I, too, am impressed by the skillful synthesis of Burrows' -Wallace's new book
Gotham.  With all the scholarly advances of the last 20 years - I wonder what
those authors - and New York [State] historians in general - think are the
most important unanswered questions.

For my particular area of closest interest - the real estate history of New
York City - I can think of several topics:

1.      How were the "wide streets" (34th, 42nd, 72nd, 86th, etc.) chosen on the
1811 plan?

2.      Which developers & architects adapted to the shift from rowhouse
construction to apartment construction at the turn of the century - and which
did not?

3.      Most of the tenants in the big, new turn of the century apartment houses
were not coming from private houses, but from other apartment buildings - and
the suburbs.  What is the real story of the migration to luxury apartment
buildings?

4.   How did the lower heating loads of fluorescent lighting (1930's?) change
office building design?

And, my personal quandary - where was Henry Clay Frick's garage (in NYC)?

Christopher Gray
New York City