Opened in 1909, the Queensboro Bridge is the longest bridge spanning the East River. The bridge had an immediate and profound effect on the development of Queens from a largely rural area into a bedroom and working community. With its graceful symmetry, the bridge has long been a source of inspiration for artists, songwriters, and authors. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel made it an icon for the 1960s with the song Ã"The 59th Street Bridge Song (FeelinÃ' Groovy),Ã" and more recently it was featured in the movie Spiderman. Through historic photographs, The Queensboro Bridge documents the creation of this cultural icon and its contributions to the history of New York.
Uncover fascinating, little-known histories of the five boroughs in The Bowery Boys’ official companion to their popular, award-winning podcast. It was 2007. Sitting at a kitchen table and speaking into an old karaoke microphone, Greg Young and Tom Meyers recorded their first podcast. They weren’t history professors or voice actors. They were just two guys living in the Bowery and possessing an unquenchable thirst for the fascinating stories from New York City’s past. Nearly 200 episodes later, The Bowery Boys podcast is a phenomenon, thrilling audiences each month with one amazing story after the next. Now, in their first-ever book, the duo gives you an exclusive personal tour through New York’s old cobblestone streets and gas-lit back alleyways. In their uniquely approachable style, the authors bring to life everything from makeshift forts of the early Dutch years to the opulent mansions of The Gilded Age. They weave tales that will reshape your view of famous sites like Times Square, Grand Central Terminal, and the High Line. Then they go even further to reveal notorious dens of vice, scandalous Jazz Age crime scenes, and park statues with strange pasts. Praise for The Bowery Boys “Among the best city-centric series.” —New York Times “Meyers and Young have become unofficial ambassadors of New York history.” —NPR “Breezy and informative, crowded with the finest grifters, knickerbockers, spiritualists, and city builders to stalk these streets since back when New Amsterdam was just some farms.” —Village Voice “Young and Meyers have an all-consuming curiosity to work out what happened in their city in years past, including the Newsboys Strike of 1899, the history of the Staten Island Ferry, and the real-life sites on which Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl is based.” —The Guardian
In New York’s Golden Age of Bridges, artist Antonio Masi teams up with writer and New York City historian Joan Marans Dim to offer a multidimensional exploration of New York City’s nine major bridges, their artistic and cultural underpinnings, and their impact worldwide. The tale of New York City’s bridges begins in 1883, when the Brooklyn Bridge rose majestically over the East River, signaling the start of America’s “Golden Age” of bridge building. The Williamsburg followed in 1903, the Queensboro (renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge) and the Manhattan in 1909, the George Washington in 1931, the Triborough (renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) in 1936, the Bronx-Whitestone in 1939, the Throgs Neck in 1961, and the Verrazano-Narrows in 1964. Each of these classic bridges has its own story, and the book’s paintings show the majesty and artistry, while the essays fill in the fascinating details of its social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental history. America’s great bridges, built almost entirely by immigrant engineers, architects, and laborers, have come to symbolize not only labor and ingenuity but also bravery and sacrifice. The building of each bridge took a human toll. The Brooklyn Bridge’s designer and chief engineer, John A. Roebling, himself died in the service of bridge building. But beyond those stories is another narrative—one that encompasses the dreams and ambitions of a city, and eventually a nation. At this moment in Asia and Europe many modern, largescale, long-span suspension bridges are being built. They are the progeny of New York City’s Golden Age bridges. This book comes along at the perfect moment to place these great public projects into their historical and artistic contexts and to inform and delight artists, engineers, historians, architects, and city planners. In addition to the historical and artistic perspectives, New York’s Golden Age of Bridges explores the inestimable connections that bridges foster, and reveals the extraordinary impact of the nine Golden Age bridges on the city, the nation, and the world.
Roosevelt Island captures the fascinating and sometimes curious history of an island located halfway between Manhattan and Queens in the East River. In 1824, the city of New York purchased Blackwell's Island, later Welfare Island, as a site for its lunatic asylum, penitentiary, workhouses, and almshouses. In the years that followed, the island was a temporary home for several of New York City's famous and infamous. William Marcy Tweed, better known as "Boss Tweed," was imprisoned at the penitentiary in the 1870s. Mae West was incarcerated in 1927 at the Workhouse for Women after her appearance in a play called Sex. After many institutions were closed or relocated, Welfare Island was virtually ignored until 1973, when it was reborn as Roosevelt Island, which is now a model planned community and thriving home to almost ten thousand people.
This exhibition sets the art of Edward Hopper in the context of the diverse and controversial movements dominating American art during the first half of the twentieth century.
Queens, New York, boasts a rich history that includes dozens of poorly publicized but historically impressive houses. A mix of farmsteads, mansions, seaside escapes, and architecturally significant community dwellings, these homes were owned by America's forefathers, nouveau riche industrialists, Wall Street tycoons, and prominent African American entertainers from the Jazz Age. Rufus King, a senator and the youngest signer of the US Constitution, operated a large family farm in Jamaica, while piano manufacturer extraordinaire William Steinway lived in a 27-room, granite and bluestone Italianate villa in Astoria. Local musicians include Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lena Horne. Through more than 200 photographs, Historic Houses of Queens explores the borough's most notable residences--their architecture, owners, surrounding neighborhoods, peculiarities, and even their fates as some vanished due to financial problems or fires.
Winner, The New York Public Library, Best of Reference Award, 2002 A year by year reference work painting the colorful history of New York City If any city deserves a complete chronology, it is surely New York. New York, Year by Year is a cornucopia of the familiar and the forgotten, the historic and the ephemeral, the heroic and the banal. In this handy reference work, Jeffrey A. Kroessler takes us from Verrazano's arrival in 1524 into the new millennium, highlighting the strikes and strikeouts, tunnels and towers, personalities and parades which not only made history in New York, but also proved to be defining moments for the nation. New York, Year by Year features events such as Mark Twain's first lecture at Cooper Union, and the letter he later wrote when the Brooklyn Public Library tried to restrict access to Huckleberry Finn. In contrast, we are reminded of the publication in the 1950s of Eloise, A Book for Precocious Grown-Ups, Kay Thompson's fanciful tale of a little girl's adventures in the Plaza Hotel, the appearance of the Beat Generation, and the flight (literally) of the Dodgers and Giants to California. New York, Year by Year chronicles the opening of Shea Stadium in April 1964 and the performance by the Beatles there that August. The Sixties also saw the opening of The Fantastiks, which is still running on Sullivan Street, and the closing of Steeplechase, the last of the great amusement parks at Coney Island. And this chronology makes sure we don't forget when Kitty Genovese was murdered in Kew Gardens and her cries for help were left unanswered because her neighbors "didn't want to get involved." Kroessler leads us on a tour of the city from its first settlers until the November 2001 election of a new mayor for the new millennium. From the colonial era and the Revolution through the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties, Kroessler has compiled a record of cultural, economic, political, and social events. Some are of transient importance, others of lasting significance, but all illuminate the city's fascinating history.
Stirring text-and-picture tribute to over 75 New York City bridges — among them the Brooklyn Bridge, Throgs Neck, Verrazano Narrows, Whitestone, George Washington, and other splendid structures.
In 1935 the renowned photographer Berenice Abbott set out on a five-year, WPA-funded project to document New York's transformation from a nineteenth-century city into a modern metropolis of towering skyscrapers. The result was the landmark publication Changing New York, a milestone in the history of photography that stands as an indispensable record of the Depression-era city. More than sixty years later, New York is an even denser city of steel-and-glass and restless energy. Guided by Abbott's voice and vision, New York photographer Douglas Levere has revisited the sites of 100 of Abbott's photographs, meticulously duplicating her compositions with exacting detail; each shot is taken at the same time of day, at the same time of year, and with the same type of camera. New York Changing pairs Levere's and Abbott's images, resulting in a remarkable commentary on the evolution of a metropolis known for constantly reinventing itself.
