Find a book to read

Best of
New-York

1939

The WPA Guide to New York City: The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s New York

history

new-york

travel

non-fiction

Work Projects Administration - 1939

This tour guide for time travelers offers New York-lovers and thirties buffs an endlessly fascinating look at life as it was lived in the days when a trolley ride cost five cents, a room at the Plaza hotel was $7.50, Dodger fans flocked to Ebbetts Field, and the new World's Fair was the talk of the town.

The New York of 1939 was a city where adventures began "under the clock" at the Biltmore, and the big liners sailed at midnight. The Yankees were on their way to four in a row, and Times Square was truly the crossroads of the world.

Berenice Abbott: Changing New York

Berenice Abbott - 1939

Originally published by The New Press in 1997 to stellar reviews and great acclaim, Berenice Abbott: Changing New York sold more than 20,000 copies in its combined editions and was featured in Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the New York Daily News and called “the definitive visual record of the city as it was during the Depression” by the Washington Post.A Midwesterner who first came to New York in 1918, Abbott (1898–1991) was one of the twentieth century’s most important photographers, and her images have come to define 1930s New York.

In 1921, she moved to Paris and worked as Man Ray’s darkroom assistant. Inspired by the great French photographer Eugène Atget, she returned to America in 1929 to photograph New York City. With the financial support of the WPA’s Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1939, she was able to realize her ambition to document a “changing New York.”This deluxe hardcover edition features more than 300 duotones—the complete WPA project—and 113 variant images, drawings, and period maps, as well as an explanatory text on Abbott’s life and work.

Best ofNew-York

1939

The WPA Guide to New York City: The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s New York

Berenice Abbott: Changing New York

Best of
New-York