Empire City shown through artists' eyes

Art: Metropolitan Museum of Art features a historic look at New York City.

The curators were also successful in landing some rarely exhibited treasures, like a pale-pink seed-pearl necklace and a pair of bracelets from the Library of Congress. President Abraham Lincoln bought them from Tiffany's for $530 for his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, who wore them to the inaugural ball in 1861.

The exhibition is the Met's largest in its American Wing since its "19th Century America" show in 1970. Strangely, this exercise in New York egoism is being sponsored, to the tune of $2 million, by Fleet bank, the largest bank in Boston, "because we're the leading real-estate lender in New York, and we want to associate ourselves with things that say New York," said Rena DeSisto, a spokeswoman for the bank.

The exhibition highlights not only the work of New York artists but also illustrates the high level of craftsmanship attained by Gotham's immigrants from France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and other countries. For example, on exhibit is a 10-foot-high mahogany door and pedimented frame from the Clarkson Lawn, a grand Greek Revival house built in Brooklyn in 1835 by immigrant craftsmen, demonstrating the grandeur of the Greek Revival style in New York. The house was demolished in 1940. The term "Empire City" has been traced by some historians to George Washington.