A spatial interface to twenty essays on the objects and themes of the exhibit as well as the objects and landmarks
More informationThe important landmarks that stood at this important Broadway intersection over time and by site
More informationA look at the technical processes along with the men and women who made all these cultural commodities in New York
More informationHannah Wirta Kinney
Claire McRee
Kelsey Brow
Andrew Gardner
Kirstin Purtich
Kirstin Purtich
Claire McRee
Laura Kelly-Bowditch
Kelsey Brow
Virginia Fister
Martina D’Amato
Zahava Friedman-Stadler
Virginia Spofford
Virginia Spofford
Martina D'Amato
Virginia Fister
Andrew Gardner
W. S. L. Jewett
“Broadway”
From Harper’s Weekly [February 15, 1868], p. 104
1868
Woodcut
Closed: 16 1/8 × 11 1/4 in. (40.8 × 28.4 cm)
Library, Bard Graduate Center
Nineteenth-century street views of New York used social typing to represent the diversity of classes and cultures in the great metropolis. In this woodcut, a beggar and a walking advertisement man mingle with fashionable ladies and gentlemen on Broadway. The epicenter of fashionable society in mid-nineteenth century New York, Broadway was the place to see and be seen. According to the article that accompanied this image: “How the ranks and antagonisms of life jostle each other on that crowded paves! Saints and sinners, mendicants and millionaires, priests and poets, courtesans and chiffoniers, burglars and bootblacks, move side-by-side in the multiform throng.”
— Kelsey Brow