New York’s Memory Palace: An Interview with Blagovesta Momchedjikova

Interviewed by Katie Uva

The Panorama of the City of New York is an enormous scale model of all five New York City boroughs. It has 895,000 structures in the scale of 1:1200 (1 inch = 100 feet, making the Empire State Building only 15 inches tall on the model) and stretches over 9,335 square feet in the Queens Museum. Commissioned for the New York World’s Fair of 1964/65 by the infamous city planner Robert Moses, the Panorama took one hundred people three years to build from geological and survey maps, and aerial photographs. It was created in 273 sections offsite under the supervision of Ray Lester, a long-time model maker for Moses, and his company Lester Associates. The Panorama was installed in 1964 in the same space it occupies today, in what was then the New York City Pavilion and is now the Queens Museum. There, fairgoers experienced the miniature metropolis as a short helicopter ride with a pre-recorded narration.

Interviews, QueensGuest UserMarch 31, 2020Comment

Interview with Ansley Erickson, co-editor of Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community

Interview with Ansley Erikson, co-editor of Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community

Interviewed by Dominique Jean-Louis

This week on Gotham we hear from the Harlem Education History Project (HEHP), a multi-platform program at Columbia University that includes a digital collection, exhibits, and the recently published Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, as well as many other resources for teaching the history of education. Today, Dominique Jean-Louis interviews the Project’s co-director, Ansley T. Erickson, co-editor of the book.

Education, Interviews, Manhattan, Race & Ethnicity, Poverty & InequalityGuest UserMarch 23, 2020Comment

Parkchester: An Interview with Jeffrey S. Gurock

Interviewed by Katie Uva

Today on the blog, editor Katie Uva talks to Jeffrey Gurock about his recent book, Parkchester: A Bronx Tale of Race and Ethnicity. In it, Gurock combines his personal experience growing up in Parkchester with research into the history of this planned community in the Bronx, and offers an interpretation both of Parkchester’s uniqueness and what it reveals about the broader city.

Bronx, Interviews, Postwar New York, Housing & RealtyGuest UserMarch 3, 2020Comment

Heaven's Wrath: Interview with Danny Noorlander

Interviewed by Deborah Hamer

Today on the blog Gotham editor Deborah Hamer speaks with Danny Noorlander, associate professor at SUNY-Oneonta, about his new book Heaven’s Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World, religion in New Amsterdam and the Dutch Republic, and what is on the horizon for his next book.

New Amsterdam, Religion, InterviewsGuest UserFebruary 20, 2020Comment

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.

Interviews, Manhattan, Podcasts, Race & Ethnicity, ImmigrationGuest UserFebruary 11, 2020Comment

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.

Crime & Policing, Interviews, Podcasts, Poverty & Inequality, Race & EthnicityGuest UserFebruary 6, 2020Comment

On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City

Evan Friss, interviewed by Kara Murphy Schlichting

Evan Friss’s latest book explores how bicycles and bicyclists shaped the city’s social, economic, infrastructural, and cultural politics.

Transportation, InterviewsGuest UserJanuary 16, 2020Comment

Mapping a Queer New York: An Interview with Jen Jack Gieseking

Interviewed by Katie Uva

Today on the blog, Katie Uva interviews Jen Jack Gieseking about their mapping project, An Everyday Queer New York, a companion project to his book A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers, forthcoming in 2020. Jack discusses the challenges and opportunities in mapping as a way of understanding lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) history in general, and the history of queer women and trans and gender non-conforming people (tgncp) in particular.

Gender & Sexuality, Contemporary Era, InterviewsGuest UserDecember 12, 2019Comment

Representing the Whole: An Interview with Dennis RedMoon Darkeem

Representing the Whole: An Interview with Dennis Redmoon Darkeem

Interviewed by Pilar Jefferson

One of the most thought provoking pieces to share and discuss with visitors since Urban Indian: Native New York Now opened at the Museum of the City of New York in late September has been “Flag” by Dennis Redmoon Darkeem. Hanging in the center of the north wall of the gallery, it sits a little apart from the posters and flyers around it, and the bold colors and patterns of the large rectangular work draw viewers in. The quilted fabric pieces that form the work create visually engaging aesthetic contrasts, and those same colors and patterns draw questions of deeper meaning from the viewer. Are the blue stars on a white background an inversion of the American flag? What is the source of the strip of checked green yellow orange and black fabric that cuts across the piece, bisecting it?

Interviews, Race & EthnicityGuest UserNovember 26, 2019Comment

Voices of Queensbridge: Pedagogical Overview of an Oral History Project

Adapted from writing in Voice of Queensbridge: Stories from the Nation’s Largest Public Housing Development

By Molly Rosner

In the fall of 2018, a group of LaGuardia Community College students embarked on a year-long project to document the experiences of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents. This project was funded by the Robert D. L. Gardiner Foundation. These stories were aimed at enriching the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives’ NYCHA collection, which until this project only reflected the agency’s perspective on public housing. The vastness of public housing in New York City necessitated that the students focus on one public housing project and Queensbridge Houses, the nation’s largest public housing development, were selected due to abundant documentation of the development, and its vicinity to the college.

Interviews, Housing & Realty, Contemporary EraPeter-Christian AignerOctober 3, 2019Comment