Review of Pete Hamill's Downtown

In “Downtown,” Pete Hamill, former New York Post editor, presents New York City through the eyes of one of the city’s last old-school journalists.
“Broadway exists as a concrete place and as an idea,” he writes. Hamill holds this philosophy for the entire city. To Hamill, born to Irish Immigrants in 1935 in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, “downtown” is any nostalgia-evoking place. It ranges from Tribeca to Rockefeller Center, from St. Mark’s Place to 125th Street in Harlem.
Hamill takes on the role of a grandfatherly Irish storyteller. He writes of being five years old, skipping down Brooklyn cobblestones with his mother after first seeing “The Wizard of Oz.” He recalls his twenties, regularly running into Allen Ginsberg on St. Marks Place. He also recalls smelling the vile odor that filled the streets on September 11, 2001.
Hamill’s remembrances are relatable for any old time New Yorker, and informative for new ones. He works in facts like the Commissioners’ Plan of the early 1800s, which gave birth to the cities grid system still used today.
The book often gets bogged-down when it relies on too much historical information – Hamill writes at length on the history of the Trinity Church. But the book remains an honest account of a man who has lived through seven decades in the city and still remains astonished at its ability to resurrect itself.