What I’m Reading: In Pursuit of Gotham: Culture and Commerce in New York

In Pursuit of Gotham: Culture and Commerce in New York is a 1992 collection of ten scholarly essays by William A. Taylor, a cultural historian. The essays examine the culture of New York from about 1890 to 1930, when, according to Taylor, America had developed a commercial culture recognizable to us today, but not yet the mass culture created by radio. This is the era when New York had its greatest impact on the national culture, with its newspapers, magazines, and Broadway shows spreading a version of Americanness that spread throughout the country.

As a collection, there isn’t really an overarching thesis, and the ten essays cover a variety of topics. Still, the themes of architecture and skyline, public space as fostering commercial culture, and the power of journalism and literature to shape culture recur throughout the book.

I think my favorite essays are the two first ones, which discuss the evolution of New York’s skyline during the 1890-1930 period, and more specifically, the evolution of the perception of the skyline. This period coincided with the first and second waves of New York’s great skyscraper construction eras. Taylor demonstrates, with the aid of numerous photographs, how the new tall buildings went from being considered and depicted as alien and rather ominous at the beginning of the period, to familiar and even beloved by the end.

One interesting point he makes is that at the beginning of the era, photographers and painters didn’t even know how to frame the buildings, repeatedly attempting to use the same perspectives and angles they had formerly used to depict harbors or churches–facing upward and horizontally oriented–to lackluster effect. Not until the 1910s did they really begin to use the aerial shots–facing downward and vertically oriented–that we recognize today as appropriate for these types of views.

I also especially liked a chapter on the development of Times Square, and how its physical evolution mirrored its coming to prominence as the foremost influence on American culture at the time. In those days before radio became widespread, the newspapers, magazines, and of course, Broadway shows produced in and around Times Square became one of the principal ways for the newly expanding middle classes to spend their leisure time. Syndicated newspaper columns originating in the New York Times (whose 1905 skyscraper lent the square its moniker), the Herald, the World, and numerous other papers appeared throughout the country, spreading a certain type of New York humor and attitude. Nationwide subscriptions to Vogue, Vanity Fair, the Smart Set, and later on, the New Yorker, did the same with their essays and short stories, also disseminating a snappy, slangy type of patter used in the Times Square area. Finally, the traveling versions of popular Broadway shows, though often edited and adjusted for audiences in different parts of the country, brought to middle America the latest fashions and slang expressions from its most cosmopolitan city.

I haven’t even gotten to the chapter discussing the evolution of the commercial parts of New York as a showcase for commercial culture through its store windows and new types of architecture; or the chapters on H.L. Mencken, Damon Runyon, Walter Lippmann, and other pioneering journalists who (quite self-consciously, as they were almost uniformly from other parts of the country) specialized in the type of new, snappy “slanguage” being invented in New York; or the chapter on the creation of the idea of writers in Greenwich Village as a counter-cultural force.

Suffice it to say, In Pursuit of Gotham is packed with fascinating insights and tidbits. Due to its disjointed nature, I can’t quite recommend it as essential reading, but students of the history of American urbanism and urban culture will find it endlessly, even compulsively readable.