This is 116th-Columbia University, Next Stop – 125th

The success of New York City as one of the leading world economic, cultural, and governmental centres could be attributed to a number of things including the location and geography of its harbour, the influx of immigrants hungry for opportunities and possible prosperity, the favourable outcome of major political events in the last couple of centuries. To me, however, New York’s prosperity is marked by its forward thinking. The infamous grid was set up in the early nineteenth century covering almost the entire island of Manhattan north of the contemporary city limits. For more than a century the markers on corners of planned streets stood solitary outside the growing city waiting for their time to play. And eventually the city grew so much that the grid needed further expansion into Inwood. Central Park was initially planned with the grid in 1811 and it still was not quite central in 1857 when it opened, but its designers envisioned its eventual centrality within the city. Times Square, another NYC icon, represents yet another leap of faith into the future. The New York Times built their impressive new headquarters there in 1904, which was the second tallest building in New York at the time, far away from Park Row, where all the other major newspaper headquarters and skyscrapers resided. And while the New York Herald, Tribune and World are all gone (together with their skyscrapers), the Times is the largest local newspaper in the country. At the same time when the Times moved to Midtown far from the centre of things, around the turn of the century, Columbia University moved Uptown to its current main campus in search for more space, and the first underground rapid transit system opened serving the full length of Manhattan and Bronx.

Columbia University Morningside Height Campus in 1910

 

When Columbia moved to Morningside Heights in 1897, the new campus did not have the urban feeling that it does today. The Dakota Apartments, some 40 streets south of campus, were so named because of their remoteness from the city. However, the remoteness of the new Columbia campus was alleviated substantially quite soon as in 1901 the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), which was one of the three companies initially operating the NYC subway system and which merged in the 1950s into the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), started the construction of it West Side line. On October 27, 1904 the first underground subway line in New York opened from Times Square to 145^th St with a stop on 116^th and Broadway right in front of Columbia University. As can be seen on the photograph of 1910 here, the campus was still pretty much alone on top of the hill. It could still look down upon the city, but it was now also connected to it.

Three Miles of Broadway - Columbia University, 116th St, the IRT Station and Streetcars

Columbia was also serviced by the now defunct Broadway and Amsterdam Ave. streetcar line operated by New York Railways, as can be seen in this photograph in 1911. However, the streetcars did not live the long life of the subway and in 1936 they were replaced by buses. The streetcar line seen in the picture is now serviced by the M7 bus. One could only wonder why this not so densely populated area needed two types of transport and moreover why the IRT invested both time and money in the creation of the underground. The process was especially cumbersome and included many difficulties along the way with one of the big challenges of the project being the support of the Columbus Monument (Skinner 1902).

IRT West Line Construction 1901

IRT West Line Tunnel Construction at 118th St in 1902

 

When the West Line opened in 1904, the 116^th-Columbia was one of the very first underground stations in New York. Its entrance was through the middle of Broadway through an entry hall very similar to the one still remaining on 72^nd St and the junction between Amsterdam Ave and Broadway. The entry hall was in used until 1967 when the current entrance stairways were built and the hall was demolished. 

The entry hall on 116th and Broadway still in use in March, 1967

Construction of the new entrance of 116th-Columbia station in September 1967

 

The station today keeps serving the university just like it did more than a hundred years ago, but despite its obvious importance for the university’s link with the rest of the city, it is not usually thought of as a prominent part of the campus landscape. The station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. It has been a part of the campus for longer than Butler Library or the Law School and SIPA part of the campus. It joined the party just a year after Alma Mater, yet I do not think that it is ever included on campus tours, official or just the ones we give our friends when they visit. I wonder whether things would have been different, should the entry hall have stood…or whether it was different when it did? Is it the fact that it is underground and so not representing the Columbian idea of the “Acropolis of America” that makes us overlook it? Or is it that it is outside the gates and so not a part of the true campus? As it looks now, the station lacks monumentality; it even lacks any reminder of its historical significance. But it keeps getting the job done (as much as we want to and could complain about the 1-train) for more than a century now and while it is largely unnoticed, it is my reminder of that very essence of the New York spirit that made the IRT take the gamble and dig those tunnels that are proving so useful today when the city is actually dense all the way north into Manhattanville and beyond into the Bronx. And as the campus will expand north, it will still rely on that same leap of faith that was taken some hundred and ten years ago.

References:

Frank W. Skinner,

1902          “Difficult Engineering in the Subway.” Century Magazine, Oct. 1902, pp. 908 – 911.

NYC Subway Web Site

1995          “IRT: The First Subway.” NYC Subway Web Site. http://www.nycsubway.org/irtsubway.html. [Accessed on April 24, 2012.]

Photo Credits: George Eastman House Collection, Michael V. Susi Collection, New York Transit Museum, Columbia University Archives

New York's Acropolis on Morningside Heights Part 2

In a conversation with my good friend Derrick Jones as we rode past the gutted view from the 1 train going North past the 125th street station, I took the opportunity to include him in this blog post to bring things current. His personal recollections add yet another important perspective which offers community feelings. Although the "landscape" depicted is one of cultural adaption and thriving communities which can be displaced, the architectural landscape being developed will encourage a "new" transient New Yorker. Certainly we can each be affected by retrieval cues which trigger memories. Derrick shares a few that jog his memory in his interview.   
 

Interview with Derrick Jones on Manhattanville - the Global Village

      From what years did you live in this area?

From 1998 to 2002

     What was the area referred to as (neighborhood boarders/nicknames)?

Manhattanville 

     What’s your earliest memory of this area that you cherish, what triggers that memory?

2010 (www)

Derrick recalls…Waking up to the smell of fresh baked bread and people waiting in line to get a table for breakfast at “FLORIDITA” Cuban/Dominican restaurant.  Every morning they would have breakfast but on the weekends there would always be a line of people from, Cuban, Jamaican, French, British, Dominican and African American. Just regular people that wanted a regular home cooked meal that was amazing; mom & pop. Another awesome thing about this restaurant was that it was joined to a bakery.  You could get everything from freshly baked bread to a beautiful freshly baked cake; you couldn’t get any better than that. When I walk past bakeries in the Bronx where I live now, it has the aroma of fresh baked bread dance past my nose it takes me back to that time in that little area of manhattanville that was a part of the Global Village called Harlem.

     Where did you go for fun; nearby parks or other, describe the environment?

Grant’s Tomb Park...   In the summer every Wednesday night at 7:30pm they would have live jazz.  Jazz Mobile was the most popular place to go, you would see performances from Wynton Marsalis, Spyro Gira, and the list goes on.  It was awesome because you would see other famous jazz musicians and actors even sport athletes come out to listen to their friends perform…Derrick recalls Samuel L. Jackson, Malik Yoba, Cassandra Wilson, enjoying the sounds as well as other locals who are now famous or walking the neighborhood.

Grant's Tomb, 2011 (D. Molina) JAZZ Mobile, 1980's (www)

 

      Why did you/your family leave the area?

Well what is called progress or re-gentrification? Rent went up and Columbia University wanted the area.

      What was living like in this area for you/your family?

      Everything from college students, immigrant families to people who family have lived in that area for 3 to 4 generations.  

      Do you feel the changes have been beneficial to residents?

No and yes. For the people who live in these communities that are not making 60 to 80 thousands dollars, the change has not been good because rent is beyond what they can pay. Food prices are soaring and treatment in this area by law enforcement has gotten worse. For the new people that are moving into this area making 60 to 80 thousand, yes the change is good for them because to them the rent are affordable and the food price are cheap.

      How do you personally feel about the changes taking place in the neighborhood? 

Well I know everything must change and there were people that would fight to make a positive change in the Global Village, I as well as others wanted the people that lived in this community to make the change not a corporation.

      Are there any buildings or shops that have been vacated, displaced or moved that you remember?

Storage build, which was a huge complex, is gone. The building that was home to Floradita restaurant, that I spoke about earlier is gone also, this restaurant had a bakery attached to it so it was a half a block long.  A block of buildings that had so many mom and pop businesses in them are totally gone…

(2011 www. [One banner offers, “No Columbia: No Forced Displacement”] At the center far right of this image, the famous Cotton Club remains standing.

     What would be your “typical” New Yorker response to such changes?

      “It’s not the same; the city is not the same”. Funny thing is that it will be said again with every generation, this statement; “IT NOT THE SAME”...

"People all over New York City want positive change in their community. Sometimes I hear, and know people who think the people in the community did fight for change or did nothing, but this is totally false. There are people who lost their lives fighting for change in this and other communities." Derrick Jones

*The Manhattan Institute’s Center for Rethinking Development posted this digital newsletter regarding the "Rezoning of West Harlem". MI Newsletter 2004  

Retethering My Identity to Jackson Heights

I spent the first few years of my life in Jackson Heights, Queens, where the bulk of my Dominican family lived at the time. My folks left New York in the early 1980s for the almost unimaginably distant state of Texas in pursuit of work, maintaining contact with our New York family, but never returning east again in any permanent way.

The stories my folks told of Jackson Heights revolved around Dominican people in decidedly Dominican places. My visits during the 1980s seemed to confirm that, making it my own Dominican Republic, or something like that. At least I was sure it wasn't Mexican, the dominant Latino identity in Texas and the ethnicity with which I spent the greatest time negotiating during my childhood and adolescence.

People spoke Spanish (and Spanglish) the way my father did in Jackson Heights. They ate red beans or moros with their arroz blanco and tostones. The accordion was an unknown instrument there. Neither the term orale nor the term güey made up any part of the Jackson Heights vocabulary as I knew it. Jackson Heights was my personal claim to "Dominicanness" or, perhaps more accurately, to "non-Mexicanness" and "non-Texanness."

That link remained uncorrupt in my overly-proud mind until my late teens, when by chance I ran into another native of Jackson Heights. By the standard of my social context then, he was white -- white as it was possible to be, as he was a suburban doctor. But our conversation led to the discovery that we shared a common origin place, Jackson Heights. How different his origin place was than mine! His Jackson Heights was an Italian-American neighborhood, one that his family left not long after the flood of Dominicans that brought my family there had swept over that part of Queens. I nodded my head proudly at the mention of the replacement of people I considered white by the great brown flood, one that I'd not heard of before that moment. But the mention of a later brown flood, an influx of migrants from the Indian subcontinent, threw me for a loop. The story of Dominican triumph, developed in my mind only seconds earlier, fell, and quickly. I listened with greater humility then, as my claim to outside ethnicity crumbled and the notion of palimpsest arose in my mind for the first time. I was more than shocked when the doctor told me that most New York neighborhoods experienced such turnover. The white doctor became Italian-American that instant. He cured me of my cough and of a certain social blindness at the same time.

Since I returned to New York several months ago, I've lived in Corona, Queens (where my Dominican family now resides in the wake of the "other" brown wave), but I have made it something of a private mission to explore the place to which my Dominicanness was once tethered. More specifically, I've spent a fair amount of my spare time in Jackson Heights searching for Dominican "survivals" in terms of businesses, homes, and other material aspects. My Dominican family's world existed largely within the spatial confines of Roosevelt Avenue, near the Jackson Heights station, so my semi-ethnographic jaunts have been limited generally to the same area.

Since my first visit, however, my interests have moved quickly from seeking Dominican survivals (of which there are relatively few in that area) to studying the latest brown flood: the arrival (ironically for me) of Mexican migrants in great numbers. I've been told by many that this is a relatively recent phenomenon, most Mexicans in New York having been born in Mexico. Though I didn't quite expect it, the Mexicano presence, including the occasional "que onda guey," makes me feel more at home than any other aspect of New York City. And, getting to what this post is actually supposed to be about, the material symbols of Mexicanness have become a sort of conglomerate anchor for me, coming together in my mind bringing me a sense of familiarity in this otherwise confusing and often unfriendly city.

I understand the symbols I see in contemporary Jackson Heights. I know why the serpent chokes under the talon of the Aztec eagle. I know the Old English font wrapped around the Aztec Nacion storefront. I know many of the songs I hear on the new Roosevelt. I recognize its smells. I know its colors. I know its Virgen. Maybe I even know some of its thoughts. Whatever the case, I've come to see that while I'm Dominican in Dallas, I'm Mexican in New York. Viva la raza, pues. I've attached some examples of the symbols that helped me come to that realization, retethering my identity to Jackson Heights.






Contemporary Roosevelt Avenue, draped in a new red, white, and green standard. The photo suffers from lighting problems, but if you look closely you'll see that the Mexican flag floats in some form over many, many doors.










Restaurant in Jackson Heights just off Roosevelt. What a fantastic business name! It truly does represent the latest Chicano frontier!













A Mexican flag placed proudly in the window of a home on my old block.

Language Assimilation and the Interpretation of Signs

While watching a presentation in class the other day, I was distracted by a sign in the background of a photograph. There was a sign in Chinese characters running down the side of a building. Now I knew that they were Chinese, because the photo was from the edge of China-town, but I found myself first translating it to Japanese before English. I am wholly unfamiliar with the Chinese language but because of the Japanese adoption of Chinese characters, it is possible for me to understand some things in written form. This made me think about a recent article by Lera Boroditsky on how language affects your perception of the world. However, I am more interested in discovering how individuals speaking more than one language interpret the literal signs around them.

New York is a city of approximately 8.4 million people. Out of that, according to a study from Baruch College, 3.9 million inhabitants reportedly speak only English, leaving the majority of the population bi- or multi-lingual (or possibly mono-lingual without English, but this demographic was not mentioned in the data). Of the multiple language speakers, how many use an intermediary language when translating from English to their native language? This might especially apply to individuals from countries with an official language and numerous 'tribal' languages, especially when English is the least familiar of the individual's known languages.

My apartment is near a part of Harlem where there is a large community of Francophone West Africans. Walking down 125^th Street you can hear many unfamiliar languages as well as a thick undercurrent of African French. For many, English is the third, fourth, or even fifth language they have had to learn in their lifetimes. What happens in these individual's minds when they are presented with an English word with which they are unfamiliar? Do those who are fluent, or simply familiar with, multiple languages have non-linear methods of translating when the target information has similarities with a tertiary language that it doesn't share with the first language?

Take the word 'bank' for example. In French it is banque, similar in both spelling and pronunciation. In my hypothetical tribal language there would be another word or description for bank that has little or no similarity to either language. It would make sense that this individual encountering a sign for a bank for the first time would utilize the French and English similarities to make a guess at the meaning, rather than simply try to decipher it directly. But what about the image created in the individual's mind? Does it go through a similar transition? For me this brings to mind the notion of the signifier and signified. A signifier in one language may or may not create the same signified image in an individual's mind as a second language. If this is true, how are the images reconciled?

In my own language study I have noticed an interesting transition. When I first began to learn Japanese, I had no signified for words such as ginkoo (bank) and had to think of the English equivalent before I could picture it. As time went on, however, there was a second image that came up when I heard the word, that of a specific banking institution. It was not the same image that came to mind when the word 'bank' was spoken. It existed as its own entity. After much more time had passed, and without my noticing the shift, both my image of ginkoo and 'bank' fused to become a single signified image. So it is now possible for me to look at a sign in Chinese (knowing it is Chinese) and gain the same image I would if it read simply 'bank', without previously knowing the word in Chinese.

What I really want to know is if this is an idiosyncratic method or if multi-lingual individuals have a similar means of language/image assimilation. Although, with at least 4.5 million fellows in the city, I am fairly certain I am not alone.

References:

Boroditsky, Lera - Lost in Translation, The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2010

Saussure, F. - Lectures on General Linguistics

New York City Department of City Planning - 2009 Census
Baruch College - Weissman Center for International Business Zicklin School of Business, NYCdata

97 Orchard Street

You have to admit, there is an element of obscured "nosiness" inherent to all anthropologists and archaeologists. Perhaps we're more comfortable with "inquisitive" and "empirical," but we are, in some sense, prying into the lives and private spaces (once upon a time) of which are not our own.

At least, that's how it felt (for a nano-second, maybe two) walking into the partially restored tenements at 97 Orchard Street.

(From Left: Present day, 97 Orchard Street tenement beside parked car; Photo of Orchard St. tenements by Tenement Museum ca. 1930s)

Just this past Wednesday afternoon, I was strolling through the Lower East Side, making my way west toward Little Italy to meet with family for the San Gennaro festival. With a couple of hours to spare, it seemed like a good time to finally check out the Tenement Museum, which holds various walking tours of restored tenements that housed thousands of immigrant families from 1863 until 1935 when they were abandoned due to "unsustainable conditions" (undoubtedly an effect of the Great Depression). (Museum Pamphlet)

Knowing how small and tall present-day apartments are in the densely populated City of New York, even for the wealthiest of residents, I was anxious to see how (and how many) early struggling immigrant families settled themselves into such confined spaces. So, I picked the longest, in-depth tour the museum had to offer - the 2 p.m. 2 hour "Getting By: Immigrants Weathering Hard Times" tour. It focused on the interiors of three tenement apartments of 97 Orchard St., which were formerly occupied by the Gumpertz (1874) of German-Jewish descent, the Baldizzi (1935) of Italian-Catholic descent, and a third apartment which excited me in an unexpected way (more on that later).

Upon entry of 97 Orchard St., the year is 1863, and we are greeted by a long, narrow and windowless corridor, staircase to the right. The only source of light available is the pale daylight peeking in through the transom window above the front door. Outside, around the back of the building are the latrines (right photo), shared among six families residing in this tenement. No indoor plumbing. Water was retrieved from a pump near the latrines and carried up in pails to the apartments.

Tenement 1: The Gumpertz

Up one flight of stairs, we enter the Gumpertz' (see pictures below). The year is 1870, the tenement door opens into the kitchen followed by the parlor (the only room with widows). Flanking the other side of the kitchen is a small bedroom where Mr. and Mrs Gumpertz, along with their 3 children, sleep. As to be expected, each living space has been transformed to serve multiple functions. The parlor became a workspace (not entirely unfamiliar if you work from home, right?) for Mrs. Gumpertz who worked as a seamstress - various garments and fabrics are strewn across the floor, nailed to the walls and folded on shelves. In the kitchen, above the iron stove, is a makeshift clothesline for hanging the wash. The stove is both an appliance for cooking, heating the house, and for ironing clothes. Efficiency is key in the city, so when one of 4 or 5 small (heavy) irons cools, Mrs. Gumpertz simply grabs the next. (See Gumpertz kitchen and parlor below.)

Am I the only one thinking that the size and setup isn't all that bad for poverty? I couldn't help but feel a little left wanting on the material culture front. What were their sources for these reconstructions? Where those jugs imports sold in NYC, or brought over by the Gumpertz? Why must the aspiring archaeologist in me have Skepticism sitting on one shoulder and Relief on the other? (Oh, if C.S. Peirce could see me now. If it was really 1874, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities and he hasn't published The Fixation of Belief yet!) On the other hand, the tour guide gave us information on what would otherwise be unrepresented in this built environment - drama, emotions and Mrs. Gumpertz frantic search for her missing husband as implied through historical census records, diaries and missives. According to our guide, missing persons is not uncommon at this time, whether by shanghaiing, suicide, hate crimes or simply running away among other possibilities.

Tenement 2: The Baldizzi

(Clockwise: Kitchen view 1; Kitchen view 2; Parlor with photo of FDR by mirror)

Moving on with the tour, jumping ahead to 1935, we enter the Baldizzi tenement across the hall. (It was the first time I've ever seen linoleum rugs! I embarrassed myself asking if they were mere representations of what would have been there. Oh, the dangers of interpretation.) Slightly better conditions. They had electricity, running water and even a radio to listen to Italian operas and FDR's Fireside Chats (see photo and video below). Like the Gumpertz, the kitchen served multiple functions. The Baldizzis, cooked, bathed, ate, played games and listened to the radio in the kitchen. The tub, adjacent to sink was covered by a lid on which was used as counter space.

(Radio photo courtesy of South Dakota State Historical Society)

I strangely felt more at ease in this tenement. It looked more "lived-in" and the reconstruction was informed by the late Josephine Baldizzi who lived here as a girl. She directed the museum to "move the dresser here," "we had [portrait] FDR hanging there," and donated a lot of her families old possessions, like old photographs, candles, a packed suitcase and her father's tool box (he was a carpenter by trade) among other items.

It was particularly interesting to see what was hanging on the parlor walls of the Baldizzis. Being an Italian-Catholic family, the Baldizzis had religious prints of Mother Mary and Jesus hanging on one wall (this triggered a memory of similar portraits hung in my grandmother's bedroom), and on the opposite wall hung a small black and white print of Franklin D. Roosevelt. I'm not sure you would find the portraits of current Presidents hanging on the walls of contemporary homes (maybe a magnet of President Obama on the fridge next to your little brother's school drawing?). While our current financial crisis is described by economists as the worst since the Great Depression, what does this say about the place of important political figures in our daily lives? Television and youtube videos of the President's weekly address may have something to do with the absence of such portraits in our private spaces, or it does it?

And finally...

The most comfortable spot in the tenement. Empty. Minimally touched. Dusty and several layers of peeling paint. Familiar. How backward is that? The tour guide noticed the gleam from my eyes and said, "Now this is home for you, isn't it?" Earlier introductions and architectural/material related questions revealed the shovel bum in me.

In a country built on immigration, this one tour of one tenement in a small section of the Lower East Side of Manhattan was a microcosm within a microcosm, within a microcosm. It brought together 6 strangers of various ethnic backgrounds, occupations, and frames of mind (and objectives) into one urban, built environment with over half a century's worth of immigrant occupation, which presently stands as one of many cultural channels around New York City.

Left: Our tour guide, Jason, and a tourist from Italy, Elena. Standing outside of Museum shop, 108 Orchard St. Tenements across the street.
The tour group I was with definitely made this an interesting experience. There were only six of us (normally 15), two couples, the tour guide and myself. One couple, Enrique and Elena, were tourists from northern Italy, and the other couple, Steve and Silvia, had great-great aunts and uncles that immigrated to NYC from Sicily around the same time as the Baldizzi family. So, while my interests were archaeological in nature, I was able to hear and see Steve, Silvia, Enrique and Elena connect with Italian-American immigrant history - mapping this experience along parallel axes, the tangible and the intangible, the material and the psycho-social, the archaeologist and the NYC tourist.

-April