Among several contemporary efforts to capture the essence of New York City in the 1890s by photograph and narrative, two stand out for their unblinking candor:
Shepp's New York City Illustrated (1894) and E. Idell Zeisloft's The New Metropolis (1899).
In New York City Illustrated, the Shepp brothers give us the city in all its glory and grime. The 528 pages and 396 sepia photographs in this volume ably accomplish the bold claims made in the Shepps' Preface:
"As New York is a miniature of the world, so this volume is New York in epitome. We have striven, with the assistance of our special artist, Mr. A.L. Simpson, to present life-like views of all phases of the city's varied activities and existence. By aid of the camera's facile art, one may in these pages behold hundreds of scenes, to observe which with his own eyes would be a task of weeks or months."
"He may here read the record of many pens, inspired by many attentive eyes, telling the story of the great city, its business and its pleasure, its law-keepers and its law-breakers, its poverty and its wealth, its sunshine and its shadow. Here are portrayed the mansions of the rich, and the "Four Hundred" who dwell therein, and the shoddy aristocracy which vainly strives to emulate them; the great middle class, happily not yet extinct; the army of labor and its daily toilings; the homes of the poor and all the pathos that invests them; the reeking slums and their scarcely human denizens. Here one may visit the famous Bowery and its typical resorts, the almost innumerable clubs, the theatres, the Patriarchs' Ball, the notoriously popular French Ball, and all the places of amusement and diversion, indoors and out, with which the great city abounds."
"One may learn how the city is governed, and how its police force suppresses crime, and its wonderful fire department extinguishes conflagrations; how the bunco-steerer and the green-goods man and the burglar ply their trades, and the tens of thousands of the "frail sisterhood" pursue their feverish career; how politicians "pull wires" and manipulate the public interest for their own ends; how the great newspapers record the doings of the day in all the world; how the great markets supply the city with food, and the hotels and eating houses of every grade furnish from a five cent meal to a sybaritic banquet such as Lucullus might have envied. All this and more we have endeavored to lay before our readers."
See the table of contents for this book for a listing chapters and illustrations.
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