Manhattan Skyscrapers: 3rd Edition - Hardcover

Nash, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568989679 ISBN 13: 9781568989679

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010

Synopsis

What do you picture when you think of New York City? For most, it is the city's distinctive skyline, made famous bycountless movies and photographs. Everyone in Manhattan, whether first-time visitor or longtime resident, experiences the awe of gazing up at the soaring stone, steel, and glass towers of Wall Street or Midtown, and wonders how those structures came to be built. First published in 1999, Manhattan Skyscrapers was the first book to document the most important peaks in the city's concrete canyons. From the earliest skyscrapers built in thecity—such as the 1896 American Tract Society Building—to the most well known, including the Woolworth, Empire State, and Chrysler buildings, the book has become the definitive reference work on the Big Apple's skyline. Now available in a revised third edition, Manhattan Skyscrapers presents more than a century's worth of New York's most fascinating and important buildings. Each skyscraper is presented with informative and entertaining texts by New York Times contributor Eric Nash, a striking full-page photograph by architectural photographer Norman McGrath, archival images, interior views, and architectural drawings.

In addition to the eighty-five buildings documented in previous versions of the book, Manhattan Skyscrapers showcases eight of the most exciting new skyscrapers built in the past few years. These wonderfully diverse additions to the city—the New York Times Building by Renzo Piano, the Standard Hotel byPolshek Partnership Architects, 7 World Trade Center by SOM, the Blue Tower by Bernard Tschumi, Bank of America Tower by Cook + Fox, 11 Times Square by FXFOWLE, 200 West Street by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, and 425 Fifth Avenue by Michael Graves—give an indication of how the city continues to evolve in the twenty-first century. Manhattan Skyscrapers is an indispensable book for both the serious student of architecture and the casual collector of all things New York.

About this title

About the Author

Eric P. Nash has been a researcher and writer for the New York Times since 1986. He is the author of several books about architecture and design.

Norman McGrath's long career includes a wide variety of work for many well-known architects and designers. Every major architectural publication has featured his images.

Reviews

Covering just over 100 years, Nash and McGrath offer New Yorkers a chance to take another look at buildings they may have stopped noticing. A chronological arrangement plucks buildings from their context and reveals a century's seismic shifts. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower (1909), essentially a double-sized reproduction of the Campanile of St. Mark's, gives way to the glass monoliths that today toggle between monumentality and disappearance, underscoring how these "Cathedrals of Commerce" (like the actual Cathedrals they replaced) tell stories about men whose ingenuity drove American capitalism and technology. Nash, who writes for The New York Times, is no wordsmith, but he has a knack for finding the perfect quote: the architect of the GE Building defends his Gothic radio-wave-topped design by saying its lines and curves are "intended to convey the directness and penetration of radio itself," while the head of the Real Estate Board states flatly that the buildings that went up at the end of World War II are modern, "Primarily because they are air-conditioned." Along with the excellent McGrath, Nash takes familiar icons of the New York skyline and makes them new again.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1568989679
• ISBN 13: 9781568989679
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 240