Reading the History of Manhattan in Its Diagrams, Maps, and Graphics

 

“From a booklet of charming Manhattan maps, probably made for readers of The Sun, sections of the city as they looked in the late 19th century. The story of New York’s Downtown-based avant-garde unfolds over a tumultuous century in a tour de force of narrative painting. ... Steven Guarnaccia updates the traditional streetscape with an overhead view of the buildings along 53rd Street that captures a slice of Midtown with a large number of Manhattan’s more recognizable postwar skyscrapers. The axonometric projections are ideal for capturing the large bulk and unusual forms of the buildings, just as the elevations used for the New York Mail and Express project almost a century earlier suited the architecture of that era. ...”

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amazon: Decoding Manhattan: Island of Diagrams, Maps, and Graphics

Steven Guarnaccia and Pentagram New York, A Walk on 53rd Street, map for the 53rd Street Association, 1987.