ANTIQUES

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2000

New York is not a capital city--it is not a national capital or a state capital. But it is by way of becoming the capital of the world.

E. B. White, Here Is New York, 1949

No one is neutral about New York City, nor can the city itself decide what it really is. At once the richest city in the United States, it is also home to the greatest number of the poor. Offering the most welcoming stage for the talented, the city with equal sangfroid accepts the misery of millions who fail to flourish. To many foreigners it represents America, and to many Americans it represents all that is foreign. Cosmopolitan and parochial, it encompasses the Great White Way and innumerable neighborhood villages where most languages in the world thrive and English is not understood. Relentlessly destroying and rebuilding its fabric, New York also has an enviably rich historic heritage. The ultimate collection of American fine and decorative arts is housed in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In celebration of its diamond jubilee, this issue of The Magazine ANTIQUES is devoted to the riches of the American Wing.

Unlike Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, New York was founded by the Dutch not as a religious establishment but as a business colony. The first colonists were all employees of the Dutch West India Company and were so devoted to malting money that it was years before they built the first church on the island of Manhattan. Since there were no religious or ideological restrictions, all were welcome. Thus from the beginning, commerce and diversity (now called capitalism and democracy) have been the dual engines that have propelled the unwieldy metropolis. As John Steinbeck wrote: "New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal. Its politics are used to frighten children. Its traffic is madness. Its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it--once you have lived in New York and it is your home, no other place is good enough."

WENDELL GARRETT