With the late-19th-Century rise of the metropolis came new ways of seeing in the American city. Observers attempting to decipher the “mysteries” of an urban landscape radically transformed by industrial and mercantile capitalism responded in a variety of ways: some chose to portray the “underside” of the city, some its expansive beauty, others its vast and disorienting scale. But what these different perspectives share is an assumption that one can comprehend and order the sprawling urban scene through a knowledge and experience predicated on sight; to “see” the city is, quite literally, to understand it.