Manhattan Skyscrapers

Covering just over 100 years, Nash and McGrath offer New Yorkers a chance to take another look at buildings they may have stopped noticing. A chronological arrangement plucks buildings from their context and reveals a century's seismic shifts. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower (1909), essentially a double-sized reproduction of the Campanile of St. Mark's, gives way to the glass monoliths that today toggle between monumentality and disappearance, underscoring how these "Cathedrals of Commerce" (like the actual Cathedrals they replaced) tell stories about men whose ingenuity drove American capitalism and technology. Nash, who writes for The New York Times, is no wordsmith, but he has a knack for finding the perfect quote: the architect of the GE Building defends his Gothic radio-wave-topped design by saying its lines and curves are "intended to convey the directness and penetration of radio itself," while the head of the Real Estate Board states flatly that the buildings that went up at the end of World War II are modern, "Primarily because they are air-conditioned." Along with the excellent McGrath, Nash takes familiar icons of the New York skyline and makes them new again. (Sept.)