The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York

From Matteo Pericoli, the celebrated author of Manhattan Unfurled, comes a unique collection of illustrated cityscapes. In these intimate drawings of window views, Pericoli captures the essence of the city by showing us what New Yorkers see when they look out their windows. The City Out My Window shows us a series of private New Yorks, as seen by Tom Wolfe, Tony Kushner, Nora Ephron, Stephen Colbert, Richard Meier, Oliver Sacks, Mario Batali, David Byrne, and other artists, writers, and thinkers who help make the city what it is. The book includes their comments on what they see out their window and is introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger.

From Matteo Pericoli, the celebrated author of Manhattan Unfurled, comes a unique collection of illustrated cityscapes. In these intimate drawings of window views, Pericoli captures the essence of the city by showing us what New Yorkers see when they look out their windows. The City Out My Window shows us a series of private New Yorks, as seen by Tom Wolfe, Tony Kushner, Nora Ephron, Stephen Colbert, Richard Meier, Oliver Sacks, Mario Batali, David Byrne, and other artists, writers, and thinkers who help make the city what it is. The book includes their comments on what they see out their window and is introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger.

The Barnes & Noble Review

No matter the book or the artwork, Matteo Pericoli always celebrates unique points of view only he could provide, be it the undulating perimeter of Manhattan island from its rivers; one of his children’s book characters; or a 397-foot, block-plus-long mural featuring architectural highlights from 70 cities from around the globe for John F. Kennedy International Airport. The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York may be comparatively diminutive in physical scale but is certainly no less an achievement -- as anyone who has ever attempted to collaborate with a New York celebrity (much less 63!) will appreciate. Pericoli credits Saul Steinberg’s much-reproduced illustration for the New Yorker cover “View of the World from 9th Avenue” for inspiring him. While that image lampooned Manhattanites for their warped umbilicus-mundi complex, Pericoli took that idea and ran with it in an opposite, far more literal, though still delightful endeavor. In this book, Pericoli presents his images -- rendered in his affectionately accurate architectural idiom -- as the illustration to the idiomatic narration of each intelligentsia member who was game enough to showhis or her personal window on New York City to this most unconventional voyeur.

The bold names and hipsters range from chef/TV personality Mario Batali to former Talking Heads lead singer/bicycle advocate David Byrne; singer/famous widow Rosanne Cash to neurologist/writer Oliver Sacks. Poet Meghan O’Rourkesays of her window-scape, “When I’m writing poetry, all this natural and man-made muttering can be an inspiration.”

Even when the quotes disappoint, the images do not. They are mesmerizingly pure in their their lack of shadow, of shaping, of judgment. Pericoli clearly strives to provide what he sees there flatly, without interpreting. The reader remains free to react, to disagree, to sometimes marvel at the irony or the agenda of the narrator. (Such as when New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. seems to be selling commercial real estate: “I peer through state-of-the-art, ultraclear glass revealing wonderful, old New York with its majestic…”)

Ultimately, this book delivers that authentic -- though not postcard-worthy -- insider’s view of New York City that so many guidebooks promise but few outsiders ever get to enjoy. My only criticism is, why not have more? Sixty-three is a frustratingly random number. (Pericoli says he contacted over 100 people, but still..!) Petulance aside, my hope is that Pericoli will continue his idiosyncratic projects and continue to have fun divining fresh points of view that he can share with us all. -- Victoria C. Rowan

Matteo Pericoli, a graduate of the Polytechnic School of Architecture, moved to New York in 1995, where he has worked as an architect, illustrator, author, journalist, and teacher. His drawings have been published in various newspapers and magazines, in the U.S., in Italy, and elsewhere—including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Conde' Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Il Corriere della Sera, and La Stampa, among others. In 2007 he completed Skyline of the World, a 397-foot-long panoramic mural for American Airlines' new International Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City.