How New York Became American, 1890–1924 by Angela M. Blake

Abstract

In this monograph Angela M. Blake embeds a fascinating exploration of the ways in which New York was marketed to tourists within a nebulous set of contentions about the meaning of Americanness and the centrality of estab-lishing New York's status as the "American" metropolis for assuring the United States' domestic development and international power. Blake's working definition of "American" is native-born, white, Protestant, middle-class citizen-consumers. By tracing the evolution of strategies that proponents of various views of New York used to expound the city's meaning, Blake argues in essence that New York became American through the process of being successfully promoted to such consumers as an exciting but still safely familiar place to visit.