Historical context
The history behind The Age of Names
The 1939 New York in this novel is real. The hidden city beneath it is not. These pages set out which is which, because a book about records owes its readers an honest one.
Documented:the World's Fair opening on April 30 beneath the Trylon and Perisphere; Roosevelt becoming the first sitting American president to appear on television; the February 20 German American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden, its approximate attendance, and Isadore Greenbaum's beating and arrest; the density and adjacency of the Mott Street neighbourhood; and the federal exclusion law that still barred Chinese immigrants from naturalization in 1939, a bar not repealed until 1943.
Invented: the households, the specific events, the Mott Street Mutual Aid Hall, and every part of the hidden city — the underlines, the Keep, the Council, and the roads beneath Manhattan.
No archival photograph, newspaper scan, or quoted archival document is reproduced on this site.
The novel's full Historical Note — “New York Between Spectacle and Dread” — states this boundary in detail, along with its sources, and is printed in the book.