Hopper’s second work depicting the island, Blackwell’s Island (1928), is stark and unsettling, related mostly in title to the 1911 piece. […] The river, a bright cerulean blue, occupies the bottom half of the canvas, and the top half consists of pale blue sky and odd clouds receding into the distance. All of the infamous institutions on the island are there, but by now had almost ceased operating. Hopper paints them as flattened, simplified, and lit brilliantly by the sun. Like most of his works, there is something slightly off about the scene — it is too quiet, too placid. Though the buildings are banal, Hopper suggests that there is something ominous that occurred within their walls.
Contributions Have Poured in from All Classes, from All Sects: New York City and Great Hunger in Ireland
By Harvey Strum
In 1847, New Yorkers of all religious denominations donated first to Irish, and second to Scottish relief efforts as part of a national movement of American philanthropy. It was during this moment that the United States emerged as the leader in voluntary international philanthropy. Commenting on the remarkable ecumenical convergence of relief efforts, New York’s mayor, Philip Hone wrote in his diary, “The Catholic Churches have given nobly, and every denomination of Christians has assisted liberally in the good work: Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Romanists are all united in the brotherhood of charity.”
Reel Freedom: Black Film Culture in Early Twentieth Century New York City
Review By Deena Ecker
Reel Freedom challenges the reader to think beyond the Harlem Renaissance and place film, an important piece of leisure in the 1920s and ‘30s, at the center of the Black cultural and intellectual transformation in New York and the nation. While much of the book focuses on the theaters in Harlem, Lopez reminds us that in the first decade of the 20th century, there were pockets of Black life all over the city. The ways that Black moviegoers, critics, projectionists, and producers engaged with film demonstrated a claim to physical, intellectual, and cultural space in early-twentieth-century New York. In real and significant ways, these claims to space were part of the larger Black struggle for equality.
The 1960s brought sweeping changes throughout America, and this included changes to women’s education. The Civil Rights Movement provoked a reassessment of the role of women in society. Many universities were reaching the conclusion that they could not, and should not, remain the restricted domains of male education. In 1963, Fordham began admitting women, as did Yale in 1969. While providing greater opportunities for women, these developments also presented new challenges for those colleges catering solely to female students. They now had to meet an ever-increasing operational cost and the loss of their monopoly on female applicants. Prospective students now looked at coeducational schools like nearby NYU or Sarah Lawrence College. Finch College was also negatively impacted through media coverage. Tales of Finch girls like Grace Slick or Jane Holzer, who joined anti-establishment rock bands or became muses for revolutionary artists like Andy Warhol, turned a nice profit for the papers, but did not enhance the school’s standing. News articles about the school oft focused on high tuition and “fluffy” academics. When Hunter College and Marymount Manhattan College became coeducational, Finch found itself competing with Barnard for the women-only market in the city.
Shirley Chisholm at 100: An Interview with Zinga Fraser and Sarah Seidman
Interviewed By Dominique Jean-Louis
“I think what connects Chisholm to this political moment is how 1972 was also a time of political turmoil and conflict between a true representative democracy and political autocracy in the form of the Nixon administration. Today, Chisholm would be in the fight for our nation to not fall prey to political leadership that does not believe they are accountable to the Constitution or the American people.”
Which Way to the Promised Land? Mabel Lee at the Intersection of Gender and Race
By Mimi Yang
Oppressed people across cultures embrace the Exodus narrative, in which Moses delivers the Israelites from slavery, as a source of hope and strength. “The Promised Land” has become more than a physical locale for modern-day seekers; it represents a cultural and spiritual sphere that offers freedom, equality, and fulfillment. Mabel Ping Hua Lee (李彬华1896 – 1966), a Chinese feminist whose work and commitment was on par with her contemporary suffragists, also sought the Promised Land — a place for a better life and dreams for happiness and fulfillment. New York City entered Lee’s life as the gate, the world, and the destiny of her Promised Land. Intriguingly, her feminism and dedication to securing the universal right to vote originated from a seemingly distant cultural background.
Fluoride in the Water and the Paranoid Style in New York City Politics
By Matthew Vaz
Fluoride has once again emerged as a matter of public controversy since a federal judge, in October of 2024, ordered the EPA to conduct a risk assessment on the effects of fluoride in the water. The issue has been further enlivened by indications that the incoming presidential administration may support ending fluoridation of water. Little remembered is the heated and drawn-out controversy that brought fluoride to the water supply of New York City. Richard Hofstadter, who lived and worked in New York all through the contentious debate, undoubtedly must have had some of his fellow New Yorkers in mind.
Sadly, Judy did not grow older and develop into a more culturally significant and financially stable feminist voice. The goal was original: these women were familiar with the gendered expectations of the many periodicals where they regularly published – from radical magazines like the Masses to the conventional Ladies’ Home Journal. Although there were influential women editors at the time (Harriet Monroe, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, to name a few), no other publication promised to disrupt the status quo in order to present the candid perspective of women. Even if Judy did not have long-term success, the youthful ambition of these women led them to a variety of creative accomplishments and careers in film, radio, the visual arts, journalism, and literature; these media provided other venues for them to privilege the perspective of women.
Reading from Left to Left: Radical Bookstores in NYC, 1930-2000s
By Shannon O’Neill
As pivotal spaces for leftists to strategize and engage one another, political party bookstores were key in supporting the labor movement, pushing for racial equality, working on behalf of revolutionary freedom fighters, and participating in global solidarity and struggle. In doing so, they created the space for their customers to not only radically reimagine their worlds, but to participate in activating their radical imaginations.
This short essay pairs two poets who relied in their time on the materials of New York City — its brick and mortar, its shatterable glass — in order to test the promise that poetry matters. Naomi Replansky (1918-2023) and June Jordan (1936-2002) each found they could get poems to admit their own possibilities and limitations as forms of action in the world by writing about what shelters New Yorkers, what they can and cannot see through, what goes up in flames or breaks apart, and what endures. Readers of Gotham may be interested in the way this infrastructural imagery draws language back, again and again, to the particularities of New York history. For Replansky and Jordan, poetry’s most salient social meanings emerge from awareness of the city as an inexorably unfinished construction, something poets and their readers — neighbors, whatever their address — must build together.
