In this age where anyone can navigate any city around the globe like a local, with a simple tap of a smart phone, a new exhibition has the viewer step back in time to a far different way of exploring the then fast growing metropolis of Manhattan.
“Wish You Were Here” is an unusual spin on New York history through the lens of the city’s magnetic lure as a visitor and tourist destination for a century and a half. The show runs through May 10 at New York’s Grolier Club, America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles (founded in 1884). The show is packed with hundreds of guidebooks, photobooks, viewbooks, photos, and maps, dating from roughly the early-1800s up through the 1940s (1807-1940), that invite close examination.
From an “uncensored” guide that promises visitors “The real low-down on the things you want to know,” to books on not only where to dine but , the material provides insight into the city’s history as a cultural and entertainment hub.
New York Behind the Scenes (1939). From the Collection of Mark D. Tomasko.
The exhibition not only tells the story of the city itself, but of its people. Since the time period also generally overlaps with decades of immigration into New York City, from every corner of the world, one can only imagine that many of these guides were enthusiastically embraced not only by visitors and tourists, but also transplants to all five of the boroughs, many of whom were eager to explore their new home territory.
Take for instance, the “New York Standard Guide,” a revised edition issued in 1924, priced at 50 cents. It bears a lengthy cover description: “This is a New and Complete Handbook of New York. . .With Views Up to Date Map and Street Directory. For Visitors and Residents. The Standard Guide has helped thousands to see New York intelligently, it will help you.”
The show comes courtesy of Mark D. Tomasko, a retired corporate lawyer and passionate collector of ephemera whose material is the source of the entire exhibition. He is also a club member.
(1903). From the collection of Mark D. Tomasko. One of the first guides to New York restaurants.
“New York City has always intrigued me,” writes Tomasko in the introduction to the show. He was born in Brooklyn and grew up in the suburbs with a father who worked in Midtown Manhattan. On Christmas Eve in 1969, Tomasko purchased an 1895 copy of , an acquisition which kicked off a lifelong fascination. “It started my New York City collecting, documenting the physical growth and development of the City in the 19th and 20th centuries,” he said.
In a phone interview, Tomasko told me he wanted the show to illustrate how visitors and residents would use the materials to learn about, navigate, and remember the city. Given his love of printed material and printing history, he concedes that the complete shift to digital makes him “personally a little sad.”
A Pictorial Description of Broadway. New York: The Evening Mail and Express, (1899). From the collection of Mark D. Tomasko.
Tomasko said he hopes to provide audiences with “a better understanding of how the city grew and described itself over the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century. When you get into the 1840s, 50s, and 60s, it just grew considerably.”
While he emphasized that he is not a historian and makes “no claim to be one,” he of course has uncovered some interesting trends and discoveries along the way.
Along with borough-specific books for Brooklyn, and the Bronx, and Queens, material within the publications can be surprisingly wide ranging and specific, such as one map that has a list of churches by denomination (Baptist, Reformed Dutch, Methodist, Friends, and Roman Catholic), with several of those churches still around today, to books that incorporated merchant directories. Tomasko explained: “When New York became a major trading center, people from out of town would come in to buy things, so merchant directories in guidebooks, would serve yet another function.”
King’s Views of New York. New York: Moses King, 1908. The title page of a King’s View of New York guide features “King’s Dream of New York,” a 1908 drawing by Harry M. Pettit.
Tomasko’s ongoing acquisitions also yielded some interesting finds about the various languages the guidebooks were available in. “I have several early Spanish guides to New York,” he explained. “One from 1863 and another one from 1872. I have a French guide and directory to French speaking people dated 1880, as well as a Czech guide from the first decade of the 20th century.”
One of my own favorite objects in the show is a handwritten note from 1939 displayed in a vitrine underneath a paper-framed photograph that reads: “souvenir of the 1st time I lived in New York City- an apt. on Riverside Drive 1939. I loved it!! even though we were poor.”
“Some of the people coming here some would have had decent means,” said Tomasko. “But I suspect a lot of them did not, particularly later in the mid and late 19th century.”
The facade of the Grolier Club in New York City. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
And if you want some real financial nostalgia, check out the map of “Average Monthly Rent By Blocks,” with a color-coded street guide based on a 1940 U.S. Census Bureau. The most expensive is “$100 and over” which appeared to apply to a small area to the east of Central Park. Nearly every other area of the map outlined in purple, pink, light blue and yellow is $99 and under.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
