View of the Tunnel of the Harlem Railroad

Nicolino Calyo

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Calyo’s decided taste for fires and explosions is evidenced not only by his images of the Great Fire in New York (1835), but by numerous gouaches he made of Mount Vesuvius erupting above his native Naples. In this view documenting the progress of urbanization into northern Manhattan, he depicts an explosion that has just occurred in the ravine below the Prospect Hotel, which sat on the hill above the entrance to the Yorkville railroad tunnel on Fourth Avenue (now Park) between Eighty-eight and Ninety-fifth Streets. Calyo probably contrived the incident; however, it may be that the herculean task of digging and blasting the tunnel to completion had become something of a public attraction, witnessed here by the crowd at the railing beneath the hotel.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art