Schlep in the City: Walking Broadway

By Katie Uva

New York City can be overwhelming in its vastness — more than 300 square miles, more than 8.5 million people, and so many distinct neighborhoods and languages spoken here that the number of neighborhoods and languages aren’t even fully agreed upon. New York City’s streets are the nervous system binding this far flung place and giant population together and their idiosyncrasies seem fitting for this metropolis — Edgar Street and Mill Lane in Manhattan vie for shortest street, while my childhood in Queens was punctuated by persistent confusion about whether I lived on 68th Road, Drive, or Avenue. Each borough has a Main Street, and Waverly Place has the distinction of being the only street in New York that actually crosses itself.

Cartooning the City: Roz Chast and Julia Wertz

Reviewed by Martin Lund

When I was asked by Gotham to review Roz Chast’s Going into Town: A Love Letter to New Yorkand Julie Wertz’s Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City, I had no idea what to expect. Both writer-illustrators are known for tackling a wide variety of topics, albeit most commonly personal subjects. Both Chast and Wertz work in styles of art and storytelling that are readily identifiable, even as their work always delivers something new. With this in mind, all I knew for certain when I said yes to the request to review was that I would be getting two books of graphic arts that dealt with New York City, and that I would be able to tell who had done which book. Anything else, it seemed to me, was anybody’s guess. How the two would relate to each other was similarly up for grabs; they could be boringly similar or wildly different.

Arts & Culture, Contemporary Era, ReviewsGuest UserJune 12, 2018Comment

Fifty Years of Struggle at NYC's Public University: An interview with Anthony G. Picciano & Chet Jordan

Today on Gotham, editor Nick Juravich sits down with Anthony Picciano, Professor of Urban Education at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, and Chet Jordan, Ph.D. student in Urban Education at the Graduate Center, to discuss their new book, CUNY's First Fifty Years, which traces the story of the nation’s largest urban university from its inception as CUNY in 1961 through the forces and events shaping it today.

Contemporary Era, Education, Interviews, Postwar New York, Urban Decline & Fiscal CrisisGuest UserMarch 29, 2018Comment

Saving the New York Public Library: An Interview with Scott Sherman

Today on Gotham, editor Nick Juravich interviews Scott Sherman about his new book, Patience and Fortitude, and the fight to save the New York Public Library.

Contemporary Era, Politics, InterviewsGuest UserMarch 13, 2018Comment

Enter Donald: The Trump Empire Goes to Manhattan

By Gwenda Blair

At the age of twenty-six Donald Trump had sealed his first multi-million-dollar deal. It was a sweet thing for a young man who had been his father’s full-time student ever since graduation from Wharton. Every morning he and his father drove from Jamaica Estates to Fred Trump’s modest office in Beach Haven, one of the large housing developments the older man had built near Coney Island in the early 1950s. Inside a nondescript, three-story brick building on Avenue Z, the headquarters of the Trump family empire still looked like the dentist’s office it had once been, with a linoleum floor, shag carpet, and chest-high partitions between cubicles.

This is the last of three profiles of the Trump patriarchs, adapted from the author's bestseller, The Trumps: Three Builders and a President, courtesy of Simon & Schuster.

Business & Labor, Contemporary Era, Housing & Realty, Manhattan, Politics, Postwar New YorkGuest UserFebruary 9, 2018Comment

Mapping Urban Renewal, Then and Now: An interview with Jakob Winkler

Today on Gotham, editor Katie Uva interviews Jakob Winkler about his Atlas of Urban Renewal, which blends historical research and critical cartography to challenge assumptions about urban renewal and empower communities resisting its impacts today.

Built Environment, Urban Planning, Contemporary Era, Interviews, Postwar New YorkGuest UserFebruary 1, 2018Comment

Can this Mayor Save NYC?

Reviewed by Bruce Berg

Over the last half century, every New York City mayor has been the subject of at least one, if not more, published works. There is clearly a consensus that mayors merit this level of attention and scrutiny, and book-length examinations of the city’s mayors have been both journalistic and academic. The current mayor, William (Bill) de Blasio is no exception to this treatment. Two works, one by New York Daily News journalist Juan González (Reclaiming Gotham) and the other by CUNY professor Joseph Viteritti (The Pragmatist), offer the preliminary narrative on the current mayor. What makes these manuscripts interesting is that both were written before the end of Mayor de Blasio’s first term. And while both offer the reader an examination of the political roots of Bill de Blasio and a discussion of his early accomplishments as mayor, five years from now readers will want to know more about the progress made over his two terms as mayor. Is there a reason why these authors should not have waited a little longer to publish their work? Possibly. In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than five to one, Bill de Blasio is the first Democratic mayor elected in twenty years (five terms). Equally as important, de Blasio is only the second progressive Democratic mayor to be elected in recent years, with the support of minorities, municipal labor unions and progressive white voters; and the first of these mayors to be elected to a second term. And although Bill de Blasio was not a political unknown prior to being elected mayor, he clearly lacked the name recognition and the visibility of his two predecessors. So after twenty years of governance from the center of the political spectrum, the de Blasio mayoralty returned New York City to its liberal/progressive roots. As a result, New Yorkers want to know who this man is, what his origins are — political and otherwise — and how he might lead the city and its governing institutions. Mr. González and Professor Viteritti address these issues.

Contemporary Era, Politics, ReviewsGuest UserJanuary 16, 2018Comment

The Monumental Possibilities of Public Art: MCNY's “Art in the Open”

Reviewed by Erik Wallenberg

As hundreds of artists and scholars call for the removal of local monuments that celebrate racist figures, the Museum of the City of New York unveiled a new exhibit. “Art in the Open: Fifty Years of Public Art in New York” has arrived at an opportune moment. The Mayor's Advisory Council is presently examining city art, monuments, and markers. Groups like Decolonize This Place are pushing for the removal of statues that celebrate historical figures who advocated or practiced racism and genocide, including Christopher Columbus, Theodore Roosevelt, and J. Marion Simms. This fight raises the question of what to replace these statues with, and “Art in the Open” offers some enticing potential answers. The exhibit holds up public art as a medium to prod society into thinking about our current world and our history, a fifty-year retrospective on how public art can reflect societies values as well as push it to recognize injustices and inequalities.

Arts & Culture, Contemporary Era, Reviews, Urban Decline & Fiscal CrisisGuest UserJanuary 2, 2018Comment

Jeremiah Moss's Vanishing New York

By Seth Kamil

I first arrived in Manhattan in the summer of 1989, but it was very much a homecoming. With deep family roots in New York, I felt more comfortable here than almost anywhere else in the world. My parents were born here. All four grandparents spent most of their lives in the City and its suburbs. My fondest memories involved driving across the 59th Street Bridge in my grandfather’s Lincoln Continental. We would hit the Horn & Hardart Automat on 42nd Street & 2nd Avenue (or, if “Poppy” was flush, Katz’s Deli) and then drive or walk around Manhattan. See Times Square. Visit his sister who lived in the Amalgamated Houses in Chelsea. The day often ended with egg cream sodas at Moishe’s on the corner of Bowery & Grand Street. Having struggled his whole life economically, my grandfather always had a kind word and some pocket change for the homeless who gathered there. But, only a child, I remembered the men who tried to wash our car windows, the grime, and graffiti, as somewhat scary. This was the mid-1970s.

Arts & Culture, Built Environment, Contemporary Era, Reviews, Urban PlanningGuest UserDecember 14, 2017Comment