New Books
Only in New York: Photographs from Look Magazine
by Donald Albrecht, Thomas Mellins
Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure
by David Freeland
From the lights that never go out on Broadway to its 24-hour subway system, New York City isn’t called “the city that never sleeps” for nothing. Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The slim island at the mouth of the Hudson River is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan’s infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history. Yet with David Freeland as a guide, it’s possible to uncover skeletons of New York’s lost monuments to its nightlife. With a keen eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry.
New York City in 3D: A Look Back in Time: With Built-in Stereoscope Viewer – Your Glasses to the Past!
by Greg Dinkins
Going Coastal New York City: Urban Waterfront Guide, Second Edition
by Barbara LaRocco
Taxi Confidential: Life, Death and 3 a.m. Revelations in New York City Cabs
by Amy Braunschweiger
New York’s Unique and Unexpected Places
by Judith Stonehill (author), Alexandra Stonehill (photographer)
Coming Soon
Architecture
AIA Guide to New York City
by Norval White and Elliot Willensky
A definitive record of New York’s architectural heritage . . . a witty and helpful pocketful which serves as arbiter of architects, baedeker for boulevardiers, catalog for the curious, primer for preservationists, [and] sourcebook to students. For all who seek to know of New York, it is here.
No home should be without a copy. —Municipal Art Society
Stop Press: New edition coming in April 2010.
40,000 Photos Later, an article about how the AIA Guide comes together.
101 Cool Buildings: the best of New York City architecture 1999-2009
by Richard McMillan
The Architectural Guidebook to New York City
by Francis Morrone (author), James Iska (Photographer)
New York Streetscapes: Tales of Manhattan’s Significant Buidlings and Landmarks
by Christopher Gray with research by Suzanne Braley
One Thousand New York Buildings
by Bill Harris (author), Jorg Brockman (photographer), Judith Dupre (forward)
New York in Photographs
New York 400: A Visual History of America’s Greatest City with Images from The Museum of the City of New York
by The Museum of the City of New York
Manhattan: An Island in Focus
by Jake Rajs
Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York
by James T. Murray, Karla L. Murray
New York’s storefronts constitute the city’s vernacular architecture, shaping the look and feel of the five boroughs no less than more celebrated elements of the skyline. These unfussy, elegant, and richly colored photographs of butcher shops, bakeries, fabric wholesalers, cuchifritos stands, stationery and sporting-goods stores, laundromats, groceries, and dive bars give connoisseurs of signage, folk typography, and ambient erosion much to pore over. —The New Yorker
Neighborhoods
New York in Movies and TV
Manhattan on Film 2: More Walking Tours of Location Sites in the Big Apple (No. 2)
by Chuck Katz
The Arts in New York
Maps
Manhattan in Maps: 1527-1995
by Paul E. Cohen and Robert T. Augustyn
Manhattan Block by Block: A Street Atlas
by John Tauranac
The unique Manhattan Block by Block Atlas gives you block-by-block maps plus individual maps showing streets, places of interest, subways, and buses; information on city streets; house numbering; neighborhoods; public transportation, plus a street and general index.
New York: The Photo Atlas
by Getmapping
New York: The Photo Atlas combines exquisite aerial photography and detailed street atlas maps to provide a truly unique perspective of the city — high above the concrete.
History, Infrastructure and Politics
Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect A City’s Landmarks
by Anthony C. Wood
Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect A City’s Landmarks is the largely unknown inspiring story of the origins of New York City’s nationally acclaimed landmarks law. The decades of struggle behind the law, its intellectual origins, the men and women who fought for it, the forces that shaped it, and the buildings lost and saved on the way to its ultimate passage, span from 1913 to 1965.
The Landmarks of New York: An Illustrated Record of the City’s Historic Buildings
by Barbaralee Diamondstein-Spielvogel
The Landmarks of New York is a definitive resource book on the architectural history of the city, documenting and illustrating more than 1100 buildings that have been accorded landmark status over the past forty years.
Bridges
Portraits of America: Bridges of New York City: The Museum of the City of New York
by Cara A. Sutherland
The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
by Gay Talese (author), Bruce Davidson (photographer)
…more History, Infrastructure and Politics
Parks
The Bridges of Central Park (NY)
by Jennifer C. Spiegler and Paul M. Gaykowski
Joel Sternfeld: Walking The High Line
by Adam Gopnik and John Stilgoe (essays), Joel Sternfeld (photography)
This book documents how the High Line looked before its recent conversion to a public park.
East Side, West Side: A Guide to New York City Parks in All Five Boroughs
by Lee Ann Levinson
Sporting New York
Visiting and Living in New York
Off the Beaten (Subway) Track: New York City’s Best Unusual Attractions
by Suzanne Reisman
Time Out New York (Time Out Guides)
by the Editors of Time Out
Blue Guide New York (Fourth Edition) (Blue Guides)
by Carol von Pressentin Wright
Frommer’s 24 Great Walks in New York
by Michelle and James Nevius (editors)
New York Walks, 2nd (On Foot Guides)
by Jane Egginton, Nick O’Donnell
Somewhat out of date now, but still interesting:
Time Out Book of New York Walks (Time Out Guides)
by Andrew White (editor)
Walking New York
by George Spelvin, Eve Devereux
New York in Fiction
Rutherfurd celebrates America’s greatest city in a rich, engrossing saga that showcases his extraordinary ability to combine impeccable historical research and storytelling flair. As in his earlier, bestselling novels, he illuminates cultural, social, and political upheavals through the lives of a remarkably diverse set of families.
As he recounts the intertwining fates of characters rich and poor, black and white, native born and immigrant, Rutherfurd brings to life the momentous events that shaped New York and America: the Revolutionary War, the emergence of the city as a great trading and financial center, the excesses of the Gilded Age, the explosion of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trials of World War II, the near-demise of New York in the 1970s and its roaring rebirth in the ’90s, and the attacks on the World Trade Center. Sprinkled throughout are captivating cameo appearances by historical figures ranging from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Babe Ruth.
Last Exit to Brooklyn (An Evergreen book)
by Hubert Selby Jr
The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel
by Tom Wolfe
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (P.S.)
by Betty Smith
New York Noir
Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics (v. 2)
by Tim McLoughlin (editor)
Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth (Akashic Noir series) (No. 3)
by Tim McLoughlin, Thomas Adcock (editors)
Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics (Akashic Noir)
by Lawrence Block (editor)
Wall Street Noir (Akashic Noir)
by Peter Spiegelman (editor)
