All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough
Reviewed by Katie Uva
In a sense, emphasizing the vernacular architecture of New York City as quintessential to its character is the project undertaken by Rafael Herrin-Ferri in All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough. The book is an outgrowth of his Instagram, which since 2018 has cataloged more than 600 domiciles throughout different parts of Queens and attempted to describe their incredible eclecticism and flamboyance. The book features a little over 200 houses, photographed on uniformly cloudy days and from a standard angle across the street, usually incorporating neighboring houses to highlight contrasts between houses on a single block.
Read MoreNew Ways to Understand Robert Moses: An Interview with Katie Uva and Kara Murphy Schlichting
By Robert W. Snyder
If you teach courses on New York City’s history, or just have a passing interest in its past, you are sure to come across Robert A. Caro’s biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Published in 1974, it remains influential and informs an exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, echoes into David Hare’s new play Straight Line Crazy, and appears conspicuously in Zoom conversations on the bookshelves of politicians and journalists.
Read MoreBefore Central Park
Reviewed by Kara Murphy Schlichting
Before Central Park is Sara Cedar Miller’s fourth publication about New York City’s famous greensward. Miller is historian emerita and, since 1984, a photographer for the Central Park Conservancy. Before Central Park is distinctive in its combination of Miller’s photography, her expert understanding of the park’s geography and archeology, and her meticulous real estate history of parkland from the 17th through the 19th centuries.
Read MoreFive Decades of (Fighting Over) 421-a
By Samuel Stein and Debipriya Chatterjee
In 2021, New York’s 421-a tax exemption for new residential construction turned fifty years old. That fiscal year, it cost the city $1.7 billion in uncollected tax revenue, a larger amount than any other single New York City housing budget item. Since 1990, as far back as public data is available, the tax exemption has cost the city over $22 billion (adjusted for inflation). In June of 2022, the program will expire unless it is renewed or replaced.
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The Dakota Strike
By Alexander Wood
In the late summer of 1883, the Dakota Apartments was nearly ready for tenants. After three years of construction, the luxury apartment building had only a few months’ work left to go. Slate-tile roofers, sheet-metal workers, and ironworkers were completing the roof, while carpenters, plasterers, and plumbers finished the interiors. Every day, hundreds of craftsmen trekked uptown to work on the million-dollar building that was not only unusually expensive but also remote in location.
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Between Itself and Brooklyn: Gerritsen Beach’s Developing Identity from the 1920s-1930s
By Michael Sutherland
The sleepy seaside Brooklyn neighborhood of Gerritsen Beach resembles a New England fishing village far more than a neighborhood in the largest city in the United States. Its residents are insular, and rarely want to rely on the City or its officials for help. But, during the neighborhood’s infancy in the early 20th century, the people of Gerritsen Beach were grappling with forming and maintaining their own identity as a neighborhood while attempting to completely and equitably integrate the fledgling neighborhood into Brooklyn and as a part of the city as a whole.
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The Problem of Water in New York’s History
By Carolyn Eastman
New York’s water problem has been on my mind because in the evening after I arrived in the city on September 1, 2021 to start a fellowship at the New-York Historical Society, Hurricane Ida barreled through the region. The water was devastating. Dozens died in basement apartments or when they unwittingly drove their cars into flooded streets and got swept away by the rushing water. Media filled with video of torrents of water pouring into the subway and dramatic water rescues in New Jersey.
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Site and Sounds: 9/11 Memorial
By James Young
On today’s episode of Sites and Sounds, James Young talks about the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero.
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