The Epic of New York: Every Neighborhood Answers Differently

New York is described as a test of the soul rather than a city, and an architect walks it neighborhood by neighborhood, each answering in its own way. Harlem's music, the painted walls of SoHo, the freedom of Greenwich Village, Central Park where a person can sit without proving their importance, the hurried feet of Wall Street and the screens of Times Square give way to Brooklyn. Along the way he thinks of money and the doors it cannot open, of a father sleeping after long work, of strangers quietly repairing what others overlook, and of the care builders owe to people not yet born. The book ends at a window opened in the morning, with the narrator ready to begin again.