Customer Reviews

New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age

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While it is too heavy to lug around, NY 1880 is an eye popping journey into New York of 120 or so years ago. There are over 1,200 photographs and 99 pages of footnotes. Anyone interested in seeing what this wonderful city was like a generation before the First World War is strongly urged to grab this book. So much of what this book is about is no longer standing - churches, synagogues, clubs, apartments, etc.

Buy it!! This is the best of the 4 books in the series (NY 1880, NY 1900, NY 1930 and NY 1960) with NY 2000 to come in a few years.

This book is the very definition of comprehensive, this book really hashes out beautiful Guilded Age New York. It is to be lamented that so many of these gorgeous buildings are no longer extant, but at least these wonderful archival images are available. As you walk around NYC today, you see glimpses of the grandeur that once pervaded the city, but this book conjures up the ghosts of an Age of unimaginable wealth and unparalled craftsmanship. High recommended to one and all.

With over 1100 pages, this book was so difficult to handle physically, that it hampered my enjoyment of this epic-length volume. On the other hand, the book is a bargain in terms of cents per page! Photos average more than one per page; however, the quality of photographic reproduction is frequently very disappointing (even when compared to Stern's 'New York 1900,' which also uses very old photographs). There are approximately 75 floor plans, with most page space used for the less-than-rivetting text. Chapters are divided by building type. A surprising amount of page space is consumed by illustrations of entries in architectural competitions (Union League Club and Cathedral of St. John the Divine).

This period was covered in New York 1900, which provided background material from 1876 and before. Although New York 1880 is longer than New York 1900, it seemed to me to be a padding of what had already been said in a more succinct and more readable way in the first book of the series (NY 1900).As for the length, New York 1880 badly needs an editor.