“Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York” is the recent title by James T. Murray and Karla L. Murray.
Dealing with the battle between past nostalgia and future expansion, the AP notes: “You see it in paeans to roadside America, to lost highways and long-forgotten attractions. Most of it is unabashed ode. Rarely, though, do you see an account that zooms in on a chunk of the American landscape — what was, what is and the hint of what may be — and manages to be both lyrical and documentarian, elegant and decidedly anthropological.”
The NYT has noted: “The book is also a study of urban migration, featuring Jewish delis and Italian latticini freschi stores downtown, Hispanic bodegas and Irish bars uptown, and a white-bread Howard Johnson s in Midtown (now gone). There are also photos of single blocks, with various contrasting storefronts tightly packed next to one another, that resemble a third-world market. Downtown is much more alluring than uptown but maybe that s because I was raised downtown.”
The AP refers to this book as: “a visual catalog of New York City retail architecture and all the stories behind it.”
Published by Gingko Press, and finishing at 336 pages, the review can be found here . Larded with photos, this should delight any architecture or history fan.
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