Between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War, New York City became one of the most familiar cityscapes in the world and a major international tourist destination. This article explores the reactions of visitors from England and France, concentrating on responses to the city’s architecture and its ethnic and racial diversity. For many Europeans, New York disturbed ingrained assumptions about the nature of modern metropolises and threatened established divisions of the world into “progressive” and “backward” domains. Tourism, however, also played its part in the development of new international understandings of New York. By the Second World War, the interpretations of the city written in international guidebooks and experienced in organized tours emphasized its distinctively modern and American characteristics instead of reading the city through its differences from London or Paris.
E. Bogen, Immigration in New York (New York: Praeger, 1987), xi-xi.
2.
C. Cocks, Doing the Town (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
3.
N. Harris, “Urban Tourism and the Commercial City.” in Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World, ed. W. R. Taylor (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), 66-66.
4.
J. Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 1990), 12-12.
5.
J-L. Cohen, Scenes of the World to Come: European Architecture and the American Challenge, 1893-1960 (Montréal: Flammarion, and Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1995), 1-1.
6.
A. Lewis, An Early Encounter with Tomorrow: Europeans, Chicago’s Loop, and the World’s Columbian Exposition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 5-5.
7.
I. Buruma and A. Margalit, Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism (London: Atlantic, 2004), 13-47.
8.
For a critique of Buruma and Margalit’s conception of “occidentalism,” see A. Bonnett, The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
9.
A. Siegfried, Les Etats-Unis aujoudhui (Paris: Colin, 1927), 16-16.
10.
J. F. Muirhead, America the Land of Contrasts: A Briton’s View of His American Kin (London: John Lane, 1898), 220-220.
11.
and S. Schama, “The Unloved American,”New Yorker, March 10, 2003.
12.
This interpretation of the knowledge of the guidebook is most famously expressed by Roland Barthes in his polemic on the Guide Blue to Franco’s Spain—“an agent of blindness.” Roland Barthes, “The Blue Guide,” in his Mythologies (1957; English trans., London: Paladin1973); 74-77.
13.
J. Taylor, A Dream of England: Landscape, Photography and the Tourist’s Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 135-135.
14.
As James Buzard has demonstrated, this attitude that he describes as antitourism emerged almost as soon as the modern category of “the tourist.” See J. Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).
15.
Cook’s Excursionist and Home and Foreign Tourist Advertiser, February 1, 1893, 15-15.
16.
and N. Smith, A Tour through the Land of the West and a Visit to the Columbian Exhibition by a Birmingham Working Man (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1894). By 1910, promotional materials for the Anchor Line were recommending that tourists avoided the peak season between April and July. “How to Enjoy a Refreshing Holiday,” Anchor Line promotional pamphlet, Glasgow University Archives UGD255/1/23/7.
17.
For a detailed discussion of the mid-nineteenth-century urban handbook in the United States, see Cocks, Doing the Town, 25-40.
18.
Karl Baedeker, The United States with an Excursion into Mexico, 1st ed., author/editor James Muirhead (Leipzig, Germany: Baedeker, 1893).
19.
Muirhead, America, 220-220.
20.
This was despite the existence of an American copy of a Baedeker-style guidebook, Appleton’s New and Complete United States Guide Book for Travellers, from the late 1840s onwards. See discussion in Cocks, Doing the Town, 27-27. Despite Muirhead’s observation, Cocks points out that internal tourism in the United States was already well developed by the 1890s.
21.
D. MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1976; reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 61-61.
22.
E. Mendelson, “Baedeker’s Universe,”Yale Review74 (1985): 386-403, esp. 396.
23.
A. Hindrichsen, Baedeker Katalog: Vereichnis aller Baedeker-Reisfuhrer von 1832-1987 (Holminden, Germany: Verlag Ursula Hindrichsen, 1988), 31-31.
24.
Baedeker, United States, 1st ed., 22-22.
25.
Harris, “Urban Tourism,”69-69.
26.
Cocks, Doing the Town, 175-176.
27.
Muirhead, America, 198-198.
28.
and MacCannell, The Tourist. McCannell’s account of the Paris Baedeker for 1900 if anything overemphasizes the novelty of this fascination for the modern in the city. There is a long tradition of celebration of the new in guides to the city and notes for travelers from the late eighteenth century onwards. Guides from mid-nineteenth-century Paris could be very dismissive about the dirty, dark, old medieval areas and monuments of Paris, contrasting them with the beauty of brand new perspectives and bright new stone.
29.
Muirhead, America, 193-193.
30.
Muirhead, America, 194-194.
31.
and W. Black, The Real United States and Canada Pocket Guide-Book (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1915), 58-59.
32.
Muirhead, America, 197-197.
33.
M. Page, The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 1-19.
34.
D. Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994).
35.
W. Leach, “Commercial Aesthetics,” in Inventing Times Square. Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World, ed.W. R. Taylor (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), 234-234.
36.
see also Harris, “Urban Tourism,”78-78.
37.
Writing for prospective French tourists in 1935, Fernand-Gregh recommended the use of either guide in the absence of an up-to-date French equivalent. H. Fernand-Gregh, Vertige de New York (Paris: Société française d’éditions littéraires et techniques, 1935), 25-25.
38.
F. Rider, ed., Rider’s New York City. A Guide Book for Travellers, 2nd ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1924), 121-121.
39.
R. E. Mitchell, America: A Practical Handbook (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1935), 37-38.
40.
Quoted in Harris, “Urban Tourism,”79-79.
41.
See R. King, “Narcotic Drug Laws and Enforcement Policies,”Law and Contemporary Problems113 (1957): 124-126.
42.
Harris, “Urban Tourism,”80-80.
43.
C. Huard, New York comme je l’ai vu (Paris: E. Rey, 1906), 36.
44.
A. Bennett, Those United States (London: Martin Secker, 1912), 236-237.
45.
P. Malo, La féerie américaine (Paris: Les Œuvres Françaises, 1936), 68.
46.
A. Lafond, New York 28. Impressions d’Amérique (Rouen: Éditions du Journal de Rouen, 1929), 14.
47.
C. Bragdon, The Frozen Fountain (New York: Knopf, 1932), 35-35.
48.
G. A. Sala, America Revisited (London: Vizetelly, 1882), 117-117.
49.
See also G. Fenske and D. Holdsworth, “Corporate Identity and the New York Office Building: 1895-1915,” in The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900-1940, ed.D. Ward and O. Zunz (New York: Russell Sage, 1992), 129-159.
50.
Muirhead, America, 195-195.
51.
Le Corbusier, Quand les cathédrales étaient blanches. Voyage au pays des timides (Paris: Plon, 1937), 65.
52.
At more or less the same time, San Gimignano was starting to be interpreted for Americans in Italy as the little Manhattan of Tuscany.
53.
E. de Clermont-Tonnerre, USA: petites notes sur un grand pays (Paris: Grasset, 1921), 1.
54.
Nye, American Technological Sublime, 192-193, for comments on other travelers to New York and their responses to the nocturnal city.
55.
See discussion of Veblen in Leach, “Commercial Aesthetics,”241-242.
56.
The Book of the Anchor Line (London: E. J. Burrow, 1932), 86-86.
57.
J. Schlör, Nights in the Big City (London: Reaktion, 1998), 60-63.
58.
F. Roz, L’Amérique nouvelle. Les Etats-Unis et la guerre, les Etats-Unis et la paix (Paris: Flammarion, 1923), 27.
59.
J. Joseph-Renaud, New York flamboie (Paris: Fasquelle, 1931), 25-25.
60.
and J. Landry, Hommes et choses d’Amérique (Paris: Lefort-Taffin, 1897), 264.
61.
P. Bourget, Outre-Mer. Notes sur l’Amérique (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1895), 40.
62.
L. Lacroix, Yankees et Canadiens. Impressions de voyage en Amérique (Paris: Lecoffre, 1895), 24.
63.
G. Moreau, L’envers des Etats-Unis (Paris: Plon, 1906), 200.
64.
See C. Willis, “Form Follows Finance: The Empire State Building,” in The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900-1940, ed. D. Ward and O. Zunz (New York: Russell Sage, 1992), 160-187.
65.
Recouly, L’Amérique pauvre, 17.
66.
A. Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London: Routledge, 1991).
67.
See “New-York La Ville Merveilleuse. Voir New-York en une semaine,” Revue de Voyages, July (Paris: Wagon-Lits, 1935); and “Bracing Holidays on the Atlantic at Special Excursion Fares,” brochure (1938), in the Thomas Cook Company Archives, Peterborough, UK.
68.
The transatlantic liners were highly segregated moving societies. Wells described them as “social microcosms” with a small plutocracy in first class, a middle class on the second-class deck, and, until the 1920s, a huge “proletariat” in steerage (Wells, Future in America, 40). The strict rules of segregation among decks seemed to actively encourage transgressive social exploration of the lower areas of the liners by first- and second-class passengers. The end of steerage in the 1920s decreased this temptation onboard ship—the new tourist-class quarters were dull, prosaic, and functional, rather than spectacles of human poverty and difference.
69.
H. G. Wells, The Future in America: A Search after Realities (London: Geo. Bell., 1906), 40-40.
70.
J. Maxtone-Graham, Crossing and Cruising (New York: Scribeners, 1992), 3-3.
71.
Baedeker, United States, 4th ed., 72-72.
72.
Ibid.
73.
Wells, Future in America, 65-65, closing ellipses in original.
74.
Ibid., 62, closing ellipses in original.
75.
and P. Malo, La féerie américaine (Paris: Les Œuvres Françaises, 1935), 20.
76.
F. Driver and D. Gilbert, “Imperial Cities: Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories,” in Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity, ed. F. Driver and D. Gilbert (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999), 15-15.
77.
See discussion of the terminology used by James Weldon Johnson and Dorothy Parker in A. Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995), 5-6. The European use of “cosmopolitan” and “cosmopolis” is closer to the use of the term mongrelization by contemporary American conservatives.
78.
and G. Frankau, My Unsentimental Journey (London: Hutchinson, 1926), 38-38.
79.
“New-York La Ville Merveilleuse.”
80.
MacCannell, The Tourist, 91-91.
81.
Baedeker, United States, 1st ed., 29-29.
82.
Konrad Bercovici’s guidebook Around the World in New York (New York: Century, 1924) was a focused example of what was becoming a central element of the tourist geography of New York.
83.
J. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 15-15.
84.
Ibid., 5.
85.
Cunard Company, The Cunard Line and the World’s Fair, 1893 (London: Electrotype, 1893), 61-61.
86.
J. Joseph-Renaud, New York flamboie (Paris: Fasquelle, 1931), 31-31.
87.
Whitechapel’s decline as a tourist destination was a reflection of the changing social and visual characteristics of the district, of changes in London’s imperial role, and also of shifts in the dominant tourist understandings of London, which were restricting the geographical distribution of sights to a more concentrated historical core. See Gilbert, “London in All Its Glory,” 286.
88.
S. Townley, “Indiscretions” of Lady Susan (London: Butterworth, 1922), 188-188, 191-191.
89.
Mitchell, America, 50-50.
90.
See Urry’s comments on the sensory qualities of tourism. J. Urry, “Sensing the City,” in The Tourist City, ed. D. Judd and S. Fainstein (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999).
91.
A. Lafond, New York 28. Impressions d’Amérique (Rouen: Éditions du Journal de Rouen, 1929), 27.
92.
L. Erenberg, Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture 1890-1930 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981), 252-252.
93.
Mitchell, America, 51-51.
94.
Gadala, Nouveau Monde, 73-73.
95.
J. W. Johnson, Black Manhattan (1930; reprint, New York: Atheneum, 1969), 160-160.
96.
Erenberg, Steppin’ Out, 255-255.
97.
Johnson, Black Manhattan, 169-169.
98.
Ibid., 160-61.
99.
Erenberg, Steppin’ Out, 257-257.
100.
and Malo, La féerie américaine, 86.
101.
See, for example, A. Tweedie, America as I Saw It (London: Hutchinson, 1913), 225-225.
102.
L. Delarue-Mardrus, L’Amérique chez elle (Paris: Albert, 1935), 131.
103.
C. Wagner, Vers le cœur de l’Amérique (Paris: Fischerbacher, 1906), 29-30.
104.
H. Bhabha, “The Other Question...: The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse,”Screen24, no. 6 (1983): 19-19.
105.
T. Gilfoyle, “Policing of Sexuality,” in Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World, ed. W. R. Taylor (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), 312-312.
106.
A. Woollacott, “‘All This Is the Empire, I Told Myself’: Australian Women’s Voyages ‘Home’ and the Articulation of Colonial Whiteness,”American Historical Review102 (1997): 1003-1029, 1025-1025. This theme is powerfully developed in Woollacott’s discussion of travel accounts of white Australian women traveling through the Asian and African ports of the British Empire.
107.
W. Howard of Glossop, Journal of a Tour in the United States, Canada and Mexico (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1897), 3-4.
108.
Gadala, Nouveau Monde, 71-71.
109.
F. Riesenberg and A. Alland, Portrait of New York (NewYork: Macmillan, 1939), 1-1.
110.
See, for example, advertising copy and special features in editions of The Traveller’s Gazette and Revue de Voyages from the spring of 1939.
111.
See Rapson, Britons View America, 3-24.
112.
MacCannell, The Tourist, 44-45.
113.
See the discussion of antitourism in Buzard, The Beaten Track.
114.
see also the discussion of the Americanization of tourist landscapes in MacCannell, The Tourist, 189-203.
115.
Any research on New York City is now touched by the events of September 11, 2001, particularly when the symbolic significance of its skyline is considered. Although clearly outside the historical scope of this article, there is a story to be told about the significance of New York’s place in global tourism in the response to the attacks. Part of the immediacy of the horror felt across the world had to do the fact that millions had been to the top of the towers as tourists.
