Chapter eleven is the second chapter to focus on the Municipal Building, the first being chapter five, "City Hall." This chapter is more accepting of the large building, insisting that it is "worthy" of its status as center of the City government. But even in this chapter there is a hint of ambivalence in Marcus’ acclaim; most of the prose focuses on the enormity of the City’s governmental bureaucracy, and this skyscraper is worthy of the task of holding so great a number of offices perhaps only because a smaller building would be unable to do so. Marcus asserts that the building – like the government it houses – is more remarkable for its size than for any formal aesthetic value. When one is impressed with an invention of the twentieth century, Marcus suggests, one is impressed with size only; in the nineteenth century structures did not achieve prominence by being tall, but by being beautiful.

Also of note in this drawing is what appears to be a entry kiosk for the City Hall Subway station. Opened in 1904 and closed in 1950, the City Hall station was the showpiece of the IRT, and was featured on many souvenir postcards. It – like the entire subway system – is almost completely ignored in New York, The Nations Metropolis. It is a startling omission given the extent to which the extent to which the subway was an important part of daily life for New Yorkers and tourists alike. There is a sense, though, in which the subway is incompatible with the notion of New York which Marcus seeks to put forward. Where he is drawn to the disjunctive collisions of old and new forms, the subway offers only the disjunctive din of modern life. It represents the elements of modernity about which Marcus seems most anxious, and presents no trace of the nineteenth century world the passing of which Marcus is driven to mourn. Because of its unadulterated modernity, the subway is not useful in the book’s project of grief.