Stephen Birmingham

“New York horses were driven until they expired, and as many as a hundred horses collapsed daily in the streets. It was…

— Stephen Birmingham

“also introduced another controversial feature—an elevator, described as a “perpendicular railway intersecting each story.” Theretofore, elevators had been installed only in a…

— Stephen Birmingham

What is known as success assumes nearly as many aliases as there are those who seek it.

— Stephen Birmingham

“New York, in the late nineteenth century, was also an astonishingly dirty city for a variety of reasons. Only about half of…

— Stephen Birmingham

“How New York has fallen off during the last forty years! Its intellect and culture have been diluted and swamped by a…

— Stephen Birmingham

“Isabella Boyer Singer, the wife with whom Singer had spent most of his final years, in her claim to be the legal…

— Stephen Birmingham

“seventeen rooms with six bathrooms and eight working fireplaces for $650. In 1884 these Dakota rents had seemed substantial. But the astonishing…

— Stephen Birmingham

“Sophisticated New Yorkers complained that their city had none of the exuberance and spectacle of Paris—no Place de l’Étoile, no Place de…

— Stephen Birmingham

“when America entered the era of the automobile, there was a noticeable tendency for the affluent of American cities to build their…

— Stephen Birmingham

“In the summer the whole family would take the night boat to Albany. You left in the evening and arrived in the…

— Stephen Birmingham

A great many people go after success simply for the shiny prizes it brings...And nowhere is it pursued more ardently than in…

— Stephen Birmingham

“Anything of even mildly antiquarian or historic interest was the target of destruction, and anyone who deplored the way the city was…

— Stephen Birmingham

What is known as success assumes nearly as many aliases as there are those who seek it. Like love, it can come…

— Stephen Birmingham

“The public could be made to want anything, if it were sold to them the right way.”

— Stephen Birmingham

“During the summers the building was empty,” she reminisced. “Everybody went away, to Long Island, or Westchester, or the Adirondacks, or the…

— Stephen Birmingham