The City Builder
“‘We proposed—,’ Newman starts, then stops. He jolts up to snatch some plans off a shelf across the room, walking less like the eighty-three-year-old he is and more like the thirty-something he was when he first opened this office in the nineteen-sixties: no nonsense, impatient to return to his point. Waning November light seeps in through slivers of glass cut into the brick wall, landing on foot-tall foam row houses, new floor plans for a burnt-out church, and a poster that asks, ‘Can a Public Library Renew Our Civil Society?’ Before I can read its answer, Newman is back in his chair, plans on the table. ‘What we proposed,’ he says, pausing for effect this time, ‘was that we move the city further east.’”
Photo and cover image by Elinor Hills.