Consider three early 20th-century paintings:In one, a young man crosses a wide street, the too-bright moon casting his shadow eerily before him. In another, the city street is devoid of all people and the sky and clouds are painted so flatly that the scene looks like a movie set. Rather, they are by the American painters – Louis Eilshemius, George Ault, and Glenn Coleman, respectively – depicting the very real city of New York in the first few decades of the 20th century. That postwar psychic and physical trauma manifested itself less in New York than in Europe, but the city was still experiencing civilization and its discontents. Industrial and technological developments happened at a rapid pace, transforming the experience of living and working in the city.