Description: Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles By Fran Leadon Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018 512 pp. Hardcover in original binding and dust jacket. Not Ex-Lib. An eye-opening history of Manhattan told through its most celebrated street.In the early seventeenth century, in a backwater Dutch colony, there was a wide, muddy cow path that the settlers called the Brede Wegh. As the street grew longer, houses and taverns began to spring up alongside it. What was once New Amsterdam became New York, and farmlands gradually gave way to department stores, theaters, hotels, and, finally, the perpetual traffic of the twentieth century’s Great White Way. From Bowling Green all the way up to Marble Hill, Broadway takes us on a mile-by-mile journey up America’s most vibrant and complex thoroughfare, through the history at the heart of Manhattan.Today, Broadway almost feels inevitable, but over the past four hundred years there have been thousands who have tried to draw and erase its path. Following their footsteps, we learn why one side of the street was once considered more fashionable than the other; witness the construction of Trinity Church, the Flatiron Building, and the Ansonia Hotel; the burning of P. T. Barnum’s American Museum; and discover that Columbia University was built on the site of an insane asylum. Along the way we meet Alexander Hamilton, Emma Goldman, Edgar Allan Poe, John James Audubon, "Bill the Butcher" Poole, and the assorted real-estate speculators, impresarios, and politicians who helped turn Broadway into New York’s commercial and cultural spine.Broadway traces the physical and social transformation of an avenue that has been both the "Path of Progress" and a "street of broken dreams," home to both parades and riots, startling wealth and appalling destitution. Glamorous, complex, and sometimes troubling, the evolution of an oft-flooded dead end to a canyon of steel and glass is the story of American progress. 53 photographs I've done my best to describe the book, but if you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail.
Price: 20 USD
Location: Clemmons, North Carolina
End Time: 2025-01-09T15:05:59.000Z
Shipping Cost: 4.95 USD
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Item Specifics
Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 14 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Year Printed: 2018
Topic: American (US)
Binding: Hardcover
Country of Manufacture: United States
Origin: American
Subject: History
Original/Facsimile: Original
Special Attributes: Exceptional and RARE book!, 1st Edition, Dust Jacket, Illustrated
