ABSTRACT

In the late nineteenth century, New York became the nation’s image-making center and the chief subject of city views in a variety of genres—stereo views, lithographs, and woodcuts. This essay foregrounds visual entrepreneurs (Currier Ives; Harper Brothers’ Harper’s Weekly; Edward Anthony) who made New York their subject and the site of their businesses. The explosion of image-making and mechanical reproduction were central to this transformation, signs of mass production’s onset, and mass consumer culture. New York became the primary site for seeing the city and the model for how an exploding urban scene might be understood visually.