New York City Archives

New York City

Conventional Wisdom

From “Grand Old Inquisitor,” which appeared in the November 2004 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The complete article—along with the magazine’s entire 174-year archive—is available at harpers.org/archive. When I left the…

The Thin Purple Line

by Jasper Craven,

The dubious rise of the private-security industry

Blank Ballot

by Matthew Karp,

On a damp, gray afternoon in April, I took my daughter with me to vote in the New York Democratic primary. After a long Tuesday, she was keen to get…

Museum Pieces

by Jonathan Lethem,

From Cellophane Bricks: A Life in Visual Culture, which was published last month by ZE Books. The museums of New York in the Seventies and Eighties were as much the…

The Absent Reader

by Eileen Myles,

From an essay that appeared in Spike Art Magazine in December. The thing I will say about being young is I hated it. I wasn’t anybody, I was broke, my…

Groan Banking

From a list of queries and complaints received by the New York City 311 line since 2003, released in March to commemorate its twentieth anniversary. Can you check if my…

On the Skids

by Edward Hoagland,

What do most of us do when we notice a hungry, disoriented person slumped on the street in obvious despair? Why, we pass quickly by, averting our eyes toward an…

Of Vice and Penn

by Thomas de Monchaux,

From “Save Penn Station,” which was published in Issue 31 of the New York Review of Architecture. “Hellhole” was the word that New York governor Kathy Hochul used for the…

Ratman Begins

From a press conference held by the New York City mayor’s office in October. commissioner jessica tisch: Good afternoon. It is an exciting day because we are about to do…

World of Night

by Hale Gurland,

The City Seen for the First Time

by Steve Mumford,

Life in New York City during the pandemic