On Wall Street

I am not sure there is any other pair of monosyllabic words in the English language that evokes as powerful a sense of place as Wall Street, except, of course, New York itself. So writes famed architectural critic Paul Goldberger in his introduction to one of the most important photographic books on New York City to appear since 9/11: David Anderson's On Wall Street. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a lot of glass-and-steel, boxlike buildings were going up in New York City. David Anderson realized that the architecturally elaborate and stylistic buildings of the early 1900s through the 1930s that defined Wall Street would never be made again. He thus embarked on a twenty-year project (from 1980 to 2000) to document Wall Street's classic architecture before further changes in the area were made, including the demolition and destructive renovation of too of its many historic structures. Anderson's approach to photographing Wall Street is unique. He avoids people, vehicular traffic, and storefronts, and rarely does he present a view of an entire building. Instead, he focuses on the details or a certain profile in order to reveal a building's architectural form and energy and its larger sense of place within the city's urban fabric. Anderson's photographs of Wall Street will forever be part of a visual record of a by-gone era that emphasized artistic craftsmanship rarely achieved in modern buildings. Like the historic skyscrapers and civic buildings that Anderson depicts, his photographs are equally solid, self-assured, and beautiful. Collectively, they capture the spirit, architectural genius, and harmonious elevated scale of this special place in the financial capital of the world.