American Cultural History on Walking Off the Big Apple: A Chronological Guide to a Selection of Posts

Over the course of the last two years writing Walking Off the Big Apple, and it's been two years this week, I realize that many posts situate themselves in a category that would best be described as American cultural history. While I spend most of my time on contemporary issues and urban matters, I often explore topics in the history of visual and performing arts, literary history, and architecture.

When I'm out looking for the past, I often find that historical walks find their way into current preoccupations. For example, last fall when I was trying to recreate the fictional world of Lily Bart and her creator, writer Edith Wharton, the Wall Street collapse drew immediate parallels with the writer's time. Even seeing an art exhibit on Babar drew parallels with the Gilded Age.

To better understand the city involves being able to perceive the layers of its history, so when I'm out walking I often chase the furtive shadows of the past. I've put together a chronological guide to a selection of posts, approximately 42 of the 700 on this site, thinking it would be useful to share with student types and with readers who may see old posts that they haven't yet read.

(Ed. note - This list will be updated, as needed. - Teri)

1600s
• The "fresh, green breast of the New World- Mannahatta/Manhattan
• Towards a New Amsterdam: Celebrations of Henry Hudson
• In New Amsterdam, the Half Moon Drops Anchor at the Battery

1810s
• Washington Irving's Solitary Walk through Christmas

1850s
• Before the Whale: Ishmael Takes a Walk in Manhattan
• Art and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century New York

1860s
• Walking Broadway With Abraham Lincoln: The Visit to New York for the Cooper Union Speech
• Living Now in the New York of the Gilded Age: Inheriting the Built Environment of the Nineteenth Century

1890s
• Reservoir Dog: New York's Demon-Cur of the Winter of 1893
• Charles Hemstreet's Nooks and Corners of Old New York: Lessons in Mortality
• Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate and One for the Wool Trade
• The Making of the Monumental Metropolis: New York and the Ecole des Beaux Arts

1900s
• New York 1900: Edith Wharton and The House of Mirth
• A Walk for a New York Christmas: O. Henry and "The Gift of the Magi"
• Henry James' Uneasy Homecoming to Washington Square
• A Visit to Audubon Terrace and Environs

1910s
• Fifth Avenue and the High Road to Taos: Mabel Dodge and Flannery O'Connor
• Harvey Wiley Corbett and the E. 8th Street Apartments
• The Woolworth Building
• 1917: Trotsky's Flâneur Boy Wanders Downtown
• Focus on POTUS: The Two Washingtons of the Washington Square Arch

1920s
• A Visit to Astoria, Then & Now: The Marx Brothers at Paramount Pictures and Notes on Contemporary Attractions
• Making My Own Manhatta (on Paul Strand)
• New York's Theater District: The Legacy of the Golden Age, A Walk and a Map
• The Marx Brothers on Broadway, & Notes on New York Theatres in the 1920s
• From The Great Gatsby: Nick Carraway's Walk
• Walking New York: Theodore Dreiser on St. Luke's Place
• James Weldon Johnson's New York and Four Stops in Central Harlem

1930s
• Lessons from the Days of the "Empty State Building"
• The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Daily News Building
• Walker Evans, a Block on E. 61st Street in 1938
• The Light in Edward Hopper: The Sunny Side of the Great Depression

1940s
• Flannery O'Connor's Six Months in New York City
• E.B. White and the New York of Stuart Little

1950s
• Mapping Holly Golightly: Walking Off Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Places From The Bell Jar: Sylvia Plath's New York
• The Classic New York of Mame Dennis
• Garbo Walks: Into the Modern

1960s
• JFK: The Presidential Candidate From the Bronx
• The New York Hotel That Looks Like It's in Miami
• Freewheelin' Jones Street
• Bye Bye Penn Station: Mad Men Takes on an Epic Battle

1970s
• After Walking, A Place to Sit: Greenacre Park, E. 51st

2000s
• Walking Off the Wall Street Bears: A Subprimer (November 2007)
• After the Closing Bell, A Protest Against the Wall Street Bailout (September 2008)
• A Timely Visit to The Museum of American Finance
• Follow Your Money: The New York Financial Crisis and Walk
• A Stroll Down Pennsylvania Avenue
• J.P. Elephant: Drawing Babar at The Morgan

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.