By: Alice,
on 11/12/2015
“Fordham professors write your books, right?” This is often less a question than an assumption and probably the biggest misconception about not just our, but all, university presses.
The post “Fordham professors write your books, right?” appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Julia Callaway,
on 3/4/2015
Dred Scott, an African-American slave, appealed to the Supreme Court for his freedom based on having been brought by his owners to live in a free territory. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, writing for the majority, wrote that persons of African descent could not be, nor were ever intended to be, citizens under the US Constitution, and thus the plaintiff Scott was without legal standing to file a suit.
The post Abraham Lincoln, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and the Dred Scott Case appeared first on OUPblog.
By: LaurenH,
on 2/3/2015
Streetcars “are as dead as sailing ships,” said Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in a radio speech, two days before Madison Avenue’s streetcars yielded to buses. Throughout history, New York City’s mayors have devoted much time and energy to making the transit system as efficient as possible, and able to sustain the City’s growing population. The history of New York’s transit system is a mix of well-remembered, partially forgotten, and totally obscure happenings that illustrate the grit, chaos, and emotion of the five boroughs at different points in history.
The images in this slideshow look at New York transit between 1940 and 1968 — a pivotal period when technology was developing rapidly and the City was seeing intense growth. They are taken from Andrew J. Sparberg’s book From a Nickel to a Token: The Journey from Board of Transportation to MTA.
In November 1967, work was completed on a significant new subway under Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side. Above, work proceeds on the new Grand Street Station, a part of the project. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
In June 1940, New York City’s government purchased two privately owned subway companies, one of which was the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corp. (BMT). Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
The other subway company purchased by the city in 1940 was the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT). BMT and IRT were unified with the Independent Subway System to form one giant system. The NYC Board of Transportation operated the entire system. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
Subway unification also included the BMT’s very large trolley and bus system. Pictured here is Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
As soon as unification occurred, some elevated lines in Manhattan and Brooklyn were closed and razed. This is Manhattan’s 9th Avenue Elevated at 110th Street, shortly before it went out of service. The double decker bus shown operated until 1953. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
Mayor LaGuardia replaced a number of Brooklyn trolley routes with buses in 1941. Above is one of those new buses at Fulton Street. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
In May 1955, Manhattan’s Third Avenue Elevated made its final run and the structure was soon removed. Pictured is a southbound express train charging through 34th Street Station. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
The historic 5¢ fare ended on July 1, 1948, when the subway fare was raised to 10¢. Bus and trolley fare was 7¢ while riders outside of Manhattan paid 12¢ to ride a combination of the subway and buses. Photo credit: Andrew J. Sparberg
Beginning in 1955, large numbers of new subway cars appeared. Above is a R21 IRT car on the #1 Broadway line. It’s shown at the 240th Street Yard in the Bronx. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
In January 1966, a twelve day citywide transit strike occurred, beginning on the first day mayor John Lindsay took office. Above, pickets are seen at the 207th Street and Broadway subway station. Photo credit: TWU Local 100 Archives
In 1957-‘59, the Transit Authority rebuilt seven stations on the IRT West Side Line (todays 1, 2, and 3 trains) to accommodate 10 car trains. Shown above is 96th Street before it was modified, showing the separate local platforms that were closed in 1959. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
On March 1, 1968, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) became the parent body for the New York City Transit Authority, an arrangement which continues today. The first subway cars the new agency ordered were the R42 class; the R42 was the first car class 100% equipped with A/C. About 50 R42s are still in service in 2015. Photo credit: New York Transit Museum.
Heading image: New IRT subway car, 1957. New York Transit Museum. Used with permission.
The post A vision of New York City’s transit system, from 1940-1968 [slideshow] appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Sarah Hansen,
on 5/1/2014
New York City, five boroughs boasting nine million people occupying an ever-expanding concrete jungle. The industrial hand has touched almost every inch of the city, leaving even the parks over manicured and uncomfortably structured. There is, however, a lesser known corner that has been uncharacteristically left to regress to its natural state. North Brother Island, a small sliver of land situated off the southern coast of the Bronx, once housed Riverside Hospital, veteran housing, and ultimately a drug rehabilitation center for recovering heroin addicts. In the 1960s the island, once full with New Yorkers, became deserted and nature has been slowly swallowing the remaining structures ever since. Christopher Payne, the photographer behind North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, was able to access the otherwise prohibited to the public island, and document the incredible phenomenon of the gradual destruction of man’s artificial structures.
North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City: Photographs by Christopher Payne, A History by Randall Mason, and Essay by Robert Sullivan (A Fordham University Press Publication). Christopher Payne, a photographer based in New York City, specializes in the documentation of America’s vanishing architecture and industrial landscape. Trained as an architect, he has a natural interest in how things are purposefully designed and constructed, and how they work. Randall Mason is Associate Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. He worked previously at the Getty Conservation Institute, University of Maryland, and Rhode Island School of Design. Robert Sullivan is the author of numerous books, including The Meadowlands: WildernessAdventures at the Edge of a City; Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants; The Thoreau You Don’t Know: The Father of Nature Writers on the Importance of Cities, Finance, and Fooling Around; A Whale Hunt, and, most recently, My American Revolution. His stories and essays have been published in magazines such asNew York, The New Yorker, and A Public Space. He is a contributing editor to Vogue.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only American history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
The post Window into the last unknown place in New York City appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Justyna,
on 2/27/2012
The world was allegedly created in six days (God rested on the seventh day), so why is it taking New York City so long — some 90 years, or possibly longer — to create the Second Avenue Subway?
According to the MTA, proposals to build a north-south subway line along Second Avenue date back to 1929. But it wasn’t until March 2007 — 78 years later — that the first construction contract for Phase One of the Second Avenue Subway was awarded. Tentative plans aim at a 2016 completion, although several dates have proliferated.
Perhaps it takes a God-like figure in this metropolis to get monumental tasks done. As it happens, New York City had such a being, Robert Moses, often referred to as the “Master Builder.”
Source: New York Public Library.
In 1929, Moses wasn’t keen on the mass transit and therefore probably not on the Second Avenue Subway as well. The Second Avenue Subway’s slow progress is clarified by reporter William Bredderman, who interviewed Moses biographer and author Robert Caro for the online magazine Realcity. (Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and The Fall of New York — qualifies him as the uber expert on Moses.) Writes Bredderman:
“According to Caro, the city attempted to build the Second Avenue line first in 1942 and again in 1954. Both times Moses prevented funds from being allocated to the project, preferring to instead spend the money building expressways through densely-populated neighborhoods. If you’ve ever been on (or near) the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the BQE or The Major Deegan, you can thank Moses.”
Moses routinely built bridges, tunnels, and roadways that transformed the city, without an iota’s consideration for what might be lost. The result was huge gashes in densely populated working-class neighborhoods to make way for roadways and expressways. Neighborhoods were destroyed, forever. Who can drive these expressways without seeing the havoc wrought? Old timers who had once lived in these now devastated neighborhoods still curse Moses.
An early example of Moses’ disdain for mass transit is also evident in his first major public project, Jones Beach, which begun in the 1920s and opened in 1929. Almost immediately after the opening, motorists jammed the city’s parkways in a beeline to get to what is still considered one of the world’s most beautiful parks. However, accommodation for public transportation to Jones Beach was not a part of Moses’ plan.
Moses, of course had his critics, including: Caro, activist Jane Jacobs, and historian and architectural critic 0 Comments on Robert Moses and the Second Avenue Subway as of 1/1/1900
