Walking East Harlem: An Interview with Christopher Bell

By Robert W. Snyder

Walking East Harlem: A Neighborhood Experience
by Christopher Bell
Rutgers University Press
October 2024, 174 pp.

For more than a century, East Harlem in Manhattan has been the home of new migrants to New York City: Italians and Jews in the early twentieth century, Puerto Ricans in the middle of the twentieth century, and more recently Mexicans.

In Walking East Harlem: A Neighborhood Experience, published by Rutgers University Press, historian Christopher Bell introduces readers and walkers to places and people. Organized around three tours, Walking East Harlem takes in churches, mosques, and synagogues; old theaters and new murals; the homes of artists and activists; and the recent pressures of gentrification.

Host Robert W. Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University. His latest book, When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers, is due out in March 2025 from Cornell University Press. Email: rwsnyder@rutgers.edu.