Saving America's Cities
Saving America's Cities

Author: Lizabeth Cohen

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0374721602

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Winner of the Bancroft Prize In twenty-first-century America, some cities are flourishing and others are struggling, but they all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. Cities have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good. It wasn’t always this way. For almost three decades after World War II, even as national policies promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents into the suburbs. In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal. He worked to revive a declining New Haven, became the architect of the “New Boston” of the 1960s, and, later, led New York State’s Urban Development Corporation, which built entire new towns, including Roosevelt Island in New York City. Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy: Neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes and progressive goals. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness, opening up possibilities for our own time.

Preserving South Street Seaport
Preserving South Street Seaport

Author: James Michael Lindgren

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1479825573

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Preserving South Street Seaportatells the fascinating story, from the 1960s to the present, of the South Street Seaport District of Lower Manhattan. Home to the original Fulton Fish Market and then the South Street Seaport Museum, it is one of the last neighborhoods of late 18th- and early 19th-century New York City not to be destroyed by urban development. In 1988, South Street Seaport became the city's #1 destination for visitors. Featuring over 40 archival and contemporary black-and-white photographs, this is the first history of a remarkable historic district and maritime museum.a aaLindgren skillfully tells the complex story of this unique cobblestoned neighborhood. aComprised of deteriorating, 4-5 story buildings in what was known as the Fulton Fish Market, the neighborhood was earmarked for the erection of the World Trade Center until New Jersey forced its placement one mile westward. After Penn StationOCOs demolition had angered many New York citizens, preservationists mobilized in 1966 to save this last piece of ManhattanOCOs old port and recreate its fabled 19th-century Street of Ships. The South Street Seaport and the World Trade Center became the yin and yang of Lower ManhattanOCOs rebirth. In an unprecedented move, City Hall designated the museum as developer of the twelve-block urban renewal district.aaaHowever, the Seaport Museum, whose membership became the largest of any history museum in the city, was never adequately funded, and it suffered with the real estate collapse of 1972. The city, bankers, and state bought the museumOCOs fifty buildings and leased them back at terms that crippled the museum financially. That led to the controversial construction of the Rouse Company's New Fulton Market (1983) and Pier 17 mall (1985). Lindgren chronicles these years of struggle, as the defenders of the people-oriented museum and historic district tried to save the original streets and buildings and the largest fleet of historic ships in the country from the schemes of developers, bankers, politicians, and even museum administrators.aaThough the Seaport MuseumOCOs finances were always tenuous, the neighborhood and the museum were improving until the tragedy of 9/11. But the prolonged recovery brought on dysfunctional museum managers and indifference, if not hostility, from City Hall. Superstorm Sandy then dealt a crushing blow. Today, the future of this pioneering museum, designated by Congress as AmericaOCOs National Maritime Museum, is in doubt, as its waterfront district is eyed by powerful commercial developers. aWhileaPreserving South Street Seaportareveals the pitfalls of privatizing urban renewal, developing museum-corporate partnerships, and introducing a professional regimen over a peopleOCOs movement, it also tells the story of how a seedy, decrepit piece of waterfront became a wonderful venue for all New Yorkers and visitors from around the world to enjoy. aThis book will appeal to a wide audience of readers in the history and practice of museums, historic preservation, urban history and urban development, and contemporary New York City.a a This book is supported by a grant from Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.a"