Henry Collins Brown and the Museum of the City of New York
By Claudia Keenan
Since at least the turn of the 20th century, New Yorkers raised the possibility of establishing a city museum. In 1904 when subway excavations at Bowling Green turned up a stone from the early 17th-century Fort George, a local author named Charles Hemstreet opposed giving it to the New-York Historical Society. “Once in the possession of the Society,” he told a reporter, “it would be as inaccessible to the general public as if it had been left in its underground resting place.” He urged the creation of a “municipal museum.”
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.
The Great Disappearing Act: An Interview with Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson
Interviewed by Hongdeng Gao
Today on the Blog, Gotham editor Hongdeng Gao speaks to Christina Ziegler-McPherson about her latest book, The Great Disappearing Act: Germans in New York City, 1880-1930. Ziegler-McPherson discusses how over the span of a few decades, New York City’s German community went from being the best positioned to promote a new, more pluralistic American culture that they themselves had helped to create to being an invisible group. She offers fresh insights into how German immigration shaped cultural, financial, and social institutions in New York City and debates about assimilation and multi-lingualism in the United States.
The Gilded Age in a Glass: From Innovation to Prohibition
By Zachary Veith
In the early 20th century, bartenders at the world-famous Waldorf-Astoria memorized 271 concoctions. Scores of signature drinks were dreamt up in honor of people and events: the “Arctic” to celebrate Peary’s discover of the North Pole, the “Coronation” to commemorate King Edward’s ascension to the throne, the “Commodore” and “Hearst,” honoring business tycoons, and even the “Charlie Chaplin.” Imbibing at the mahogany bar aligned oneself with the wealth and tastemakers of America; crowds of Wall Street bankers like J.P. Morgan, celebrities like Buffalo Bill Cody and Mark Twain, and the high-society elites all enjoyed more than a few of the bar’s signature cocktails.
Review: Robert A. McCaughey’s A College of Her Own: The History of Barnard
Reviewed by Kelly Marino
In A College of Her Own, scholar Robert McCaughey examines the history of Barnard College and the changes in its leadership, programs, and demographics from its founding in 1889 to the present. He argues that the school's administrators, location in New York City, and relationship with Columbia University made Barnard distinct among the “Seven Sisters,'' the group of elite women’s liberal arts colleges in the Northeast.
Podcast Interview: Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York
Edgardo Meléndez Interviewed by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskoff
Edgardo Meléndez's book Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York (Centro Press, 2019) examines the activities and ideals of Puerto Rican revolutionary exiles in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century. The study is centered in the writings, news reports, and announcements by and about Puerto Ricans in Patria, the official newspaper of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Both were founded and led by the Cuban patriot José Martí.
The Doctors Blackwell: An Interview with Janice Nimura
Interviewed by Katie Uva
Today on the blog, Gotham editor Katie Uva speaks to Janice Nimura, author of The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine. The book is a joint biography of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, and her sister Emily Blackwell, the third woman to do so. The book examines the Blackwells’ struggle to obtain training and credentials in the increasingly professionalized field of medicine in the 19th century, and also provides insights into 19th century New York as a place of opportunity and obstacles for these groundbreaking women.
Dispatches from “Anthropoid Ellis Island”: New York City’s More-Than-Human History
By Barrie Blatchford
New York City’s status as entrepot for millions of new Americans is one of the most well-known aspects of American history. But much less understood is that the city has long been the epicenter of the American (nonhuman) animal trade, a shadowy and little-studied subject that was nevertheless of enormous importance and pecuniary value.[1] Indeed, as New York City welcomed millions of new human immigrants in the decades after the Civil War, the increased mobility of the era also facilitated a rapidly expanding trade in animals. The creatures swept up in this trade were destined for often-dismal fates in zoos, circuses, travelling road shows, medical research laboratories, and as exotic pets — provided they survived the arduous trip to America in the first place.
Forbs, Fungi, and Fading Memories: What Can Preserving a Disappearing Staten Island a Century Ago Teach Us Today?
By Melissa Zavala
Staten Island’s rich history of conservation is overshadowed by its reputation as a “dump,” most often associated with Fresh Kills, the notorious landfill which at its peak point of operations in the 1980s was considered the largest landfill in the world. A look through the Staten Island Museum’s archival collections, however — its founder’s letters, journals, publications, photographs, and a wide array of other objects including herbariums, assorted wet and dry collections of specimens, and more — reveals an island that has transformed radically.
