Nancy Webster and David Shirley’s new book, A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park (Columbia University Press, 2016), recounts the grassroots, multi-voiced, and contentious effort, beginning in the 1980s, to transform Brooklyn’s defunct piers into a beautiful, urban oasis.
By the 1970s, the Brooklyn piers had become a wasteland on the New York City waterfront. Today, they have been transformed into a park that is enjoyed by countless Brooklynites and visitors from across New York City and around the world. The movement to resist commercial development on the piers reveals how concerned citizens came together to shape the future of their community. [Read more…] about A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park
Winnakee Land Trust has announced the Northern Dutchess Trail Project and receipt of a grant in the amount of $14,800 from the 2016 Greenway Conservancy Trail Grant Program.
The New York State Library commemorates the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor with an exhibit on the 7th floor, the centerpiece of which is a small but interesting collection of papers left by one Private First Class/later Sergeant Archibald Francis McCaw, who preferred to be known as Fran.
Fort Ticonderoga’s “Fort Fever Series” will begin in January and run through April 2017. The lecture series will be held on Sunday afternoons at 2 pm in the Mars Education Center. Tickets are $10 per person and can be purchased at the door; Fort Ticonderoga Members are admitted free of cost. 
Historic Huguenot Street (HHS) has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections Planning Grant for in the amount of $49,170.
The Connect Kids to Parks Transportation Grant Program is available to K-12 classrooms in Title 1 schools across the state to connect New York public school children with nature and New York State history by providing reimbursement grants to public schools for visits to a New York State park, nature center or historic site, a Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Environmental Education Center or Fish Hatchery, or the SUNY ESF Adirondack Ecological Center in Newcomb. 
The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland (Cornell University Press, 2016) by Marisa Schenfeld, which features essays by Stefan Kanfer and Jenna Weissman Joselit, presents Scheinfeld’s photographs of abandoned sites where resorts, hotels, and bungalow colonies once boomed in the Catskill Mountain region of upstate New York. Today the Borscht Belt is recalled through the nostalgic lens of summer swims, Saturday night dances, and comedy performances. But its current state, like that of many other formerly glorious regions, is nothing like its earlier status. Forgotten about and exhausted, much of its structural environment has been left to decay. 
The Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA) is now accepting nominations for the SPLIA Endangered Places List. SPLIA is looking for historic buildings or places that are in decline or threatened by development. Postmark deadline for completed nominations is January 31, 2017.