Tony Sarg's New York
first edition Cloth
1926 · New York
by Sarg, Tony
New York: Greenberg Publisher Inc., 1926. First Edition. Cloth. Very Good. Wonderful bird's eye views of some of the prominent sights, and sounds? of New York! Sounds are a question mark, because literally there is no sound, of course, but Sarg's pictures capture the life and throb of the city and it is easy to imagine the sounds that would have emanated from the depicted scene. Folio, 33 by 26 cm. Unpaginated, with two page introduction, 24 color plates, each preceded by a separate leaf with the place written on the recto, and a smart, clever or ironic caption on the facing verso. There is a mix of places now forever gone, such as the Aquarium that was in Battery Park, the Sixth Avenue L, and Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria (the Waldorf is still around, but it is in a different location now); places that still exist but are enormously different today, such as the Stock Exchange, Chinatown or Columbus Circle, and places that are more or less the same, such as the Flatiron Building, Grand Central Station and the Public Library. Sarg shows the opulent and the gritty, the rich and the poor, and above all else, the legendary energy of the pulsing metropolis. One of the most wonderful of the plates is just of people from the Lower East Side. The collection of illustrations is full of serendipity, and somehow Sarg brings his unique vision to the most familiar of sights. Light to moderate wear to the cloth cover. (Inventory #: 005027)