When Connecticut-raised New Yorker Tommy Silk embarked on a "harebrained scheme to track down as many landmarks in New York City as possible" and photograph them, a popular Instagram account was born (@LandmarksofNY). Hidden Landmarks of New York: A Tour of the City's Most Overlooked Buildings gathers Silk's work into a book that would spruce up a coffee table in any ZIP code.
Showcased here are 120-odd photos of New York City buildings and clusters thereof; each image shares the page with a corresponding text that concludes, when applicable, with the year the subject was landmarked. While roughly half of Hidden Landmarks of New York is devoted to Manhattan sites, Silk dutifully represents each of New York's five boroughs. Readers can expect to see houses of worship, historic hubs of abolitionist activity and gay activism, firehouses (yes, including the one from Ghostbusters), and places that famous people called home (Manhattan's Langston Hughes House, Brooklyn's Truman Capote House, the Bronx's Poe Cottage).
Each large-scale, full-color image is so commanding that it would also make a big impression in a smaller format--think souvenir postcard. Likewise, the texts are punchy, often finding Silk unable to repress his zeal for his subject ("Want to feel Swiss in a formerly Polish neighborhood across from a church built for Italians?"). There are snatches of street life in many photos--outdoor diners here, dog walkers there--as if the book is hinting that, dazzling and humbling as the city's architecture is, New Yorkers are what make the city itself. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer