"Over the course of the nineteenth century, the city of Boston evolved from a dilapidated, haphazardly planned, and architecturally stagnant provincial town, into a booming, visually impressive metropolis. Unexpectedly, the effort to impose moral and social order on the "Athens of America" inspired class-conscious spectators to look beyond the cityscape, reimagining nature, divinity, and the afterlife. A pioneering experiment in urban re-development, argues City of Sight, helped birth the remarkable cultural movements of Transcendentalism and Spiritualism."