Building 42nd Street

This book describes the changes in architecture, planning, business, transportation, and other aspects of city development over the past centuries on one of Manhattan's three great streets. It includes buildings from river to river: skyscrapers, high-rise apartments, lavish and modest hotels, theaters and tenements, buildings for culture and charity, North America's greatest train station and its premier urban library.. Aspects of social life are included, from elite home-owners or those who dined at lavish 'lobster palaces' to the denizens of the Deuce, a block famous for vice, while the focus is on changes to the heart of midtown and its physical fabric.