FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

powerHouse Books is pleased to announce the February 2020 release of

A Century Downtown:
A Visual History of Lower Manhattan
by Matt Kapp

Showcasing an unprecedented array of photographs, paintings, renderings, drawings, and other images culled from dozens of archives and individual collections worldwide, A Century Downtown ensures that no one will ever forget the vast and varied history of this famous part of New York City.

Catchphrases like “urban renewal” have a nice ring to them, but none measure up to the tectonic, often brutal metamorphoses that have remade Lower Manhattan over the last century. Downtown’s defining cataclysmic event is undeniably 9/11. Yet we often forget that the original World Trade Center grew out of the wholesale demolition of an entire neighborhood, home to more than 300 electronics businesses employing some 30,000 workers. We forget that the first “worst terrorist attack in American history”—the Wall Street bombing of 1920—claimed 38 lives and triggered a tsunami of anti-immigrant sentiment that swept Warren G. Harding into the White House. We forget that Washington Street was once home to the biggest Arab-American community in the country, known as Little Syria, eventually displaced by the transportation appetite of a burgeoning suburbia.

A Century Downtown raises these and other pivotal events—some mere footnotes to the city’s official history—into sharp relief. It’s a remarkable visual journey guided by a fascinating historical narrative that sheds new light on the evolution of Lower Manhattan over the past hundred years.

Top Row (left to right): A group of “newsies,” as the newspaper delivery boys were known, February 12, 1908, Courtesy of Library of Congress. Carnage in the aftermath of the Wall Street Bombing, September 16, 1920, Courtesy of Getty. Men gathered along Cortlandt Street’s Radio Row, circa 1940, Courtesy of Municipal Archives. Middle Row (left to right): Shop owners protesting the proposed demolition of Radio Row, July 13, 1962, Courtesy of Getty/Bettmann. Architect Minoru Yamasaki and Governor Nelson Rockefeller view a model of the World Trade Center, January 16, 1964, Courtesy of Getty. Daredevil Philippe Petit walking a wire between the Twin Towers, August 7, 1974, Courtesy of Polaris. Bottom Row (left ot right): Ground Zero, September 11, 2001. Workers on the glass roof of the Oculus, 2015. 3 and 4 World Trade Center above the Oculus, July 6, 2018. All images on the bottom row, courtesy of Joe Wooldhead.

Matt Kapp is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Brooklyn. Most recently he wrote and co-produced the critically acclaimed documentary 16 Acres, which told the inside story of the struggle to rebuild the World Trade Center in the decade after 9/11. Among his other producing credits are Valentino: The Last Emperor and The Education of Gore Vidal. Aside from his film and television work, he was a reporter-researcher and Web contributor for Vanity Fair for more than 15 years and has written frequently for Downtown magazine. He is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a native of Burlington, Vermont.

Chris Mueller is an award-winning creative director and designer based in New York. His work for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and other brands has been recognized by the Society of Publication Designers, ASME, Folio, and the Webby Awards. He studied print and digital design at the Cooper Union, New York University, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He divides his time between Westchester County and the Western Catskills with his wife, Mary, and their two sons, Oscar and Milo.

Architecture / Lower Manhattan / New York City / History
Hardcover, 12 x 9-1/4 inches, 272 pages
ISBN: 978-1-57687-944-3, $49.95 US / $66.00 CAN 

High-res scans to your specification are available upon request; scanning from the book or lifting images from the mechanical file are strictly prohibited. Mandatory credit line: From A Century Downtown by Matt Kapp, published by powerHouse Books.

For contact at powerHouse Books:
Madison Morales
madison@powerhousebooks.com
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram