Creative History

“It was as if New York had been a burning candle upon which nature had clapped a Snuffer...leaving nothing of the city’s activity but a struggling ember.” -The New York Times, Tuesday, March 13, 1888 One hundred and twenty years ago the New York City skyline looked very different than it does today.  Late Victorian-era New York was a city sheathed in a constant pall of smoke; covered by a blanket of dusty black coal soot.  It was a city made up almost entirely of brick, masonry and wood.  A city that moved via horse, elevated train and on foot with main streets of macadam cobblestone and dark muck filled back alleys.  Asphalt, the automobile, and the subway still remained in the not to distant future. Had you stood on the New Jersey side and gazed across the Hudson, back then, you would have seen a short squat bustling city ready to leap skyward like a rottweiler poised to fight with the coming dawn of a new century. The cityscape of 1888 was spreading outward in all dir