Old Buildings of New York, With Some Notes Regarding Their Origin and Occupants

A loving catalogue of Manhattan's architectural ghosts, written when the city was still recognizably itself. The anonymous author wanders through the streets of early 20th-century New York, pausing before buildings that have since been demolished, renamed, or forgotten, gathering the stories of the merchants, politicians, and visionaries who built them. This is not a dry architectural treatise but a memorial: a record of structures the author already feared were vanishing, along with the occupants whose ambitions gave them meaning. For anyone who has walked past a blank lot in the Financial District and wondered what once stood there, this book provides the ghosts.