Curbstone sketches: Photography, art and leisure during the modern urban transformation of New York City, 1890-1920

Between 1890 and 1920 New York City experienced a radical urban transformation which led to it being recognized as the modern of modern cities. This dissertation discusses the relations between individualism and collective experience in the city by showing how artists, writers and photographers found creative ways to represent the city. The underlining theme of the project is the study of urban vision whose modern character was exemplified by the ambulatory type of observer that strolled leisurely in the city. I explain how this urban observer, known in Paris of the nineteenth-century as the flaneur, was known to East Coast intellectuals who wished to emulate French culture to establish a New York City as a metropolitan center.; At first, the social importance of promenading in New York City is established to show that the upper middle classes displayed themselves in organized spaces of leisure. These spaces were either antithetical to the city (Central Park), had a cosmopolitan air (Madison Square), or were centers of commerce and commodity-display (Fifth Avenue and Ladies' Miles).; The discussion moves on to show three ways the urban observer explored the city. Writers and artists depicted New York in walking tours that turned the city into a picturesque landscape. The purpose of these descriptions was to humanize the city and make it a friendly place.; The series of photographs Alvin Langdon Coburn took of New York from its pinnacles is discussed in relation to the way pedestrians sought inventive ways of escaping the streets to the topmost layers of the city to find forms recreation entertainment; from above the panorama turned the city into an image and gave people the false impression that they were in command of the view.; The series of portrait photographs that Paul Strand took surreptitiously of people in New York forms the basis for a discussion of the relationship between private and public space. The role of the hand camera is examined in terms of its small size and easy transportability which epitomized the social mobility and organized leisure activities of a rising middle class whose expression of individual freedom was exemplified by use of the kodak cameras.