"New York Challenged" - Course Outline


The Draft Riots of 1863: Scene on Broadway

People reveal their character in response to crises. So do cities. We'll look at how New Yorkers experienced and overcame a variety of catastrophes through the centuries and what this tells us about New York and its history.

The goal of this course is to familiarize 3rd-8th grade teachers with opportunities for using New York’s history in the classroom. We will study the history of New York City through both primary and secondary sources, using both traditional and activity-based approaches.

Each week we will read from Homberger’s Historical Atlas of New York City and selections from various secondary and primary sources. Our two-hour sessions will begin with a 45-minute historical presentation. In a seminar format, we will then discuss the history, sources and tools for teaching and evaluate the materials and activities that teachers might use to teach the historical content. One afternoon session will be a walking tour.

During two Saturday sessions we will present activities for and discuss approaches to teaching New York City history in the classroom.

The following syllabus includes for each week: a description of the lecture topic, questions for discussion, sources we will discuss, and sources and websites you may wish to explore later and possible field trip sites. Each source is a link to a primary source image or text. The sources of images, when available, are in parentheses. Beneath each source, when available, is a link to a related website. We will also provide a New York City history bibliography, a copy of Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, and copies of the images and texts we discuss in class.

Reading
Homberger, Historical Atlas of New York

Recommended
Burrows and Wallace, Gotham
Ellis, The Epic of New York
Jackson, ed., The Great Metropolis
Lankevich, American Metropolis: A History of New York City
NYC 100, The Peopling of New York: A Teachers’ Resource Manual on Immigration
The New-York Historical Society, Teaching Local History: NYC as a National Model

Schedule:

April 11th
Meeting One: Introduction- New York Challenged

Lecture: Mike Wallace will give the introductory lecture on crises and responses in NYC history.

Discussion: The question of crisis in New York City: What does New York's response to crisis or challenge reveal about the city? Preview of the eight crises of the course with documents and images. Begin discussing strategies for using the documents in class. Introduce the instructors and discuss the texts and procedures for the course.

Sources:


Web sites:


Possible Site Visits:

  • Battery Park
  • Customs House
  • Museum of the Native American
  • Lovelace tavern excavation on Pearl St.

April 18th



Meeting Two: Periphery to Center- The Battle of Brooklyn and the Crisis of Occupation

How is New York’s experience of the Revolution exceptional? How is it not? How does New York recover from occupation and move swiftly to the center of American economics and politics in the 1790s?


Lecture: The seizure and occupation of city; how it recovers in 1780s-90s

Reading: HA p. 46-51 and Chapter 4

Discussion: How do economic conditions feed both loyalism and unrest leading up to the Revolution? How did New York’s geography and geology affect the outcome of Washington and Howe’s battles? How was the Revolution potentially a crisis both in defeat and in victory? What factors led to New York’s swift recovery after 1783?

Sources:

Web sites:

An Example of Teacher Created Technology Integration

Possible Site Visits:

  • Williamsburg Savings Bank
  • Battle Pass
  • Fraunces Tavern
  • Federal Hall
  • McGowan's Pass in Central Park


April 25th


The Five Points Neighborhood in 1827

Meeting Three: The Perils of Prosperity- The Fever Epidemics
How does New York's emerging economic role (both national and global) and the conditions in the city contribute to the epidemics? How do the epidemics contribute to the growth of civic institutions and city government?

Lecture: Immigration and the Yellow Fever and Cholera epidemics in 1820s and 30s; the city responds with public health initiatives.
We will go on a walking tour of the "Five Points" to discuss the Yellow Fever and Cholera epidemics in the context of immigration, poverty, class and public health. Please meet at the fountain in City Hall Park at 4pm
Reading: HA 70-77, 80-85; Gotham p. 587-594

Discussion: How do conditions in NYC and its emerging economic role contribute to the epidemics? How do the city’s elites combine science and religion to interpret the causes of the epidemics? How do the epidemics contribute to the temperance movement? How do the public health initiatives reflect attitudes toward class and ethnicity?

Document Based Question: Cholera and the Crisis of the Five Points

The crisis of the cholera epidemics revealed a chronic crisis over immigration, ethnicity, poverty and latent class conflict in Jacksonian Era New York City. Both the proposed remedies and the eventual civic responses show the manner in which these underlying conflicts were either aggravated, repressed or resolved.

Respond to the statement above using the following primary documents.

  • Document A - Father Isaac Jogues, Novum Belgium, 1646
    Father Isaac Jogues was a French Jesuit missionary who made several trips to the colony of New France (Canada). Here, during his last sojourn in New France he describes New Amsterdam as he had seen it three years before:

    "On the island of Manhate, and in its environs, there may well be four or five hundred men of different sects and nations: the Director General told me that there were men of eighteen different languages…

    No religion is publicly exercised but the Calvinist, and orders are to admit none but Calvinists, but this is not observed; for besides the Calvinists there are in the colony Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, Anabaptists, here called Mnistes [Mennonites]."
  • Document B - George Catlin, Five Points, 1827- Lithograph from Valentines Manual, Courtesy of the New York Historical Society
  • Documents C & D
    • Document C - New York Magdelen Society, First Annual Report. Instituted January 1, 1830.
    • Document D - "Petition to Have the Five Points Opened," Board of Assistant Aldermen documents, October 24, 1831
      Cholera map
  • Documents E, F, & G
    • Document E - Daily tally of cholera victims in the Five Points, 1832 (MCNY)
    • Document F - Report of the Cholera Outbreak in the New York Mercury, July 18, 1832.
    • Document G
      T. Gardiner Spring, A Sermon Preached August 3, 1832, "A Day Set Apart in the City of New-York for Public Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer ..."
  • Document H - "E. M.," Morning Star (Dover, N.H.), XXIV (August 15, 1849):

    "If cholera had no other mission than this, to sanction the practice of temperance and cleanliness, and to denounce the penalties against artificial and undenied appetites, and putrescent inhalations, it is yet an angel of mercy to the world, if mankind will suffer themselves to be instructed by it."
  • Document I - Dr. John Griscom, Annual Report of the Interments in the City and County of New-York, for the year 1842, with remarks thereon, and a brief view of the Sanitary Condition of the City.

  • Document J - Charles Dickens, American Notes, (1843)
  • Document K - The Old Brewery- Lithograph from Valentines Manual, Courtesy of the New York Historical Society
  • Document L - Matthew Hale Smith, Sunshine and Shadow in New York (1866) -- from the American Social History Project:

    "Mid-nineteenth century publications presented the East's industrializing cities, such as New York, as fractured societies. According to articles, novels, and city guides, New York was really two cities: one orderly, prosperous, and bathed in 'sunlight,' the other menacing, poor, and steeped in 'darkness.'"

  • Document P - Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, (1890)
  • Document Q - View of Mulberry Park (now Columbua Park) in 1905

  • Document R - View of the Tombs in 1905

Sources:

Web sites:

Possible Site Visits:

  • Five Points


May 2nd


The Great Fire of 1835 by Nicolino Calyo (MCNY)

Meeting Four: The Great Fire of 1835
How are both the fever epidemics and the Great Fire the products of prosperity? How does New York recover so quickly from the Great Fire?

Lecture: Fire destroys Lower Manhattan. The City responds with Croton Water System

Reading: HA p. 76-79, 82-83; Gotham p. 594-602

Discussion: How does the fire contribute to the economic boom and subsequent panic of the late 1830s? How do the Fire and the fever epidemics contribute to a growth in civic activism and city services? How does the Croton System grow and how does that growth reflect the city’s imperial relationship with New York State?

Sources:

Web sites:


Possible Site Visits:

  • New York City Fire Museum
  • MCNY
  • Highbridge Aqueduct or Croton Tunnel

May 9th


The Draft Riot of 1863 at First Avenue (NYHS)

Meeting Five: The Draft Riot of 1863- Crisis of Race, Class and Partisan Politics

Is the draft itself the cause of the draft riots? How do racial, political and class tensions fuel the unrest?

Lecture: Racial, political and class tensions erupt; upheaval spurs first efforts to regulate housing and mediate political tensions

Reading: HA p. 96-97; Gotham p. 887-99

Discussion: How do the course of the riots and their aftermath in 1863, from Monday July 13th to Thursday July 17th, reveal the underlying tensions that fueled the riots?

We will use the documents below and the Virtual New York site sponsored by the CUNY New Media Lab and the Old York Library to discuss the riots and possible classroom activities.

Virtual New York-CUNY-Grad Center:
http://www.virtualny.cuny.edu/riots.html

Ideas for activities:

  • map the riot for each day
  • create a timeline of the riot from July 13-16
  • create two newspapers, one Democratic and the other republican for July 16th
  • write two opposing interprpetations of a primary source image, below
  • compare two images
  • find an image and text that go together

Primary Sources:

Web sites:

May 23rd


Meeting Six: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: Crisis in Workplace Safety and Worker Exploitation

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was a catalyst for reform. Was it inevitable? Was it necessary? If so, why? If not, why not? How does the crisis and its resolution reflect longstanding New York attitudes and approaches?

Lecture: Tragedy leads to City and State safety and workplace regulations

Link to Slide Sheet: http://www.ecfs.org/Projects/Fieldston57/triangle/

Reading: HA p. 132-133, 136-137;

Evaluate Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire at Cornell:
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

Please explore the Triangle site at Cornell in preparation for a discussion of the weekly question, above.

Discussion: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was a catalyst for reform. Was it inevitable? Was it necessary? If so, why? If not, why not?

How does the crisis and its resolution reflect longstanding New York attitudes and approaches?

We will use the websites below and the ASHP video Heaven Protect the Working Girl to discuss the questions above and develop possible classroom activities.

Web Evaluation Activity (In Class):
Please evaluate the websites below and answer the following questions:
1. Who created the website?
2. What is the purpose of the website?
3. Who is the audience? Who was the website designed for?
4. How might you use the website to answer the week's question, above?
5. How might you use the website with students?

Suggested roles for group members:
•Navigator
•Facilitator
•Reporter
•Investigator

Web sites and Primary Sources:

Other Web Sources:

June 1

Meeting Seven: Great Depression, 1929-41

How might New York's response to the Great Depression inspire a response to the challenge posed by the 9/11 attacks?

Lecture: Economic catastrophe; New Deal and World War II as solutions

Slide Lecture on New Deal New York:
http://www.ecfs.org/Projects/Fieldston57/andypage4/OAH99.html

Reading: HA, 142-145

Discussion: We will discuss the question above using the two sites below.

Please read the document at:
http://newdeal.feri.org/speeches/1936e.htm

Please evaluate the following site (as we did last class):
The Magpie Sings the Great Depression:
Selections from DeWitt Clinton High School's Literary Magazine, 1929-1941
http://newdeal.feri.org/magpie/index.htm

Assess each website using the following questions.
1. Who created the website?
2. What is the purpose of the website?
3. Who is the audience? Who was the website designed for?
4. Is the website useful for teachers? Why or why not?
5. How might you use the website with students?

Suggested roles for group members:

  • Navigator
  • Facilitator
  • Reporter
  • Investigator