Scavenger Hunt - #1 & #6

(1) Find and photograph Philip Johnson’s “daring” AT&T Building in Manhattan [page 83].

AT&T Building – 560 Madison Avenue (at 56th Street)






(6) What is a “frontier neighborhood” [page 101]? Find one in the area and visit it. How do you know it’s a frontier?

A frontier neighborhood is one in which the American Dream can come to be. In James Howard Kunstler’s words the American Dream is “a detached home on a sacred plot of earth in a rural setting, unbesmirched by the industry that made the home possible; a place where one could play at cultivating the soil without having to rely on husbandry for a livelihood; a place that was most of all, not the city.” (The Geography of Nowhere, 101) But also, a frontier neighborhood, and thus the American Dream, includes being able to have a successful economic life. In the 1920s (when the frontier neighborhood idea basically began), the best business was that of land development. So the houses in such neighborhood would be fairly big with a nice back or front yard where one could have cultivate the soil or plant seeds without relying on it to survive. A frontier neighborhood, as Kunstler states in the last sentence of the above quote, is not the city. We can then assume that if someone lives (or lived) in a frontier neighborhood, they get out of that area to work.
Maspeth in Queens is an example of a frontier neighborhood. The “inside” of Maspeth (a few blocks down from Woodside or approaching Middle Village and Ridgewood) is very rural-like, with big house that fit in the Kunstler’s description. Many have a large front yard, where plants and some crops are planted. I’ve lived over two years in this neighborhood and enjoy walking around in it. I know virtually every one within 5 blocks of my house (in all directions). Maspeth is a small, close community- it’s really hard not to know who your neighbors are and talk to them every time you see them on the street. Hence, I know that many of them leave Maspeth to go to work and make a living to be able to live in the houses that they do. For example, my landlord has his own mechanical company, and although he does a lot of the work in the yard of the house, he is constantly going to Manhattan and Brooklyn where he does most of the business. Many of the neighbors just across the street work in Manhattan. If not, there are other people (such as me!) that work in Grand Ave or Metropolitan Ave, which are the most “urban”-like areas in Maspeth with too many business next to each other and apartment buildings.


*-*-Tania Damiano-*-*