Customer Reviews

New York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890-1915

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This is an excellent treatment of New York architecture, 1890-1915, divided into chapters by building type. It's substantially thinner than Robert Stern's other books in this series (New York 1880, New York 1930, New York 1960), but there's enough meat here that the reader feels the topic has been fully covered. The book has a particularly attractive page format, with numerous photos that beautifully document the era (averaging approximately one per page). There are also roughly 60 floor plans, although most page space is used for text.

This work (the first in a projected pentology on New York architecture in 1876, 1900, 1930, 1960 and 2000) is a dead-on account of NYC high-style architecture from 1890-1915. A must have.

This is a groundbreaking work that unearthed the contemporaneous understanding of events that, because of the advent of modernism, was never recorded in books. It has paved the way for more specialized studies, but its breadth of learning and expertise has never been surpassed.

The twentieth-century items by which New York City is usually synechdocally identified, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center and what have you, are arguably just later iconic ornaments set atop the massive base formed during the earlier period covered in this book. The character New York has today was really in good part formed by the turn of the last century, by the structures and systems here presented. Gimlet-eyed Robert Stern and his apparently omnivorous assistants, Gilmartin and Massengale, have sorted, digested and made available enormous amounts of information. _New York 1900_ is an indispensable starting point for architects, historians, preservationists and others serious about understanding the City of the era.

The book attempts to be more that an architectural history and fails miserably. They tried to use architecture as a way of intertwining the political and social history of the city. Needless to say, this type of scope is best in the capable hands of Robert Caro. In addition to the wooden text, the photographs, while rare, are uninspiring. The publisher produced a well-bounded book, so the most useful place for it would be on a coffee table.