Fred Trump Slays the King of Cooperative Housing

By Gwenda Blair

Nearly two decades after Friedrich Trump came to America and a year before his first son, Fred, was born, another boy landed at New York Harbor. He was fifteen, a year younger than Friedrich had been upon his arrival. Like Friedrich, he had traveled alone and left behind his family, his homeland, and his obligation to enter into his country’s military service. And he, too, did not intend to return. His name was Abraham Eli Kazan, and the country he left was Russia. In the coming decades, he, like Fred Trump, would become a real estate developer in New York, building apartments in a city with a desperate need for housing. In the late 1950s the two men each sought to build on the same stretch of Coney Island, a long and bitter struggle that eventually entangled the highest levels of city government. But it was more than a battle between two well-connected businessmen. Trump and Kazan were leaders in two separate movements battling for effective control of the way the city would grow — and because New York City was a bellwether for the rest of the nation, the way that cities all over the country would grow. Ultimately, on this patch of Coney Island, not far from the famous amusement rides, Fred Trump helped carve America's urban future.

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

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

Myth #8: Static Manhattan, Part II

By Gerard Koeppel and Jason M. Barr

Today, the image of Manhattan is as a vertical city — a place that, as E. B. White saw it, “has been compelled to expand skyward because of the absence of any other direction in which to grow.” With our eyes focused skyward, we think little of the city’s horizontal expansion, as the grid plan seemingly set Manhattan in stone, literally and figuratively.

This is the final installment of the authors' series The Manhattan Street Grid: Misconceptions and Corrections.

Built Environment, Early Republic, Manhattan, Urban PlanningGuest UserDecember 12, 2017Comment

Myth # 7: Static Manhattan, Part I

By Jason M. Barr and Gerard Koeppel

Today, Manhattan is synonymous with its Cartesian configuration. Unlike a standard mathematical graph, which starts at the intersection of zero and zero, Manhattan “begins” at First Street and First Avenue (the “nexus of the universe,” according to Seinfeld’s Kramer). From there, it’s a simple counting exercise north or west. The integer-based order creates the perception that Manhattan is a frozen lattice.

But, when one starts to look a bit deeper, we can see that the grid plan has, in fact, shown significant evolution, both in the early phases of its implementation and throughout the 20th century. Though the pace of change is slow, a “helicopter tour” through time reveals these cumulative modifications.

Manhattan, Urban PlanningGuest UserOctober 26, 2017Comment

JFK Airport, "Icon for the Jet Age"

By Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin

Excerpts, Metropolitan Region, Transportation, Urban PlanningGuest UserOctober 10, 2017Comment

Do We Want to Exhibit a Clean or Unclean City? Private Contractors, Scavengers, and Waste Disposal at the 1939 New York World’s Fair

By Tina Peabody

Metropolitan Region, Progressive Era, Urban PlanningGuest UserOctober 5, 2017Comment

Myth #6: The Grid Plan Caused Too Much Density and Rampant Land Speculation

By Jason M. Barr with Gerard Koeppel

In the two centuries since its creation, the grid plan has had no shortage of critics. Many, for example, have bemoaned its relentless monotony, its disregard for Manhattan’s topography and its lack of grand boulevards. In many respects, the grid has become a kind of Rorschach blot for the failures of 19th century New York to provide a cleaner, more efficient, and greener city. Detractors often see the plan as the cause or catalyst of the larger problems that New York confronted from rapid economic growth, massive immigration and poverty, and a municipal government that was, more or less, unable and unwilling to effectively handle these issues.

Urban Planning, Built Environment, Housing & Realty, Metropolitan RegionGuest UserSeptember 21, 2017Comment