Supreme City

“New York,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, “had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.” He was speaking of the city in the 1920s, of course—that delirious decade that began early with the victorious troops home from World War I marching up Fifth Avenue and ended early with the crash of 1929. In between, the town celebrated its new preeminence among cities of the earth, and now you can join in that celebration with a special three-part section on New York in the twenties. Gerald Carson, one of the tens of thousands of country boys drawn to America’s grandest junction, recalls the splendid tribulations of getting a home, a wife, and a job in the city of Jimmy Walker, Al Jolson, and Edna St. Vincent Millay; a guide tells you everything you need to know to find your way around the town—restaurants, shows, dives, hotels, apartments (if you want a big place on Park, you’d better be prepared to spend more than three hundred dollars a month); and a photographic portfolio takes you through buildings—both grand and humble— that stand today as the most tangible monuments to an uncommon decade.