Whistler unfolds across a precisely mapped New York City, and the novel’s geography is closely tied to its exploration of memory, history, and reconnection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Daphne and Eddie reunite in the opening chapter, isn’t merely a backdrop but a recurring setting. The Met’s collection brings together objects from different historical periods and cultures, providing an appropriate setting for a novel that moves between the 1980 interlude chapters, the present-day narrative, and the memories that connect them. The museum returns in the final chapter, when Eddie and Daphne sit on a bench near the choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, a medieval Spanish artifact preserved in a new context. That the novel begins and ends at the Met highlights the museum’s role as a place where history is preserved and revisited.

Central Park serves as an important link between several of the novel’s key locations. Jonathan walks Daphne across it to Leda’s apartment on the Upper West Side, guiding her because she’s prone to getting lost. The park links the East Side museum world to Leda’s building, the Gallant Green, and its recurring presence highlights the movement between the different parts of the city that shape Daphne’s relationships and daily life. Her admission that “in the best of times [she’s] likely to take a wrong turn in Central Park” reflects her unfamiliarity with navigating the city despite her long association with it (19).

The Century Association, the private club where Eddie takes Daphne to the Hotallings’ anniversary party, is a real institution founded in 1847 to promote interest in literature and the fine arts. Its long association with writers, artists, publishers, and other cultural figures places Eddie within New York’s literary and intellectual circles. His ease in this milieu, where “his name [i]s a bass note called again and again” (75), reflects the professional reputation he has built during his decades in publishing.

The novel also registers New York’s transformation over time. When Eddie pauses outside Sephora on Fifth Avenue, he tells Daphne that the building once housed the Scribner Book Store, a landmark of literary retail that operated at 597 Fifth Avenue and that, according to Eddie, closed in 1988. His lament captures a broader cultural shift—the displacement of literary institutions by commercial enterprises—that contextualizes his own persistence as an editor in an industry undergoing rapid consolidation. Meanwhile, Daphne’s commute between Bronxville and Grand Central Terminal highlights the contrast between the suburban quiet of Westchester, where she and Jonathan tend their garden and Candy Fuller’s rabbit paintings, and the density of Manhattan, where Eddie’s Chelsea apartment, Random House’s offices, and Café Luxembourg anchor his world. The train, recurring throughout the novel, links these two environments and underscores the distance between Daphne’s suburban life and Eddie’s Manhattan-centered world.