“‘ The Intimate City ’ is a joyful miscellany of people seeing things in the urban landscape
the streets alive with remembrances and ideas even when those streets are relatively empty of
people.” —Robert Sullivan New York Times Book Review From the New York Times architecture
critic his celebrated walking tours of New York City now expanded covering four of the five
boroughs and some 540 million years of history accompanied by some of the people who know it
best As New York came to a halt with COVID Michael Kimmelman composed an email to a group of
architects historians writers and friends inviting them to take a walk. Wherever they liked
he wrote—preferably someplace meaningful to them someplace that illuminated the city and what
they loved about it. At first the goal was distraction. At a scary moment when everything
seemed uncertain walking around New York served as a reminder of all the ways the city was
still a rock joy and inspiration. What began with a lighthearted trip to explore Broadway’s
shuttered theater district and a stroll along Museum Mile when the museums were closed soon
took on a much larger meaning and ambition. These intimate funny richly detailed
conversations between Kimmelman and his companions became anchors for millions of Times readers
during the pandemic. The walks unpacked the essence of urban life and its social fabric—the
history plans laws feats of structural engineering architectural highlights and everyday
realities that make up a place Kimmelman calls “humanity’s greatest achievement.” Filled with
stunning photographs documenting the city during the era of COVID The Intimate City is the
ultimate insider’s guide. The book includes new walks through LGBTQ Greenwich Village through
Forest Hills Queens and Mott Haven in the Bronx. All the walks can be walked or just be
read for pleasure by know-it-all New Yorkers or anyone else. They take readers back to an age
when Times Square was still a beaver pond and Yankee Stadium a salt marsh across the Brooklyn
Bridge for green tea ice cream in Chinatown for momos and samosas in Jackson Heights to
explore historic Black churches in Harlem and midcentury Mad Men skyscrapers on Park Avenue. A
kaleidoscopic portrait of an enduring metropolis The Intimate City reveals why New York
despite COVID and a long history of other calamities continues to inspire and to mean so much
to those who call it home and to countless others.
