EDITORIAL
A
t La Guardia Place and Houston Street, just north
of Manhattan���s SoHo neighborhood, one of New York
City���s five boroughs, there is a very small plot of land, not
much bigger than a standard townhouse lot. Its perimeter
is marked by a high chain-link fence. Occasionally tour
guides describe the wild vegetation within this smallest of
nature preserves as a remnant of virgin, pre-Henrik Hudson Manhattan. It likely resembles undergrowth of the sort
Native Americans would forge circuitous paths through.
Certainly, then, Manhattan had towering, ancient trees,
thick berry patches and the occasional wetland vegetation. But Oscar Wilde���s aphorism that ���if nature had been
comfortable, man-kind would never have invented architecture,��� would in subsequent centuries hold true for New
York City as much as anywhere in the world.
Eventually Manhattan and all other boroughs became, almost exclusively, the built world. During the last quarter
of the 19th century New York went seriously vertical, partly
out of necessity and partly inspired by the father of skyWilliam
Klein
Atomic,
New York
1955
All images
courtesy
of Peter
Fetterman
Gallery.
HYLAND
