Fire has shaped New York City's skyline and has transformed its political and cultural landscape. Historic Fires of New York City traverses the five boroughs, exploring the historic fires that have occurred since the very beginning of the metropolis. Starting with bucket-wielding Dutch burghers and accelerating with the appointment of 35 "strong, able, discreet, honest and sober men," the effort to bring order out of chaos has been a constant concern of the city for more than three centuries.
Fire Department City of New York honors the department's 137 years of dedicated service to the City of New York by chronicling its history of the department with a updated listing of all the firefighters that have been killed in the line of duty. This book features 272 pages of which 67 are full-color pages. It has been updated to include the photos of all 343 individuals that so bravely lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
New York City, 1968. The RAND Corporation had presented an alluring proposal to a city on the brink of economic collapse: Using RAND's computer models, which had been successfully implemented in high-level military operations, the city could save millions of dollars by establishing more efficient public services. The RAND boys were the best and brightest, and bore all the sheen of modern American success. New York City, on the other hand, seemed old-fashioned, insular, and corrupt-and the new mayor was eager for outside help, especially something as innovative and infallible as "computer modeling." A deal was struck: RAND would begin its first major civilian effort with the FDNY. Over the next decade-a time New York City firefighters would refer to as "The War Years"-a series of fires swept through the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Brooklyn, gutting whole neighborhoods, killing more than two thousand people and displacing hundreds of thousands. Conventional wisdom would blame arson, but these fires were the result of something altogether different: the intentional withdrawal of fire protection from the city's poorest neighborhoods-all based on RAND's computer modeling systems. Despite the disastrous consequences, New York City in the 1970s set the template for how a modern city functions-both literally, as RAND sold its computer models to cities across the country, and systematically, as a new wave of technocratic decision-making took hold, which persists to this day. In The Fires, Joe Flood provides an X-ray of these inner workings, using the dramatic story of a pair of mayors, an ambitious fire commissioner, and an even more ambitious think tank to illuminate the patterns and formulas that are now inextricably woven into the very fabric of contemporary urban life. The Fires is a must read for anyone curious about how a modern city works.
Magnet for the ambitious, lodestone for talented and oppressed alike, Mecca for businessmen and immigrants, New York City has presided for over 350 years as the critical center of American life. From its origins as a primitive Dutch outpost to the sprawling urban complex it is today, the defining characteristic of New York has been continuous, dramatic, and rapid change. Historian George J. Lankevich's volume concentrates on political and economic affairs, illustrating how New York has always combined principle and pragmatism in its role as pace-setter in business communications, education, urban policy, and cultural life. American Metropolis is loosely divided into three historical epochs, each spanning roughly one of the last three centuries. In its early years, New York was defined by trial and tribulation; wars, fires, rebellions, and revolution were guiding influences on the colonial port. Nineteenth-century New York history was dominated by heroic figures in the form of bosses, reformers, merchant princes and statesmen, by enormous population increases, and by the achievement of commercial, financial, and cultural supremacy. For much of the twentieth century, greater New York, plagued by crime, white flight, fiscal trauma, and decay, embodied the nation's urban crisis. Its current Renaissance stands as fresh testimony to its characteristic vitality and resilience. Emphasizing the cyclical nature of New York's history through tides of crisis and renewal, George J. Lankevich here offers the definitive short history of America's most important and vibrant metropolis. By understanding the history of New York, we obtain a vital sense of what America was, is, and can become.
Operated by the New York Board of Fire Underwriters, the New York Fire Patrol was organized in 1839 to patrol lower Manhattan. Their job was twofold: to discover fires and to prevent losses to insured properties. The New York Fire Patrol evolved, and in 1867, a state charter was granted to legally extinguish fires and conduct salvage operations throughout New York City. The New York Fire Patrol is the oldest paid fire service in the United States, and it also remains the last insurance-funded fire salvage corps in the country. Today, the fire patrol continues to serve the city of New York, responding to over 10,000 alarms each year alongside the Fire Department of New York.
Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Anisfield-Wolf Award Winner In New York Burning, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Jill Lepore recounts these dramatic events of 1741, when ten fires blazed across Manhattan and panicked whites suspecting it to be the work a slave uprising went on a rampage. In the end, thirteen black men were burned at the stake, seventeen were hanged and more than one hundred black men and women were thrown into a dungeon beneath City Hall. Even back in the seventeenth century, the city was a rich mosaic of cultures, communities and colors, with slaves making up a full one-fifth of the population. Exploring the political and social climate of the times, Lepore dramatically shows how, in a city rife with state intrigue and terror, the threat of black rebellion united the white political pluralities in a frenzy of racial fear and violence.
From the urban affairs correspondent of the New York Times--the story of a city through twenty-seven structures that define it. As New York is poised to celebrate its four hundredth anniversary, New York Times correspondent Sam Roberts tells the story of the city through bricks, glass, wood, and mortar, revealing why and how it evolved into the nation's biggest and most influential. From the seven hundred thousand or so buildings in New York, Roberts selects twenty-seven that, in the past four centuries, have been the most emblematic of the city's economic, social, and political evolution. He describes not only the buildings and how they came to be, but also their enduring impact on the city and its people and how the consequences of the construction often reverberated around the world. A few structures, such as the Empire State Building, are architectural icons, but Roberts goes beyond the familiar with intriguing stories of the personalities and exploits behind the unrivaled skyscraper's construction. Some stretch the definition of buildings, to include the city's oldest bridge and the landmark Coney Island Boardwalk. Others offer surprises: where the United Nations General Assembly first met; a hidden hub of global internet traffic; a nondescript factory that produced billions of dollars of currency in the poorest neighborhood in the country; and the buildings that triggered the Depression and launched the New Deal. With his deep knowledge of the city and penchant for fascinating facts, Roberts brings to light the brilliant architecture, remarkable history, and bright future of the greatest city in the world.
Residents of the South Bronx during its promising postwar decades tell their stories in their own words. In the 1930s, word spread in Harlem that there were spacious apartments for rent in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Landlords, desperate to avoid foreclosure, began putting signs in windows and placing ads in New York’s black newspapers that said “We rent to select colored families”—by which they meant those with a securely employed wage earner and light complexions. Black families moved in by the score, beginning a period in which the Bronx served as a borough of hope and upward mobility. Chronicling a time when African Americans were suspended between the best and worst possibilities of New York City, Before the Fires tells the personal stories of men and women who lived in the South Bronx before the social and economic decline of the late 1960s. Located on a hill overlooking a large industrial district, Morrisania offered migrants from Harlem, the South, and the Caribbean an opportunity to raise children in a neighborhood with better schools, strong churches, more shopping, less crime, and clean air. It also boasted vibrant music venues, giving rise to such titans as Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, Valerie Simpson, the Chantels, and Jimmy Owens. Rich in detail, these interviews describe growing up and living in communities rarely mentioned in other histories. Before the Fires captures the optimism of the period—as well as the heartache of what was lost in the urban crisis and the burning of the Bronx. “Excellent . . . profound, moving.” —Robert W. Snyder, Rutgers University, Newark
* “A hundred years from now, when people want to know what we told our children about 9/11, Kalman's book should be among the first answers.”—Booklist, starred review * “Intelligently conveys those unfathomable events in a way that a picture book audience can comprehend. . . . With this inspiring book, Kalman sensitively handles a difficult subject in an age-appropriate manner.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review * “Fireboat does many things. It sets forth an adventure, helps commemorate an anniversary, offers an interesting bit of history, celebrates the underdog, and honors the fire-fighting profession. Children and adults will respond to it in as many ways.”—School Library Journal, starred review * “Exciting, uplifting, and child-sensitive. . . . Revisits the tragedy without the terror and conveys pride without preachiness."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, starred review * “Quintessential New York artist Kalman gives us an idiosyncratic but informative look at a Big Apple institution. . . . Kalman’s use of the events of September 11 is honest and honorable, and rarely is she as straightforward as she is here.”—The Horn Book, starred review This is the inspiring true story of the John J. Harvey—a retired New York City fireboat reinstated on September 11, 2001. Originally launched in 1931, the Harvey was the most powerful fireboat of her time. After the September 11 attacks, with fire hydrants at Ground Zero inoperable and the Hudson River's water supply critical to fighting the blaze, the fire department called on the Harvey for help. There were adjustments—forcing water into hoses by jamming soda bottles and wood into nozzles with a sledgehammer—and then the fireboat's volunteer crew pumped much-needed water to the disaster site. The John J. Harvey proved she was still one of New York's Bravest! Maira Kalman brings a New York City icon to life, celebrating the energy, vitality and hope of a place and its people.
