num_pages: 272
description:  The Intimate City  is a joyful miscellany of people seeing things in the urban landscape the streets alive with remembrances and ideas even when those streets are relatively empty of people. Robert Sullivan New York Times Book ReviewFrom the New York Times architecture critic his celebrated walking tours of New York City now expanded covering four of the five boroughs and some 540 million years of history accompanied by some of the people who know it bestAs New York came to a halt with COVID Michael Kimmelman composed an email to a group of architects historians writers and friends inviting them to take a walk. Wherever they liked he wrotepreferably someplace meaningful to them someplace that illuminated the city and what they loved about it. At first the goal was distraction. At a scary moment when everything seemed uncertain walking around New York served as a reminder of all the ways the city was still a rock joy and inspiration. What began with a lighthearted trip to explore Broadways shuttered theater district and a stroll along Museum Mile when the museums were closed soon took on a much larger meaning and ambition. These intimate funny richly detailed conversations between Kimmelman and his companions became anchors for millions of Times readers during the pandemic. The walks unpacked the essence of urban life and its social fabricthe history plans laws feats of structural engineering architectural highlights and everyday realities that make up a place Kimmelman calls humanitys greatest achievement.Filled with stunning photographs documenting the city during the era of COVID The Intimate City is the ultimate insiders guide. The book includes new walks through LGBTQ Greenwich Village through Forest Hills Queens and Mott Haven in the Bronx. All the walks can be walked or just be read for pleasure by know-it-all New Yorkers or anyone else. They take readers back to an age when Times Square was still a beaver pond and Yankee Stadium a salt marsh; across the Brooklyn Bridge for green tea ice cream in Chinatown for momos and samosas in Jackson Heights to explore historic Black churches in Harlem and midcentury Mad Men skyscrapers on Park Avenue. A kaleidoscopic portrait of an enduring metropolis The Intimate City reveals why New York despite COVID and a long history of other calamities continues to inspire and to mean so much to those who call it home and to countless others.
language: English
title: The Intimate City: Walking New York
publisher: Penguin Press