"Neither a conventional history of the city nor simply a collection of illustrations and photographs, this work weaves together diverse historical works - from political and economic analyses to ethnic and gender studies - with visual evidence from each historical period.".

"Cityscapes tells the story of the city from its origins in the early seventeenth century, when Dutch settlers encountered the Lenape Indians and founded New Amsterdam, through the end of the twentieth century. Through lithographs, paintings, drawings, and broadsides New York is portrayed as rising from a small Dutch outpost to a republican seaport whose life was framed by the American Revolution.

The visual evidence changes to etchings, photographs, and lithographs as Cityscapes depicts a mid-nineteenth-century city torn by dislocations caused by a multiethnic society wracked by the turmoil of the industrial revolution. Documenting the turn of the last century, a wealth of photographs shows the new five-borough metropolis absorbing waves of immigrants and portrays the evolution of the immigrant metropolis into the cosmopolitan city of mid-century.

In its final chapter, Cityscapes looks at the global village and takes stock of New York's role as the world economic and artistic capital of the late twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.