NYC2: It’s Been a Long Time Coming

So, if you didn’t notice, I failed to write anything for the past month or so. Jess and I continued to absolutely love our time in New York, but all of my “work” time (i.e. when Jessica was working and I was at home getting stuff done and not just enjoying life) ended up being dedicated to studying math. I spent about 4 to 5 hours a day prepping for my first math test and finally took it last week. I was only about 70% sure I would pass going in (especially b/c I didn’t sleep well the night before), but the test was substantially easier than expected (actually, just didn’t have some of my least strong subjects on it), so I’m hoping for a positive result when I get my scores in January. Wish me luck!

Anyhow, all of that is my way of saying, “Sorry! I was busy!” But, now that we’re done with our time in New York (sad face), and have gone south to visit Jessica’s family, hopefully I’ll start catching up. I have about three hundred stories and half a million photos to share, so I’ll try to organize my thoughts in some fashion. Since I rambled about math above, I thought I’d start with the subject matter I might ditch to take that up: history.

Of course, New York as we know it today is the result of five centuries of immigrants, enslaved people, refugees, etc. coming to what was once Lenape land. This heritage is clearly honored with statues of Columbus (in Columbus Circle and elsewhere) as well as a lovely tribute to the friendship of Dutch traders landing in the 1600s.

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Of course, these are ridiculous, claiming that Columbus was “as generous as oppressed” and that the Dutch and the indigenous folks they “bought” Manhattan from have an “ancient and unbroken friendship.”

Of course, there are statues and monuments around the city that more properly celebrate some of the actual heroes of American history. My favorites were the unusual and powerful statue of Harriet Tubman and the one of Fredrick Douglass, who, as one recent President put it, is “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.” (Ugh. Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.) But, really, “Fred Douglass” — as the bus along 125th street calls him, which made me and some others sitting near me crack up — is truly an amazing person, deserving of much more than just a statue.

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There were also statues dedicated to lots of people I’d never heard of. One was Carl Schurz, a former German revolutionary, Union Army General, Senator, and Secretary of the Interior. He was an abolitionist, but not terribly supportive of Reconstruction, yet as Secretary of the Interior was known for trying to soften US policy towards Native Americans, maybe not too successfully though. Regardless, it was interesting seeing all of these statues, plaques, memorials, etc. around the city that helped me learn just a touch about folks I’d never heard of before.

The part of history Jessica and I immersed ourselves in most was probably the European immigrant history of New York. One of the places that was repeatedly recommended to us was the Tenement Museum. The museum isn’t a traditional museum–they have refurbished two old tenement buildings on the lower east side modeled on the actual lives of various families that lived in those actual buildings at different times from the 1880s to 1960s, and the only way to access these spaces is on one hour guided tours that tell the stories of these families. We looked at the website and couldn’t decide which tour we most wanted to take because they all sounded pretty fascinating, so we ended up getting a membership and went on five different tours over the time we were in New York.

Unfortunately, they don’t allow photos inside, so you’ll just have to use your imagination a bit, but it was interesting to see how the lower east side played host to a changing landscape of folks over the course of a century. In the mid-1800s, the area was known as Klein Deutschland — little Germany. On our 1880s-focused tour, we learned about the life of Natalie Gumpertz, a single mother of three whose husband disappeared and was declared dead. She became a successful dressmaker and eventually moved north as the city’s German-speaking population did. The tour also introduced the Schneider family who owned a saloon on the below-ground level. The saloons were, of course, a major part of German immigrant life, and they also helped introduce lager as an important form of beer in the US.

Over time, the neighborhood shifted, and another tour focused on the now-largely-Jewish neighborhood of the early-1900s. The saloon was now a kosher butcher shop (which, again, were multiple per block in the neighborhood), and the other family we met on the tour were involved in the Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902. The boycott history was fascinating: when meatpackers in Chicago raised prices on beef, Jewish women in New York refused to pay the increased prices, eventually smashing windows and such to convince the butchers to put pressure on the distributors who eventually pressured the meatpacking companies to lower the prices significantly.

As we moved forward to the 1930s we learned about the Depression and the Italian immigrant families that lived in the building, and later we took a tour focused on the Puerto Rican and Chinese families that lived there in the 1950s and 60s. The discussion of both these families’ trajectories and connections to their home countries was quite a dichotomy, with a much more robust back-and-forth life for the Puerto Rican Saez-Velez family.

All of these tours were engrossing, as we got to see how the spaces inside were transformed over time, from the 1880s when there was no gas, electricity, or water, to the 1960s where a TV featured prominently in the Saez-Velez apartment. The rooms went from totally enclosed to having more internal windows to allow light and the movement of air as the city began to enforce some minimal health and safety standards. But some things also didn’t change much, such as garment manufacturing being one of the major sources of employment in the neighborhood, all the way from Nathalie Gumpertz in 1880 to Mrs. Wong, a member of ILGWU in the 1960s.

One of the best parts of the museum tours was that they often helped elucidate exactly how the tours came to be. For the older ones, they often presented documents from the time period that they unearthed — census data, court records, etc. — while the later 20th century tours also highlighted how the museum has been in touch with the people who lived in the building and their descendents, getting the family stories, heirlooms, photos, etc. right from the source. Overall, highly recommended.

Across the city, not far from the World Trade Center, we also encountered a very moving monument remembering the Irish Potato Famine and its influence on 19th century migration. When you first come up to it, you notice the two levels. “Below ground” metal strips carry dozens of quotes from both the past and present about the impact of hunger and poverty. But, after passing through a tunnel of such quotes, you emerge into the Irish countryside, with a small ruined stone cottage set smack in the middle of the part of the city most associated with wealth. It’s quite a powerful contrast.

And, of course, the story of European immigration to New York all flows through Ellis Island, the gateway to the US from 1892 to 1924 (and beyond, but at a much reduced rate after the passage of the National Origins Act). Though I know and teach a lot about this period of history, seeing the actual building and getting immersed in its day to day operations was pretty intense. About 12 million people came through here over the years, starting in the giant (and beautiful!) Registy Room, and proceeding through a long series of processes to gain admittance to the United States. And, while I teach a lot about how entry at Ellis Island was quite easy (pre-1924), there were still obstacles that resulted in about a 2% deportation rate. Among those were literacy tests (of quite a variety–see below) and medical checks. The photo of various reasons people could be rejected (and marked with chalk), includes mental “defects,” trachoma, and lameness among others. They checked the eyes by lifting them with hooks. Ouch. So, while the vast majority of immigrants passed through without issue, there was definitely a level of tension and a sense that any little thing could result in a return trip to poverty, persecution, or whatever people were fleeing. Nothing like the issues immigrants are faced with today, but still…

Aside: Of course, New York is still very much a center for immigration today. Our neighborhood, as mentioned in my previous post, has tons of folks from around the Caribbean among other places. But, as this post is dealing with history…we’ll move on.

To get to Ellis Island, the ferry takes you to the Statue of Liberty first. We thought that would just be a brief, boring stop, but it was actually quite beautiful. And, let’s be honest, as symbols of the US go, you could do a lot worse than Liberty. The ascent to the crown has been closed since 9/11, but we did ascend the pedestal and got to peek up Liberty’s skirt. I’d say there was nothing to see there, but, actually, there was. The ability to see the work that went into creating this enormous statue, the level of detail, the way the segments are welded together, etc. was pretty cool. Jessica also noticed how the copper color was seeping down off the statue and into the cracks between the stones of the pedestal. Inside we found the plaque with Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” and at the new museum on the other side of the island, we found some great modeling of how the parts were pounded out using giant molds. And learning about all the people (fundraisers, architects, engineers, and more) that helped to make the statue possible was pretty cool. (Did you know Eiffel designed the support structure inside? How did I not know that?) Overall, a fun extra stop.

I made a quicker historical stop by the Stonewall Inn. It’s not much to see these days, but the park out front had a great photo exhibit about the history of LGBTQ activism in New York, a bust of Marsha P. Johnson, and a group of statues standing around that somehow is supposed to be a monument to the Gay Liberation Movement.

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And, since I’m covering all the bases of my 7th grade history class, let’s not forget I saw:

• A plaque about George Washington and the Revolutionary War
• Hamilton’s home (just a few blocks from where we were living)
• A memorial to Ulysses S. Grant
• Statues of William Tecumseh Sherman, Horace Greeley, and William Seward
• and the Riverside Church, where MLK Jr. gave his “Beyond Vietnam” speech

Bascially, walking around New York was kinda a daily reminder of just how central the city has been to U.S. history…

As Jess and I settled into living in New York, we kinda lost sight of some of the long long list of things to see or do that I had made. Oh well. But, when I finally finished my math test, with just a few days left, I pulled that list out and at the top was doing a walking tour focused on the Harlem Renaissance. Sadly, there were none left to sign up for, but I did find a downloadable walking tour about the Civil Rights Movement in Harlem. Among other things, we saw and learned about:

• A bunch of historic churches.
• Places related to famous authors, including James Baldwin’s high school and the homes of Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes.
• A statue of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., as well as the site of the former department store which he and others first targeted with a “Don’t shop where you can’t work” campaign, a campaign which led to many other larger chains seeking to negotiate settlements to avoid boycotts and protests.
• The former site of the Nation of Islam’s Mosque No. 7 which Malcolm X led, as well as the Hotel Theresa, where he had the headquarters for his later Organization of Afro-American Unity. The hotel was also a center for organizing the March on Washington and the location Fidel Castro stayed in when visiting the UN.
• A mural dedicated to the Central Park 5 and other victims of the police with a series of “know your rights” messages.
• The Schomburg Center, one of the research-oriented branches of the New York Public Library system, with a huge collection focused on Black history. There we saw the floor mural under which Langston Hughes is interred and a great exhibit about abolitionist art and literature. One of the most fascinating documents in the exhibit was an account of a 1747 conspiracy to free the slaves of New York.

Of course, the Schomburg Center isn’t the only research library in New York. The Schwarzman Building right next to Bryant Park is the much larger and quite beautiful original branch of the library. We took a tour there where we learned a bit about the library’s history, and were exposed to the obsessive level of detail that the architects put into every aspect of the classically-inspired building.

Besides seeing the gorgeous reading rooms, we were also introduced to the Pictures Room, a room that has folders of photos and other images collected and curated over the past century-plus. There were several examples from an exhibit where Taryn Smith had chosen and arranged some of her favorite images from one folder or another. The exhibit was called “The Color of a Flea’s Eye” named after a letter sent to the library once asking them what exactly that color was. This inspired me to go back and check out the photos room later, where you can just grab one folder or another and sort through them at your leisure. I randomly came across a folder of “Strikes” from earlier in the 20th century and picked a few of my favorites out just to show what sorts of things are in each folder.

Perhaps even cooler than that was the “Treasures” exhibit that was currently showing, with some of the rarest bits of the library’s collection on display. There were about a hundred incredible objects shown there, from a Gutenburg Bible to personal correspondences of famous authors, politicians, and more. Among other things, we saw:

• The first cash issued in New York, c. 1708.
• Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence.
• A letter from James Baldwin to Angela Davis upon her arrest.
• Beethoven’s composition in process.
• Christopher Robin Milne’s collection of stuffed animals that inspired his father’s stories.

Of course, there was a ton of other stuff: a first edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, Mary Wolstonecraft’s notes on A Vindication of the Rights of Women, notes and letters by Fredrick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Karl Marx, Christopher Columbus, and many more, documents from the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and Peru, postcards to Susan B. Anthony from a number of Senators both supportive and antagonistic, and so so so much more…

As I said, New York was full of constant reminders of its history and its role in US and world history as well. From the statues, museums and exhibits described above, to the dozens more we didn’t get to see, but wanted to, there wasn’t a day that went by without some moment reminding me of the power and centrality of the city. It was both incredible and a little overwhelming immersing myself in the history there. I feel lucky to have had this time.

_{More to come in the next couple of weeks as I start catching up on my writing and photo-sorting work…}