Dutch Baymen, Blue Points, and Oyster Crazed New Yorkers

By Erin Becker

Beginning as early as 8,000 years ago, the land which would eventually become New York City was intrinsically connected to the oyster. The Lenape targeted shellfish as a food resource and left behind heaping shell middens. Upon arrival to the New World, the Dutch and English colonists found a familiar food source — the oysters of New York Harbor. For a time, it seemed oysters were an inexhaustible resource. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, oysters fed the rich and poor of New York City. Like the ubiquitous hot dog carts of today, oyster carts and cellars lined the streets of New York City, peddling affordable food to the masses.

JFK Airport, "Icon for the Jet Age"

By Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin

Excerpts, Metropolitan Region, Transportation, Urban PlanningGuest UserOctober 10, 2017Comment

Do We Want to Exhibit a Clean or Unclean City? Private Contractors, Scavengers, and Waste Disposal at the 1939 New York World’s Fair

By Tina Peabody

Metropolitan Region, Progressive Era, Urban PlanningGuest UserOctober 5, 2017Comment

Myth #6: The Grid Plan Caused Too Much Density and Rampant Land Speculation

By Jason M. Barr with Gerard Koeppel

In the two centuries since its creation, the grid plan has had no shortage of critics. Many, for example, have bemoaned its relentless monotony, its disregard for Manhattan’s topography and its lack of grand boulevards. In many respects, the grid has become a kind of Rorschach blot for the failures of 19th century New York to provide a cleaner, more efficient, and greener city. Detractors often see the plan as the cause or catalyst of the larger problems that New York confronted from rapid economic growth, massive immigration and poverty, and a municipal government that was, more or less, unable and unwilling to effectively handle these issues.

Urban Planning, Built Environment, Housing & Realty, Metropolitan RegionGuest UserSeptember 21, 2017Comment