NYC BOOK AWARDS 1999
New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age
Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman
"New York, 1880, the fourth volume in a series of documentary studies of architecture and urbanism in the city, covers the post-Civil War era when the city outstripped Boston and Philadelphia to become the great commerical center of the United States. As one reviewer noted, "It began to pile office floor upon floor to create the splintered skyline that heralded the profiles of the 20th-Century American city; and a mounting inflow of people, the newly rich from the inland and the 'huddled masses' from without, transformed the city's population from largely homogenous to multicultural and widened the gulf between the very wealthy and the miserably poor, expressed architecturally in the unbridgeable gap between the mansions of Vanderbilt Row and the 'rookeries' of Five Points." The authors reveal a city in the throes of dramatic technological change. Vast infrastructure projects not only brought the telephone, electric light, and elevator to everyday use, but also installed new systems of water supply and rapid transit that allowed the city to grow both out and up. The book definitively presents the buildings and master plans that transformed New York from a harbor town into a world-class metropolis. " - Award Committee
"New York, 1880 by Stern, Mellins and Fishman is the most sophisticated volume yet of their comprehensive series on the architecture of the city. From tenements to skyscrapers they weave an engaging portrait of New York's buildings, both high and low."
- Barbara Cohen
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