In Antiquity in Gotham, Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis examines the abiding influence of ancient architecture on New Yorkers and their city. The twist is that Macaulay-Lewis is a classical archaeologist, and she considers styles and periods rarely brought together in a single study—Greek revival, Renaissance classicism, and Egyptian and Near Eastern forms from across the long nineteenth century—under a category she calls the “Neo-Antique.” In doing so, she aims to uncover common impulses and strategies that motivated their appropriation. An additional aim that she expresses frequently in the chapters, but that she leaves unstated in the introduction, is to explore the enduring relevance of ancient architecture both today and in the past.
The book’s eight chapters move from the public to the private sphere. The first chapter focuses on large infrastructure projects and begins with the largest of them all—the city’s famous Commissioner’s Plan of 1811, based on the functional grid...
University of California Press