The opening chapter of Changing New York covers the southern tip of Manhattan, from The Battery on the south to Thomas Street and the Brooklyn Bridge on the north (interestingly, Abbott wasn’t as enchanted by the Brooklyn Bridge as we are today).   This area encompasses all of the original New Amsterdam, and what we now refer to as the Financial District and the South Seaport District.  

Abbott returned to New York in 1929, after an eight-year absence, and immediately became obsessively interested in the skyscraper building frenzy of Lower Manhattan, where she saw how hundreds of 19th-century buildings had been demolished to make way for the new, massive structures.  By 1935, when she finally secured funding from the Works Projects Administration, construction had come to a halt, courtesy of the Depression.  As a result, the skyline she photographed would remain fixed for the next two decades.

In her book, this chapter includes a number of rather cool photographs that she shot from different skyscraper rooftops or windows.  These presented her with significant challenges, as she wasn’t keen on heights and getting access to the roofs of tall buildings was an added hurdle.  “They think you want to jump off,” she later said.  In our post-9/11 world, getting permission to shoot from rooftops is harder still, and I am, for the time being at least, only able to show you street-level views.