In Martin Scorsese’s 1985 screwball noir After Hours, the protagonist Paul, a thirty-something word processor, descends into a maelstrom of strange encounters after meeting the attractive and peculiar Marcy at a Midtown Manhattan diner. Marcy invites Paul for a late-night visit to the downtown loft where she is staying with her sculptor friend—a proposal he gladly accepts—and a circuitous jaunt through the crevices of SoHo ensues. His journey includes finding a dead girl, having his head forcefully shaved by punks, and being chased by a mob led by a Mister Softee truck. The story’s manic hyperbole speaks to the city’s labyrinthine tendencies, underscoring how the most solitary activities can quickly spiral into a string of unexpected detours and discoveries. Despite Paul’s misery, as I rewatched the film during my fifth week in quarantine, his travails reminded me of what I miss most about urban life: the ability to simply stumble upon adventure.
Nowadays, New York City has never been such a stranger to its inhabitants. Restricted to the indoors, leaving the apartment only to go to the grocery store or to take a socially distant stroll within the limits of our own non-functioning neighborhoods, we are realizing just how exciting quotidian routines like commuting to work and running errands really were. Walking deserted streets and passing by closed shops, the city’s wondrous collage of architectural styles and outdoor spaces have become stale without the vignettes of public life unfolding before them.
In his book Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, the late architecture critic Michael Sorkin, who tragically died from Covid-19 in March, reflects on his myriad interactions and observations during a typical fifteen block walk from his Greenwich Village apartment to his Tribeca office, digressing with commentary on the social history of his urban surroundings along the way. “Inescapably, the walk takes on a narrative quality,” Sorkin writes. “Walking is a natural armature for thinking sequentially.”
But with society as we once knew it on pause for the foreseeable future, our walks now provide us with less information—less room for imagination and digression. Our chances of accidental encounters diminished, we have been deprived of one of the greatest pleasures of urban existence: encountering the complexities of day-to-day life, the interplay between architecture, design, and people.
As thinker and writer Rebecca Solnit writes in her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking: “Walking is only the beginning of citizenship . . . through it the citizen knows his or her city and fellow citizens and truly inhabits the city rather than a small privatized part thereof.” Growing up in Manhattan, I first came to understand the city in high school, venturing outside the apartment on my own. By myself or with friends, aimless walking through the East Village, Chelsea, and the Far West Side formed the foundation of my critical thinking capabilities. An identical route led to different experiences every time, offering new combinations of passersby, enticing storefronts, visual fodder, and liveliness, in turn fostering my interests in architecture and storytelling. I relished the limitless opportunities for diversion, whether I cared to engage in them or not.
Perhaps the thing I’ve come to appreciate most about roaming the city is the anonymity—the ability to simultaneously be a part of something and on the fringe of it. Describing “the perfect idler, the passionate observer,” French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote: “It becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the fleeting and the infinite.”
Of course, the present global health crisis has prohibited crowds, bringing the continuous dance of pedestrians to a screeching halt. And while we can binge watch our favorite New York movies (especially Scorsese), or, say, take a virtual walk via Google Maps to reflect upon street life, no amount of armchair traveling can reproduce the elements of surprise and exploration to which we have lost access.
Yet, of the options available, I’ve found most comfort in one particular medium: the archive. Between the New York Public Library, the New York City Municipal Archives, and Columbia University’s Avery Library alone, there are tens of thousands of digitized images of New York City for public consumption, from architectural ephemera and technical drawings of major infrastructure to tax photos and artistic photography anthologies. Each of the online collections serves as its own side street to leisurely stroll down, allowing us to become digital flaneurs.
Just as sauntering through the city presents a degree of randomness and innumerable choices, so do these archives; like a walk through a new neighborhood, you’re not sure what you’re looking for, or what you’re going to get. While sitting at my desk the other afternoon, I came across: the heating and ventilation plans for my high school circa 1930; a photo of my dad’s childhood home from the 1940s; the Coney Island Boardwalk under construction; trolley tracks on Avenue C and a United Airlines plane crash on the streets of Park Slope. I became enamored by the Wurts Brothers’ gorgeously austere architectural photographs, with subjects ranging from Rockefeller Center to Upper West Side tenements. Some other favorite items include the over 3,000 photos of doors across the boroughs, Irish artist Alen MacWeeney’s black-and-white depictions of life on the subway, and the assorted decades-old street shots—all on the New York Public Library’s website—as well as the collections from the Department of City Planning, the Public Design Commission, and other public agencies in the Municipal Archives.
The range and depth of subjects available through these free resources—plus the variety in format and style of image—lend to a truly multidimensional encounter with the city, giving crucial insights into the nooks and crannies of urban life. Moreover, archives occupy a quiet digital territory that is hard to come by these days—ad-free spaces without likes, comments, or friends where we can step away from the deliriousness that has consumed online culture and indulge in New York.
Sifting through images of the city’s past, one thing remains constant throughout the decades: the vibrant street life. Inevitably, I wonder how will this current moment of public life—or lack thereof—be documented for future generations? Will New York ever look the same?
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Alex Klimoski is a New York-based writer and editor covering architecture and design.
You can find her on twitter @alex_klimoski and on instagram @alex_klimo
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