Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth To Modern America, Miller - B+

  This history is focused on the extraordinary growth of midtown Manhattan and its role in setting the urban standard for the country and indeed, the world. The city's peak came in the late 1920's and coincided with Gentlemen Jimmy Walker's terms as mayor. He was elected in 1925 with the vigorous support of Governor Al Smith. The charming Walker had dazzled as a State Senator. "New York was the capital of everything - America's financial, industrial, engineering, architectural, publishing, theatrical, musical, radio, advertising, opinion making, sports and fashion center." The city was larger than most states, had a budget bigger than many countries, and was flat-out corrupt and riddled with self-dealing and Tammany managed lawlessness. The 1920's roared in NY because of Prohibition, an absurd law that never had a chance of succeeding in America's big cities. By the time Walker became mayor, there were more speakeasies in NY than there had been saloons before the law. Prohibition was never seriously enforced in NY, and boot-legging was the source of endless crime, corruption and massive amounts of cash. Throughout Manhattan, night clubs sprang up. They were owned by gangsters and were a place where hoods, pols, entertainers and blue bloods all mixed. The mix of cash and the continuous violation of Prohibition's enforcement laws led to the first organizing of crime and the creation of NY's five families. The midtown of Jimmy Walker's NY had been transformed a decade and a half earlier by a construction project on the east side of the city.  The NY Central's rail lines ran north from grand Central Station like an open sore, utilizing coal burning locomotives, polluting, spewing ashes, and making noise. The train yards had eliminated the city's cross streets as far north as 57th St. The company's chief engineer proposed building a new, more efficient terminal, constructing an office building over it, and paving over Park Avenue. This was all made possible by using electric trains. The new Grand Central transformed the city. By the mid-20's, 43 million people per year would pass through the terminal. A massive building boom followed on the east side. Its apogee was the new Park Avenue which became the "most stupendous aggregation of multimillionaires the world has ever seen."  From 5th Avenue to Sutton Place, apartments for the wealthy were going up at a rapid pace. Up and down 5th Avenue below 57th St. and east along 42nd St. to the river, up went one skyscraper dedicated to commerce after another.                                                                                                         A young immigrant from Byelorussia, David Sarnoff, rose through the ranks of RCA and made it a NY based broadcasting powerhouse. It sold radios and produced content, leading to RCA becoming the fastest growing company of the era. RCA created NBC, the nation's first network. Sarnoff purchased the Victor phonograph company and began research into television. Sarnoff was a visionary, but one with rather pedestrian and bland programming ideas. Soon, Bill Paley's CBS network would challenge him and the two titans would go head to head for the next forty years. The focus at CBS was constantly changing entertainers and a vast marketing of every conceivable product. The 1920's also saw two engineering marvels that improved life in the city. The Port was severed by the Hudson River, thus leading to a trans-river ferry system that grew to the point where almost everything  shipped to and fro the American heartland crossed on a lighter. Thirty-five hundred rail cars were floated across the river daily. The states of NY and NJ created a port authority that built the longest tunnel, the Holland, and the longest bridge, the GW, in the world in an attempt to end the ferry system. The Lincoln Tunnel was added a decade later. A century later, there still is no commercial train line under the Hudson.                                    Everything about the city was bigger and better than anyone could imagine when, in the waning weeks of the decade the stock market collapsed, and with it, the whirlwind of prosperity the Roaring 20's had created. F. Scott Fitzgerald said the Jazz Age was brought "to a spectacular death in October, 1929." But, "no other decade in the life of the city was more exuberantly alive or enduringly creative." Thanks to Bill Barry for the recommendation. There is a never ending joy in reading about our 'city'.