After the Rent Strike: Neoliberalism and Co-op City

By Annemarie Sammartino

In mid-1976, a provisional settlement awarded control of Co-op City to its residents. Co-op City was, and is, a 15,382 apartment middle-income development located in the Northeast Bronx. The achievement of resident control represented the culmination of negotiations following a thirteen-month rent strike that destroyed the non-profit United Housing Foundation (UHF) that had built Co-op City and nearly bankrupted the New York State Housing Finance Agency. As the terms of the provisional settlement began to come out, the Wall Street Journal was apoplectic about what awarding resident control might mean:

If the state wants to regain its financial credibility, it will have, to put it brutally, to make an example of the Co-op City rent strikers… The state may find… that the rent strike will collapse after the first tenants lose their apartments. But in any case, it will be more humane to throw people out into the June sunshine than into the December snow.

Bronx, Housing & Realty, Urban Decline & Fiscal CrisisGuest UserApril 3, 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

Advocacy and Memory at the Hall of Fame For Great Americans

By Kate Culkin

“I am a little frightened by what is necessary to elect Miss Lillian D. Wald but am determined to do all I can to bring the election of this great lady, deserving of a place in the Hall of Fame,” Aaron Rabinowitz wrote in October 1964. He was referring to his campaign to elect Wald, the public health advocate who founded the Visiting Nurse Service and the Henry Street Settlement, to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. Dedicated in 1900 and designed by Stanford White, the monument was the first hall of fame in the United States. The open-air colonnade with spaces for 102 busts is located at Bronx Community College (BCC), formally home to New York University’s University Heights campus. In August 2017, it was thrust into a national conversation about commemoration in the wake of the riots in Charlottesville, VA, over the removal of confederate monuments. News reports and city and state politicians condemned the presence of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee in the hall. The school removed the busts and is considering how to address their presence and removal. The conversation around the monument, however, more commonly focuses on its being old-fashioned and in need of repair, such as the 2009 New York Times article “A Hall of Fame: Forgotten and Forlorn.”

Bronx, Politics, Postwar New YorkGuest UserMarch 27, 2018Comment

Al Smith's Revolution: An interview with Robert Chiles

Today on Gotham, managing editor Peter-Christian Aigner speaks with Robert Chiles, author of the new book The Revolution of '28 (released today!), about the long-debated question of whether Al Smith — the beloved representative of Manhattan's nationally symbolic (immigrant and working-class) Lower East Side — set in motion the New Deal "realignment" with his 1928 presidential race.

Interviews, Politics, Progressive Era, Great Depression & New DealGuest UserMarch 22, 2018Comment

Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect at the Bronx Museum of the Arts

By Craig Lee

In an unexpected but deft move, Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect at the Bronx Museum of Arts (November 8, 2017 to April 8, 2018) begins in the lobby above the XM Café — a partnership with Fountain House, a community program supporting people with mental illness. Upon entering the museum, accessible to all through the free admission policy, visitors turn and see an open seating area filled with tables and chairs with the café’s food and beverage service counter against the back wall. Above, where one might find a menu display board, instead is the introductory wall panel for the exhibition. Rather than providing a comprehensive survey of Gordon Matta-Clark’s too brief (he died of pancreatic cancer in 1978 at 35 years of age), but prolific and influential creative practice in the 1970s, the exhibition is tightly organized around a handful of key projects and explorations.

Arts & Culture, Bronx, Reviews, Urban Decline & Fiscal CrisisGuest UserMarch 20, 2018Comment

John Hughes, Irish Catholic NYC, and the Year of Revolutions

By John Loughery

In 1847, a rather breathless British travel writer, a Protestant named Susan Minton Maury, published her Statesmen of America in 1846 and was sufficiently impressed (not to say awed) by New York City's bishop, John Hughes, to devote twenty-five pages of her book — more space, in fact, than she gave to Daniel Webster, Chief Justice Taney, William Seward, or Martin Van Buren — to someone she described as “the historical man of the day” and the most impressive cleric in America. With his name appearing regularly in national newspapers, Hughes was certainly the most talked-about clergyman in the country.

This is an exclusive excerpt, adapted from the author's new book (released today!), Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America, courtesy of Cornell University Press.

Antebellum & Civil War, Excerpts, Race & Ethnicity, ReligionGuest UserMarch 15, 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

Why the British Lost: An Interview with George C. Daughan

Today on Gotham, editor Nick Juravich interviews George C. Daughan about his recent book, Revolution on the Hudson: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the American Revolution.

American Revolution, Interviews, Politics, Waterfront & IslandsGuest UserMarch 8, 2018Comment

Schools in Department Stores?: Continuation Schools and Department Store Employees

By Sandra Roff

“Mr. Selfridge” and “The Paradise” are two recent PBS series that dramatize working in the new department stores established in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Across the Atlantic, department stores were similarly enjoying success with stores opening and expanding to meet the demands of consumers. However, it was not just the sale of material goods to consumers that took place in these stores, but also activities that seemed to benefit employees. Forward-thinking employers believed they had a responsibility to provide for the welfare of their employees, whether it was for medical care, recreation, or even schooling: a movement known as Industrial Paternalism.

Business & Labor, Education, Progressive EraGuest UserMarch 6, 2018Comment

The Cultural Origins of the Urban Crisis: An Interview with Brian L. Tochterman

Today on Gotham, editor Nick Juravich interviews Brian L. Tochterman about his new book, The Dying City: Postwar New York and the Ideology of Fear, about the competing narratives that shaped the city after World War II, in the age of mass suburbanization and deindustrialization.

Arts & Culture, Interviews, Politics, Postwar New York, Urban Decline & Fiscal CrisisGuest UserMarch 1, 2018Comment