The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot

The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot PDF Author: Matthew Spady
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823289443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Audubon Park’s journey from farmland to cityscape The study of Audubon Park’s origins, maturation, and disappearance is at root the study of a rural society evolving into an urban community, an examination of the relationship between people and the land they inhabit. When John James Audubon bought fourteen acres of northern Manhattan farmland in 1841, he set in motion a chain of events that moved forward inexorably to the streetscape that emerged seven decades later. The story of how that happened makes up the pages of The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It. This fully illustrated history peels back the many layers of a rural society evolving into an urban community, enlivened by the people who propelled it forward: property owners, tenants, laborers, and servants. The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot tells the intricate tale of how individual choices in the face of family dysfunction, economic crises, technological developments, and the myriad daily occurrences that elicit personal reflection and change of course pushed Audubon Park forward to the cityscape that distinguishes the neighborhood today. A longtime evangelist for Manhattan’s Audubon Park neighborhood, author Matthew Spady delves deep into the lives of the two families most responsible over time for the anomalous arrangement of today’s streetscape: the Audubons and the Grinnells. Buoyed by his extensive research, Spady reveals the darker truth behind John James Audubon (1785–1851), a towering patriarch who consumed the lives of his family members in pursuit of his own goals. He then narrates how fifty years after Audubon’s death, George Bird Grinnell (1849–1938) and his siblings found themselves the owners of extensive property that was not yielding sufficient income to pay taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Like the Audubons, they planned an exit strategy for controlled change that would have an unexpected ending. Beginning with the Audubons’ return to America in 1839, The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot follows the many twists and turns of the area’s path from forest to city, ending in the twenty-first century with the Audubon name re-purposed in today’s historic district, a multiethnic, multi-racial urban neighborhood far removed from the homogeneous, Eurocentric Audubon Park suburb.

The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot

The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot PDF Author: Matthew Spady
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823289443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Get Book Here

Book Description
Audubon Park’s journey from farmland to cityscape The study of Audubon Park’s origins, maturation, and disappearance is at root the study of a rural society evolving into an urban community, an examination of the relationship between people and the land they inhabit. When John James Audubon bought fourteen acres of northern Manhattan farmland in 1841, he set in motion a chain of events that moved forward inexorably to the streetscape that emerged seven decades later. The story of how that happened makes up the pages of The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It. This fully illustrated history peels back the many layers of a rural society evolving into an urban community, enlivened by the people who propelled it forward: property owners, tenants, laborers, and servants. The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot tells the intricate tale of how individual choices in the face of family dysfunction, economic crises, technological developments, and the myriad daily occurrences that elicit personal reflection and change of course pushed Audubon Park forward to the cityscape that distinguishes the neighborhood today. A longtime evangelist for Manhattan’s Audubon Park neighborhood, author Matthew Spady delves deep into the lives of the two families most responsible over time for the anomalous arrangement of today’s streetscape: the Audubons and the Grinnells. Buoyed by his extensive research, Spady reveals the darker truth behind John James Audubon (1785–1851), a towering patriarch who consumed the lives of his family members in pursuit of his own goals. He then narrates how fifty years after Audubon’s death, George Bird Grinnell (1849–1938) and his siblings found themselves the owners of extensive property that was not yielding sufficient income to pay taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Like the Audubons, they planned an exit strategy for controlled change that would have an unexpected ending. Beginning with the Audubons’ return to America in 1839, The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot follows the many twists and turns of the area’s path from forest to city, ending in the twenty-first century with the Audubon name re-purposed in today’s historic district, a multiethnic, multi-racial urban neighborhood far removed from the homogeneous, Eurocentric Audubon Park suburb.

The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot

The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot PDF Author: Matthew Spady
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823289435
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
“An illuminating treat! . . . it retraces the neighborhood’s fascinating arc from remote woodland estate to the enduring Beaux Arts streetscape.” —Eric K. Washington, award-winning author of Boss of the Grips This fully illustrated history peels back the many layers of a rural society evolving into an urban community, enlivened by the people who propelled it forward: property owners, tenants, laborers, and servants. It tells the intricate tale of how individual choices in the face of family dysfunction, economic crises, technological developments, and the myriad daily occurrences that elicit personal reflection and change of course pushed Audubon Park forward to the cityscape that distinguishes the neighborhood today. A longtime evangelist for Manhattan’s Audubon Park neighborhood, author Matthew Spady delves deep into the lives of the two families most responsible over time for the anomalous arrangement of today’s streetscape: the Audubons and the Grinnells. Beginning with the Audubons’ return to America in 1839 and John James Audubon’s purchase of fourteen acres of farmland, The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot follows the many twists and turns of the area’s path from forest to city, ending in the twenty-first century with the Audubon name re-purposed in today’s historic district, a multiethnic, multi-racial urban neighborhood far removed from the homogeneous, Eurocentric Audubon Park suburb. “This well-documented saga of demographics chronicles a dazzling cast of characters and a plot fraught with idealism, speculation, and expansion, as well as religious, political, and real estate machinations.” —Roberta J.M. Olson, PhD, Curator of Drawings, New-York Historical Society The story of the area’s evolution from hinterland to suburb to city is comprehensively told in Matthew Spady’s fluidly written new history.” —The New York Times

Lost Inwood

Lost Inwood PDF Author: Cole Thompson and Don Rice
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467102784
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
"Inwood, the northern most neighborhood of Manhattan, has a rich yet little-known history. For centuries, the region remained practically unchanged--a quaint, country village known to early Dutch settlers as Tubby Hook. The subway's arrival in the early 1900s transformed the area, once scorned as "ten miles from a beefsteak," from farm to city virtually overnight. The same construction boom sparked an age of neighborhood self-discovery, when vestiges of the past--in the form of mastodon bones, arrowheads, colonial pottery, Revolutionary War cannonballs, and forgotten cemeteries--emerged from the earth. Waves of German, Irish, and Dominican immigrants subsequently produced a vibrant urban oasis with a big-city/small-town feel. Inwood has also been home to wealthy country estates, pre-integration sports arenas, and a lively waterfront culture. Famous residents have included NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Basketball Diaries author Jim Carroll, and Hamilton creator/star Lin-Manuel Miranda."--Publisher's description

Forgotten New York

Forgotten New York PDF Author: Kevin Walsh
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061145025
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Forgotten New York is your passport to more than 300 years of history, architecture, and memories hidden in plain sight. Houses dating to the first Dutch settlers on Staten Island; yellow brick roads in Brooklyn; clocks embedded in the sidewalk in Manhattan; bishop's crook lampposts in Queens; a white elephant in the Bronx—this is New York and this is your guide to seeing it all. Forgotten New York covers all five boroughs with easy-to-use maps and suggested routes to hundreds of out-of-the-way places, antiquated monuments, streets to nowhere, and buildings from a time lost. Forgotten New York features: Quiet Places Truly Forgotten History Happened Here What is this Thing? Forgotten People And so much more. No matter if you are a lifelong New Yorker, recent resident, or weekend visitor, this magical book is the only guide to true New York.

Five Points

Five Points PDF Author: Tyler Anbinder
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439137749
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 684

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Book Description
The very letters of the two words seem, as they are written, to redden with the blood-stains of unavenged crime. There is Murder in every syllable, and Want, Misery and Pestilence take startling form and crowd upon the imagination as the pen traces the words." So wrote a reporter about Five Points, the most infamous neighborhood in nineteenth-century America, the place where "slumming" was invented. All but forgotten today, Five Points was once renowned the world over. Its handful of streets in lower Manhattan featured America's most wretched poverty, shared by Irish, Jewish, German, Italian, Chinese, and African Americans. It was the scene of more riots, scams, saloons, brothels, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in the new world. Yet it was also a font of creative energy, crammed full of cheap theaters and dance halls, prizefighters and machine politicians, and meeting halls for the political clubs that would come to dominate not just the city but an entire era in American politics. From Jacob Riis to Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett to Charles Dickens, Five Points both horrified and inspired everyone who saw it. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America's immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich. Tyler Anbinder offers the first-ever history of this now forgotten neighborhood, drawing on a wealth of research among letters and diaries, newspapers and bank records, police reports and archaeological digs. Beginning with the Irish potato-famine influx in the 1840s, and ending with the rise of Chinatown in the early twentieth century, he weaves unforgettable individual stories into a tapestry of tenements, work crews, leisure pursuits both licit and otherwise, and riots and political brawls that never seemed to let up. Although the intimate stories that fill Anbinder's narrative are heart-wrenching, they are perhaps not so shocking as they first appear. Almost all of us trace our roots to once humble stock. Five Points is, in short, a microcosm of America.

Crossing Broadway

Crossing Broadway PDF Author: Robert W. Snyder
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801455170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Robert W. Snyder's Crossing Broadway tells how disparate groups overcame their mutual suspicions to rehabilitate housing, build new schools, restore parks, and work with the police to bring safety to streets racked by crime and fear. It shows how a neighborhood once nicknamed "Frankfurt on the Hudson" for its large population of German Jews became "Quisqueya Heights"—the home of the nation's largest Dominican community. The story of Washington Heights illuminates New York City's long passage from the Great Depression and World War II through the urban crisis to the globalization and economic inequality of the twenty-first century. Washington Heights residents played crucial roles in saving their neighborhood, but its future as a home for working-class and middle-class people is by no means assured. The growing gap between rich and poor in contemporary New York puts new pressure on the Heights as more affluent newcomers move into buildings that once sustained generations of wage earners and the owners of small businesses. Crossing Broadway is based on historical research, reporting, and oral histories. Its narrative is powered by the stories of real people whose lives illuminate what was won and lost in northern Manhattan's journey from the past to the present. A tribute to a great American neighborhood, this book shows how residents learned to cross Broadway—over the decades a boundary that has separated black and white, Jews and Irish, Dominican-born and American-born—and make common cause in pursuit of one of the most precious rights: the right to make a home and build a better life in New York City.

Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side

Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side PDF Author: Jim Mackin
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823289311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Nearly 600 captivating stories of notable former residents of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, some famous, some forgotten What do Humphrey Bogart and Patty Hill (co-author of “Happy Birthday,” the most popular song of all time) have in common? Both of them once lived in the neighborhood of Morningside Heights and Bloomingdale, a strip of land that runs from the 90s to 125th Street, between the Hudson River and Central Park. Spanning hundreds of years, Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side is a compilation of stories of nearly 600 former residents who once called Manhattan’s Upper West Side home. Profiling a rare selection of wildly diverse people who shaped the character of the area, author Jim Mackin introduces readers to its fascinating residents—some famous, such as George and Ira Gershwin and Thurgood Marshall, and some forgotten, such as Harriet Brooks, Augustus Meyers, and Elinor Smith. Brief biographies reveal intriguing facts about this group, which include scientists, explorers, historians, journalists, artists, entertainers, aviators, public officials, lawyers, judges, and some in a category too unique to label. This collection also promotes accomplished women who have been forgotten and spotlights The Old Community, a tight-knit African American enclave that included such talented and accomplished residents as Marcus Garvey, Billie Holiday, and Butterfly McQueen. The book is divided into five geographical sections: the West 90s, the West 100s, the West 110s, the West 120s, and Riverside Drive. Addresses are arranged in ascending order within each section, first by street number and then by street address number. While the focus is on people, the book includes an eclectic collection of interesting facts and colorful stories about the neighborhood itself, including the 9th Avenue El, Little Coney Island, and, notoriously, one of the most dangerous streets in the city, as well as songs and movies that were written and filmed in the neighborhood. Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side provides a unique overview of the people who shaped the neighborhood through their presence and serves as a guide to those who deserve to be recognized and remembered.

The Financial District's Lost Neighborhood

The Financial District's Lost Neighborhood PDF Author: Barbara Rizek
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738535111
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Before the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the World Trade Center, and Battery Park City, Manhattan's southern tip was home to a vibrant community of thousands of Slovakian, Irish, Syrian, Greek, and Lebanese immigrants. Living closely in five-story tenement buildings, these early New Yorkers, many of whom filled the low-wage jobs of Wall Street, built a multicultural neighborhood where the weekdays were filled with the hustle of business and the nights and weekends were filled with stickball games, dances, and worship. The Financial District's Lost Neighborhood: 1900-1970 celebrates this little-known neighborhood while highlighting some of New York City's most famous landmarks: Trinity Church, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, Battery Park and the New York Aquarium, and the Downtown Athletic Club, home of the Heisman Memorial Trophy.

New York PARADISE LOST

New York PARADISE LOST PDF Author: Meryl Meisler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578831824
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
"The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." John Milton, Paradise LostNew York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco is an intimate photographic journey to the pandemonium and paradise of New York City during the 1970s through the early 1990s. Carrying her camera everywhere, Meryl documented a tumultuous time in the city's history; epidemics of arson, AIDS, crack, and crime intensified by a paralyzing blackout, political and fiscal crisis. Nevertheless, Meryl's effervescent images are a personal memoir - love letters filled with compassion and humor mixed with angst, kept secret for decades. The viewer explores a serpentine-like adventure. Split seconds of a flash expose hedonistic hangouts filled with overtly sexual and drug activity, celebrities, and people out to have a good time. Daylight reveals the beauty of those who loved and thrived in the destruction of Bushwick. Unique to New York PARADISE LOST, Meryl reveals an insider's point of view of Bushwick's school life - students, staff, and families working together to create a safer space to learn and grow despite societal ills of poverty and prejudice. Meryl's photos show the beginnings of the local community and government working together to rebuild Bushwick. From one small neighborhood and a larger city on the brink- new music, art, fashion, literature, creative thinking, and culture emerge and remain influential today. Flash forward four decades - many bemoan the gentrification of cities like New York City, the renaissance of small towns and neighborhoods like Bushwick. There is nostalgia for a "realness" and a sense of community lost in the process of change. New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco is a story of discovery, tenacity, and the resilient human spirit that can inspire us today. Then and now, individuals and communities must work together locally and globally to recover from a crisis. From our losses, may we learn, preserve, create and appreciate with renewed strength.

Forgotten Borough

Forgotten Borough PDF Author: Nicole Steinberg
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438435851
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
The stories, poems, and essays in Forgotten Borough offer twenty-four takes on New York City's biggest underdog: Queens. From the immigrant communities of Forest Hills to the unsung heroes of Maspeth and the bustling crowds of Flushing, Queens is the most diverse county in the United States, but unlike the iconic boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx, it's neither as well known in other parts of the country nor as well traveled by New Yorkers (at least those who don't need to take the 7 Train to get home). Featuring writers who hail from the borough as well as those who have moved there and come to call it home, Forgotten Borough uncovers the New York stories that most of us don't get to hear, tales that reflect not only upon contemporary life in Queens but also its humble history and its evolution to the multicultural community—the community of communities—it is today. Taken together, they offer a vivid, layered portrait of Queens as a microcosm of America, where race, ethnicity, class, and industrial growth all influence our collective past, as well as our present and future.