Author Karen Foresti Hempson is set to discuss her new book Bean Pickers: American Immigrant Portraits, which shares eight true-life portrayals that focus on the Italian-Americans who begin their American lives as summer bean pickers, on Wednesday, June 5th at 5:30 pm, at the Oneida County History Center, 1608 Genesee Street, Utica. [Read more…] about Bean Pickers: Italian Immigrant Portraits in Utica
Immigration
New Book on Immigrant Builders and Architects in New York
Zachary J. Violette’s new book The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) reexamines urban America’s tenement buildings born of the housing reform movement embraced by the American-born elite in the late nineteenth century, centering on the immigrant neighborhoods of New York and Boston.
Violette focuses on what he calls the “decorated tenement,” a wave of new buildings constructed by immigrant builders and architects who remade the slum landscapes of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the North and West Ends of Boston in the late nineteenth century. [Read more…] about New Book on Immigrant Builders and Architects in New York
Eugene O’Neill and Ireland: A Talk by Dan McGovern
The American Irish Historical Society has announced “Eugene O’Neill and Ireland,” a talk by Dan McGovern, president of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House, has been set for Thursday, April 25th, at 6:30 pm.
Eugene O’Neill was the only American playwright to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was at Tao House in Danville, California, where O’Neill wrote his greatest plays, including Long Day’s Journey Into Night and The Iceman Cometh. [Read more…] about Eugene O’Neill and Ireland: A Talk by Dan McGovern
Rochester’s Near Northside and Neighborhood Change
Neighborhoods change. Ours was changing when my single parent mom managed to buy a modest house for cash in Rochester’s Near Northside in 1952. My mom was an immigrant from Toronto whose own mother had emigrated from England.
She had grown up in this working-class immigrant neighborhood somewhat northeast of downtown. In 1937, she graduated from Vocational High, located in the Bausch and Lomb plant. In 1952 she was newly divorced and had been hired to work on an assembly line – she could walk to work. [Read more…] about Rochester’s Near Northside and Neighborhood Change
22nd International Fenimore Cooper Conference Call for Papers
The 22nd International James Fenimore Cooper/Susuan Fenimore Cooper Conference has been set for September 25-28, 2019, at SUNY Oneonta.
This years conference will examine Cooper within this tension between native purity and immigrant amalgamation.
Organizers have announced they are seeking papers that address the role of Cooper and his contemporaries in forging an American identity out of the cultural mixture of overlapping empires and immigration. [Read more…] about 22nd International Fenimore Cooper Conference Call for Papers
All the Nations Under Heaven Revised
First published in 1996, All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York (Revised, Columbia University Press, 2019), written by Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, and Rovert W. Snyder, chronicles the role of immigrants and migrants in shaping the history and culture of New York City.
This updated edition of a classic text brings the story of the immigrant experience in New York City up to the present with new material on the city’s revival as a global metropolis with deeply rooted racial and economic inequalities. [Read more…] about All the Nations Under Heaven Revised
HDC Searching For NYC’s Latino Heritage
The Historic Districts Council of the City of New York is seeking information on historic place and events related to the city’s Latino Heritage.
The main altar of St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, in the Financial District of New York, is embellished with a painting called The Crucifixion, by the Mexican artist Jose Vallejo. Many of the paintings that decorate this church, including The Crucifixion, were donated by Archbishop Nunez de Haro from Mexico City in the late 18th Century.
In 1965, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church was designated a landmark of the city by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, one of the earliest designations in the city. [Read more…] about HDC Searching For NYC’s Latino Heritage
The Case Against Peter Stuyvesant
There is a Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan at 16th Street and 2nd Avenue with a statue of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of its New Amsterdam colony, a Stuyvesant High School, and a Stuyvesant Town residential development.
At least one group wants these places renamed and the statue removed. According to Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the head of the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center “Peter Stuyvesant was an extreme racist who targeted Jews and other minorities including Catholics and energetically tried to prohibit them from settling in then New Amsterdam.” [Read more…] about The Case Against Peter Stuyvesant
Catholic Missionary to the Adirondacks Father Fitz
The Rev. John G. Fitzgerald, or “Father Fitz,” as he was known to contemporaries, was the first resident Roman Catholic priest in Old Forge. He is fondly remembered as a missionary to the widely scattered working people of the region and as a prolific builder of churches. His obituary in 1925 and local histories rightly focus on his time in Old Forge, but Father Fitzgerald had a significant career prior to that. His early assignments reveal a resourceful and energetic clergyman who made an impact across the Adirondacks and North Country. He served the people of northern New York State for a total of 49 years providing faith, culture, and kindness.
John Gerald Fitzgerald was probably born November 19, 1850 in Deptford, Kent, England (now part of Greater London). His parents, Patrick Fitzgerald and Joanna O’Connor, were both born in Ireland. John was educated in Catholic schools in England, namely: Blackheath; Sedgley Park in Wolverhampton; and St. Edmund’s in Ware, Hertfordshire. Records from St. Edmund’s show that a John Fitzgerald attended the school from 1868 until 1871. Soon after, John emigrated to the United States where he attended St. Joseph’s Provincial Seminary in Troy, NY. He was sponsored by the recently established Diocese of Ogdensburg. At seminary, John served as choirmaster and developed what would become a lifelong interest in music. He was ordained at Troy by Bishop Bernard J. McQuaid of Rochester on June 10, 1876. [Read more…] about Catholic Missionary to the Adirondacks Father Fitz
Scorsese’s ‘Gangs of New York’ and New York History
Because I teach urban history, immigration history, and in particular New York history, I often have students inquire about the merits of Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film “Gangs of New York.”
Here are a few observations about the movie and about New York history. [Read more…] about Scorsese’s ‘Gangs of New York’ and New York History