http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/192611221

Curbstone sketches : photography, art and leisure during the modern urban transformation of New York City, 1890-1920

Between 1890 and 1920 New York City experienced a radical urban transformation which led to it being recognized as the modern of modern cities. This dissertation discusses the relations between individualism and collective experience in the city by showing how artists, writers and photographers found creative ways to represent the city. The underlining theme of the project is the study of urban vision whose modern character was exemplified by the ambulatory type of observer that strolled leisurely in the city. I explain how this urban observer, known in Paris of the nineteenth-century as the flaneur, was known to East Coast intellectuals who wished to emulate French culture to establish a New York City as a metropolitan center.

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