The interactive tour includes 3D maps of the grounds, high definition images, video clips, and more. The colossal project of building the memorial museum and exhibit has taken nearly fifteen years to complete.
Castle Village of New York City, courtesy of Wikimedia
The New York Times has published an interactive video created by documentary filmmaker Katerina Cizek. The video highlights the history of the high-rise throughout history.
The interactive video allows you to pause and explore various imagery and features. It’s brief yet informative and quite fun! Check out the video by clicking on the link here.
So, at the end of a rather full Day 2, I have to admit that I’m a bit on “information overload,” so I’m a little… frazzled. As such, don’t be surprised to see some revisions on this over the next couple of days. It’s been a while since the sheer volume of information has left me felt… exhausted, yet it happened today (and I’m only in Day 1)!
The first session focused on the resources available via the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. They house thousands of primary source documents related to American History and readily make these resources available to the public. If you have not done so, check out their Affiliate School Program (entirely free), their digital collection, and resources for educators. Their focus is on the importance and practical application of primary sources – they provide documents, resources, and lesson plans for educators (incorporated into common core standards).
The morning, we focused on “The RIse of New York to National Dominance,” in which Professor Kenneth Jackson brought forth the question (and possible answers to) “Why New York? Why did New York become the most prominent and important city in the United States over others like Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.” New York City has a unique history that has led to its (seemingly permanent) position as the economic and cultural capital of the United States. We discussed issues such as geography, economy, culture, and even ‘pure damn luck.’
The next hour we discussed the “Changing Role of Women in Post-Civil War America,” hostd by Professor Karen Markoe. She was quick to point out that investigating the role and position of 50% of the population in a century and a half period is an impossible task – yet feminist scholars always like to pigeon hole the role of women. She highlighted some common and well-recognized names: Margaret Sanger and Hetty Green (the Witch of Wall Street), but was quick to point out that we had only scratched the surface of prominent New York women.
The afternoon, we began to investigate the experience of literature in Gotham, specifically the work of Edith Wharton and her work The Age of Innocenceas highlgihted by Professor John Rocco. We discussed the changing atmosphere of New York’s elite from the late 19th century through the “Jazz Age” (as higlighted by Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald) – by the way, if you have not seen the preview of the new 2012 film “The Great Gatsby” it is a highly recommend! Even if the film is terrible, the preview is amazing!
The rest of the afternoon we spent at the New York Historical Society, examining primary source documents and learning about the many, many resources available at Giler Lehrman. It was a vastly stimulating and thoroughly exhausting day… and I’m only 20% through the experience!
I have been to New York many times, but not in more than a decade. In fact, the last time I was here was the summer of 2001. I have not been back since the tragedy of September 11, 2001 – at first I was unable to face head on the tragedy, but then I simply did not have the opportunity. I was excited to be back in the city although I’ll admit, as a lifelong resident of the West Coast and Southern United states, the lack of urban sprawl makes me a bit… claustrophobic.
Photo by Roger Wollstadt
For the first time I flew into New York’s La Guardia airport (I’ve always flown into Kennedy or Newark), named for former (and deceased) mayor Fiorello La Guardia (a rather vibrant subject of our preparatory research for this seminar). The most striking feature of the decent into the airport was the stunning view of the New York Skyline and the Statue of Liberty. It seemed a fitting introducing to the urban culture I would be studying for the next week.
Upon arriving at Columbia University, I met the esteemed Anthony Napoli, the Director of Education at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He handed me several thick packets, a free flash drive (yay free stuff), and the key to my dorm room – yes, dorm room. For the next week I’ll get to channel my inner 19 year old college student! At dinner, I met my esteemed colleagues from a variety of institutions all over the country. Tomorrow, we begin with “New York City and the Transformation of Post-Civil War America.” We will listen to a series of lectures on the transformation of the Empire City after 1865!
Over 870,000 photographs of the municipal operations of New York City have been made public and tell the history of the city through a unique medium. Some of the photographs date back to the mid 1800s and highlight the unique physical and cultural evolution of the city – highlighting the construction of various important buildings and structures, the rise and fall of celebrities, and even grisly gang-land murders.
The publication and availability of these photographs is a move by the Department of Records to make these records more readily accessible via the internet.
“We all knew that we had fantastic photograph collections that no one would even guess that we had,” Kenneth Cobb.
The database, while impressively large, still has some prominent gaps that the city is consistently working to fill – and it is growing daily.
I get to spend a week at Columbia University attending lectures and hiking around the city learning about urbanization. I’m so excited! Of course, I’ll be blogging the whole thing.
