buildings (Hardcover)
If it's one weighty, definitive library reference you need to New York City's landmarks, make it Landmarks Of New York: An Illustrated Record Of The City's Historic Buildings: its scope and format can't be beat. Art and architectural libraries as well as New York City specialty collections will welcome documentation of over 1,100 buildings which have earned landmark status over the past forty years. A chronological arrangement guides readers through a wealth of building styles and types, from farmhouses and churches to mansions, with black and white photos of each accompanying descriptions, comments on style and design, listings of architects involved in the building's construction and redesign over the decades, and style descriptions. A 'must' for any serious architectural or New York history collection.
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