Research Catalog

Title

Writing the city : essays on New York / Elizabeth Barlow Rogers.

Author

Rogers, Elizabeth Barlow, 1936-

Publication

Amherst, Massachusetts : Library of American Landscape History, [2022]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 178 pages; 25 cm

Summary

"The eminent preservationist, author, and landscape historian Elizabeth Barlow Rogers is also a committed New Yorker. Writing the City reveals the many facets of her passion as a citizen of the great metropolis and her lifelong efforts to protect and improve it. These include, most importantly, the creation of the Central Park Conservancy, the organization that transformed Central Park from one of the city's most degraded amenities into its most valuable. Many of Rogers's essays relate to this remarkable achievement, and the insight and administrative acumen that propelled it. The first section of Writing the City, "Below and Above the Ground," explores New York's physical make up, especially its geology, as well as the origins of another of New York's world-class landscapes, the New York Botanical Garden. "Along the Shoreline" features an insightful review of Phillip Lopate's Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan and two other essays about the city's edges, one of which focuses on Brooklyn Bridge Park. In the last section in the collection, "In and About the Parks," Rogers's understanding of culture, architecture, urban planning history, and landscape architecture come together in five insightful essays. Subjects range from Green-Wood Cemetery and Prospect Park in Brooklyn to "Thirty-three New Ways You Can Help Central Park's Renaissance," published in New York Magazine in 1983. The concluding essay, "Jane and Me," offers new perspectives on the urban theorist and activist Jane Jacobs, whose writings catalyzed Rogers's own interest in urban planning in the 1960s."--

Alternative Title

Essays on New York

Subjects

• Parks
• Landscapes
• Landscape architecture
• Essays
• New York (State) > New York
• New York (N.Y.)
• Parks > New York (State) > New York
• Landscapes > New York (State) > New York
• Landscape architecture > New York (State) > New York

Genre/Form

Essays.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Preface / by Robin Karson -- Introduction -- Below and above the ground. Bedrock, sand, and water: the geological landscape of New York City ; New York: a once and future Arcadia ; The Hudson River: then and now ; "An American Kew": the transformation of Bronx Park into the New York Botanical Garden ; Representing nature: the dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History -- Along the shoreline. On Phillip Lopate's Waterfront: a journey around Manhattan ; Beneath the great bridge: a park grows in Brooklyn ; On New York's aged waterfront, a pinch of salt -- In and about the parks. Green-Wood Cemetery: scenic repose among the shades ; Designing Prospect Park ; Robert Moses and the transformation of Central Park ; Thirty-three new ways you can help Central Park's renaissance ; Jane and me.

ISBN

• 9781952620362
• 1952620368

LCCN

99991270222

OCLC

• on1260192945
• 1260192945
• SCSB-14349319

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries