Gotham
Wasted City: A History of Waste and Water Pollution in New York City
Reviewed by Erik Wallenberg
Coastal cities face a dizzying array of environmental problems, from rising seas due to climate change chaos, to polluted waters endangering fish, wildlife, and drinking water. New York City, rocked by Superstorm Sandy and struggling to rebuild a harbor ecosystem that can sustain edible fish and shellfish populations, is ripe for historical examination as environmental crises increase. Throughout its modern lifetime, New York harbor has experienced waste dumping, toxic pollution, a changing coastline, and growth as an international shipping port with attendant dredging issues, all of which we might look to for current context, historical lessons, and to help us better understand our relationship within this ecosystem.
Read MoreJames Rivington: Music Purveyor in Revolutionary New York
By Lance Boos
Printer and bookseller James Rivington arrived in New York in the autumn of 1760 with a hoard of books, pamphlets, sheet music, and instruments ready for sale. Rivington (the namesake of Rivington Street in lower Manhattan) went on to become a prominent figure in New York: he was a fervent Loyalist propagandist during the American Revolution, a spy for the Americans late in the war, and one of the first merchants in the American colonies to import and advertise a significant amount of music.
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New Editors at Gotham!
We’re delighted to announce that we have once again expanded our team of editors here at Gotham.
Read MoreDid All Jews Become White Folks?:
A Fortress in Brooklyn and Hasidic Williamsburg
Reviewed by Gabe S. Tennen
In A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Makings of Hasidic Williamsburg, Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper add an important wrinkle into prevalent understandings of American Jewish history. Deutsch and Casper focus their text on the Hasidic Satmar sect and its creation of a “holy city of Jerusalem” in one corner of north Brooklyn, tracing that community from its nascent beginnings in the 1940s into the 21st century. By offering a detailed and crisply written account of this often discussed but largely underexamined group, the authors provide a caveat to nearly fifty years of scholarship.
Read MoreThe Imaginative Geographies of Place Naming in New York City: Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s Names of New York
Reviewed by Reuben Rose-Redwood and CindyAnn Rose-Redwood
In the opening chapter of Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names, the author observes that New York is a city “in love with stories about itself.” That the Big Apple has an overinflated sense of its own self-importance will come as no surprise to those familiar with the city’s reputation for narcissistic self-indulgence informed by the belief that New York is the center of the universe. Yet, if one thing is certain, it’s that the streets of New York do indeed contain a multitude of stories clamoring to be told.
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“We Accuse”: The Harlem Rebellion, Bill Epton’s Anti-Carceral Activism, and the rise of the Surveillance State
By Joseph Kaplan
On July 16th, 1964, a mere three weeks after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, off-duty police officer Thomas Gilligan shot and killed fifteen-year-old Black student James Powell outside of Harlem’s Robert Wagner Junior High School. Gilligan claimed that he shot the 5’6” 122-pound Powell in self-defense when the teenager charged him with a knife, a claim disputed by several of Powell’s classmates. While the events of that day remain contested, there is firm agreement that this was the spark for the first major urban rebellion of the 1960s.
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“Completion by Contrast”: Architecture and Sculpture in Postwar New York
By Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins
In the March 30, 1963 issue of the New Yorker, art critic and historian Calvin Tomkins profiled sculptor Richard Lippold, whom he described as “by all odds, the busiest artist now working predominantly in collaboration with architects.”
Read MoreFarming between the Heights
By Cynthia G. Falk
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.
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