Who Makes a City?

Recently I watched again the great 1974 movie Chinatown, the noir thriller about the battle for land and water in 1930s Los Angeles. While the movie itself is fiction, the story is based on the very real history of how William Mulholland brought water to -- and stole it from -- Los Angeles. He was a man of humble origins, a hardworker, an immigrant (!) from Ireland who worked his way up the economic ladder, and helped shaped the nation's second largest city -- while making himself rich and causing the death of 500 people in the meantime. A legend and a monster all at once.

History is made of such people, and the people who powered the growth of cities are no exception.

In NYC, the masterbuilder Robert Moses is the most obvious example -- a great builder of roads, bridges, parks, and everything else who brought this city into the 20th century -- and also destroyed neighborhoods and lives forever. But Moses was not the only transformative New Yorker -- think of the great artists and businesspeople who have shaped it -- Broadway producers like the Shuberts and the Nederlanders, filmmakers like Scoresese and Woody Allen, businessmen like the Rockefellers and Lew Rudin, the list of New Yorkers who built this city and made it rich (literally and figuratively is great). Some were great, some were awful, and many were both -- but they gave us our city, for better or worse. 

That's why I loved reading this excerpt from a book about the growth of New Orleans. It's about the various characters -- some inspiring, some frightening, many just down right weird -- who shaped the Crescent City in the 20th century. I love New Orleans and have blogged about my 2009 trip there as well as other things I love about. As a city, it couldn't be any more different from NYC but, like NYC, it has great characters over the years who made it the great place that it is.

And, if you're the mood for some good New Orleans grub, consult this list of the best canjun-creole joints in NYC.