Monuments of Colonial New York: Stuyvesant and Hudson
Douglas Hunter and Nicole Maskiell
Today’s installments in Gotham’s ongoing series on monuments in / about colonial NYC, takes us back to Nieuw Amsterdam. Douglas Hunter and Nicole Maskiell ask us to reconsider the memorials of two dominant figures of the Dutch period: Henry Hudson and Petrus Stuyvesant. Uniting their pieces is a call to think more about the men — and in Maskiell’s case, the women, too — who toiled under these leaders.
Monuments of Colonial New York: The Tulip Tree and 'Signal'
Lisa Blee and John C. Winters
This week Gotham presents a six-part series on monuments, statues, and commemorations in / about colonial New York City. Recognizing that one of the more recent debates over public memory has been the conflict over Columbus / Indigenous People’s Day, we begin with Lisa Blee and John C. Winters, who examine monuments of and by Native peoples in Manhattan.
“Traitors In Our Midst”: Race, Corrections, and the 1970 Tombs Uprising
By Willie Mack
In 1966, newly elected New York City Republican Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed George F. McGrath as Commissioner of Correction. McGrath was previously the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction and was widely known as a respected and progressive liberal penologist. But by 1969, the New York City jails were in worse condition than ever before.
Few individuals are more closely associated with the development of 20th century American music than lyricist and songwriter Irving Berlin. From the early 1910s, when he was first launched into the stratosphere by era-defining pieces like “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” until the late 1950s, when his success finally dried up, Berlin remained at the forefront of the nation’s burgeoning music industry.
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.
Erich Goode’s Taming of New York’s Washington Square: A Wild Civility
Reviewed By Stephen Petrus
Even during COVID-19, New York’s Washington Square Park maintains its quirky identity. Chances are on a visit you’ll still encounter locals, tourists, buskers, sunbathers, NYU students, dog walkers, chess players, homeless people, petty drug dealers, and maybe even Fartman, Pigeon Man, and the Squirrel Whisperer.
Biotechnology, Race, and Memory in Washington Heights
By Robin Wolfe Scheffler
Amidst the economic and human toll inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic on the City of New York, one industry still thrives: the city’s Economic Development Corporation trumpeted the news in June that biotechnology companies were still “gobbling” up space in an otherwise sagging real estate market.
Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City
Philip Mark Plotch Interviewed by Robert W. Snyder
Ever since New York City built one of the world’s great subway systems, no promise has been more tantalizing than the proposal to build a new subway line under Second Avenue in Manhattan. Yet the Second Avenue subway — although first envisioned in the 1920s, did not open until 2017 — and even then in a truncated form.
“The Lungs of the City”: Frederick Law Olmsted, Public Health, and the Creation of Central Park
By Lucie Levine
As the nation’s first great urban park, Central Park was conceived as “The Lungs of the City,” and built in 1858 as an oasis for “the sanitary advantage of breathing.” A half-century later, a letter to the editor of the New York Times glowed that “thousands visit the park daily just to breathe.” But today, “I can’t breathe” is the defining cry of the moment, as the city and the nation confronts both a global respiratory pandemic and the ongoing scourge of police brutality against black people.
Refuge in the Heights: Migration, Memory and Authoritarianism in the Twentieth Century
By Robert W. Snyder
Immigrants travel with baggage, and some of the most important things they carry are their memories of life in their original homes. In Washington Heights and Inwood, where immigrants include German Jews, Dominicans, and Jews from the former Soviet Union, personal and collective memories embrace an unusual cast of characters: some of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century. Upper Manhattan is haunted, you might say, by memories of Hitler, Trujillo, and Stalin.
