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Gotham

Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean
Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean

Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, interviewed by Tyesha Maddox

In the late nineteenth century, a small group of Cubans and Puerto Ricans of African descent settled in the segregated tenements of New York City. Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof’s book presents a vivid portrait of these largely forgotten revolutionaries and reveals the complexities of race-making within migrant communities and the power of small groups of immigrants to transform their home societies.

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Interviews, Manhattan, Podcasts, Race & Ethnicity, ImmigrationGuest UserComment
The Rise and Fall of The Young Lords
The Rise and Fall of The Young Lords

The Rise and Fall of The Young Lords

Johanna Fernandez, interviewed by Beth Harpaz

One of the most influential groups of the radical ’60s was the Young Lords, an organization of poor and working class Puerto Ricans that began as a street gang and rose to confront the racism of institutions from government to religion. Johanna Fernandez, a professor of history at Baruch College, traces their roots and tells the story of their rise and fall in The Young Lords: A Radical History.

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Crime & Policing, Interviews, Podcasts, Poverty & Inequality, Race & EthnicityGuest UserComment
Greater New Yorker: George McAneny, the Dual System and the Making of Greater New York
Greater New Yorker: George McAneny, the Dual System and the Making of Greater New York

Greater New Yorker: George McAneny, the Dual System and the Making of Greater New York

By Lucie Levine

On March 19, 1913, at the offices of the New York State Public Service Commission, in the New York Tribune Building at Nassau Street and Park Row, a group of city administrators and transit tycoons signed the “Dual Contracts,” a landmark deal between the City of New York, and the IRT and BRT subway companies, to vastly expand the city’s subway network. The Dual System was the largest single public works initiative in American history up to that time. It doubled the size of the subway network and tripled its capacity, made possible the development of the outer boroughs, and allowed for the unprecedented growth of an unparalleled city.

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Transportation, Urban Planning, PoliticsGuest UserComment
New York City’s Women Teachers, Equal Pay, and Suffrage
New York City’s Women Teachers, Equal Pay, and Suffrage

New York City’s Women Teachers, Equal Pay, and Suffrage

By Rachel Rosenberg

On May 7, 1908, Carrie Chapman Catt, the famous American suffragist, spoke at Association Hall in New York City.  There were women in the hallway outside selling “suffragette” buttons.  The hall was packed despite the bad weather, and the event went on past 11 pm.  The evening, however, was not about suffrage.  It was a meeting of the Interborough Association of Women Teachers (IAWT), the organization demanding equal salaries for men and women teachers in New York City.  Alongside many other speakers, Catt spoke as a woman taxpayer about the number of problems in the country that the women teachers in public schools were being asked to solve, and how important these teachers were to the nation.  Her speech called for equal pay for women teachers, but also for woman’s suffrage in acknowledgment of that importance.

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Education, Gender & Sexuality, Progressive EraGuest UserComment
Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Youth on Stage in 19th century New York City
Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Youth on Stage in 19th century New York City

Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Youth on Stage in 19th Century New York 

By Anna Mae Duane

Judging by their absence from most histories of the early republican and antebellum eras, one might think that children,  especially children of color, were largely hidden away from the public worlds of print and politics. This alleged historical invisibility would have come as a surprise for the young people attending the New York African Free Schools in the 1820s. Far from feeling hidden away from the public’s view, they spent much of their childhood on one form of stage or another. In the years which marked the growing popularity of minstrel performances appropriating Black culture in the service of white supremacy, students at the NYAFS were learning how to deploy performances that blurred the very racial categories they were being taught to inhabit.

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Education, Race & EthnicityGuest UserComment
Design for the Crowd: Patriotism and Protest in Union Square
Design for the Crowd: Patriotism and Protest in Union Square

Design for the Crowd: Patriotism and Protest in Union Square

Reviewed by Donald Mitchell

Almost immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, crowds started gathering in Union Square, the closest big public space to Lower Manhattan’s “exclusion zone.” People brought candles and photographs, flowers and flags. They came to mourn and to commune, turning the square into “a shrine and memorial, layered with photos, handwritten messages, schoolchildren’s drawing, expressions of sympathy and sorrow from flight attendants who had been spared the luck of the draw,” as Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin later wrote.[1] Quiet and dedicated mostly to mourning in the first days, Union Square soon also became a place of debate and discussion: what should America’s response be to the attacks?  Why invade Afghanistan?  How to understand America’s geopolitical role in the world?

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Reviews, Metropolitan Region, Urban PlanningGuest UserComment
Who is the Village For? the troubled history of the Northern Dispensary
Who is the Village For? the troubled history of the Northern Dispensary

Who is the Village For? The Troubled History of the Northern Dispensary

By Salonee Bhaman

The dusty red brick façade of the Northern Dispensary sports a hand-lettered sign, a throwback to a bygone era. Built in a neo-Georgian style, the triangular, three-story building occupies the entirety of its oddly shaped, now-trendy West Village block bound by Christopher Street, Grove Street, and on two sides by Waverly Place. Remarkably, given its bustling and costly surroundings, the Dispensary is empty—a shell observing a city in constant flux. Underwritten by a mixture of public and private funds, the building and the land it sits on fall under a restrictive deed requiring that the premises serve the poor and infirm. Just what that requirement means has become a question determining much of the Dispensary’s fate over the twentieth century.

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Medicine & Public HealthGuest UserComment
Documenting the City: A Research Project Inspired by the Journalism of Edith Evans Asbury

Documenting the City: A Research Project Inspired by the Journalism of Edith Evans Asbury

By Molly Rosner

On November 20th, 2019 more than 100 people attended the celebration of the release of a book of student work at LaGuardia Community College. The book, Documenting the City: Journalism Inspired by Edith Evans Asbury, is comprised of essays and photographs by students and faculty who worked for a full year on a research-based project funded by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation focused on introducing students to history and historical research practices.[1] The group is called the Gardiner-Shenker Student Scholars, in which students take on assignments outside of their classroom work and receive individualized mentoring and payment for their participation. The students have demonstrated a deep commitment to the program and produced rich materials ranging from photography to writing, to podcasting and video projects. Most importantly, though, through publication, presentations, and fieldwork the students learned that archival work is vitally important to understanding the world around them and can help them participate in the life of the city in new and profound ways.

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EducationGuest UserComment
Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment
Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment

Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment

Reviewed by Benjamin L. Carp

New York is a city of destruction. What doesn’t burn by accident, somebody tears down on purpose. When Chip asks Hildy to take him to the Hippodrome in Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town, she replies, “It ain’t there anymore,” which might as well be the city’s motto. Nothing is too sacred to shatter. Nothing is too exalted to escape the city’s brutal contests over money and power.

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Reviews, American Revolution, Arts & CultureGuest UserComment