Cleopatra's Needle: The Egyptian Enigma in the American Garden framed mans cave art A Lower East Side tableau

A Lower East Side tableau caught between immigrant commerce and turn-of-the-century ornament

The Gilded Balconies of Mott Street looks down the spine of Chinatown's busiest artery

The Kampfe Brothers Razor Brace Patent — Instruments of the Morning Ritual is a small monument to the morning ritual — the kind of drawing that hung in apprentice manuals when barbering was a guild and a calling

and battlefield monuments at Manassas — a commonwealth that catalogued itself in greeting cards and real-photo plates with quiet

Cleopatra's Needle: The Egyptian Enigma in the American Garden framed mans cave art A Lower East Side tableauCleopatra's Needle: The Egyptian Enigma in the American Garden frames the 3,000 year old obelisk in its improbable Central Park exile, hieroglyphs weathering quietly behind the Metropolitan Museum. A Gilded Age trophy hauled across the Atlantic by Vanderbilt money, rendered here as if Thebes had wandered into Olmsted's pastoral. About the Source Bella Frye sources NYC artifacts from American photographic archives, postcard collections, and period