ASH 3002y Class Notes
March 1, 1999

Civic Culture:  New York City as Cultural Resource

Project check-ins

New assignment

Moving beyond the campus:

• Into cyberspace / what you can do in American Studies with technology
• Onto the trains to visit sites / what you can do with a Metro Card (Assignment)
• But not to abandon the printed, published word -- see Readings

A Brief NYC Timeline

Kinds of cultural remains:

• The physical landscape –
  • The archaeological record -- "New York Unearthed" -- 17 State Street (Battery Park)
    Mentioned in htttp://www.SouthStSeaport.org
• Renderings of physical surface – maps and paintings /neighborhood configurations
• Buildings/structures/homes/shops/farms in situ -- restorations/reconstruction
• Parts of same -- cornerstones/mantels/beams/floorboards/nails... artifacts
  

Questions to be asking while looking

What's left? -- What's gone? Why?

• The durability of the structure/material -- physical considerations (stone/wood)
• The subsequent development of the space/real estate -- (urban/rural)
• The subsequent value attached to the space/material -- (winners/losers)

How/What the City chooses to keep – and to destroy
The instructive contingency of survival

[Paul Goldberger on the urban architecture of Havana -- New Yorker 1/26/98]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Landscape/Seascape – Manhattan is an island/flat/rocky/and portrait shaped/
developed northward from southern tip

Altered landscape -- filling in of the water's edge in lower Manhattan-- 1/3^rd wider than in 18^th C.

1874 Landfill around Lower Manhattan http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/map/viele.html

Altered topography -- Central Park plowed around; hills created (opposite of Boston);
Wallter Muir Whitehill, A Topographic History of Boston

Islands joined by bridges/tunnels/trains...

Surviving Pre-19th C. Domestic Structures in NYC -- approximately 50 structures:

Houses:  (see New York City Historic House Trust)

Peter Claesen Wyckoff House (1641) -- Brooklyn
Oldest house in NY State -- one of oldest wooden structures in US

Bowne House (1661)
Alice Austen House (1700) -- Staten Island -- half the pre-1800 houses on SIsland

Van Cortlandt House (1748) -- Bronx
Adriance Farmhouse (1772) -- Queens

Morris-Jumel Mansion (1765) --lower Washington Heights -- Manhattan's only surviving pre-revolutionary house

Dyckman Farmhouse Museum (1785)--northern tip of Manhattan--Manhattan's only surviving Dutch Colonial farmhouse.

Abigail Adams Smith House (61st Street) -- 1799
Gracie Mansion (1799) -- Mayor's residence/Carl Schurz Park
Hamilton Grange (1801) -- Convent Avenue, Manhattan

Graveyards:

• Shearith Israel cemeteries (can be viewed by appointment):
  • 55 St. James Place, opposite Chatham Square, in use 1682-1828
  • 76 W. 11th, between 6th and 7th Avenue, in use 1805-1829
  • 21st Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, in use 1829-1851
• St. Paul's Chapel churchyard (Broadway at Fulton Street)
• Flatlands Dutch Reform Church cemetery
• Old Gravesend Cemetery (1650) -- Brooklyn 1.6 acres
• Prospect Cemetery in Queens (1688)

Churches

• Friends Meeting House (1694) -- oldest house of worship standing in NYC
• St. Paul's Chapel (1764) -- oldest church building in use in Manhattan
• The Kings Highway Dutch Reform Church
• [Trinity Church in its 3rd building since 1697] www.trinitywallstreet.org
  

Schools as old structures??
Erasmus Hall (1786) -- Brooklyn
Oldest School -- Collegiate -- 1687/Dutch Reformed -- has moved 17 times
King's College/Columbia -- three sites
College Hall -- demolished in 1857 -- land for $600,000
1756 -- above line of settlement -- 1857 -- Central Park about to be underway north of 59th Street

Harvard/Yale/ Princeton [Nassau Hall].

Surviving Commercial Buildings?

Fraunces Tavern -- 54 Pearl Street -- 1714/restored/reconstructed 1907

Schermerhorn Row (1810) -- Rare surviving instance of early 19^th Century commercial architecture
Factories? -- Samuel Slater Textile Mill -- Pawtucket, R.I. (1780s)

Ships as 18th/19th C equivalent of factories -- What's left?
USS Constitution (1798) Charles W. Morgan (1841)

Again, see http://www.SouthStreetSeaport.org

Government/Civic Buildings?

Federal Hall National Museum -- Corner of Wall and Broad St. (Built at City Hall in 1760s; demolished 1812; restored 1840s

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

Visual Renderings – 17^th Century -- Site of intense cartographic interest – area’s questionable navigability; at the corner of coastline

Pre-English -- Verrazano/Hudson/Adrien Block -- Dutch mapmakers à 1609 – 1664 Still in 1670s

Single best collection -- I. Anson Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan, 6 volumes (1915-1928)

New York Public Library – 5^th and 42^nd – Anson Stokes Collection

Maps and charts of Early New York

Best electronic sites -- SUNYStony Brook -- http://www.sunysb.edu/library/ldmap.htm
and NY Public Library -- http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/map/mapping.html

Stonybrook
-- 1639 Manatus Map (1639) -- Dutch houses on Lower manhattan
http://www.sunysb.edu/libmap/img0009.jpg

-- 1656 Nicholasm Visscher -- Novi Belgi /img0011.jpg

-- 1777 25 miles around NYC libmap/imgoo5B.jpg

NYPublic Library

New! -- Slaughter Collection -- chss/map/slauweb.html

Permanent Exhibits -- Special Exhibits/Digital versions http://nypl.org

"Moving Uptown: 19^th century Views of Manhattan

Lower Manhattan (1808)
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/print/exhibits/movingup/nycmapb.htm

South Street (1828) http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/print/exhibits/movingup/no10b.htm

Broadway and Trinity Church (1830)
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/print/exhibits/movingup/no14b.htm

Other Museums with NYC Stuff -- http://www.NYChistory.org

Metropolitan Museum -- http://www.metmuseum.org
Especially the American Wing NW corner. 1^st and 2^nd Floors

Museum of the City of New York -- 5^th Avenue and 103rd or so http://www.mcny.org
Stuff relating to Dutch -- also Brooklyn Museum

New-York Historical Society -- Central Park West and 78^th Street

Brooklyn Historical Society - - http://www.brooklynhistory.org

READINGS:

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)