Author: Federal Writers' Project
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 818
Book Description
This tour guide for time travelers offers New York lovers and 1930s buffs an endlessly fascinating look at life as it was lived in the days when a trolley ride cost five cents, a room at the Plaza was $7.50, and the new World's Fair was the talk of the town. Hailed by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books ever written about the city. Photos. Maps.
The WPA Guide to New York City
Author: Federal Writers' Project
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 818
Book Description
This tour guide for time travelers offers New York lovers and 1930s buffs an endlessly fascinating look at life as it was lived in the days when a trolley ride cost five cents, a room at the Plaza was $7.50, and the new World's Fair was the talk of the town. Hailed by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books ever written about the city. Photos. Maps.
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 818
Book Description
This tour guide for time travelers offers New York lovers and 1930s buffs an endlessly fascinating look at life as it was lived in the days when a trolley ride cost five cents, a room at the Plaza was $7.50, and the new World's Fair was the talk of the town. Hailed by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books ever written about the city. Photos. Maps.
The WPA Guides
Author: Christine Bold
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578061952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
In 1935 the FDR administration put 40,000 unemployed artists to work in four federal arts projects. The main contribution of one unit, the Federal Writers Project, was the American Guide Series, a collectively composed set of guidebooks to every state, most regions, and many cities, towns, and villages across the United States. The WPA arts projects were poised on the cusp of the modern bureaucratization of culture. They occurred at a moment when the federal government was extending its reach into citizens' daily lives. The 400 guidebooks the teams produced have been widely celebrated as icons of American democracy and diversity. Clumped together, they manifest a lofty role for the project and a heavy responsibility for its teams of writers. The guides assumed the authority of conceptualizing the national identity. In The WPA Guides: Mapping America Christine Bold closely examines this publicized view of the guides and reveals its flaws. Her research in archival materials reveals the negotiations and conflicts between the central editors in Washington and the local people in the states. Race, region, and gender are taken as important categories within which difference and conflict appear. She looks at the guidebook for each of five distinctively different locations -- Idaho, New York City, North Carolina, Missouri, and U.S. One and the Oregon Trail--to assess the editorial plotting of such issues as gender, race, ethnicity, and class. As regionalists jostled with federal officialdom, the faultlines of the project gaped open. Spotlighting the controversies between federal and state bureaucracies, Bold concludes that the image of America that the WPA fostered is closer to fabrication than to actuality. Christine Bold is director of the Centre for Cultural Studies and an associate professor of English at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario.
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578061952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
In 1935 the FDR administration put 40,000 unemployed artists to work in four federal arts projects. The main contribution of one unit, the Federal Writers Project, was the American Guide Series, a collectively composed set of guidebooks to every state, most regions, and many cities, towns, and villages across the United States. The WPA arts projects were poised on the cusp of the modern bureaucratization of culture. They occurred at a moment when the federal government was extending its reach into citizens' daily lives. The 400 guidebooks the teams produced have been widely celebrated as icons of American democracy and diversity. Clumped together, they manifest a lofty role for the project and a heavy responsibility for its teams of writers. The guides assumed the authority of conceptualizing the national identity. In The WPA Guides: Mapping America Christine Bold closely examines this publicized view of the guides and reveals its flaws. Her research in archival materials reveals the negotiations and conflicts between the central editors in Washington and the local people in the states. Race, region, and gender are taken as important categories within which difference and conflict appear. She looks at the guidebook for each of five distinctively different locations -- Idaho, New York City, North Carolina, Missouri, and U.S. One and the Oregon Trail--to assess the editorial plotting of such issues as gender, race, ethnicity, and class. As regionalists jostled with federal officialdom, the faultlines of the project gaped open. Spotlighting the controversies between federal and state bureaucracies, Bold concludes that the image of America that the WPA fostered is closer to fabrication than to actuality. Christine Bold is director of the Centre for Cultural Studies and an associate professor of English at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario.
Going Coastal, New York City
Author: Barbara La Rocco
Publisher: Going Coastal, Inc.
ISBN: 9780972980302
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
An ultra-useful guide that brings together all the information necessary to enjoy the waterfront, in a compact, well-organized form - Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan Use this guide to discover the beaches, boardwalks, historic sites, and marine attractions, as well as the limitless opportunities for waterside fun, dining, and adventure in the five boros of New York. Designed for travelers and locals, alike, Going Coastal New York City offers the best, most comprehensive information on what's happening along New York City's over 500 miles of coastline.
Publisher: Going Coastal, Inc.
ISBN: 9780972980302
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
An ultra-useful guide that brings together all the information necessary to enjoy the waterfront, in a compact, well-organized form - Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan Use this guide to discover the beaches, boardwalks, historic sites, and marine attractions, as well as the limitless opportunities for waterside fun, dining, and adventure in the five boros of New York. Designed for travelers and locals, alike, Going Coastal New York City offers the best, most comprehensive information on what's happening along New York City's over 500 miles of coastline.
Murals of New York City
Author: Glenn Palmer-Smith
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
ISBN: 0789347075
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
A celebration of New York City's most treasured public art, now available in a smaller format for a lower price. Whether it's cocktails at the Carlyle, taking in a show at Lincoln Center, traveling via subway, or flying out of LaGuardia's venerable Marine Air Terminal, uptown to downtown to the outer boroughs, the art created for the walls of New York City's bars, hotels, offices, government buildings, and schools have themselves created the identities of the rooms they live in. Murals of New York City was the first book to curate more than thirty of the most important, influential, and impressive murals found within all five boroughs. Full-color images of works such as Paul Helleu's Mural of the Stars on Grand Central Terminal's ceiling, Robert Crowl's Dancers at the Bar at Lincoln Center, Edward Laning's New York Public Library McGraw Rotunda, José Maria Sert and Frank Brangwyn's Rockefeller Center murals, and work by artists such as Marc Chagall, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Maxfield Parrish, and more are accompanied by informative and historical commentary. Perfect for art and architecture lovers, Murals of New York City serves as the perfect resource for New Yorkers and souvenir for the millions of tourists who visit the city every year.
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
ISBN: 0789347075
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
A celebration of New York City's most treasured public art, now available in a smaller format for a lower price. Whether it's cocktails at the Carlyle, taking in a show at Lincoln Center, traveling via subway, or flying out of LaGuardia's venerable Marine Air Terminal, uptown to downtown to the outer boroughs, the art created for the walls of New York City's bars, hotels, offices, government buildings, and schools have themselves created the identities of the rooms they live in. Murals of New York City was the first book to curate more than thirty of the most important, influential, and impressive murals found within all five boroughs. Full-color images of works such as Paul Helleu's Mural of the Stars on Grand Central Terminal's ceiling, Robert Crowl's Dancers at the Bar at Lincoln Center, Edward Laning's New York Public Library McGraw Rotunda, José Maria Sert and Frank Brangwyn's Rockefeller Center murals, and work by artists such as Marc Chagall, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Maxfield Parrish, and more are accompanied by informative and historical commentary. Perfect for art and architecture lovers, Murals of New York City serves as the perfect resource for New Yorkers and souvenir for the millions of tourists who visit the city every year.
Los Angeles in the 1930s
Author: WPA Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in Southern California
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520268830
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584
Book Description
Previously published: New York: Hastings House, 1941, under the title Los Angeles: a guide to the city and its environs, as part of the American guide series.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520268830
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584
Book Description
Previously published: New York: Hastings House, 1941, under the title Los Angeles: a guide to the city and its environs, as part of the American guide series.
Republic of Detours
Author: Scott Borchert
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374719055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice | Winner of the New Deal Book Award An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depression—and employed some of the biggest names in American letters The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious—and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight states—along with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns—while also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities. All this was the singular purview of the Federal Writers’ Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration founded in 1935 to employ jobless writers, from once-bestselling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified. The FWP took up the lofty goal of rediscovering America in words and soon found itself embroiled in the day’s most heated arguments regarding radical politics, racial inclusion, and the purpose of writing—forcing it to reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself. Scott Borchert’s Republic of Detours tells the story of this raucous and remarkable undertaking by delving into the experiences of key figures and tracing the FWP from its optimistic early days to its dismemberment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. We observe notable writers at their day jobs, including Nelson Algren, broke and smarting from the failure of his first novel; Zora Neale Hurston, the most widely published Black woman in the country; and Richard Wright, who arrived in the FWP’s chaotic New York City office on an upward career trajectory courtesy of the WPA. Meanwhile, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, John Cheever, and other future literary stars found encouragement and security on the FWP payroll. By way of these and other stories, Borchert illuminates an essentially noble enterprise that sought to create a broad and inclusive self-portrait of America at a time when the nation’s very identity and future were thrown into question. As the United States enters a new era of economic distress, political strife, and culture-industry turmoil, this book’s lessons are urgent and strong.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374719055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice | Winner of the New Deal Book Award An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depression—and employed some of the biggest names in American letters The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious—and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight states—along with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns—while also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities. All this was the singular purview of the Federal Writers’ Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration founded in 1935 to employ jobless writers, from once-bestselling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified. The FWP took up the lofty goal of rediscovering America in words and soon found itself embroiled in the day’s most heated arguments regarding radical politics, racial inclusion, and the purpose of writing—forcing it to reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself. Scott Borchert’s Republic of Detours tells the story of this raucous and remarkable undertaking by delving into the experiences of key figures and tracing the FWP from its optimistic early days to its dismemberment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. We observe notable writers at their day jobs, including Nelson Algren, broke and smarting from the failure of his first novel; Zora Neale Hurston, the most widely published Black woman in the country; and Richard Wright, who arrived in the FWP’s chaotic New York City office on an upward career trajectory courtesy of the WPA. Meanwhile, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, John Cheever, and other future literary stars found encouragement and security on the FWP payroll. By way of these and other stories, Borchert illuminates an essentially noble enterprise that sought to create a broad and inclusive self-portrait of America at a time when the nation’s very identity and future were thrown into question. As the United States enters a new era of economic distress, political strife, and culture-industry turmoil, this book’s lessons are urgent and strong.
American-Made
Author: Nick Taylor
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553381326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 673
Book Description
Seventy-five years after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, here for the first time is the remarkable story of one of its enduring cornerstones, the Works Progress Administration (WPA): its passionate believers, its furious critics, and its amazing accomplishments. The WPA is American history that could not be more current, from providing economic stimulus to renewing a broken infrastructure. Introduced in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression, when unemployment and desperation ruled the land, this controversial nationwide jobs program would forever change the physical landscape and social policies of the United States. The WPA lasted eight years, spent $11 billion, employed 8½ million men and women, and gave the country not only a renewed spirit but a fresh face. Now this fascinating and informative book chronicles the WPA from its tumultuous beginnings to its lasting presence, and gives us cues for future action.
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553381326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 673
Book Description
Seventy-five years after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, here for the first time is the remarkable story of one of its enduring cornerstones, the Works Progress Administration (WPA): its passionate believers, its furious critics, and its amazing accomplishments. The WPA is American history that could not be more current, from providing economic stimulus to renewing a broken infrastructure. Introduced in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression, when unemployment and desperation ruled the land, this controversial nationwide jobs program would forever change the physical landscape and social policies of the United States. The WPA lasted eight years, spent $11 billion, employed 8½ million men and women, and gave the country not only a renewed spirit but a fresh face. Now this fascinating and informative book chronicles the WPA from its tumultuous beginnings to its lasting presence, and gives us cues for future action.
Underneath New York
Author: Harry Granick
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 9780823213122
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Book Description
Describes the subways, tunnels, steam pipes, sewers, gas pipes, and rest of the mysterious life beneath the sidewalks of New York.
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 9780823213122
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Book Description
Describes the subways, tunnels, steam pipes, sewers, gas pipes, and rest of the mysterious life beneath the sidewalks of New York.
Soul of a People
Author: David A. Taylor
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9781684425204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
Soul of a People is about a handful of people who were on the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s and a glimpse of America at a turning point. This particular handful of characters went from poverty to great things later, and included John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Studs Terkel. In the 1930s they were all caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of WPA guides. Through striking images and firsthand accounts, the book reveals their experiences and the most vivid excerpts from selected guides and interviews: Harlem schoolchildren, truckers, Chicago fishmongers, Cuban cigar makers, a Florida midwife, Nebraskan meatpackers, and blind musicians. Drawing on new discoveries from personal collections, archives, and recent biographies, a new picture has emerged in the last decade of how the participants' individual dramas intersected with the larger picture of their subjects. This book illuminates what it felt like to live that experience, how going from joblessness to reporting on their own communities affected artists with varied visions, as well as what feelings such a passage involved: shame humiliation, anger, excitement, nostalgia, and adventure. Also revealed is how the WPA writers anticipated, and perhaps paved the way for, the political movements of the following decades, including the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Right movement, and the Native American rights movement.
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9781684425204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
Soul of a People is about a handful of people who were on the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s and a glimpse of America at a turning point. This particular handful of characters went from poverty to great things later, and included John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Studs Terkel. In the 1930s they were all caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of WPA guides. Through striking images and firsthand accounts, the book reveals their experiences and the most vivid excerpts from selected guides and interviews: Harlem schoolchildren, truckers, Chicago fishmongers, Cuban cigar makers, a Florida midwife, Nebraskan meatpackers, and blind musicians. Drawing on new discoveries from personal collections, archives, and recent biographies, a new picture has emerged in the last decade of how the participants' individual dramas intersected with the larger picture of their subjects. This book illuminates what it felt like to live that experience, how going from joblessness to reporting on their own communities affected artists with varied visions, as well as what feelings such a passage involved: shame humiliation, anger, excitement, nostalgia, and adventure. Also revealed is how the WPA writers anticipated, and perhaps paved the way for, the political movements of the following decades, including the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Right movement, and the Native American rights movement.
New York's Historic Armories
Author: Nancy L. Todd
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791480992
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
Winner of the 2007 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award presented by the Preservation League of New York State Winner of the 2007 Building Typology Award presented by the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America New York's Army National Guard armories are among the most imposing monuments to the role of the citizen soldier in American military history. In New York's Historic Armories, Nancy L. Todd draws on archival research as well as historic and contemporary photographs and drawings to trace the evolution of the armory as a specific building type in American architectural and military history. The result of a ten-year collaboration between the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, this illustrated history presents information on all known armories in the state as well as the units associated with them, and will serve as a valuable reference for readers interested in general, military, and architectural history. Built to house local units of the state's volunteer militia, armories served as arms storage facilities, clubhouses for the militiamen, and civic monuments symbolizing New York's determination to preserve domestic law and order through military might. Approximately 120 armories were built in New York State from the late eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, and most date from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the National Guard was America's primary domestic peacekeeper during the post–Civil War era of labor-capital unrest. Together, New York's armories chronicle the history of the volunteer militia, from its emergence during the early Republican Era, through its heyday during the Gilded Age as the backbone of the American military system, to its early twentieth-century role as the nation's primary armed reserve force.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791480992
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
Winner of the 2007 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award presented by the Preservation League of New York State Winner of the 2007 Building Typology Award presented by the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America New York's Army National Guard armories are among the most imposing monuments to the role of the citizen soldier in American military history. In New York's Historic Armories, Nancy L. Todd draws on archival research as well as historic and contemporary photographs and drawings to trace the evolution of the armory as a specific building type in American architectural and military history. The result of a ten-year collaboration between the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, this illustrated history presents information on all known armories in the state as well as the units associated with them, and will serve as a valuable reference for readers interested in general, military, and architectural history. Built to house local units of the state's volunteer militia, armories served as arms storage facilities, clubhouses for the militiamen, and civic monuments symbolizing New York's determination to preserve domestic law and order through military might. Approximately 120 armories were built in New York State from the late eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, and most date from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the National Guard was America's primary domestic peacekeeper during the post–Civil War era of labor-capital unrest. Together, New York's armories chronicle the history of the volunteer militia, from its emergence during the early Republican Era, through its heyday during the Gilded Age as the backbone of the American military system, to its early twentieth-century role as the nation's primary armed reserve force.