Summary of Stephen Birmingham's Life at the Dakota

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#1 New York was a city that had made up its mind that whatever existed was dispensable and replaceable, as long as some more profitable use could be found for it. The past was not New York’s concern; its concern was the future, and Progress.

#2 While New York was building taller and taller buildings, it was also suffering from a poor self-image. The city lacked the exuberance and spectacle of Paris, and the houses of the rich were considered pretentious and embarrassing.

#3 The city of New York was an astonishingly dirty city in the late nineteenth century. The streets were filled with horse dung, and it took a Manhattan businessman an hour to an hour and a half to get from his home to his place of work in the slow-moving traffic of the densely congested streets.

#4 The subway system in New York City had been built in 1863, but it was not an unmixed blessing. It was bumpy and noisy, and the elevated trains were not without danger. The streets beneath the elevated lines were dark, as the trains spewed out ashes, hot cinders, and live steam onto the sidewalks below.

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