A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street by Bird, Christiane

A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781632867421)

Vendor: Christiane Bird
Product type: Books
Format: Hardcover
$28.00
$28.00
$28.00
Subtotal: $28.00
A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street by Bird, Christiane

A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street

$28.00
A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street by Bird, Christiane

A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street

$28.00
Format: Hardcover
Description
Description
x

Gotham meets The Island at the Center of the World in this dazzling history of a single block in Manhattan from the Age of Exploration to the present.

This is the story of New York City, told through the prism of one block, bordered by Twenty-third Street to the south, Twenty-fourth Street to the north, Fifth Avenue and Broadway to the east, and Sixth Avenue to the west. It's a story of forest and cement, bird cries and taxi horns, theaters and factories, gambling dens and gourmet foods. It's also the story of high life and low life, immigrants and tourists, farmers and aristocrats, crooked cops and moral reformers, toy stores and social climbers--from Solomon Pieters, a former slave who was the first owner of the block, to Alexander "Clubber" Williams, the notorious police officer of the 1870s who accepted bribes and wielded his club with equal impunity, to Marietta Stevens, whose Sunday-night socials and scheming became the stuff of legend. Greed and generosity, guilt and innocence, extravagance and degradation--all have flourished on this one Manhattan block, emblematic of the city as a whole.

Venturing from the opulent halls of the Fifth Avenue Hotel to grimy Sixth Avenue brothels, from the era of the Lenape to that of the Dutch, from the Gilded Age to the twentieth century, when the block and the city were transformed into something closely resembling the Manhattan we know today, A Block in Time takes us on a dynamic, exhilarating tour of history. Welcome to New York, past and present, and hear all the sordid and edifying stories this small patch of land has to tell.

Author: Christiane Bird
ISBN-10: 1632867427
ISBN-13: 9781632867421
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Language: English
Published: 03/01/2022
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.30w x 1.40d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 10/01/2021 pg. 19
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2022
Publishers Weekly 01/17/2022
By Christiane Bird
By Christiane Bird
x
Christiane Bird is the author of The Sultan's Shadow; A Thousand Sighs, a Thousand Revolts; and Neither East Nor West, among other titles. She has worked on staff for the New York Daily News and has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Miami Herald, among other publications. She holds a BA in literature from Yale University and an MALS in American Studies from Columbia University. She lives in New York City with her family.

Recently Viewed Products