"This pattern inscribed itself in the city’s skyline and streetscape. In boom times, speculative capital cascaded into real estate, generating frenzied building sprees. When the fever broke, office and housing construction halted abruptly. By the time the economy regathered its energies, a new generation of promoters and architects had come along, new cultural fashions were in vogue, new technologies and construction practices had materialized, and the latest spurt of building bore little resemblance to its predecessor. This spasmodic evolution of New York’s spatial geography allows us to ‘read’ the cityscape, rather as archaeologists decipher stacked layer of earth, each of which holds artifacts of successive eras. Here, remnants of built environment offer clues to New York’s periodization."
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace - Yep, I think I’m going to like my History of New York Architecture class.
#Quotes #New York #Architecture #Homework's Not So Bad
