Cleopatra's Needle: The Egyptian Enigma in the American Garden framed mans cave art the marquees and newspaper towers

the marquees and newspaper towers of Times Square caught mid-blaze in that peculiar Manhattan dusk when the bulbs outshone the stars

or a man's bathroom built around a straight razor and a leather strop

and rain-slick pavement glowing under the incandescent canopy that earned Forty-Second Street its luminous nickname

The Gilded Balconies of Mott Street looks down the spine of Chinatown's busiest artery

and battlefield monuments at Manassas — a commonwealth that catalogued itself in greeting cards and real-photo plates with quiet

Cleopatra's Needle: The Egyptian Enigma in the American Garden framed mans cave art the marquees and newspaper towersCleopatra's Needle: The Egyptian Enigma in the American Garden frames the 3,000 year old obelisk in its improbable Central Park exile, hieroglyphs weathering quietly behind the Metropolitan Museum. A Gilded Age trophy hauled across the Atlantic by Vanderbilt money, rendered here as if Thebes had wandered into Olmsted's pastoral. About the Source Bella Frye sources NYC artifacts from American photographic archives, postcard collections, and period