Stumbling Toward Tomorrow

Nineteen twenty-nine was a banner year for visions of New York. In the heady atmosphere of the beautiful life and endless tomorrows of that doomed decade, just before the future died, all dreams were possible. In 1929 the architect-delineator Hugh Ferriss published his drawings and descriptions of “The Metropolis of Tomorrow,” a crepuscular Elysium of wide-spaced, soaring spires in perfect axial symmetry that managed to combine the aura of the traditional Beaux Arts City Beautiful with futuristic intimations of Le Corbusier’s towers-in-a-park. This magnificent Manhattan was rigidly organized into impressive formal “zones” for business, arts, and science, with supertowers marking the intersections of grand av...