Printmaker and illustrator Joseph Pennell illustrated 100 books throughout his career and was influenced in style by his friend James McNeill Whistler. Pennell traveled the world, producing etchings, pen-and-ink drawings, and lithographs of cathedrals, plazas, street scenes, and palaces. Pennell made a drawing of these skyscrapers for John C Van Dyke’s 1909 book "The New New York." This etching is exactly the same as the drawing, but in reverse due to the printing process. In 1908, Pennell traveled to New York to make these drawings, and Van Dyke used 123 of them.