New York 400: A Visual History of America's Greatest City with Images from The Museum of the City of New York Review

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(More customer reviews)The panorama of light and life contained within these pages is extensive. The images portrayed whether maps, sketches, prints, paintings, or photographs take one into the heart and soul of New York City. Having lived there a good part of my life many images were familiar from first hand experience or from the extensive history of New York that every student takes growing up in that school system. However, there are images never seen outside the Museum of the City of New York that tell a dramatic story anyone can not only simply enjoy but stand in awe of. The soul of the city, created as it absorbed so many cultures and people over the years, stands center stage. Time has simply stopped in may photos and one anxiously waits for the people, frozen motionless in ordinary acts of living, to simply start moving again where they left off over one hundred years ago. The excitement of life captured in the 1898 photo of Orchard Street, looking South from Hester Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan is worth the price of the book alone. We are also introduced to many previously existing photographic studies, essays, and the artists who created them all within this one book. There is great drama here to be visited again and again each time the covers are opened.

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The year 2009 is a landmark in the history of New York, and America. It's the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival along the river that bears his name. With public initiatives and media attention on commemorative events and exhibits at a fever pitch throughout the year, the stage is set for New York 400, a one-of-a-kind celebration of the greatest city in America.With unprecedented access to the Museum of the City of New York's vast archive, this is a visual history of the city of New York like none other, focusing not merely on landmarks but also on everyday life in the city over the past four centuries. The people, arts, culture, politics, and drama unfold through hundreds of rarely seen photographs and a fascinating profile of the city that never sleeps. Featuring essays from leading historians of the distinct epochs of Gotham, this volume takes us from the days of Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant in the seventeenth century through to mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg in the modern melting pot that is New York in the twenty-first century.The Museum of the City of New York has a unique mandate—to explore the past, present, and future of New York, and to celebrate the city's heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation. Its unparalleled collections, including photography, sculpture, costumes, toys, and decorative arts, enable the museum to present a variety of exhibitions, public programs, and publications investigating what gives New York its singular character.