The World of Dubrow's Cafeteria: An Interview with Marcia Bricker Halperin
By Robert W. Snyder
In the middle decades of the twentieth century in New York City, Dubrow’s cafeterias in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and the garment district of Manhattan were places to get out of your apartment, have coffee with friends, or enjoy a hearty but affordable meal. They were grounded in the world of Jewish immigrants and their children, and they thrived in years when Flatbush and the Garment District each had a distinctly Jewish character. […] before Dubrow’s cafeterias were shuttered, Marcia Bricker Halperin captured their mood and their patrons in black and white photographs. These pictures, along with essays by the playwright Donald Margulies and the historian Deborah Dash Moore, constitute Marcia’s book Kibitz and Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow’s Cafeteria, published by Cornell University Press and winner of a National Jewish Book Council prize for Food Writing and Cookbooks.
Policing the World from New York City: How Policing Changed from 1880 to 1920
A Collaboration with Public Books: Matthew Guariglia, interviewed by Emily Brooks
From the 1880s to the 1940s, New York City was transformed—and so too was the New York City Police Department. This is the second of two interviews—published in collaboration with Public Books—where Matthew Guariglia and Emily Brooks discuss this pivotal era, through their exciting new books on the NYPD. The first interview was published on Public Books. You can read it here.
Skyscraper Settlement: An Interview with Joyce Milambling
Joyce Milambling, interviewed by David Huyssen
[…] Christodora House has an amazing history, too much of which has become obscured by time and influenced by what the building has come to represent to many people. The building at 143 Avenue B deteriorated in the 1960s and 70s after the City abandoned it, making it a symbol of urban blight. Later, its 1986 conversion to condominiums associated it with conflicts over gentrification in the East Village. It took center stage in those conflicts when protesters from Tompkins Square Park broke into and vandalized the building in 1988. Although its architectural and historic value have since earned it spots on both the National Register and the State Register of Historic Places, its settlement-era history remains under-appreciated. The settlement house movement, despite its flaws, confronted social problems head-on and provided entire communities with both urgent social services and opportunities for growth and development. Christodora is an important part of that story.
The Eight tells the story of the Lemmon slave case, a dramatic legal battle over the freedom of eight enslaved people who were brought to New York City while sailing from Virginia to Texas, at which point New York abolitionists initiated a freedom suit on their behalf. The eight-year legal saga that followed reflected escalating political tensions over the fate of American slavery and highlighted the legal contradictions that complicated a half-slave, half-free nation.
Right now, New York City is attempting to recover from the pandemic, more populous than ever before, and facing exorbitant housing costs. It seems… both booming and in crisis at the same time,… What are some ways the history featured in We Won’t Move! should inform our understanding of housing in New York in the present?
The tenant protections and affordable housing programs which we have today are primarily the result of grassroots organizing and advocacy. While the power of real estate capital can seem overwhelming, We Won’t Move aims to demonstrate the political power of tenants, and to offer an understanding of NYC’s rich history of tenant organizing as an inspiration and strategic tool.
Sodomites and Gender Transgressors In 1840s New York
Marc Stein, interviewed by Katie Uva
We have ample evidence of queer acts and desires, but not gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans identities and communities, in colonial America or the United States before the late 1800s. That’s part of what makes this set of documents from the 1840s so interesting and so significant — they might allow us to push back the clock on when such identities and communities emerged in the United States…. these sources capture widespread cultural anxieties about the genders and sexualities of young white men and the new pleasures and dangers of life in urban America.
(Podcast) Stephanie Azzarone, Heaven on the Hudson
Interviewed by Robert W. Snyder
On the west side of Manhattan, Riverside Park winds between the banks of the Hudson River and the elegant housing of Riverside Drive. In her new book Heaven on the Hudson: Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside Park(Fordham UP, 2022), Stephanie Azzarone seeks to lift the park and its surroundings from the shadows of more famous places, like Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and Central Park West.
New Ways to Understand Robert Moses: An Interview with Katie Uva and Kara Murphy Schlichting
By Robert W. Snyder
If you teach courses on New York City’s history, or just have a passing interest in its past, you are sure to come across Robert A. Caro’s biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Published in 1974, it remains influential and informs an exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, echoes into David Hare’s new play Straight Line Crazy, and appears conspicuously in Zoom conversations on the bookshelves of politicians and journalists.
Interview: Bob Santelli on the “Songwriters Hall of Fame Experience” Exhibit at the GRAMMY Museum
Bob Santelli interviewed by Ryan Purcell
What makes great music? What gives it power to sway our hips and emotions? These are some of the questions behind the Songwriters Hall of Fame Experience exhibit at the CUNY Graduate Center. Founded in 1969 by songwriter Johnny Mercer, the Songwriters Hall of Fame (SOHF) has celebrated the work and legacy of some of the most significant songwriters in American popular culture. The esteemed ranks of SHOF’s inductees include prolific teams such Rogers and Hammerstein (who helped compile the Great American Songbook), and Holland-Dozier-Holland (the songwriting engine that drove Motown), as well as solo songsmiths from Carole King to Mariah Carey.
Interview: Anthony Tamburri on the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
Interviewed by Adam Kocurek
Today on the blog, Gotham editor Adam Kocurek speaks with the dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Anthony Tamburri about the history of the Institute, and the work it does for supporting Italian American scholars and the history of Italian Americans.
