Lower Manhattan

"I came to see the buildings as fossils of a time past. These buildings were used during the Civil War. The men were all dead, but the buildings were still here, left behind as the city grew around them....The passing of the buildings was for me a great event. It ...more

In the mid-1960s, New York City Mayor Robert Wagner assembled a team of the best and brightest urban designers and architects to decide the future of downtown Manhattan. After six months of drawing and discussion, they produced The Lower Manhattan Plan, a 368-page document that was hand-typed, hand-bound, and photocopied. ...more

Photographs by Berenice Abbott, Alvin Langdon Colburn, Alfred Stieglitz, Andreas Feininger, Lewis Hine, Richard Benson with text by Whitman and others. ...more