Quiara Alegría Hudes and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical, now turned feature film, has brought increased attention to northern Manhattan above 155th Street. In the Heights depicts a vibrant Latinx community facing the challenges of gentrification, immigration policy, educational and economic inequality, and stereotyping. If we were to travel back in time to the northern Manhattan of Alexander Hamilton’s era, we would find a very different landscape than the one we see today in Washington Heights and neighboring Inwood to the north and Harlem to the south. That is true whether our observations are based on actual encounters with place or representations on the stage or screen.
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.
“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.
New Amsterdam and Old New York: Remnants of Netherlandic Architecture in Late-17th Century New York City
By Jeroen van den Hurk
On the afternoon of Monday, June 7, 1697, Dr. Benjamin Bullivant set out from Boston on a trip down the East Coast that would take him all the way down to New Castle, Delaware, and back. The exact reason for his travel is unknown, but he carried with him various letters of introduction for dignitaries he would meet along the way. He also kept a travel diary in which he recorded notes on the built environment he saw in New York City, some of which he considered old and some of which he labeled new.
The World That Fear Made: Interview with Jason T. Sharples
Interviewed by Madeline Lafuse
Today on the blog, Madeline Lafuse speaks with Jason T. Sharples, author of the recently published The World That Fear Made : Slave Revolts and Conspiracy Scares in Early America, about how the fear of slave conspiracies shaped New York City and early America.
Rev. Charles Inglis was distraught. “I cannot express the Distress I felt at hearing of your Embarkation for England, & the Cause of it,” he wrote. It was June 1775 and Myles Cooper, his close friend and colleague, had recently departed Manhattan for Britain. Cooper, one of the city’s most prominent and outspoken loyalists, and had long been targeted by revolutionaries. Just a few months before, he was among five New Yorkers who were warned in a April 25, 1775 letter from “Three Millions” that Parliament’s “Repeated insults and unparalleled oppressions” had reduced colonial Americans “to a state of desperation.”
Monuments of Colonial New York: George III and Liberty Poles
Wendy Bellion and Shira Lurie
For the last installment in our six-part series on monuments in / about colonial Gotham, Wendy Bellion and Shira Lurie discuss NYC’s rebellion against British rule during the volatile decade before the War for Independence. Bellion begins with a story of destruction — the tearing down of the statue of George III in Bowling Green. Lurie tells of construction — the raising of five liberty poles on the Common (present day City Hall Park).
A Long and Complex Legacy: An Interview with Thai Jones on the Columbia University and Slavery Project
Interviewed by Robb K. Haberman
Today on the blog, editor Robb Haberman speaks with Thai Jones, who co-taught the Columbia University and Slavery Seminar in 2020, about the history of slavery and its continuing legacy at King’s College and Columbia University.
A Loyalist and His Newspaper in Revolutionary New York
By Joseph M. Adelman
New York in the 1760s was a divided town, riven by local factions as well as imperial politics. Local elections were fiercely contested, as they had been for decades. The imperial crisis didn’t help.
The Gomez Family and Atlantic Patterns in the Development of New York's Jewish Community
By Noah L. Gelfand
On November 1, 1750, Mordecai Gomez, a member of one of North America’s most prominent Jewish mercantile families, died in New York City. According to a notice a few days later in the New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy, the sixty-two year old Gomez was “esteemed a fair Trader, and charitable to the Poor” who passed away “with an unblemish’d Character;” and who would be “deservedly lamented” by his large family and all his acquaintances.
