History & Mission
Our Mission
History
The Gotham Center is a research and public education institution, sponsored by The Graduate Center, CUNY, dedicated to advancing scholarly and public understanding of New York City’s rich and living past. The organization was founded in 2000 by Mike Wallace, after his landmark work Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, co-authored with Edwin Burrows, won the Pulitzer. For more than twenty years, it has been the one academic institution devoted exclusively to promoting this critical field of study.
Mission
Our goal is to support independent and professional historical work examining the various forces and figures that have shaped life in the city, New York’s unrivaled contributions to the development of the nation, and the global influences that have continually redefined it. Through a variety of research programs — grants, fellowships, seminars, conferences, and other projects — we hope to underwrite the production of this knowledge and shape the next generation of scholarship. Through a variety of public-facing initiatives — such as our free event series, blog, podcasts, online education and K-12 programs — we also strive to make that knowledge available to the widest possible audience, sharing the best and most interesting new work far beyond the academic community and immediate metropolitan area. Finally, we endeavor to make this information useful to actors influencing culture and policy today, fostering greater awareness of historical knowledge and exchange between scholars and leaders in civil society and government. In all things, we ask New Yorkers to consider how the past has created the present, and what lessons it might offer for the challenges we face in our great city, now and in the future.