The skyscraper and the city : the Woolworth Building and the making of modern New York
"Gail Fenske shows here that the Woolworth Building's multiplicity of meanings reflected the cultural contradictions that defined New York City's modernity. For Frank Woolworth - founder of the famous five-and-dime store chain - the building served as a towering trademark; for advocates of the City Beautiful movement it suggested a majestic hotel de ville; for technological enthusiasts it represented the boldest of experiments in vertical construction; and for tenants it provided an evocative setting for high-style consumption. Tourists, meanwhile, experienced a spectacular sightseeing destination, and avant-garde artists discovered a twentieth-century future. In emphasizing this multifaceted significance, Fenske illuminates the process of conceiving, financing, and constructing skyscrapers as well as the mass phenomena of consumerism, marketing, news media, and urban spectatorship that surround them."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2008
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2008