Sharon Zukin, author of Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture, on ‘B. Altman’s,’ the famous Midtown department store, and the new world of consumption it helped make
Randall Mason, co-author of North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, on this now-abandoned, once-feared part of Gotham’s archipelago, which served for decades as (often forced) quarantine for the ill during various epidemi
Stacy Horn, author of Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York, on the notorious ‘lunatic asylum,’ prison, workhouses, and hospitals that once stood on Roosevelt Island
Brendan Cooper, author of “The Domino Effect: Politics, Policy, and the Consolidation of the Sugar Refining Industry in the United States, 1789–1895,” on the rise and fall of the enormous Williamsburg, Brooklyn factory
Bob McGee, author of The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers, on the iconic stadium (formerly in Crown Heights) and its still-bemoaned departure
Shane White, author of Prince of Darkness and Stories of Freedom in Black New York, on the African Grove, a theater company which played with an entirely black cast and crew to mostly black audiences in the last days of slavery in NYC
Alexander Manevitz, author of The Rise and Fall of Seneca Village: Remaking Race and Space in Nineteenth-Century New York City (forthcoming), on the free black community destroyed to build Central Park
Graham Russell Gao Hodges, author of David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City, on Mother Zion A.M.E. Church and its nationally influential antislavery leaders
Leslie Alexander, author of African or American? Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861, on the African meetinghouse, headquarters of the secret society that created the state’s first incorporated black organization;
Christopher F. Minty, author of “American Demagogues”: The Origins of Loyalism in New York City (forthcoming), on James Rivington and his controversial printshop in Hanover Square
Mark R. Wilson, author of Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II and The Business of Civil War, on the Brooklyn Navy Yard
Martin Melosi, author of the forthcoming Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City, on the infamous landfill-turned-park in Staten Island
Angela Kane, professor of dance at the University of Michigan and the forthcoming author of the first critical study of Paul Taylor, on the famous choreographer’s studio in the Lower East Side
Benjamin Flowers, author of Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century, on the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park
Lindsay K. Campbell, author of City of Forests, City of Farms: Sustainability Planning for New York City’s Nature, on the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm at the Navy Yard
In this episode of The Gotham Center podcast “Sites and Sounds,” Gail Fenske talks about the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan. Fenske is a Professor of architecture at Roger Williams University and the author of a celebrated book on the W
In this episode of The Gotham Center podcast “Sites and Sounds,” Edith Gonzalez talks about the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Canarsie, Brooklyn, the oldest structure in the city and the first to be designated a landmark. Typifying the archi