There is a particular fascination and nostalgia today for the metropolis at the turn of the century, and for its architecture. It has recently called forth a series of books, The Sacred Spring: The Arts in Vienna, 1898-1918, Paris 1900, London 1900, and, most recently, New York 1900.[1] The leading architectural firm in New York at the time, McKim, Mead & White, is moreover the subject of two recent books.

What accounts for this interest in the turn-of-the-century metropolis? It surely owes something to the fact that we feel 1900 to mark the start of what the largest twentieth-century cities have become. By 1900 the hiving of populations in the major cities had reached a critical mass that initiated the urban conditions we know today. By 1900, too, the technology, society, and culture of the nineteenth century had developed the urban qualities and relationships that distinguish the modern metropolis.

But another aspect of the greatest cities of 1900 attracts us as well. At the beginning of New York 1900, its authors—Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and John Massengale—cite the British architectural historian Andrew Saint observing that it is the “variety and completeness” of the greatest cities as they then existed that draws us to them. The variety of our cities has, in fact, increased during the twentieth century. But their completeness, sadly, has diminished. It could indeed be the completeness of the metropolises of 1900 that most attracts us.