Feb16notes.htm
AMHS 3002y/Spring 1998

New York City as an American Studies/ Cultural Resource/Repository

EARLY AC HOMEPAGE | LECTURE NOTES

On the Field Work/Hands On/Lab Aspirations of the Course

1. Into cyberspace /what you can do in American Studies with technology

2. Onto the trains to visit sites/ what you can do with a Metro Card

3. But not to abandon the printed, published word -- see Readings

New York -- Who Owns New York?

A Brief NYC Timeline

Kinds of cultural remains:

1.  The physical landscape –

The archaeological record -- "New York Unearthed" -- 17 State Street(Battery Park)
Mentioned in htttp://www.SouthStreetSeaport.org

2. Renderings of physical surface – maps and paintings /neighborhood configurations

3. Buildings/structures/homes/shops/farms in situ -- restorations/reconstruction

4. Parts of same -- cornerstones/mantels/beams/floorboards/nails... artifacts
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Persistent Questions to be asking while looking

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

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]
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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-- 1/3rd wider than in 18th C.

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

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

Bowne House (1661) oldest house n Bronx
Alice Austin 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

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

Graveyards
Old Gravesend Cemetery (1650) -- Brooklyn 1.6 acres
First Shearith Graveyard (1654) -- gravestones from 1683
Cemeteries -- gravestones http://www.brooklynonline.com/history/DUTCH/lot2.jpg
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
A Dutch Reformed church in Brooklyn?
[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 19th 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

 

Visual Renderings – 17th 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 – 5th and 42nd – 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/research/chss/map/mappinh.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: 19th 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. 1st and 2nd Floors

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

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

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

EARLY AC HOMEPAGE | LECTURE NOTES