Daniel S. Levy is a journalist and author of several books, including the recently released Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York (Oxford University Press). He spoke with City Journal associate editor Daniel Kennelly.
How did you come to write this book?
As a freshman at New York University I learned that the Minetta Brook once wended through Washington Square Park and still flows underground toward the Hudson. I majored in American history, took a class on New York architecture, and became fascinated with how my hometown grew, decayed, and grew again. This was the late 1970s, and New York appeared on an irreversible downward slant. It was also the time when Son of Sam shot three people just blocks from my home in Forest Hills and a citywide blackout led to chaos in some neighborhoods.
I planned on becoming an architect and started a masters in preservation at Columbia’s school of architecture. There I wrote my thesis on a Trinity Churchyard monument erected in memory of members of a pre-Civil War fire company, and I read about the Great Fire of 1835.
