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‘Skyscraper Primitives’: Futurity and Primordial Time in New York City, 1904–1932

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Time, the City, and the Literary Imagination

Part of the book series: Literary Urban Studies ((LIURS))

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Abstract

Nardi’s chapter applies the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’s concept of an ‘architectural Big Bang’ to frame the emergence of the skyscraper as a central trope for time and space in the literary manifestos of the 1910s and 1920s. Koolhaas argues that the new architectural technologies emerging at the turn of the century in New York revolutionized concepts of space and time; Nardi traces similar ideas among avant-garde in New York, where writers such as Amy Lowell, Waldo Frank, and Gorham Munson, explored the technological space of the immense architectural interior as a force that contained all of time and could undo time as well as mark the progress and development of urban ambitions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Mount Saint Vincent, New York, NY, USA

    Steven Nardi

Authors
  1. Steven Nardi
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Correspondence to Steven Nardi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities, York St John University, York, UK

    Anne-Marie Evans

  2. Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Kaley Kramer

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Nardi, S. (2021). ‘Skyscraper Primitives’: Futurity and Primordial Time in New York City, 1904–1932. In: Evans, AM., Kramer, K. (eds) Time, the City, and the Literary Imagination . Literary Urban Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55961-8_9

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