Cities from the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America

From Publishers Weekly
Dozens of oil derricks in 1930s Long Beach, Calif.; the boardwalk in 1952 Ocean City, N.J.; shot after shot of pre- and postwar Manhattan and environs in Cities from the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America, Wired contributing writer and urbanist Thomas J. Campanella collects 125 lush duotone photos of spectacular midcentury cityscapes, taken by the Fairchild Aerial Survey Corporation. The foreword by University of Pennsylvania urbanism professor Witold Rybczynski (City Life) extols the photos' humanist virtues, comparing them to Lorenzo's painting of Siena. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Campanella showcases the work of Fairchild Aerial Surveys, the cornerstone of the industrial empire of Sherman Fairchild, who became interested in photography and flying as a youth. Splendidly mounted on 14.5-by-12.5-inch pages, the photos show a sampling of U.S. cities, circa 1921-50, and are disposed in three parts according to whether the city in view is in the East, the interior, or the West of the U.S. Virtually all taken on crystal-clear days at angles ranging from, say, 30 degrees to the perpendicular, they are wonderfully well detailed, so that the new 1936 cars on the Ford lot in Dearborn are unmistakably of the old square passenger-box and trapezoidal engine-compartment style. If New York comes off most impressively, the pictures remind us of such less-renowned urban glories as Philadelphia's fine skyscraper collection, Annapolis' baroque late-seventeenth-century city plan, and Cedar Rapids' Municipal Island. Present-day western metropolises, such as Albuquerque and Phoenix, surprise with how relatively small they were and how much room they had to grow. A book to pore over again and again. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Metropolitan Home (November / December 2001)
"A miraculously preserved collection of black-and-white aerial photographs from the 1920s through the 1960s. . ."


Wired (January 2002)
"The photographs . . . recall our love affair with the silver skyline."


Book Description
Cities From the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America features over 125 classic photographs that together form a definitive portrait of America's urban landscape. Taken by the intrepid photographers of the Fairchild Aerial Survey company over a five-decade span, these lavishly reproduced images provide a sparkling record of our cities in the boom years of the twentieth century. The Empire State Building, the Washington Monument, Wrigley Field, Hoover Dam, and Alacatraz Island are just a few of the American monuments pictured here. Also presented are such milestones as the first inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the perfect game pitched by the New York Yankees' Don Larsen in the 1956 World Series. Assembled after years of research, these stunning images offer an intimate portrait of the United States.


About the Author
Thomas J. Campanella is an urbanist and historian, as well as a licensed pilot. He is a lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, and a contributing writer for Wired magazine.


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Dozens of oil derricks in 1930s Long Beach, Calif.; the boardwalk in 1952 Ocean City, N.J.; shot after shot of pre- and postwar Manhattan and environs in Cities from the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America, Wired contributing writer and urbanist Thomas J. Campanella collects 125 lush duotone photos of spectacular midcentury cityscapes, taken by the Fairchild Aerial Survey Corporation. The foreword by University of Pennsylvania urbanism professor Witold Rybczynski (City Life) extols the photos' humanist virtues, comparing them to Lorenzo's painting of Siena. ( Dec.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.


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