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Design authority Wendy Moonan takes the reader on a tour of some of New York City's finest residential rooms--past and present. The selection of interiors is about the "wow" factor--New York residential spaces that elicit gasps of pleasure and surprise when first seen. Some are very grand, others sparingly modern or eclectic. All are exceptional and, Moonan promises, unforgettable. Groundbreaking rooms include Brooke Astor's elegant library by Albert Hadley; Gloria Vanderbilt's sublime patchwork bedroom; Donald Judd's dramatically spare art-filled loft; Adolfo's opulent and magnificently red entrance hall; a Peter Marino-designed penthouse with sweeping midtown views; and Jamie Drake's stunn...
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This guidebook to the Big Apple goes beyond the traditional tour, offering visitors a fascinating exploration of the city’s rich history. New York is a city of superlatives. It has the largest population, greatest wealth, broadest diversity, and most elegant museums in the nation. With that comes an amazing history that you can experience firsthand with this unique guide. George Washington took his first oath of office on the steps of Federal Hall. Visitors can still dine at the famed Fraunces Tavern and worship at historic St. Paul’s Chapel. From the Brooklyn Bridge to stunning skyscrapers, the city celebrates its own history and that of the nation. Join author Alison Fortier as she traces the history and heritage of America’s largest metropolis.
The official guide to New York's must-see buildings profiles a host of new landmarks and includes 80 two-color, easy-to-read maps, and more than 200 photographs. This new edition will make every visitor feel like a native--and turn every native into a wide-eyed tourist. Includes a Foreword by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
Some weeks later a dray drove up to the Astor store, then at 68 Pine Street, and delivered a number of very heavy little kegs which chinked faintly as they were rolled in through the door. "What on earth are those, Jacob?" Sarah demanded when she happened in during the afternoon. "Der fruits of our East India pass," he answered, his deep-set eyes twinkling merrily. "Money?" He nodded. "Ho-how much?" "Fifty-five t'ousan' dollar." "Jacob!" she gasped. And well she might. It was as rich a coup as he ever achieved. -from "Fur and Tea" New Yorkers can't escape the name Astor: it graces theaters, hotels, street names, and even an entire Queens neighborhood. This delightful biography of the "landlo...
In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age. Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior. Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure
The fascinating history of American bookishness as told through the sale of Charles Lamb’s library in 1848 Charles Lamb’s library—a heap of sixty scruffy old books singed with smoke, soaked with gin, sprinkled with crumbs, stripped of illustrations, and bescribbled by the essayist and his literary friends—caused a sensation when it was sold in New York in 1848. The transatlantic book world watched as the relics of a man revered as the patron saint of book collectors were dispersed. Following those books through the stories of the bibliophiles who shaped intellectual life in America—booksellers, publishers, journalists, editors, bibliographers, librarians, actors, antiquarians, philanthropists, politicians, poets, clergymen—Denise Gigante brings to life a lost world of letters at a time when Americans were busy assembling the country’s major public, university, and society libraries. A human tale of loss, obsession, and spiritual survival, this book reveals the magical power books can have to bring people together and will be an absorbing read for anyone interested in what makes a book special.
On May 11, 1911, the New York Public Library opened its “marble palace for book lovers” on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. This was the city’s first public library in the modern sense, a tax-supported, circulating collection free to every citizen. Since before the Revolution, however, New York’s reading publics had access to a range of “public libraries” as the term was understood by contemporaries. In its most basic sense a public library in the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries simply meant a shared collection of books that was available to the general public and promoted the public good. From the founding in 1754 of the New York Society Library up to 1911, public l...