- ISBN13: 9780811868761
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Packed with 25 walking adventures, this unique guide uncovers the Big Apple’s most breathtaking buildings, parks, and monuments! Each card focuses on a specific area and features helpful background information, detailed walking instructions, a full-color map, and stunning photography. Covering both landmark structures and little-known wonders, this is the perfect gift for design-savvy travelers and adventurous locals alike.
Walks include:
Greenwich Vill… More >>
I spend lots of time in New York and am endlessly curious about the streets, buildings and businesses in Manhattan and surrounding boroughs.
But guidebooks give me grief. They scream “tourist-alert,” of course, to everyone within a city block, but it’s more than that. Guidebooks are heavy. Clunky. Confusing. Guidebook users are typically found hunched over in the middle of busy sidewalks, noses stuck between pages as they frantically search for reference points.
Well, City Walks: Architecture/New York provides an ingenious alternative to guidebooks, whether you’re a regular visitor to New York, a resident or a first-time tourist.
Rather than a book, it’s actually a a handsome box filled with a deck of 25 single-fold cards. Each 3 3/4″ x 5 1/2″ card serves up an architectural walking tour through a NY neighborhood in Manhattan (plus a few outer boroughs).
They’re all there. SoHo. Lower East Side. Upper East Side. Harlem. Wall Street. Central Park. On and on. Plus several cards covering important landmarks like Rockefeller Center (where the author says you’ll find the best view of the city), Fifth Avenue, the Brooklyn Bride and United Nations. Most walks can be taken in an hour or two — and all start and finish at subway stations (they even tell you which trains to catch).
Each card has a dramatic photo on the front, succinct and crisp narrative on the inside spread and an easy-to-follow tour map on the back. When you’re heading to a specific area of New York, just stick a card or two in your pocket or purse, and off you go. No more fumbling through dog-eared guidebooks or scratching your head over your whereabouts.
The author of the narrative, Alissa Walker (perfect name for a walking-tour writer, huh?), did an astonishing job with the daunting task of boiling volumes of facts down to digestible doses. Her tone is conversational, her directions are clear and her explanations are interesting, entertaining and enlightening.
As you move down the sidewalk, card in hand, Walker feeds you bits of history and morsels of personal interest. Walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, you learn its steel cables were the first to be used on a suspension bridge and spun on site. Standing in front of the Flatiron Building, you find it was first called “Burnham’s Folly,” because people thought it would fall down from being so slender. Entering Grand Central Terminal, you’re guided to the corner of a restaurant to see a dark rectangle showing how the ceiling looked before a 1998 restoration washed away the grime.
And Walker won’t let you travel hungry. From time to time, she point out a place to stop for a noteworthy lunch or snack. Have schnitzel at the Neue Galerie’s cafe after viewing German art, picnic in Central Park with lunch from Zabar’s gourmet emporium, sip tea and enjoy the view on the top floor of Bergdorf Goodman.
This handy deck will be in my bag on every trip I make to New York. And pertinent cards will be in my pocket each time I leave the hotel. Goodbye, guidebooks.
Rating: 5 / 5