ASH3002y Reading Assignment
March 1, 1999

Civic culture: New York City as a Cultural Resource

This class will focus on New York City as a resource for exploration of American culture.  We'll consider materials and sites that you might want to explore, including historic sites, archives, and museums.

Please explore the web resources below.  In class, we'll discuss your first field-trip assignment, which will move you off the web and into the city.  By the time you arrive in class on Monday, you should have accomplished the following things:

• Find a site or collection worthy of exploration that's not listed below, and post a description of it (and relevant information about hours, etc.) along with relevant URLs (if applicable) to the course bulletin board.
• Identify a few sites that you might want to consider.

Note also that the reading assignment for Wednesday is quite substantial.  Take advantage of the lightness of this assignment to get an early start on Wednesday's reading.

Web resources for the study of New York City's history:

• A Brief New York City Timeline
• Research tools at Columbia:
  • New York City Information Sources - A Guide to Library Resources at Columbia concerning New York
  • New York City History:  Prepared by the History and Humanities Division, Columbia
    University Libraries.
  • Avery Library's "How to Research a New York City Building"
• Brooklyn History:  part of the Brooklyn Historical Society's website; includes list of historic buildings
• Brooklyn Stories
• Central Park History - a part of the Central Park Web Site.
• Coney Island History:   This site doesn't quite fit into the time period of the course, but I thought that it might be of interest.
• Gracie Mansion - the Mayor's House
• Images from New York Album: published by Wittemann Bros. in 1883
• The Seneca Village Website:   historical materials on a nineteenth-century African American community in New York City.
• The Society for New York City History - established in 1983 as a forum for discussion of current research in New York City History

Museums and libraries:

• The American Museum of Natural History
• The Brooklyn Museum
• Lower East Side Tenement Museum
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology
• The Museum of American Financial History
• The Museum of the City of New York
• The New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown
• The New York Public Library
• The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
• The New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
• The New York Public Library Science, Industry and Business Library
• The South Street Seaport Museum

Maps:

• New York City Maps at the New York Public Library

General New York City Guides:

• Columbia's list of New York City guides

Useful Local (i.e., NYC) Studies:

• Anson Phelps Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan, 1498-1909.  6 Volumes (1915-1928)
• John A. Kouwenhoven, The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York (Doubleday, 1953)
• Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (Yale UP, 1995)
• Barbaralee Diamonstein, The Landmarks of New York (Harry Abrams, 1993)

Some Barnard Authorities on Early New York City:

• Nan A. Rothschild, New York City Neighborhoods: The 18th Century (Academic Press, 1990)
• Randall Balmer, A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Culture in the American Middle Colonies (Oxford UP, 1986)