With the completion of the world's first skyscraper in Chicago in 1885, the modern city skyline was born. A result of American technology and ingenuity, the 180-foot steel-framed Home Insurance Building rose above the city, and Americans have been reaching higher ever since. From Boston, steeped in history, to Las Vegas, a modern mirage in the desert, to Honolulu, America's paradise, each city has its own story. 'Skylines' takes us cross country and back in time to witness the steady growth of our great nation-city by city. For even the most well-seasoned air traveller, a city emerging from beneath the clouds is a compelling sight. Though the perspective is different for those arriving in cars, trains, on bicycles, or on foot, the first view of a city is always memorable. Throughout history, cartographers and explorers, photographer and artists have produced meticulous panoramas of urban areas-from the decks of ships, aloft in hot-air balloons, or perched on the side of a high hill. This sumptuous volume showcases the skylines of 48 great American cities with the spectacular panoramic photographs of Blakeway World-wide Panoramas.James Blakeway and Chris Gjevre have travelled the world photographing cities and other major attractions, waiting for the perfect time to take to the skies and capture each subject at its best. Complementing these images are historical photographs and bird's-eye-view maps reflecting each city's distinct character. The book completes its spectacular tour with a well-travelled historian guiding the reader through each city, offering atmospheric written portraits to accompany the antique photos and stunning Blakeway panoramas.

Met lit. opg. Essays on the commonplace artifacts of life in modern America: advertising and celebreties, architecture, short fiction and magazines.

Offering some 30 essays, this volume concentrates on recent writings by historians of American architecture & urbanism. The essays are arranged chronologically from colonial to contemporary & accessible in thematic groupings.

This history of skyscrapers examines how these tall buildings affected the cityscape and the people who worked in, lived in, and visited them. Much of the focus is rightly on the architects who had the vision to design and build America's skyscrapers, but attention is also given to the steelworkers who built them, the financiers who put up the money, and the daredevils who attempt to "conquer" them in some inexplicable pursuit of fame. The impact of the skyscraper on popular culture, particularly film and literature, is also explored.

A tale of two cities, both called 'New York'. The first is a real city, an urban agglomeration of millions. The second is a mythic city, so rich in memory and association and sense of place that to people everywhere it has come to seem real: the New York of films such as 42nd Street, Rear Window, King Kong, Dead End, The Naked City, Ghostbusters, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, and Do the Right Thing. The dream city of the movies - created by more than a century of films, since the very dawn of the medium itself - may hold the secret to the glamour of its real counterpart. Here are the cocktail parties and power lunches, the subway chases and opening nights, the playground rumbles and observation-deck romances. Here is an invented Gotham, a place designed specifically for action, drama, and adventure, a city of bright avenues and mysterious sidestreets, of soaring towers and intimate corners, where remarkable people do exciting, amusing, romantic, scary things. Sanders takes the reader from the tenement to the penthouse, from New York to Hollywood and back again, from 1896 to the present, all the while showing how the real and mythic cities reflected, changed, and taught each other.

"American Picturesque offers a magisterial account of the concept of the picturesque and its manifestation in many aspects of nineteenth-century American life. Conron's study ranges over the entire phenomenon, tracing the development of the picturesque aesthetic in genre, landscape, and topographical painting, rural cottages and villas."--BOOK JACKET.