Paintings of New York Book of Postcards

From the collection of the Museum of the City of New York come thirty paintings made between 1825 and 1993. They capture many aspects of New York, from the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty to a night scene of a street in the Bowery. The artists range from gifted amateurs to professional artists who specialized in marine subjects, a muralist, and the celebrated American impressionist Childe Hassam.

A city perpetually in motion, New York changed most visibly between 1857, when the design competition for Central Park was won by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, and 1931, when the Empire State Building established supremacy over the Manhattan skyline. The expansion of green, the surge of skyscrapers, and the vault of suspension bridges attracted countless artists to set up their easels, chronicling the changing metropolis. They recorded feats of engineering and new leisure areas, the parks and squares where New Yorkers strolled and sauntered.

During the same period, the population of New York shot from two million to seven million, stuffing the land so tightly that subsequent increases have been relatively modest. Artists could hardly ignore the change, and their pictures captured the press of throngs at parades and waterfront entertainments.

The great poet of America’s greatest city, Walt Whitman asked in “Sun-Down Poem” (later retitled ”Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”), ”Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d Manhattan?/River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?” How much more might he have admired the island a century after his song, when towers stood like masts all across the land!

Images

1. George Loring Brown (1814–1889), View of Central Park, 1862


2. Joseph Oppenheimer (1876–1966), Madison Square, 1900


3. John M. Slaney (active 1890s), Gapstow Bridge, 1895


4. James Monroe Hewlett (1868–1941), New York Connecting Railroad Bridge at Hell Gate, c. 1916–1917


5. Israel C. Litwak (1867–1952), Rockefeller Center, 1941


6. Ruth Carroll (1899–1999), Elevated Station, c. 1929–1930


7. Everett Warner (1877–1963), The Municipal Building, c. 1915


8. Sebastian Cruset (1859–1943), View from Queensboro Bridge During Snowstorm on St. Patrick’s Day, 1910


9. W. S. Parkes, Crystal Palace, c. 1853


10. George Harvey (1801–1878), Nightfall, St. Thomas Church, Broadway, New York, c. 1837


11. Warren Sheppard (1858–1937), Brooklyn Bridge Celebration, May 1883, 1883


12. Fred Pansing (1844–1912), Sampson and Schley Leading the Fleet into New York Harbor, August 20, 1898, c. 1898


13. William Louis Sonntag Jr. (1869–1898), Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1895


14. Stokely Webster (b. 1912), Times Square, 1940


15. Maurice Kish (b. 1898), East River Waterfront, 1932


16. Frederick Detwiller (1882–1953), Temples of God and Gold, c. 1923


17. Blendon Reed Campbell (1872–1969), The Queensboro Bridge, c. 1935


18. Bascove (b. 1946), Pershing Square Bridge, 1993


19. Childe Hassam (1859–1935), Winter Afternoon in New York, 1900


20. John Beverley Robinson (1791?–1863), Jefferson Market Court House, 1881


21. Ernest Fiene (1894–1965), Night View, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 1956


22. Benjamin Eggleston (1867–1937), Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1927–1930


23. Anthony Imbert (1794–1834), The Erie Canal Celebration, New York, 1825, 1825–1826


24. James Cafferty (1819–1869) and Charles G. Rosenberg (1818–1879), Wall Street, Half Past Two O’clock, October 13, 1857, 1858


25. William Louis Sonntag Jr. (1869–1898), Madison Square Garden, c. 1895


26. Childe Hassam (1859–1935), Rainy Late Afternoon, Union Square, 1890


27. Leo McKay (dates unknown), Steeplechase Park, c. 1898–1906


28. William Louis Sonntag Jr. (1869–1898), The Bowery at Night, c. 1895


29. Grace Ravlin (1873–1956), Red Cross Parade, Fifth Avenue, at 41st Street, 1918


30. Edward P. Moran (1829–1901), Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, 1886

Pomegranate’s books of postcards contain up to thirty top-quality reproductions bound together in a handy, artful collection. Easy to remove and produced on heavy card stock, these stunning postcards are a delight to the sender and receiver. Postcards are oversized and may require additional postage.