Skip to main content

Coming Into Town

March 2023
1min read

Stop in at the U.S. Assay office…and exchange your gold in any form valued at not less than $100, for money.

There is no safer city in the world than New York. Newspaper headlines to the contrary are largely sensationalism, playing up crimes and accidents of the day generally out of all proportion to their number or real importance. Women alone, or accompanied by young children, may be assured of safety and comfort in New York.…

In small towns like “Gopher Prairie,” the visitor is spotted at once, either by speech or dress or manner, or by mere “newness,” as he steps from the train, as he treads the quiet streets.…In New York the most unfamiliar type is the New Yorker —that almost unknown, practically nonexistent specimen, the native born Manhattanite. It is he, rather than the visitor, who is curious; yet he, poor dear, claims no special distinction, moves in no separate aura, nor ventures criticism of the hordes of aliens which possess his city — looks askance at none, accepts all.

— How to Enjoy New York, Official Membership Publication of the New York Visitors’ Association Inc., 1925

New York may not be America but it is New York. And New York stands outside comparison. It is without doubt one of the most remarkable places existent now, and one of the most remarkable in history. It is a portent of this and the coming time, the towering apex of a growing pyramid of civilisation. At the same time it is not natural. In some respects it is grander than Nature, for there is more to marvel at in a skyscraper than in a mountain, and there is the illusion of more light flashing off its dynamos than from the revolving sun itself. It is a monument of human artifice.…

New York stands outside comparison. It is a portent of this and the coming time, the towering apex of a growing civilisation. At the same time it is not natural.

I walked the streets of New York a long while before I found poetry. There was majestic and glittering prose, but no glamour, no softness, no tenderness, no emotional relief even in the secret aftermidnight hours, sanctified by the sleeping, by the invincible stars and the quietude of the rivers.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "November 1988"

Authored by: Peter Andrews

Every presidential election is exciting when it happens. Then the passing of time usually makes the outcome seem less than crucial. But after more than a century and a quarter, the election of 1860 retains its terrible urgency.

Authored by: Patrick Allitt

He was a capitalist. He was an urban reformer. He was a country boy. He was “Comrade Jesus,” a hardworking socialist. He was the world’s first ad man. For a century and a half, novelists have been trying to recapture the “real” Jesus.

Authored by: Richard B. Trask

A routine chore for JFK’s official photographer became the most important assignment of his career. Much of his moving pictorial record appears here for the first time.

Authored by: The Editors

Advertising from the Antique and
Classic Eras

Authored by: The Editors

An American Adventure

Authored by: The Editors

Courtship in Twentieth-Century
America

Authored by: Gerald Carson

All through the 1920s eager young emigrants left the towns and farms of America and headed for New York City. One of them recalls the magnetism of the life that pulled him there.

Authored by: The Editors

Where do you stay? What will it cost? How do you get a drink?
Where to eat? What will that cost ? What’s playing? Is it a talkie? How many people live here, anyway? What kind of place is this? All the answers are here.

Authored by: Marvin Gelfand

The great buildings of the 1920s are standing all over Manhattan, preserving in masonry the swank and swagger of an exuberant era.

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.