For the next hour and a half, he signed 141 copies with blue Sharpie pens, fortified by a mug of coffee that a museum staff member placed in front of him. The mug, which the museum sells for $19.95, boasts in all caps: “I Finished The Power Broker.”Caro usually dislikes cracks about the book’s length. But he seemed delighted by the mug.“Did you see this?” he asked, holding up his coffee.“I’m not supposed to say this,” he said, “but I kind of like it.”

A book is a complete discrete object, cut to fit and shaped for engaging reading, but thousands upon thousands of loose pages in their archival boxes constitute something else: a relay baton handed off to the future.

He handwrites first, then types it up, triple-spacing in the old newspaper fashion, then pencil-edits and retypes, pencil-edits and retypes.

I suggest to Caro that it’s become one of those things young New Yorkers do, or at least say they do, on the path to becoming a serious adult: Get a Met membership, figure out where Film Forum is, buy (and maybe even finish) The Power Broker.

Caro has never revealed who his Simon & Schuster editor was, and when I ask him point-blank, he smiles firmly. “I’d rather not say. I’ve promised myself I’m not going to go down that road, and I never have.” (Gottlieb, in his memoir, was less discreet. It was Richard Kluger, who in 1973 quit editing to write books of his own, including the Pulitzer-winning Ashes to Ashes, a critical history of the tobacco business.)

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This particular shed was a floor sample, bought because he wanted it delivered right away. The business’s owner demurred. “So I said the following thing, which is always the magic words with people who work: ‘I can’t lose the days.’ She gets up, sort of pads back around the corner, and I hear her calling someone … and she comes back and she says, ‘You can have it tomorrow.’”

“I’m actually not surprised,” Mr. Caro said, when told of the typewriter renaissance. The tangible pleasures of typewriters are something he’s known about for decades. “One reason I type is it simply makes me feel closer to my words,” Mr. Caro said. “It’s like being a cabinetmaker. It’s like laying down the planks. This is the way it’s supposed to feel.”

What do literary stalwarts of the original typewriter era make of all this? “We old typists, it makes us feel young again to think there’s a new generation catching on,” said Gay Talese, 79. He still uses a typewriter, albeit electric, as does his friend, Robert A. Caro, 75, the Pulitzer-winning biographer of Robert Moses and President Lyndon B. Johnson. They discussed Mr. Caro’s Smith Corona while watching the Super Bowl.

And that's what happened to teenage Roxie's favorite arcade. The existing community was kicked out, replaced by something designed with absolutely no input from the community. It wasn't even the community's choice to kick the arcade out. There was no vote, there was no decision, there were no surveys. The people who control the neighborhood aren't the people who live there, the people who hang out and enjoy its offerings, but instead some higher-ups with money, making secret deals on golf courses miles away, only concerned about moving numbers around. Gentrification, really, is the loss of ownership, the loss of community, in the places where you spend your time. Gentrification is the sense that you're no longer welcome as anything more than a cog in the machine.

It is quite large, the letters along its spine are big and bright, and readers are required to own it in print, because Mr. Caro, who still uses a typewriter, has refused to distribute the written version in any other way.

ROBERT A. CARO, THE POWER BROKER: ROBERT MOSES AND THE FALL OF NEW YORK 571 (1974)