If London redefined how the world viewed cities in the 19th century, then New York City became the iconic metropolis of the 20th. Christoph Lindner focuses on the years 1890 to 1940, the era of modernism and of the skyscraper – the architectural form that still dominates our idea of the modern city. Fascinated by Manhattan’s “jumbling of memory, space and meaning”, Lindner looks at how our consciousness was shaped in this crucial period by the response of artists, writers and photographers to the evolving city’s spaces. He divides his book into two: skylines and sidewalks. From the soaring towers of commerce to the concrete canyons between them, he explores the city on two planes – the horizontal and the vertical. Manhattan’s skyline is the city’s signature, one that’s constantly changing with each new skyscraper. Lindner argues this skyline “hovers between the sublime and the uncanny” in the art and writing of this period. By contrast the city’s sidewalks were characterised by “speed, movement and dislocation”. An evocative and insightful reading of “this endlessly mutable city”.
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