New York City on film

Few places are as cinematic as New York City. Filmmakers sometimes think of the city as a character itself. The list of movies in which New York plays a crucial role is too long to cover in depth, but some of these top New York City movies are worth renting before you visit. Possibly the best New York City promotional film is the musical On The Town, with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. This film is about three sailors who spend their 24-hour leave exploring Gotham. Shot on location, all the landmarks, circa 1949, are captured in Technicolor. Woody Allen is known as a New York filmmaker and proudly shoots all his films (with the exception of “Match Point,” shot in London) in the city. One of his best and a good, but maybe a bit dated, look at neurotic New York is 1977’s Annie Hall.
Following in Woody Allen’s footsteps are director Rob Reiner and writer Nora Ephron, the team who made When Harry Met Sally in 1989. It’s a gorgeous cinematic tribute to New York. By the way, the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene was filmed in Katz’s Delicatessen (see Chapter 10 for more on this famous deli).
“I love this dirty town,” says Burt Lancaster in the gritty, crackling Sweet Smell of Success. In this beautifully photographed black-and-white movie from 1957, Lancaster plays malicious gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis is perfectly despicable as the groveling publicist, Sidney Falco.
Another filmmaker identified with New York is Martin Scorsese. He has made many films in which New York plays a central role, including Mean Streets (1973), The Age of Innocence (1993), and 2002’s Gangs of New York, which was actually filmed in Italy. But the one film where New York is a character, and not a very flattering one, is Taxi Driver. The Academy Award–nominated 1976 movie about an alienated and psychotic taxi driver is tough and bloody, but if you want to see images of pre-cleanup Times Square, check this film out.
The best history of New York on video is the Ric Burns documentary, New York: A Documentary Film (1999). The seven-disc, 14-hour DVD (also available on VHS) with a poignant, post-9/11 epilogue is a must-see for anyone interested in the evolution of this great city.

New York City on paper

For the definitive history of New York City from its birth to the end of the 19th century, you won’t find a better read than the Pulitzer Prize–winning Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace (Oxford University Press, 1998). Another recommended historical look at the growth of New York City — this one told in a breezy narrative tone — is Epic of New York City: A Narrative History, by Edward Robb Ellis (Kodansha, 1990).
One of master biographer Robert A. Caro’s early works, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Vintage, 1975), focuses on how the vision of master builder Robert Moses transformed New York to what it became in the second half of the 20th century. In Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (Simon & Schuster, 1983), David McCullough devotes his estimable talents to the story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. The companion volume to a PBS Series (see New York: A Documentary Film later in this chapter), New York: An Illustrated History, by Ric Burns, Lisa Ades, and James Sanders (Knopf, 2003) uses lavish photographs and illustrations to show the growth of New York City. The great essayist E.B. White’s classic, Here is New York (Little Bookroom, 1999), is as relevant today as it was in 1948 when it was written. Another timeless masterpiece is Miroslav Sasek’s illustrated children’s book from 1960, This is New York (Universe Books, 2003). Both books are available in recent reprints. One of New York’s best chronicler’s is long-time newspaperman, Pete Hamill. His Downtown, (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2004) is a wonderful history of Manhattan from Times Square to Battery Park.

The New York Local Cuisine

I dare you to define the local cuisine of New York: Is it a hot dog with mustard? Pastrami on rye? A bagel and a schmear? A “slice” (of pizza, of course)? It’s all of them and more. The cuisine of New York is the cuisine of the world. A little bit of everything goes into the melting pot, and the mix is constantly changing. A few years ago, you couldn’t get good Mexican food. Now, with the influx of thousands of Mexican immigrants, good, authentic Mexican restaurants abound.
But what defines New York cuisine is not just different ethnic foods, but the different trends, styles, and types of restaurants. Food is important in New York. And it’s also big business. This is a city where a hamburger can sell from $3 to $30, or an omelet with mounds of caviar can sell for $1,000. It’s also the city where you can find a restaurant where the only item on the menu is peanut butter. Everyone can find something to eat in New York.

Late 19th Century to 9/11

With industry booming, the late 19th century was termed the “Gilded Age.” New York City was an example of this label in action; millionaires built mansions on Fifth Avenue, while rows of tenements teeming with families (made up of the cheap, mostly immigrant laborers who were employed by the industrial barons) filled the city’s districts. In 1880, the city’s population boomed to 1.1 million.
More European immigrants poured into the city between 1900 and 1930, arriving at Ellis Island and then fanning out into neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, and Harlem. With the city population in 1930 at 7 million and a Depression raging, New York turned to a feisty mayor named Fiorello La Guardia for help. With the assistance of civic planner Robert Moses, who masterminded a huge public works program, the city was remade. Moses did some things well, but his highway, bridge, tunnel, and housing projects ran through (and sometimes destroyed) many vibrant neighborhoods.
While most of the country prospered after World War II, New York, with those Moses-built highways and a newly forming car culture, endured an exodus to the suburbs. By 1958, the Dodgers had left Brooklyn and the Giants had left the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. This economic slide climaxed in the late 1970s with the city’s declaration of bankruptcy. As Wall Street rallied during the Reagan years of the 1980s, New York’s fortunes also improved. In the 1990s, with Rudolph Giuliani — whom they haven’t named anything after yet — as the mayor, the city rode a wave of prosperity that left it safer, cleaner, and more populated. The flip side of this boom was that Manhattan became more homogenized. Witness the Disney-fication of Times Square — the ultimate symbol of New York’s homogenization — and the growing gap between the rich and poor.
Everything changed on September 11, 2001, when terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. But New York’s grit and verve showed itself once more, as the city immediately began to rebound emotionally and financially from that terrible tragedy. As this book goes to press, ground has broken on a memorial, but bickering on what should be built on the site continues. Stay tuned.

From Verrazano to Civil War

The area that became New York City was the home to many Native Americans before Giovanni da Verrazano arrived in 1524. Even though Verrazano didn’t stay, a bridge was named after him. And it wasn’t until 1609, when Henry Hudson, while searching for the Northwest Passage, claimed it for the Dutch East India Company, that New York was recognized as a potential, profitable settlement in the New World. Hudson (the river that separates Manhattan from the mainland is named after him) said of New York, “It is as beautiful a land as one can hope to tread upon.” The treading didn’t really start until years later, but by 1625, Dutch settlers established a fur trade with the locals and called their colony New Amsterdam. A year later, Peter Minuit of the Dutch West India Company made that famous deal for the island. He bought New Amsterdam from the Lenape Tribe for what has widely been reported as $24.
New Amsterdam became a British colony in the 1670s, and during the Revolutionary War it was occupied by British troops. England controlled New York until 1783 when it withdrew from the city two full years after the end of the American Revolution. Two years after that, New York was named the first capital of the United States. The first Congress was held at Federal Hall on Wall Street in 1789, and George Washington was inaugurated president. But New York’s tenure as the capital didn’t last long. A year later, the government headed south to the newly created District of Columbia.
By 1825, New York City’s population swelled to 250,000 and rose again to a half-million by mid-century. The city was a hotbed of Union recruitment during the Civil War; in the 1863 draft riots, Irish immigrants violently protested the draft and lynched 11 African Americans.