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TOUR UNIT FOUR
Skyscrapers and Greenwich Village: The “Roaring Twenties”
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Day
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Topic
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Day 1
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Wall Street and the Skyscraper: Architecture of Commercial and Corporate
Capital
HA, 90-94; 104-105
Willis, Form Follows Finance* p. 19-47 (lotsa pictures...)
Robins, Top This One: The Continuing Saga of the Tallest Building in the World
*
1) What “problem” does the skyscraper
solve, technically, economically, culturally? how does it solve these problems?
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Day 2
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Fifth Avenue: The Architecture of Prosperity
HA, 100-101
Burchell, On the Avenue, Fifth Avenue *
in class slides
1) What are the push and pull
factors that drive the upward growth of Fifth Avenue?
2) Draw a map/timeline of Fifth
Avenue’s upward growth showing where the landmarks are established
and when
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Day 3
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Shopping for Status: The ‘Ladies Mile’ and the Culture of Consumption
HA, 102-103
Stainman, Shopping for Status
Harriman, And the Price is Right
begin Wharton stories
1) How is shopping a “democratizing”
activity? How can it be turned to a means of reinforcing social status?
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Day 4
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Edith Wharton and ‘Old New York’
1) How are Edith Wharton’s female
characters caught in the same dynamic that Stainman describes
in Shopping for Status?
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Day 5
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Mass Transit, the Apartment Building and the Segregated City
Discuss tour location and choose
stops(in groups)
HA, 106-107
Clifton Hood, 722 Miles
Elizabeth Hawes, New York, New York*
1) How do the “el” and the apartment
building contribute to geographic segregation? What are the forms
of segregation that increase at the turn of the century, social,
economic, functional?
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Day 6
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Form Follows Finance: Wall Street to 1916
Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance,pp. 67-90
in-class slides
1)How does “form follow finance”
in the case of the skyscaper? How is the skyscraper the product
of corporate capital? Real-estate speculation? Architectural trends?
Technological advances? What, in the end, really drives the invention
and evolution of the New York skyscraper?
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Day 7
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The Empire State
Library research
Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance, pp 90-101 *
Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York pp 132-144 *
in-class slides
1)How is the Empire State Building
the quintessential symbol of metropolitan NYC?
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Day 8
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Rockefeller Center
Classroom and web research and
submit quiz questions
HA, 142-143
Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York pp 178-207
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Day 9
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Tour
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Day 10
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Quiz, debrief on tour and post
contributions on the Gotham map website
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OPTIONAL GREENWICH VILLAGE UNIT
Greenwich Village- Radicalism and Bohemia, 1919-29
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Day
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Topic
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Day 1
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Village Radicalism: the Birth of Bohemia
HA, 134-135
Ware, Greenwich Village , pp3-15
Cirino, Literary New York, pp 35-63
1) How does Henry James’ genteel
quarter of “established repose” become the “bohemia” of Willa
Cather and John Reed? How
does ethnic succession contribute to this transformation?
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Day 2
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Village Radicalism: Socialism, Feminism and Free Love
Ware, Greenwich Village , 235-263
“Greenwich Village: The Playground
of Utopia”
1) What is the connection between
bohemianism and the feminism of the 1920s? Between socialism and feminism?
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Day 3
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Gay Bohemia
Chauncey, Gay New York, 24-44
New York Times 6/29/69
1) How does Greenwich Village
become a “homosexual enclave”? How is the gay village a different phenomenon
than the bohemia of the 1920s?
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