We see the world in Leaves of Grass because Manhattan was Whitman’s “city of the world.” The population of New York grew from two hundred thousand in 1830 to half a million in 1850, the steepest growth rate of its time. By 1845, immigrants accounted for thirty-six percent of the city’s residents, while in the years between 1820 and 1860, Manhattan’s immigrant population between the ages of sixteen and forty-five rose to fifty-seven percent. Such immensity and diversity motivated opportunities and possibilities; here, perhaps more than anywhere else on earth during Whitman’s day, residents were driven to possess a global awareness, challenged to recognize and tolerate difference, and tested to the limits of their humanity. In 1852, Whitman pronounced it “the most radical city in America at the moment”;three decades later, he saw in New York “the directest proof yet of successful democracy.” Though he never owned a home on the island and only boarded there for limited periods (perhaps for a year or two around 1835–36, and then again from 1841 to 1845), this “Brooklyn boy” also declared himself a “Manhattanese, free, friendly, and proud.”

The city was a constant source of inspiration and excitement, whether it was from the Latting Observatory or on street level. The Illuminated Pictorial Directory for 1848 is a four-pamphlet series—a nineteenth-century version of Google Street View—that allows the reader to stroll up the Broadway Whitman knew and loved.  The detailed depictions of the shops, parks, churches, hospitals, museums, venues, views, and other attractions on either side of the great avenue recreate the energy and excitement of Whitman’s New York.

This video offers a 3D interpretation of the Illuminated Pictorial Directory, attempting to create a ramble down the kinetic Manhattan that inspired the creation of the first distinctly American collection of poems, Leaves of Grass.