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Color aquatint and etching, ca. 1927. Max Pollak was commissioned by author Theodore Dreiser to do a series of eight color etchings of New York which were reproduced in Dreiser’s book “My City”, published in 1929. This is one of the etchings that was not used.
Though the edition for the New York images was anticipated as 150 Pollak did not finish the whole edition, the stock market crashed the next year, 1929, when Dreiser’s book was published, and the economic practicality of printing a full edition disappeared.
This view shows the southern tip of Manhattan and the New York Harbor. The low building near the water is the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, which was built between 1902 and 1907 by the federal government to house the duty collection operations for the port of New York. The Battery is named for the artillery batteries that were positioned there in the city’s early history to protect the settlement.
