The National Mall: a reading

In 2007 I first came to the United States for any prolonged period of time and I stayed in Washington DC. One night that summer, an idea struck me: the National Mall represents the governing trinity of America and this trinity closely resembles the Christian trinity. This idea has stuck with me, amused me, but also baffled me ever since.

Let me explain.

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The center of the National Mall, as I understand it, is formed by the Washington Monument, dedicated to George Washington, founding father of the United States of America. In the Christian trinity, God-the-Father is the creator (like George Washington is the founder), however he cannot be represented figuratively - as per the first or second commandment (depending on your bible). And indeed George Washington is not represented figuratively here but as a gigantic obelisk. Some will say it is appropriate the father figure is represented by a giant phallus, but something that has always struck me is the two red blinking lights that are on all four sides, near the top of the monument. At night these give you the distinct illusion that you are being watched from up high.

Another aspect of the trinity is God-the-Son, better known as Jesus. In most Christian theologies, God, in the form of his son, Jesus, came to earth and sacrificed himself, thereby renewing (or perhaps restoring) the covenant between Himself and his people. A cataclysmic event that eventually led to a better world. On the National Mall it can be said that this aspect of the trinity is represented by Abraham Lincoln, who sits to the west of George Washington, can be considered his 'son' (as the 16th successor-president of the Union). Lincoln gave up his life and resided over a cataclysmic event that eventually restored the Union. One could even say that Lincoln, by giving his live, winning the civil war, and abolishing slavery, made the Union 'more perfect' - closer to the ideals in which it was conceived. In Christian iconography, Jesus is usually represented as a human ('ecce homo', "look, this is a human", as Pilate said). And so, unlike God-the-Father and his equivalent George Washington, Lincoln in represented figuratively: a giant sitting in his chair. It is interesting to note that Lincoln resides to the west of Washington, surrounded by monuments representing the death of Americans who - according to official ideology - gave their lives to defend the Union: the Vietnam monument, the Korea War monument, the Second World War monument, and crossing the Memorial Bridge, Arlington Cemetery. This side of national Mall, under the setting ('dying') sun, is dedicated to the remembrance of death. In many mythologies (e.g. Aztec), the land of the dead is imagined to be to the west.

Following this line of thought: what is on the eastern half of the Mall? Here we find mostly museums: several Smithsonian museums, the National Gallery, the National Botanical Gardens. Monuments to Science, to Knowledge, if anything. Most importantly, however, here we find the third element of the trinity: the equivalent of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came over the apostles and gave them the ability to speak in tongues and spread the word (the 'eu anggeleia', or good message). In Christian iconography the Holy Spirit is usually represented by a dove or, less commonly, a flame. However, what we find on the eastern end of the National Mall, and at the exact center of Washington DC, is House of Congress, on Capitol Hill. This is where American Democracy is practiced and, with all their disagreements, the inhabitants of the building sometimes may seem indeed to speak in tongues. The other components of the trinity may be dead, or history at least, but it is here at Congress that their legacy maintains a certain degree of agency to this day. The living spirit of American ideology, at the center of the center. (Washington DC was originally built to be at the very center of the United States, needless to say things have changed somewhat since then).

Now, what is the meaning of this? Is this some (sub)text inscribed into the landscape by some author? Probably not by any one author. Pierre l'Enfant, who designed the original master plan for Washington DC had planned an equestrian Washington Monument. The Lincoln Memorial sits on land that was not reclaimed from the swampy Potomac banks until the 20th Century and was itself not completed until the 1920's. The war monuments were not built until the 1980's and 1990's whereas Arlington Cemetery really is the result of an elaborate, cruel prank played on the confederate general Lee during the Civil War. (The cemetery was originally Lee's home and the first war dead to be were buried here were buried on his front lawn).

If an answer to the why of this text is not in any one author, I could make the claim that this reading represents some kind of essential truth about America, Americans, or American ideology. But perhaps the answer lies in myself and my own understanding of the United States. I have always been struck by some Americans' fetishization of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and related documents. To some people in this country, these documents and these men represent some kind of inalterable essence of what America is or rather: should be (the founding fathers as justification for some kind of change, closer to what they 'really intended'). From this fetishization it is easy to make the extra step and cast these figures in mythical (biblical) terms and in doing so I reinforce my own reading of America as a secular, but essentially Christian nation.

upward expansion and other facets of NYC

As a small child, my parents would occasionally take me through the tunnel from New Jersey, out into NYC for a Broadway show or a family get-together. The hustle and bustle of New York City always overwhelmed me since it differed so much from the quiet little town in which I grew up. Whenever we visited, I would inevitably start to feel trapped by the city and its enormous buildings that seemed to block out all possible light and nature. As we would walk around the city, my parents, who spent many years living in the city, often commented on its small size. I, however, could not envision New York City as anything but huge until I started living in New York and lost the etic perception of the outsider.

One prominent issue that is raised by the paragraph above is the contradictory idea that New York City can at once be viewed as both large and small. The huge quantity of people and the numerous buildings certainly help to give the feel of a large city; however, the idea of largeness exists mainly as the center of etic perceptions of thought, which are streamed through the “sensory overload” that one experiences upon first visiting NYC. An outlook of smallness seems to occur only after such a number of experiences in the city that one no longer views the city as foreign, but can recall memories from individual parts and can, in a sense, claim those parts as their own. In “Material Culture as Text”, Hodder discusses the “emic” verses the “etic’, and explains that the use of space can perhaps act as a bridge between the two viewpoints. In this way of thinking, a scarcity of space in NYC can be recognized when people or institutions attempt to acquire their own personal place to live in the city. Following in the same vein as Albert’s post, obtaining private living spaces in the city can be just as difficult to accomplish as creating private space on the R train.

Another instance of the scarcity of space can be seen in Columbia University’s somewhat controversial expansion to West Harlem. Columbia University has a significantly smaller campus than most of the other universities of a similar size and thus has been crunched for space. Even with the addition of the Harmony Hall undergraduate residence and the new science building, space is still tight. What has always seemed strange to me is the way that Lerner Hall was designed to waste so much space with those huge ramps when space is already so limited. (Article on the CU Manhattanville expansion.)

The last idea that I will bring up about space in NYC is the concept of upward expansion as it relates to archaeology and, thus, the past. The idea of space is central to one's perception of the present and the past. On any archaeological excavation, one strives to locate the specific place in which past generations of humans lived and flourished. This idea of space upward for skyscrapers is strange in that the different levels of occupation all occur in one time period; yet these levels, now orientated upward, seem to exist on the same plane as that of chronological occupation that occurs in archaeology. One would then think that the upward expansion of space seen in New York City would automatically evoke the presence of previous occupation underneath the ground. However, in this case, the skyscrapers do not tend to act as signifiers for the previous expansion, now underground, that occurred upward over time. It seems to me that the lack of nature presented by these skyscrapers causes the archaeological aspect of upward expansion underneath the city to be lost as the signified. Therefore, the upward expansion of NYC creates a disconnect between the city space and the more natural underground environment of the city’s archaeological past.

Camille Hutt

Brooklyn Bound

"The historical usurpation and theoretical oddity that install the image within the rights of reality are determined as the forgetting of a simple origin." (Derrida, Of Grammatology, pg 37)

The people who lived here owned the property once, maybe twice. The title reads like the Popol Vuh bestowed and taken back leaving traces of past worlds behind. The house stood empty for three or more years before some one tracked down the distant relative who, in his twenties, had no idea he owned a house. The day he saw it, smelled it, he hired a realtor to sell it. She would not go inside during the open house but someone bought it. If it were any place other than Brooklyn I would suggest they salt the earth. Instead, the new owners will remove the asbestos siding and put the clapboard back. The next new owners will know nothing of the five dogs that never got walked, the innumerable visits from police and that their “adopted son” sometimes ate out of the trash cans.

Does Brooklyn derive sustenance from its own history, ingesting and remaking it? The Coney Island of Requiem for a Dream was refashioned in its own image by an Italian designer, its future set to be moderated by Mike Wallace at the Graduate Center this Thursday. As Brooklyn’s history is folded back into itself, the Dodgers become the Cyclones and ticket are $5 for the bleachers.

Requiem for a dream
Save Coney Island

Jenna

Semiotic Topographies

“What we call ideology only achieves consistency by intervening in social space and its production, and by thus taking on body therein. Ideology per se might well be said to consist primarily in a discourse upon social space (Lefebvre, 1974: 44).”

An almost daily reminder of this discourse is my walk up through Morningside Park to Columbia’s campus. The significance of the park itself has been contested for many years, and I’ve always found the position of the University in relation to the poorer neighborhoods below to be especially striking. The University relocated to its current campus in 1896, joining St. Luke’s Hospital and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It has often been suggested that gathering such institutions in their locale atop a cliff was meant to recall the Athenian Acropolis. Topographical extremities seem to have been a signifier since the emergence of the first permanent settlements and though the heights no longer serve practical measures as such, they have retained their inherent symbolism as a bastion of relative power and wealth, in this case magnified by the placement of the Park. The characteristics of the topography in this case create the signifier.

The decision to situate a park between one hundred tenth and one hundred twenty-third streets was made at the request of the city's comptroller, who thought that the 'severe topography' of the area would make the extension of the street grid prohibitively expensive. First proposed in 1867, the park was conceived long before the racial and economic divide between Harlem and the Heights. However, Morningside Park has since had the effect of distancing Harlem from the academic community that, geographically, is only blocks away. While this may have aided Harlem in establishing a unique identity as a community, it has also led to a degree of disengagement by the University from the nearby community that has sometimes resulted in hostility.

From the parapet along Morningside Drive, one is able to survey the buildings of Harlem, and beyond them. It is a natural vantage point to gaze upon the urban landscape below. To reach Harlem, one must descend multiple flights of steps and continue walking downhill along a path, only reaching the neighborhood of Harlem itself after passing through an open gate in a cast-iron fence that contrasts sharply with the grandeur of the west entrances. The difference in perspective from above as one passes through the gate is striking. There is no vista now, only the immediate urban environment. Passing through the Park back to Morningside Heights requires a more strenuous walk, as one must wind one's way back up the path and the stairs, confronted by hill, cliff, and wall. If a wrong turn is taken, it will shortly be discovered that not all paths lead directly to the streets above, many instead meandering back down into the park.

An interesting dialogue over this function of the park's location can be observed in the material culture of the park itself. An elegant pond in the park is the remnant of a controversial attempt by Columbia University to build an athletic center in the park in the 1960's. Although the center was to have featured a facility for the use of Harlem residents, it was regarded by the emerging civil rights movement as an attempt at segregation. The administration denied this, stating that the athletic center would benefit both communities. However, student protests in 1968 halted construction of the new building. Whether there was any true racial bias inherent in the plan is not as relevant as is the observable paradigm shift to an active attempt at integration. Interestingly, there is also a statue at the one hundred sixteenth 'Morningside entrance' of Carl Schurz “A Defender of Liberty and a friend of Human Rights.” It is explained that Schurz was an advocate for abolition and was active on behalf of Native Americans at the bureau of Indian affairs.

Pedestrians are able to learn that the area was inhabited by a succession of Native Americans, and Dutch and English settlers. The immediate vicinity can be connected to both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. The attempt by Columbia to build an athletic center is noted and contextualized within the larger civil rights movement as a moment of solidarity between the student body and the population of Harlem. The presence on the Harlem Plain of Native American and Dutch settlements, eventually appropriated by the English settlers is noted in the same perfunctory way as the controversy over the athletic center, on a placard at the Morningside entrance to the park. The statues and friezes that act as a monument to people and ideas attempt to weave a multicultural history into the fabric of the park.

--Stephen

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