Secret passageways under Chinatown, remnants of a bygone Bowery beer hall, a rooftop film studio…Author David Freeland writes of these and more in his book Automats, Taxi Dances and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure. Freeland seeks to find continuity through history, using the lens of leisure activity in New York. He is more [...]
Posts Tagged ‘immigration’
AUTOMATS, TAXI DANCES and VAUDEVILLE: Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure
Posted in manhattan, tagged atlantic garden, automats, beer hall, bowery, chinatown, david freeland, entertainment, history, immigration, leisure, manhattan, new york city, preservation, theater, vaudeville on November 24, 2009 | 2 Comments »
SUNSET PARK, Brooklyn
Posted in brooklyn, tagged brooklyn, commuter vans, diversity, gentrification, immigration, sunset park, sweatshops, williamsburg on September 20, 2009 | 8 Comments »
A neighborhood infinitely more nuanced than its namesake, Sunset Park repeatedly defies expectation. Once hailed as the “New Williamsburg,” Sunset Park residents have fought to keep industry in as a means to keep gentrification out. A widely diverse area where the term “minority” is misleading, upwards of 75% of the population is Hispanic or Chinese, [...]
VINEGAR HILL, Brooklyn
Posted in brooklyn, tagged architecture, brooklyn, community, development, DUMBO, immigration, preservation, urbanization, vinegar hill on July 17, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Nestled between symbols of urban industrialization and modern residential development (aka a Con Edison plant and glass condos), Vinegar Hill is a five-block square cobble-stoned neighborhood next to the Manhattan Bridge that seems to have been preserved in time circa the nineteenth century. This break in the time-space continuum is perpetuated by a sudden loss [...]
