Berlin/New York:Like & Unlike

Book by Kleihues, Joseph

With more than 600 illustrations augmenting 34 essays by art historians, critics and architects, this stimulating volume examines parallels and contrasts between New York and Berlin. Both cities are "electropolises" that flourished during the second industrial revolution between 1870 and 1920. In the suburbs of both Berlin and Manhattan, urban planners belonging to the Garden City movement sought ways to combat ugly aspects of capitalism. Essays draw parallels between New York's Central Park and Berlin's wooded Tiergarten, and between the cities' respective amusement industries, as exemplified by Brooklyn's Coney Island and Berlin's enormous, domed Haus Vaterland. Other essays chart analogous developments in art from the emergence of modernism to postwar experiments in painting and sculpture. Yet fundamental differences also emerge, such as NYC's anarchic, individualistic growth versus Berlin's greater emphasis on economic democracy and on integrating technology and culture.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This collection of essays by 34 German and American scholars and critics grew out of a 1987 conference at the Aspen Institute in Berlin on "The City of the 21st Century." Berlin and New York are cited here as premier cities of the "second industrial revolution," and their development is compared and contrasted through three chronological periods: 1870-1918, 1918- 45, and 1945 to the present. The various essays, copiously illustrated with architectural drawings, maps, and photographs, discuss each metropolis-which is not just a large city but "an urban creation that expresses the history, the multifold social and cultural activities, and the aspirations of the larger national...society of which it is a part"-in terms of transportation system, housing gardens, urban planning, art, and entertainment, among other characteristics. Throughout, efforts are made to track the differences and similarities between the two cities. Yet for all the subtle analysis, one essayist opines, not without humor, "The only visible motivation in the building of New York...has been greed." An original, engrossing study recommended for architecture and urban studies collections.
Edward B. Cone, New York City
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.