AM091: Manhattan in Sixty Minutes

You probably know that Manhattan was built on rocks and swamps, but do you know how the city we know today was made? It’s one thing to imagine the wooden homes built by the Dutch in the mid-1600s, but quite another to understand how skyscrapers were constructed –early and recently---and why they aren’t everywhere. Why is there a grid of streets instead of an organic accumulation of old roads, as in Paris? What effect did Paris have on New York’s buildings? What impact did railroads have, and why are the stations where they are? Our instructor will take you on a trip through four centuries of urban design, legal constraints, city planning, and architectural form, culminating in today’s thinking about ecological concerns, climate change, and the potential effects of the pandemic.

Carol Herselle Krinsky, a Smith graduate with a Ph.D; from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, has been Professor of Art History at NYU since 1965. She's the author of five books, is working on a sixth, has earned national and university teaching awards, and has been President of several scholarly organizations concerned with architecture and art. She has also been a guest professor elsewhere in the USA, and in Mexico, Germany, Belarus, and Tatarstan, and has lectured in ten European countries.

Photo Credit: Library of Congress