Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side: Bloomingdale–Morningside Heights
Jim Mackin Interviewed by Robert W. Snyder
In Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side: Bloomingdale-Morningside Heights, Jim Mackin introduces readers to almost 600 former residents of a culturally and politically fertile slice of Manhattan wedged between Central Park and the Hudson River from the West 90s to 125th Street. The range of people he has uncovered will astonish even long-time residents of the area. Actor Dustin Hoffman, writer Dorothy Parker, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and singer Ronnie Spector are just four of the people you will meet in these pages.
Dyckman Discovered: Generations of Slavery on the Dyckman Property in Inwood, 1661-1827
By Richard Tomzack
On Tuesday, May 21, 1765, an enslaved African American named Will escaped the estate of Jacob Dyckman in Kingsbridge, New York. Taking nothing but his clothes, described by Dyckman as a “blue Broad Cloth Coat,” and “Homespun Trowsers, a Beaver Hat, halfworn, with a hole through the rim,” Will made his escape under the cover of darkness. Like many of the 10,000 enslaved individuals living in the province of New York, Will had been bought and sold multiple times, passing from the ownership of both the Alsop and Keteltas families in New York City, before Jacob Dyckman purchased him and relocated him to his property in Kingsbridge.
Have you recently trekked to a farmers’ market for fresh produce? In this lockdown year, do you miss attending concerts at Carnegie Hall? A Broadway show? Have you enjoyed roaming through the romantic landscape of Central Park, or wandered the streets of the city’s historic districts? Do you go out of your way to experience the inspiring urban spaces of Grand Central Terminal? Are you invigorated when you head west to the Hudson River Park and marvel at the river’s recovery?
Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family
Bruce Haynes Interviewed by Tyesha Maddox
Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family tells the story of one Harlem family across three generations, connecting its journey to the historical and social forces that transformed Harlem over the past century. Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch capture the tides of change that pushed blacks forward through the twentieth century — the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, the early civil rights victories, the Black Power and Black Arts movements--as well as the many forces that ravaged black communities, including Haynes's own. As an authority on race and urban communities, Haynes brings unique sociological insights to the American mobility saga and the tenuous nature of status and success among the black middle class.
Projecting “Spread City”: The New York Metropolitan Region Study and Its Critics, 1956–1968
By Peter Ekman
“This project is not a blueprint for action. It has no recommendations to make about the physical structure of the Region or about the form or activities of the governmental bodies there. At the same time, it is a necessary prelude to future planning studies of the Region.” The project in question was the New York Metropolitan Region Study (NYMRS), executed 1956–59 for the Regional Plan Association (RPA) by an interdisciplinary group of scholars from Harvard’s Graduate School of Public Administration. Unlike the RPA’s original Regional Plan of New York, issued 1929–31, which was zealously promoted to the public and substantially implemented by 1940, the ten-volume NYMRS very deliberately was not a plan.
Rainbow LaGuardia: An Interview With Stephen Petrus and Thierry Gourjon-Bieltvedt
Interviewed by Adam Kocurek
Today on the blog, we talk to Stephen Petrus and Thierry Gourjon-Bielvedt about their project Rainbow LaGuardia, a virtual exhibition that examines what it means to be LGBTQ in academia. In it, viewers can explore dozens of video and audio clips taken of twenty-seven LGBTQ faculty and staff at LaGuardia Community College. In these clips, participants talk about everything from their professional lives as LGBTQ academics to their formative experiences in their youth.
The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It
Matthew Spady Interviewed by Robert W. Snyder
In northern Manhattan in 1841, the naturalist John James Audubon bought 14 acres of farmland on the banks of the Hudson River and built his family a home far from the crowded downtown streets. Audubon’s country homestead is long gone, but his story launches Matthew Spady’s The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It.
“The Scourge of the ‘90s:” Squeegee Men and Broken Windows Policing
By Jess Bird
There is perhaps no other bogeyman of New York City’s “bad old days” that has incited greater ire than the squeegee man. Cars created a sense of safety, of separation from the unruly world of the street, but a window washer approaching a car stopped at a red light ruptured that sense of safety, incited panic, and demonstrated, to some, a breakdown in law and order. Squeegee men, “the scourge of the ‘90s,” symbolized the need to be tough on crime, regardless of the costs. Unsurprisingly then, the so-called squeegee pest featured heavily in the mayoral race of 1993, a rematch between incumbent Mayor David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.
One Day in New York, 1882: Interview with Filmmaker Arne Peisker
Interviewed by David Huyssen
Today on the blog, David Huyssen speaks with Arne Peisker, a director with the German/American production company, Story House Productions, about his new documentary film, One Day in New York, 1882. The film is part of a series, and in the final stages of production for one of Germany’s major national broadcasters, ZDF.
“God is Forgotten, and the Soldier Slighted”: New York City’s Golden Hill and Nassau Street Riots and the Affective Rhetorics of Crowd Violence
By Russell L. Weber
Winter’s chill clutched New York City the morning of January 19, 1770. Such unwelcoming weather might have persuaded some New Yorkers to remain indoors, supply their stoves with more kindling, and delay their trip to the market until warmth returned to either their bones or their city. The soldiers of Britain’s 16th Regiment of Foot, however, ignored January’s harsh bite. As these regulars made the half-mile walk from their barracks to Fly Market, their enraged, boiling blood kept them warm.
