Stories from America’s East Coast

The Manhattan skyline seen across the Hudson from Weehawken.

In search of the future

New York still fascinates us enough to make us stay longer than planned. And yet something is missing from the promise of the future that the city embodied for us thirty years ago.

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New York City · 4 min

Betsy Ross

We get off at the Betsy Ross House because the courtyard looks like a café — and begin to understand how America turns history into national stories.

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Philadelphia · 6 min

Watching for buggies

We stake out country roads in our hire car, looking for horse-drawn buggies. Later, we reflect on why the Amish seem so unfamiliar to us and yet command our respect.

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Lancaster County · 8 min

A view of Provincetown, the sea and the houses along the shore.

Good Vibrations

In Provincetown, we find ourselves just outside the mainstream as a straight couple. With Paige Turner and out at sea, we discover how exciting it can be not to be at the centre of things.

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Provincetown · 4 min

A view across the National Mall in Washington, with the Washington Monument and the Capitol.

America in the park

Washington stayed with us not as one story but as a sequence of images: Pride flags, school buses, monuments, a Texan, flags for headaches and an almost empty Mall in the evening.

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Washington, D.C. · 9 min

An opulently furnished interior in a Newport mansion.

Stucco or exposed concrete

Newport’s mansions bring to mind King Ludwig II of Bavaria and his extravagant palaces. Behind them lies a larger question: what are wealth, history and good taste meant to make visible in our homes?

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Newport · 5 min

The statue of Nathan Hale on the Yale University campus.

The spy, the statue and the CIA

Yale commemorates Nathan Hale, and so does the CIA. Yet with no known portrait to work from, the famous statue probably does not really look like him.

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New Haven · 3 min

Historical industrial buildings and pipes on the American side of the Niagara Gorge.

The falls reclaimed

Factory buildings, chimneys and thick pipes right on the Niagara Gorge: a historical photograph shows how thoroughly a landscape can be built over — and that it need not stay that way.

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Niagara Falls · 4 min

A view of the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls from every angle

From America to Canada, from viewpoints, steps, tunnels and twice from a boat: we tried almost every perspective on Niagara Falls. These are the experiences we would plan exactly the same way again.

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Niagara Falls · 9 min