Gritty Cities
Schroth, Raymond A.
In Brief Gritty Cities: A Second Look at Allentown, Bethlehem, Bridgeport, Hoboken, Lancaster, Norwich, Paterson, Reading, Trenton, Troy, Waterbury, Wilmington, by Mary Proctor and Bill...
...And who will forgive them for hot including a picture of the great bridge sign beloved by anyone who has crossed the Delaware at New Jersey's capital: "TRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES...
...are as strong or weak as their sources...
...RAYMOND A. SCHROTH / August 1980: 447...
...The recent and perhaps too late,agree* ment among some city planners and architecture Writers during the last decades that "urban renewal"—which couldn't tell the difference between a neighborhood and a slum—did more harm than good, and that the best way to "save" a city's character was to preserve or recycle its distinctive old buildings—court houses, railroad stations and abandoned mills—has inspired a good number of handsome and clever picture books about cities yearning to be preserved, but very little good writing about the character and history of the cities themselves...
...the beautiful balustrades, fire escapes and brownstones of Hoboken, New Jersey...
...the maps, black and white reproductions of U.S...
...Their too-brief sketches of each city (5 pp...
...the Great Falls of Paterson and the mills below them (though the authors say nothing of the William Carlos Williams's poem...
...Gritty Cities is an affectionate and modest consideration of 12 old industrial communities with true grit, a rugged determination that even though the factories that gave them life, prosperity and identity a century ago may have moved or closed, they will forge new identities not by emulating the big cities but by building on those things—canals, parks, neighborhoods—that gave them unique character in the first place...
...Anyone who loves these cities—I have visited half and grew up in Trenton—will like this book and wish it were longer and better...
...Geological color maps, are unreadable and useless for the purposes of the book...
...There are some striking pictures: the Waterbury McKim, Mead and White (1908) Railroad Station modeled (the authors neglect to note) on the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence...
...In Brief Gritty Cities: A Second Look at Allentown, Bethlehem, Bridgeport, Hoboken, Lancaster, Norwich, Paterson, Reading, Trenton, Troy, Waterbury, Wilmington, by Mary Proctor and Bill Matuszeski, Temple University Press, $17.50 cloth, $9.95 paper, 271 pp...
Vol. 107 • August 1980 • No. 14
